I've finally gotten far enough with my Chinese to attempt a (very poor) translation of some easy poetry. Of necessity, this is a loose paraphrase, since the literal translation would be ungrammatical, lacking poetry, and incomprehensible.

This is the saddest thing to me:
Not waking to find you gone,
After a night spent
Composing poems on these walls,
But there on the table to see
Your wine cup, still half-full.

--Xia Zhou Yu, c. 900?

The "State" Of Idaho: The Case For Open Debate

Yep, I'm a proud member of the Cartographic Thought Police.

In a similar vein...

I'm a sucker for kemence and bagpipes, so imagine my delight to stumble upon this very interesting post by Dumneazu on Laz ethnorock and the Pontic music scene generally. Plenty of interest here. I particularly like that these folks aren't running afoul of Turkish language laws because Lazuri is not written:

Laz literature, in fact, seems to have skipped the "written literature" phase altogether and gone straight to the "hit CD" level.

And speaking of YouTube, Dumneazu has the best apologie for Internet video I've yet seen:

Youtube lets you peek in on private after dinner parties where a bunch of greek speaking turkish muslims drink raki/ouzo and just let it all hang out.

Indeed. Based on a quick look at the archives, Dumneazu's mission in life seems to be to jaunt about Eastern Europe and the Levant in search of drunken musicians and sausages. Nice work! There are a lot pork products in those archives, as well as this gem:

Two YouTubes in a row: apologies. But some things cannot be passed up:

Thank you, Rigor Vitae!