Croatian Is Code For "Animal"

[il ragno]

Gypsies, stop beating helpless women!

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/08/25/2008-08-25_breaking_the_silence_to_aid_victims_of_f.html?page=0

Breaking the silence to aid victims of family violence
By Heather Robinson
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Monday, August 25th 2008, 9:24 PM

http://stumbleinn.net/forum/customavatars/avatar198_1.gif
Croatian Katarina Tepesh has written a memoir that will be used to counsel victims of domestic violence.

A survivor of domestic violence and rape, Katarina Tepesh has spent much of her adulthood trying to forget.

But after Sept. 11, the 58-year-old Croatian, who immigrated to New York at 17, started trying to remember.

An upper East Sider who works as an accounting supervisor for the YWCA, Tepesh published a memoir last year that will be used to counsel victims of domestic violence. "My father hit me so badly my leg was fractured, and was in severe pain for a month," recalled Tepesh, who has striking blue eyes. "As an additional punishment, my father forbade my mother to take me to the doctor."

But her book, "Escape from Despair: A Croatian Family's Survival," is not only a story of ghastly abuse. It is the story of a family - its customs, its members' personalities and the ways the larger society affected this family.

It takes place in Croatia, where Tepesh grew up and which fell under Communist rule during her childhood.

One of the book's themes is the damage that occurs when people are bullied into silence.

She draws parallels between her father's repression of the family and the repression of Croatian society behind the Iron Curtain's Communist regime.

"Our father imposed a silence," she says, adding wryly, "He certainly didn't practice democracy."

Notified by neighbors of abuse in the home, the local police came and did nothing. "An officer walked into the house, saw the signs of abuse, and walked out with [my father]," she writes in the book. "Rather than arresting him, he took him to the closest bar, where they both got drunk."

Her father's alcoholism is a subject she tackles head-on, something that he, tragically, was never able to do. "It takes a great deal of courage to stand up and say, ‘I am an alcoholic,'" she says. "Unfortunately, my father grew up in a macho society ... with no freedom of expression personally and politically."

In a chilling chapter detailing her father's funeral, which she traveled back to Croatia to attend, she also indicts the local clergy of their town, who had failed to intervene.

After describing the priest's words over her father's grave, she reflects in the book: "How many times had this same priest seen my mother black-and-blue, with a swollen face, missing teeth, and fractured bones, but had chosen to turn away and say nothing?"

Alongside the story of the abuse is a parallel narrative about her Aunt Anica, who immigrated to the U.S. as a single woman of 35 and eventually married a well-to-do man.

With Anica's help, Tepesh and her family escaped their father and managed to come to the U.S.

Shortly afterward, she was raped on a date - a trauma she describes in her book.

"It's something you never get over totally," she says.

For most of her adulthood, she worked in accounting. At one time, she considered working at a shelter in Brooklyn because she wanted to help abused women and children. But she found it too painful.

"I saw women and children, they were black-and-blue, just like us when we were kids," she says. "It was too much suffering. I couldn't deal with it."

She remains, however, a committed women's rights advocate, volunteering "behind the scenes" on political campaigns and for the National Organization for Women.

"She has always been loyal, passionate and truly committed to women's issues," says her friend Carmen Delgado of the upper West Side, a fellow women's rights advocate.

But following Sept. 11, Tepesh felt emotionally raw and unable to repress the memories.

She had been a writer for some time. As a contributor to two publications, Zajednicar, a Croatian-American newspaper based in Pittsburgh, and American Home, a Slovenian-American newspaper published in Cleveland, she had covered lighter fare about New York City events like the marathon.

But she poured out her reactions to Sept. 11.

"Being attacked is a horrible feeling, and Sept. 11 reminded me," she says.

"I wrote about how afraid and unsure we were."

That experience led her to explore memories of the abuse.

In a class at the Gotham Writers' Workshop, her instructor, Kathleen Finerman, encouraged her to expand her memories in a book. Self-published in 2007, the book took several years to complete because she wrote it while working full-time.

She learned recently the book, available at www.escapefromdespair.com, will be used as a resource by Mount Sinai Medical Center's Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program, which provides aid and counseling to victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence.

Tepesh, who is single, says she is proud to be helping women through her writing and also through her day job, keeping track of finances for the YWCA's pension fund.

"My goal today, our goal, is for women to be financially independent," she says.

[Niccolo and Donkey]

Poor Michael Musto aka Il Ragno has been forced to go dumpster-diving and posting a fluff piece for American dyke feminism to try and jab at Croatia and Croatians simply because he doesn't like me since all his feces-throwing has a habit of landing on his own face.

