[DeTomaso] NPC a Thanksgiving story

Mon Nov 28 20:28:28 EST 2011

Albania - a very cool but also fairly odd place.  I was there for a couple
of weeks while evaluating a well the company I work for was drilling back in
2005 or so.  The drill bit got stuck at one point, so I had several days to
see the sights while the drillers tried to free the bit.

The climate and geography in Albania are great, very similar to southern
Italy - which is understandable since Albania is just a short hop across the
Adriatic Sea from Italy.  One of the bigger problems in Albania though is
that Albanians seemed to have a problem with trash.  They didn't throw it
away, they just tossed it aside where ever they happened to be.  Men, women,
children, everyone just threw stuff on the ground or out the window, even if
there was a trash bin right next to them.  Uncontrolled littering is
absolutely ruining what could otherwise be a top notch tourist destination.

The second biggest problem were hoards of reinforced concrete pillboxes.
The previous puppet dictator (Albania was a Soviet satellite country in the
50's and 60's) was totally paranoid that the US was going to invade his poor
little country.  So after the Soviets left, he recruited the Chinese to fund
building pillboxes which were placed all over the countryside.  There are
about 2.5 million people in Albania and 800,000 or so of these Chinese
pillboxes.  The pillboxes sort of resemble a big mushroom and one is near
almost every house and droves of them were placed in every field.  I guess
the idea was that when the evil Americans attacked, all Albanian families
would run to their private pillbox to defend the country. Since ordinary
Albanians weren't allowed to have weapons, I suppose they would throw corn
and olive pits out the front pillbox slit until the invaders gave up and ran
away.  Anyway, after the old dictator dude died, the farmers began dragging
the pillboxes out of the fields with muscas (see below).  Invariably during
the towing process, the pillbox would flip upside down and then the base
would dislodge.  So all the roads in Albania are now lined with inverted
concrete mushrooms that have 2 or 3 feet of old rusty rebar sticking up in
the air.  They look for all the world like gigantic dead radioactive
cockroaches from a 50's sci-movie.  The pillboxes are so prevalent that you
can buy replica Albanian pillbox souvenirs at the airport gift shop.  I have
one sitting on my desk at work.

But I also learned a few Albanian words while I was there.  One was
'Musca'(see above), which is Albanian for mule.  Musca doubles in meaning
for stubborn in Albania and is used as a personal insult, somewhat similar
to English.  Another thing that I noticed were bizillions of signs that said
'shit-it'.  Shit-it signs were all over the place in Albania - on buildings,
on cars, trucks, stacks of hay....you name it, it said shit-it on it.
Finally I asked one of the local rig hands what shit-it meant.  'For-Sale',
he told me.  So all of Albanian is apparently shit-it.  Probably cheap
shit-it to boot.

I'm tempted to try a shit-it ad on Craigslist or Ebay.  I'm pretty sure it
would get noticed.  What a bunch of musca.

Dave Bell

-----Original Message-----
From: detomaso-bounces at realbig.com
[mailto:detomaso-bounces at realbig.com]On Behalf Of Larry - Ohio Time Corp
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 4:16 PM
To: detomaso at realbig.com
Subject: [DeTomaso] NPC a Thanksgiving story

This years Thanksgiving dinner table had both old people (older then me) and
young people (my age and younger) at it. One young lady told us that she is
an archeologist and was at a dig this summer in Albania.

A funny thing she found out when she talked about her car back home, all the
locals laughed and snickered at her. She then told us she later found out
that the local word for penis is car.

The poor people did not know what was about to happen. but you guys do!

I dated a girl that had a machine that polished my car.I was known as a
young man that could fix any car.Some people call me a car whisper.My dad
drove a big car, I inherited it too. I wanted to drive it today.

After about 20 minutes of this I got up, took my glass of wine to the big EZ
chair in the front room spent.

Larry (was trying to be good too) - Cleveland

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