The Guardian Sphinx

this is just a copy from my Flickr upload
http://www.flickr.com/photos/roobitphotography/6890537465/in/photostream

A few cultural notes. The text is under the picture.
Camera - Semflex
Film - Rollei RPX 400 (in actuality an ISO 320 film) pushed to 630
Rodinal 1 to 50
Click the image for larger view (all my images are also available as huge scans or as actual traditional photographic prints.

Coffee-in - on the first glance it is a somewhat witty, Anglicized or as the case is here Americanized  name for a small type of coffee-to-go chain that uses push carts, kiosks and really small stores to peddle  the coffee and the coffee itself is not bad not bad.  Today's former Soviet republic of Estonia is funded by injections of capital from Putinist Russia that uses its for raw material and fossil fuel transit  as well as for what amounts to money laundering on the state scape - that despite policies of ethnofacism and apartheid against Russian speakers on one hand (Russian Federation does not care about Russian speakers here for a number of reasons), and the largesse of the EU which, the Fifth Reich sort of project, has made the expansion into what used to Russian Baltic provinces before the Bolsheviks an ideological priority, and it won't allow their newly acquired territories to fail (we'll see about that, here goes the euro first:)

Because those territories are not economically, culturally or in any other sense viable or independent - not in any respect that I can think of, a number of things occurred. First there is a massive population exodus - like close to a third of inhabitants left the entity since 1990s. These are human losses greater than the same territory had in WWII and if projected as a hypothetical scenario on to the USA itself. then that would amount to sudden emigration or disappearance of now... just wait... 100 million (hundred million) US nationals. Even in these economic times and stringent visa barriers, the US remains a country of immigration, not emigration (as by the way - and miraculously to me at least - is the Russian Federation, say more  now migrate from Israel to Russian Federation than vice-versa, probably to some displeasure of hardened Zionists. The second phenomenon of that economy that is apparent to me, to an outsider and frequent visitor,  is that it is oriented toward a small strata of consumers of goodies, consisting of ethnocratic bureaucracy,  foreign  tourists (of which now riffraff from Moscow and Putinburg represent the largest and most freely spending portion), well-to-do employes of foreign banks, colonial administrators,  and that means that the prices are skewed. An espresso, a parody on the real Italian espresso (because the inspiration here does not come from Italy) or  not less delicious Gallic café expres, so an espresso costs like 2 euros - (it would like 1 euro in Ravenna, Italy) a caramel cappuccino is like 3 euros -   (now cappuccino is not what is to be enjoyed from a properly sized  china or ceramic cup  for breakfast or only in the first half of the day as is the case in Italy, cappuccino is really soapy, sweetish sludge in a huge paper cup - it is all US-inspired beverage but perverted and distorted in the process). Now an income in rural parts of this territory and among some people who are deemed inferior by the ethnostate (like say someone who is over 45 and unemployed and Russian speaker) is like 200 euros per month, could be worse,  per capita  income in Italy would be in effect, not in falsified EU statistics which are as phony as a three dollar bill (pardon the cliche which itself has mutated to "phony as a two dollar bill". despite the fact that two dollar bills are legitimate currency in the United States), so the comparative income is  10 times greater in Italy, so in effect the price of that espresso in that kiosk, for the locals,  is about 20 euros. One must also admit that the consumption of espresso like goodies  also culturally distorted in a different way, population has its spending priorities, like it does in Russian Federation proper where in large cities at least it is all very similar to what it is in post Soviet Estonian. In short the population does not go around here sipping espressos,  the average species when they make enough money usually sit voluntarily locked up in their Soviet era (that is statistically greater case) apartment and more likely than not would spend its resources on an automobile, a sedan normally, of Asiatic or Teutonic make, preferably of black, metallic silver or, the most Bohemian and adventurous ones, would choose  funeral white color. The creature here does not socialize - unlike say Czechs who go out to coffee places and pastry shops with their kids, that is even in small towns and who have a need to socialize - in beer taverns, in their fabulous pivnice a hospody., which are a part of local culture, but in this part of the world he post-Soviet urbanized peasant has no need for this sort of socialization, he just wants a big sedan like the Soviet bosses had (that is why those vehicles happen to be black or dark - exactly like the natives' souls) . When  you enter a restaurant in this part of town, you are more likely than not to be addressed in English (or in Finnish if you are taken for a Finn, the nose of the folks here is trained for things visually anthropological and racial to a phenomenal extent) . The last visible feature is linguistic Americanization, the local ethnocratic "elite" of Soviet provenance mainly feels being protected by America (like they were by the Germans in the short Nazi era) and the local Estonian-speaking urbanized peasant now plunged into the English speaking universe - English is the international and urbane (well it is not, but go tell them)  and */the* foreign language is really English. For a different reasons situation in the Russian Federation itself is very similar and in fact in many ways worse. English is absolutely everywhere but it is fantastically bad. As a Finnish friend of mine said that in the Soviet era the territory was bilingual (for examples most signs were in the local tribal language, called Estonian,  but also in Russian, which was the language of the confederation, the Soviet Union, and both versions were equally correct).  The local EU-protected ethno-Nazis had Russian is purged from visibility though not out of use and replaced it with Estonian (to me a useless tongue of no cultural clout and with less than a million speakers all of whom being recently urbanized peasants; there is no cultural layer cake and richness one sees in developed European languages, from Portuguese to Polish) . They even have language police in Estonia that would monitor that Russian does not appear and then even fine its users - that is called discrimination because only Russian is targeted and not English (as this photograph testifies) but this is something that does not bother the EU Nazis. Soon not the Estonian (which was the official language in the Soviet era here by the way) but he language of new owners appeared and - where is the language police I wonder (and let me tell you, they would be here in an instant if the sign was in Russian) ,  Now we come to the funniest part - the local tribe's tongue is gone, as one can see here right in this photograph, and everything  is now only in English. As are most advertising slogans and catch lines. But they are all in pig English.   Now, here are very few words and they are all obviously English words. A speaker of English would immediately detect that something is fishy though as one would not say "feel energy" in this contents of the catchphrase as he or she would most certainly say "feel the energy", not feel energy. This is a minor thing but there are major ones as well and a few are hilarious.