This piece touches on all those hallmarks of what Il Ragno must stand for: feminism, democracy, the tragedy of 9/11, and the glory of America today, especially Manhattan. It even has a Finerman in it to coach this attention-seeker!

I guess next up from Il Ragno is no doubt a post from the Simon Wiesenthal Center chastising Croatia for being "evil Nazis"......that'll show us.

A very big LMFAO

[Warka]

Notified by neighbors of abuse in the home, the local police came and did nothing. "An officer walked into the house, saw the signs of abuse, and walked out with [my father]," she writes in the book. "Rather than arresting him, he took him to the closest bar, where they both got drunk."

We need cops like that here in the U.S.

[RuneX2]

I was once on a holiday in Croatia, when it was called Yugoslavia, where I met a young beautiful Croatian girl who could drink vodka like two drunken sailors from Leningrad. And do some other things too. So lay off Croatia will you!

[il ragno]

Poor Michael Musto aka Il Ragno has been forced to go dumpster-diving and posting a fluff piece for American dyke feminism to try and jab at Croatia and Croatians simply because he doesn't like me since all his feces-throwing has a habit of landing on his own face.

This piece touches on all those hallmarks of what Il Ragno must stand for: feminism, democracy, the tragedy of 9/11, and the glory of America today, especially Manhattan. It even has a Finerman in it to coach this attention-seeker!

I guess next up from Il Ragno is no doubt a post from the Simon Wiesenthal Center chastising Croatia for being "evil Nazis"......that'll show us.

A very big LMFAO

Poor Niccolo, the metrosexy disco wog, likes to fumfer at "idiot Americans" and their "barbaric racism" out of one side of his mouth... but then, he likes to play-act at being a hairy-chested, woman-punching Opus Dei Croat out the other side.

Now that he's no longer swooning over Negresses on Friday nights, he spends his time railing against "dirts", which I guess is the Croatian term for "women" - at least, in between the rape camp and the mass grave (at which point they all become "BritZOG propaganda").

Note that he shrieks about "feminism" and "democracy" like any brownshirt with a dangling gold earring, but gasps in horror at the word "nigger". (Kinda like the way he cackles at 9/11, but cries like a girl at NATO bombardment of his favorite pesthole.)

Is that how it works, Darkows? Wimmens are The Enemy, but the Carr Brothers are Our Friends and Equals? No wonder you're still lighting a votive candle for Franjo Tudjman's posthumous Peace Prize.

PS: No dumpster diving was necessary. There it was in today's paper....big as life. Hey, you've got a steady girlfriend now - if you don't like it, make yourself comfortable: beat the shit out of her!

[Niccolo and Donkey]

Amazing that a fifty year old "man" like Il Ragno has only the attack on the personal in his arsenal. After all, why discuss and debate actual matters when you can fling feces like Il Ragno? Stooping down to the lowest common denominator is the most typical of American cultural attributes and is typically Il Ragno in all his pseudo-judeo glory.

Hey, whatever keeps the monkeys clapping...I understand why you do it :)

Rest assured that every personal attack you send my way only validates what I say about you. You outjew the jew that you lament so much.

Be sure to copy this over at SI as is your wont so that the mouthbreathers over there can hi-five you and each other without understanding why.

I will give you a bit of credit this time though: you failed to mischaracterize my words and avoided blatantly fudging them into something that they're not.

You're making progress......who knows, maybe by the age of 80 you'll actually be an honest person!

Last thing: no matter how hard you try, you simply can't piss me off. That's why I smile every single time you lash out at Croatians, Croatia, or me personally. Half the fun of being here is watching you get upset by my mere presence.

Thank you for once again making an ass of yourself by posting this shit. Never took you for a Finerman fan.......word has it that you're opening up for Margaret Cho in the Bowery next week, two drink minimum.

[il ragno]

Amazing that a fifty year old "man" like Il Ragno has only the attack on the personal in his arsenal. After all, why discuss and debate actual matters when you can fling feces like Il Ragno?

I merely posted the article as it appeared in the paper.

You went straight to Def-Con 4. Don't cry foul if I return fire.

And by the way, I'm turning 48 this year, sure - and you're a still-childless, still-unmarried 36-year-old marketing bottom-feeder, still hustling for your supper, still living in a country you secretly despise (but pretend not to for the purposes of directing all your self-loathing vitriol outwards and southwards), only you decided to add 'born-again Catholic' to your resume a few years ago - probably to give yourself some kind of identity and tradition to cling to, desperately, now that you've outgrown the black silk shirt with the white tie and the shark's-tooth pendant.

