Self-service

I do like coming home to Barcelona. Uh oh.

Anyway, on the one day in town between the Croatia trip and a statistics conference (ugh) we went to CCCB, Centre de Cultura Contemporània Barcelona. It's a confusing collection of buildings with exhibitions on all kinds of stuff; the main one now is about Chernobyl or, as they write in Catalan, Txernòbil. About as uplifting as a Holocaust museum, but very interesting. I know it's a colossal understatement, but what a tragedy.

Russian humor is really dark. The exhibition talked about how people used humor as a coping mechanism and had some sample jokes. One was something like "Reagan calls up the Pentagon and tells them to stop the nuclear program against the USSR--they've gone self-service." Ouch. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see that going over very well in an American museum. It seems like the sort of thing that would offend people, or people would think it would offend people. Especially since a lot of the jokes used the words shit and fuck.

Also, they showed some really graphic pictures of babies and animals born after Chernobyl with all kinds of severe problems. I just don't see that happening in the US.

And I'm kind of disturbed by the fact that I don't remember the Chernobyl accident's happening at all. I was eight--that's plenty old enough to remember something so monumental. What the hell was I doing?