Another curious thing one encounters here (the most curious thing is the massive fabrication of history and its falsification on a scale that is quite breathtaking but I won't go into it)  is transposition of own (or rather Russian as they have little of their own) cultural notions onto something else and then labeling it all in pig English. I saw a bizarre object - should buy it just for photographing - there was a single sour pickle (a pickled cucumber) suspended in a glass jar.  The twisted yellow-greenish cucumber was very much floating there like a preserved fetus in the solution of formaldehyde as an exhibit of some anatomically-themed display. The label was in English however - it said Good Morning (a local peasant feels like an educated master when addressed in some sort of anglais-esque, I don't believe they export those single pickles to the Court of St. James) ,  now I had to pause for a second - why would a bizarre looking pickle in a jar be labeled Good Morning, what did the language of Shakespeare and Milton had to do with this gastronomic abomination was beyond me  then eureka! I saw the light - Russian alcoholics are known to quench their morning first with pickle juice. I am quite sure there is no tradition of guzzling down pickle juice or eating sour pickles in the morning in the any English speaking country I am familiar (certainly not in the USA, not  as far as I know), but the thing is labeled in English because those who labeled that (frankly disgusting) condiment are culturally inadequate.

Feel (the) energy.

As I saw from the larger scan later the basilisk inside the kiosk did not enjoy being photographed - even though I did  enjoy photographing it, I took the picture "on the go" without setting up a tripod or even stopping for more than a fraction of a second sufficient to release the shutter of my Semflex, I did survive though she was securely caged in the confines of the kiosk.