[Niccolo and Donkey]

I merely posted the article as it appeared in the paper.

oh please! Spare me the Margaret Dumont act...you're not stupid and we both know why you posted it.

And by the way, I'm turning 48 this year, sure - and you're a still-childless, still-unmarried 36-year-old marketing bottom-feeder, still hustling for your supper, still living in a country you secretly despise (but pretend not to for the purposes of directing all your self-loathing vitriol outwards and southwards), only you decided to add 'born-again Catholic' to your resume a few years ago - probably to give yourself some kind of identity and tradition to cling to, desperately, now that you've outgrown the black silk shirt with the white tie and the shark's-tooth pendant.

34 and I like Toronto very much....great place. I still have another 14 years in which to catch up to you in the failed marriage game so give a guy a break!

[Niccolo and Donkey]

As for the actual topic: this bitch in question has Tepesh for a last name, the same last name as Vlad Tepes, aka Dracula. Funny thing is that Croatia's leading feminist cunt is named Slavenka Drakulic, whose last name means "son of Dracula".

Feminists = vampires?

[il ragno]

oh please! Spare me the Margaret Dumont act...you're not stupid and we both know why you posted it.

Yes, that's right....I set it all up with "Heather Finerman" beforehand. At first, she was a little antsy about making the story up out of whole cloth, but once I explained I needed it for an online prank, and wrapped it up with ".....It's Musto, bitch", she got right on the ball.

I still have another 14 years in which to catch up to you in the failed marriage game so give a guy a break!

Well - like Draco used to always remind Glenn Miller: don't hit girls, Nic! :nono:

[Niccolo and Donkey]

Well - like Draco used to always remind Glenn Miller: don't hit girls, Nic! :nono:

Oh c'mon! How can you look at Sarah Silverman and not want to give her an upper cut followed by a kick in the kidneys?

[il ragno]

Mental torture, Nic...think "mental torture".

[Ambrosio Spinola]

What have we missed here? I thought you two had made some sort of peace over things croatian. This is getting way to personal for my taste. Could you please cool it off?

[Longinus]

Poor Michael Musto aka Il Ragno has been forced to go dumpster-diving and posting a fluff piece for American dyke feminism to try and jab at Croatia and Croatians simply because he doesn't like me since all his feces-throwing has a habit of landing on his own face.

This piece touches on all those hallmarks of what Il Ragno must stand for: feminism, democracy, the tragedy of 9/11, and the glory of America today, especially Manhattan. It even has a Finerman in it to coach this attention-seeker!

I guess next up from Il Ragno is no doubt a post from the Simon Wiesenthal Center chastising Croatia for being "evil Nazis"......that'll show us.

A very big LMFAO

Treating woman as a property is a mark of strong races and since Anglos are so obviously homosexual, lackig this patriarchal virility, their bitches shall replace them with niggers. Good riddance! :deadhorse:

http://thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=599174&postcount=15

[shanemac]

For some reason I like Croatia. I don't really know why... I think it's mostly the fact that I like the sound of the word "Croatia".

On the other hand I dislike simpering slimy sinister Serbia.

[Ace Rimmer]

I beat my women only under special circumstances, for like, not getting my clothes ironed on time,if dinner isn't ready and properly served, for disagreeing with me, for having too much free time for her self...etc.

[Jebivjetar]

Tuci ženu svaki dan, ako ne znaš zašto, zna ona. - grafit u Novom Zagrebu

[Ahknaton]

What have we missed here? I thought you two had made some sort of peace over things croatian. This is getting way to personal for my taste. Could you please cool it off?
I agree. More Canadian metrosexual jokes and less ripping on our Balkanoid brethren!

[Rogerius Josephus Boscovich]

I beat my women only under special circumstances, for like, not getting my clothes ironed on time,if dinner isn't ready and properly served, for disagreeing with me, for having too much free time for her self...etc.

Thats your own problem, tighten up that loose chain in the kitchen and problem solved.

[Niccolo and Donkey]

I beat my women only under special circumstances, for like, not getting my clothes ironed on time,if dinner isn't ready and properly served, for disagreeing with me, for having too much free time for her self...etc.

You are a good white man :thumbsup:

[PseudoCop]

What have we missed here? I thought you two had made some sort of peace over things croatian. This is getting way to personal for my taste. Could you please cool it off?

That article was just too good a piece of troll bait to resist- hell, when I saw it in the paper I saw the potential for its use, so don't judge IR too harshly.

[Ace Rimmer]

See... See how popular we are...

[il ragno]

It appears I might owe Croatia - cradle of wife-beating - an apology of sorts.

See, on the one hand, I've never punched a ho I was with mainly because, if I didn't like 'em, I wouldn't be with 'em. Or so I like to think.

On the other hand, though, if I ever woke up one morning to find myself lying next to this self-obsessed twat, I not only would beat her till my knuckles ached - I'd duct-tape her, ball-gagged, to a straight-back chair and down a few Red Bulls for a quick energy boost before going to work on her with a c-clamp and pliers. Compared to her husband, Gregor Samsa hit the megaball lottery.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/08/26/o.divorce.dreams/index.html

She's happily married, dreaming of divorce
By Ellen Tien

(OPRAH.com) -- I contemplate divorce every day. It tugs on my sleeve each morning when my husband, Will, greets me in his chipper, smug morning-person voice, because after 16 years of waking up together, he still hasn't quite pieced out that I'm not viable before 10 a.m.

It puts two hands on my forehead and mercilessly presses when he blurts out the exact wrong thing ("Are you excited for your surprise party next Tuesday?"); when he lies to avoid the fight ("What do you mean I left our apartment door open? I never even knew our apartment had a door!"); when he buttons his shirt and jacket into the wrong buttonholes, collars and seams unaligned like a vertical game of dominoes, with possibly a scrap of shirttail zippered into his fly.

It flicks me, hard, just under the eye when, during a parent-teacher conference, he raises his arm high in the air, scratches his armpit, and then --then! -- absently smells his fingers.

It slammed into me like a 4,000-pound Volvo station wagon one spring evening four years ago, although I remember it as if it were last year.

He had dropped me off in front of a restaurant, prior to finding a parking spot. As I crossed in front of the car, he pulled forward, happily smiling back over his left shoulder at some random fascinating bit (a sign with an interesting font, a new scaffolding, a diner that he may or may not have eaten at the week after he graduated from college), and plowed into me. The impact, while not wondrous enough to break bodies 12 ways, was sufficient to bounce me sidewise onto the hood, legs waving in the air like antennae, skirt flung somewhere up around my ears.

For one whole second, New York City stood stock-still and looked at my underwear.

As I pounded the windshield with my fist and shouted -- "Will, Will, stop the car!" -- he finally faced forward, blink, blink, blink, trying, yes, truly trying to take it all in. And I heard him ask with mild astonishment, very faintly because windshield glass is surprisingly thick, "What are you doing here?"

In retrospect, it was an excellent question, a question that I've asked myself from altar to present, both incessantly and occasionally. What am I doing here?

Don't misunderstand: I would not, could not disparage my marriage (not on a train, not in the rain, not in a house, not with a mouse). After 192 months, Will and I remain if not happily married, then steadily so. Our marital state is Indiana, say, or Connecticut -- some red areas, more blue. Less than bliss, better than disaster. We are arguably, to my wide-ish range of reference, Everycouple.

Nor is Will the Very Bad Man that I've made him out to be. Rather, like every other male I know, he is merely a Moderately Bad Man, the kind of man who will leave his longboat-sized shoes directly in the flow of our home's traffic so that one day I'll trip over them, break my neck, and die, after which he'll walk home from the morgue, grief-stricken, take off his shoes with a heavy heart, and leave them in the center of the room until they kill the housekeeper. Everyman.

Still, beneath the thumpingly ordinary nature of our marriage -- Everymarriage --runs the silent chyron of divorce. It's the scarlet concept, the closely held contemplation of nearly every woman I know who has children who have been out of diapers for at least two years and a husband who won't be in them for another 30. It's the secret reverie of a demographic that freely discusses postpartum depression, eating disorders, and Ambien dependence (often all in the same sentence) with the plain candor of golden brown toast. In a let-it-all-hang-out culture, this is the given that stays tucked in.

This is the Mid-Wife Crisis.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/LIVING/personal/08/26/o.divorce.dreams/art.divorce.dreams.gi.jpg
Keep America Beautiful: kill me.


Mind you, when I say Mid-Wife Crisis, I mean the middle-of-married-life kind, not the kind where you go to Yale to learn how to legally brandish a birthing stool. As one girlfriend remarked, it's the age of rage -- a period of high irritation that lasts roughly one to two decades. As a colleague e-mailed me, it's the simmering underbelly of resentment, the 600-pound mosquito in the room. At a juncture where we thought we should have unearthed some modicum of certainty, we are turning into the Clash. If I go will there be trouble? If I stay will it be double? Should I stay or should I go? Oprah.com: Six relationship decisions we've made for you

Our mothers knew better than to ponder such questions, at least not out loud in front of God and the hairdresser. They deliberately waited to reach the last straw until their children were grown and the house was paid for. At 25, they were ladies with lady clothes and lady hairdos -- bona fide adults, the astronauts' wives. By 40, they were relics.

But we, we with our 21st-century access to youth captured in a gleaming Mason jar with a pinked square of gingham rubber-banded over the top, we are still visually tolerable if not downright irresistible when we're 30 or 35 or 40. If you believe the fashion magazines -- which I devoutly do -- even 50- and 60-year-olds are (lick finger, touch to imaginary surface, make sizzle noise) pretty hot tickets.

We are also tickets with jobs and disposable income. If we jump ship now, we're still attractive prospects who may have another shot at happiness. There's just that tricky wicket of determining whether eternal comfort resides in the tried-and-true or whether the untried will be truer.

Our mothers, so old too young, believed that marriage was the best they could get. We, the children of mothers who settled (or were punished for not settling), wonder: Is this as good as it gets?

Our mothers feared being left alone. We crave time alone. Alone time is the new heroin. Oprah.com: Do you have a hard time being alone?

What are we doing here?

We were groomed to think bigger and better -- achievement was our birthright -- so it's small surprise that our marriages are more freighted. Marriage and its cruel cohort, fidelity, are a lot to expect from anyone, much less from swift-flying us. Would we agree to wear the same eyeshadow or eat in the same restaurant every day for a lifetime? Nay, cry the villagers, the echo answers nay. We believe in our superhood. We count on it.

So, did our feminist foremothers set us up for failure? Or were they just trying to empower us so that we wouldn't buy into the notion of having to be a better better half?

Either way, many of us semi-bought into it. As the tail end of the baby boomers/mavericks of Gen X, we still had one foot in the Good Girl pond, or at least the wet footprints leading out of it. In the beginning, we felt obliged to join the race to have it all; being married was an integral part of the contest and heaven forfend we should be disqualified.

Flash-forward to 10 years later, when we discover that we can get it all but whose harebrained scheme was this anyway? We can get jobs, get pregnant, get it done. We can try -- with varying levels of success -- to get sleep, get fit, get control, and get those important Me-moments where one keeps a journal with thought-provoking lists that go "I'm a woman first, a mother second, a laundress third." We get upset, we get over it. What we don't always get is: Why.

My high-powered, high-earning friend discovers that her magnificently indolent husband has been having an affair with a co-worker; she threatens to give him the heave-ho, demurs when he demands that she pay the rent on his new apartment, and decides to work it out. For now.

Why?

A woman I know, the stay-at-home wife of a mogul -- a really nice mogul with multiple houses, a jet, a chef, the whole pizza pie -- throws it all over, packs up her two young children, and leaves him in search of greater satisfaction.

Why?

I watch in frustration as my son desperately tries to talk to Will through a newspaper or computer screen or whatever other large, flat surfaces fathers place between themselves and filial communication, and yet I know in my heart that I would be mightily hard-pressed to remove this father from his son's house.

Why?

Reasons and rationalizations abound and rebound. It doesn't matter whether the infractions are big or small. At a certain point, we stop asking why and start asking how. How did it come to this? How much longer can I go on? When there are no hows left, the jig is up.

I recently stood by as a clothing designer, a mother in her 40s, announced to a group of women that she was divorcing her husband. The women's faces flickered with curiosity, support, recognition, and -- could it be? -- yearning. Not a one of us suggested that she try harder to make it work. No voice murmured, "What a shame."

Because it isn't a shame. Divorce is no longer the shame that spits stain upon womanly merit. Conventional wisdom decrees that marriage takes work, but it doesn't take work, it is work. It's a job -- intermittently fulfilling and annoying, with not enough vacation days. Divorce is a job too (with even fewer vacation days). It's a matter of weighing your options.

A friend once compared the prospect of leaving her husband to leaving her child's private school: The school wasn't entirely to her liking, but her daughter was happy there; it wasn't what she'd expected, but applying to other schools involved a lot of costly, complicated paperwork and the nagging uncertainty of whether another school would accept her and/or really be that much better.

Another friend viewed divorce as being akin to an extended juice fast: You're intrigued but skeptical, admiring yet apprehensive. Is it dangerous? Does it work? You're not completely sold, but then again, you could envision yourself attempting it down the road.

What this says to me (other than: my friends sure do come up with awfully good metaphors!) is that women don't view divorce as a scary, shadowy behemoth. It's an unpalatable yet manageable task -- like changing schools or extreme dieting -- that may or may not yield a better result.

To be sure, there will be throngs of angry women who will decry me for plunging a stake into the heart of holy matrimony. "My husband is my lifeline," I've heard said (and that's bad news for the aorta). "My husband and I never fight" is another marital chestnut -- again, bad news (not to mention a big fat lie), since according to the experts, the strongest relationships are the ones in which people can continually agree to disagree. "My husband is my best friend," others will aver.

No. Your husband is not your best friend. Your best friend is your best friend. If your husband were your best friend, what would that make your best friend -- the dog? When a woman tells me that her husband is her best friend, what I hear is: I don't really have any friends.

But if self-delusion is your particular poison, well, then that's fine too. Just make sure that when you phone your life-order in, you say, "One self-delusion, please," as opposed to "One perfect marriage." Fantasy, as we all know, doesn't deliver.

Because in the end, that's basically what it's all about: getting your order right. Our day comes down to choices -- and it's finally dawning on the long-term wives of the world that divorce may be the last-standing woman's right to choose. We can admit that our marriages aren't lambent, lyrical ice-dancing routines and still decide to push on together to the final flying sit spin. We also realize that divorce is an alternative that's fully within reach, be it now or later or never. The more readily we acknowledge the solid utility of marriage (as one friend's husband put it, "I'm essentially a checkbook and a sperm bank -- but I'm okay with that!"), the more ably we can splinter the box of marital fantasy that makes us feel stuck, trapped, obliged. One eloquent swing of the ax and happiness is thrust firmly back into our own hands.

This is not to say that dismantling one's marriage will automatically bring happiness; it's the idealization of marriage that needs to be shredded, along with its accompanying bumper sticker WIVES MAKE BETTER WOMEN. If we stay, we stay because we decide to, not because our ankles and wrists have been locked into societal expectations. If, after various efforts, we finally leave, we have the confidence to be the leavers and not the left.

Having choices is a cornerstone of strength: Choosers won't be beggars. "Thinking about divorce is kind of like living in New York City with its museums and theater and culture," a doctor friend of mine said. "You may never actually go to any of these places, but for some reason, just the idea that you could if you wanted to makes you feel better."

Maybe one day, marriage -- like the human appendix, male nipples, or your pinky toes -- will become a vestigial structure that will, in a millennium or two, be obsolete. Our great-great-great-grandchildren's grandchildren will ask each other in passing, "Remember marriage? What was its function again? Was it that maladaptive organ that intermittently produced gastrointestinal antigens and sometimes got so inflamed that it painfully erupted?"

Yes. Yes it was.

Until that day of obsolescence, we can confront the dilemma and consider the choice a privilege. Once upon a time is the stuff of fairy tales. As for happily ever after -- see appendix.

from "O, The Oprah Magazine," May 2008

[Scryllak]

ragno has just convinced me to never marry any woman for any reason.

[Niccolo and Donkey]

Gromo: Il Ragno has given me a great idea for tourism in the old country....a wife-beating festival held every August in the town squares of the Dalmatian coastline.

Croatia: Come for the beaches, stay for the wife-beatings and chainsaw rape.

[Gull]

First in my surrounding nobody beats women, more like they rule men.
Second Tepesh is Wallache (Vlaško) surname and they genes and culture are not of Croat.
Third women is beaten everywhere just like a man.
Forth Croatia is country, organized under it's name while Anglo-Saxon where still tribes.

[Königin Luise von Preußen]

now that you say this, Gull, I must remember on a law case at court for one Croatian, who has sued for libel a philosopher who is of Serbian origin, has now the Croatian citizenship living in Croatia but saying: the Croatian nation is more stupid than doves and that they don`t know their "interests".. i.e. Croatians were animals in his eyes.. and this after all what happened by the oppression and the genocide that the JNA did in Milosevics hands.. his name is Kangrga and he was in Tito-times promenading with his Jugo-nostalgic colleagues from the whole world making holidays at our beautiful coast, philosophising about Tito and the world.. and not seeing infront of their eyes the former Gulag-Alcatraz-islands like Goli Otok.. disgusting..