― dave q, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
― Nick, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
― Richard Tunnicliffe, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
― Dan Perry, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
― mark s, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
― Robin Carmody, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
― Josh, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
Also, search: centuries-old blood feuds that leave elderly men in Chicago dead in their beds with slashed throats.
― Benjamin, Wednesday, 22 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
Why? Because anyone who uses this as the official "welcome to my web site" picture is completely bad-ass...
http://www.president.al/images/presidenca.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:17 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/377.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:19 (twenty-one years ago)
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:20 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/373.jpg
Control of the Assets? There are assets?
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:22 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/337.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:24 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/326.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:25 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/324.jpg
(jbr sez: "R.E.M. publicity shot circa 1995")
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:28 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/316.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:30 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/294.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:33 (twenty-one years ago)
― bnw (bnw), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:36 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/277.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:40 (twenty-one years ago)
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:44 (twenty-one years ago)
― typo acapulco (gcannon), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:57 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/204.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:58 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.tvtome.com/images/people/0/0/18-1064.jpg
(Eliza Dushku)
― nickn (nickn), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:59 (twenty-one years ago)
― nickn (nickn), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:00 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/168.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:00 (twenty-one years ago)
― typo acapulco (gcannon), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:02 (twenty-one years ago)
a) an eastern european music videob) the presidents of Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia signing a declarationc) the presidents of Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia starring in a tourist advertisement/music video
http://www.president.al/album/138.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:05 (twenty-one years ago)
― typo acapulco (gcannon), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:08 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/91.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:12 (twenty-one years ago)
jbr: i bet there's at least one PiL tribute band in Albania, and that band is my favorite band everckb: agreed. i'll bet Albania has the worst Neil Diamond impersonator toojbr:: YES
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:13 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/113.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:18 (twenty-one years ago)
― bad jode (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:24 (twenty-one years ago)
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:41 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.banknotes.com/AL64.JPG
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:42 (twenty-one years ago)
apparently once King Zog was on a state visit somewhere. An assassin pulled out a gun and took a few shots at him. King Zog coolly drew his own and fired back at his assailant. This endeared him to the masses of Europe.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 10:28 (twenty-one years ago)
Oh wait, not that kind of Albanian. Sigh.
― Citizen Kate (kate), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 10:33 (twenty-one years ago)
― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 10:33 (twenty-one years ago)
― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 26 November 2003 11:21 (twenty-one years ago)
I've not visited them but they tell me that the mayor ordered all the buildings in central Tirana to be painted in bright happy colours to disguise the shabbiness of the town. So parts of it now looks like a Lego city.
― Hanna (Hanna), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 11:31 (twenty-one years ago)
― MarkH (MarkH), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 11:34 (twenty-one years ago)
― MarkH (MarkH), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 11:36 (twenty-one years ago)
Theresa Russell IS King Zog
― H (Heruy), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 11:45 (twenty-one years ago)
― H (Heruy), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 11:48 (twenty-one years ago)
http://www.lewzworld.com/simpsons/adilhox.jpg
― fletrejet, Wednesday, 26 November 2003 13:01 (twenty-one years ago)
― Matt DC (Matt DC), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 13:25 (twenty-one years ago)
― gem (trisk), Tuesday, 14 September 2004 02:30 (twenty-one years ago)
WHICH IS TOTALLY AWESOME.
― g--ff (gcannon), Tuesday, 14 September 2004 02:48 (twenty-one years ago)
u b the judge:
fashë = bandagefushë = area, fieldkofshë = thighlafshë = prepuce of penis
― g--ff (gcannon), Tuesday, 14 September 2004 02:58 (twenty-one years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 14 September 2004 03:00 (twenty-one years ago)
― Tag (Tag), Tuesday, 14 September 2004 07:05 (twenty-one years ago)
TIRANA, Albania -- Near the end of his 40 years in power, Enver Hoxha prepared his tiny country for an invasion he warned was sure to come. The Marxist dictator built 750,000 concrete bunkers in the 1970s and 1980s and imported large quantities of weapons to repel an expected attack by Americans, Soviets, Yugoslavs or perhaps all three at once.
But his most prized weapons acquisition was a state secret known only to the Albanian leader and his closest advisers -- a secret that only now is coming fully to light.
In the mid-1970s, U.S. and Albanian officials now believe, Hoxha arranged the purchase of several hundred canisters of lethal military chemicals to be used in weapons against invading armies. The chemicals included yperite, or sulfur mustard, one of the chemicals used by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to slaughter thousands of Kurdish civilians in the 1980s, as well as lewisite and adamsite, which are based on arsenic.
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:02 (twenty years ago)
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I61981-2005Jan09L
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:03 (twenty years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/1395.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:06 (twenty years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/1338.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:08 (twenty years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:08 (twenty years ago)
Like I said, don't mess with Albania.
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:10 (twenty years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/1330.jpg
Similarly unpronouncable names...
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:14 (twenty years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/1102.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:16 (twenty years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/1108.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:17 (twenty years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/1070.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:19 (twenty years ago)
The prospect of an Albanian/Moldovian alliance, it must be said, does not make me tremble.
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:21 (twenty years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/895.jpg
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:23 (twenty years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 26 January 2005 05:26 (twenty years ago)
The New Yorker on Tirana mayor Edi Rama
Rama has been in office for nearly five years (he was elected in 2000, at the age of thirty-six, and reëlected three years later), and the first thing he did as mayor was to order paint. He blasted the façades of Tirana’s gray Stalinist apartment blocks with color—riotous, Caribbean color—turning buildings into patchworks of blues, greens, oranges, purples, yellows, and reds, and the city itself into something close to a modern-masters sampler. (Art in America put a Tirana façade on its December cover; it looked like an abstract painting.) It was an extravagant gesture, but Rama thinks in extravagant gestures. “The city was without organs,” he says, meaning that it was a dump, and that nothing in it functioned. (“Kandahar” is how he usually describes it.) “I thought, My colors will have to replace those organs. It was an intervention.”
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Tuesday, 16 August 2005 02:40 (twenty years ago)
― Leon C. (Ex Leon), Tuesday, 16 August 2005 02:44 (twenty years ago)
― Leon C. (Ex Leon), Tuesday, 16 August 2005 02:45 (twenty years ago)
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 16 August 2005 02:52 (twenty years ago)
― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Thursday, 3 November 2005 17:50 (twenty years ago)
^albanians
― jbr: the little-known, idiosyncratic nutball (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 3 November 2005 17:57 (twenty years ago)
The playwright was just as outraged by NATO's 1999 air war in Kosovo. Though the bombing was essentially a last resort in the face of Slobodan Milosevic's savage campaign of ethnic cleansing, Pinter described it as "a criminal act" - the U.N. Security Council hadn't approved - designed to consolidate "American domination of Europe." He complained, in fact, of "the demonization and the hysteria" that accompanied the NATO campaign against Milosevic and the Serbs.
― _, Thursday, 3 November 2005 17:58 (twenty years ago)
― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Thursday, 3 November 2005 18:58 (twenty years ago)
― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Thursday, 3 November 2005 18:59 (twenty years ago)
― Rockist_Scientist (RSLaRue), Thursday, 3 November 2005 19:03 (twenty years ago)
― Rumpie, Friday, 4 November 2005 12:01 (twenty years ago)
President Moisiu handing the flag to the Albanian team participating in the Winter Olympics.
http://www.president.al/album/2774.jpg
Note: that guy IS the Albanian olympic team.
― The Equator Lounge (Chris Barrus), Saturday, 11 February 2006 19:36 (nineteen years ago)
:(
Albanian arms blast toll rises At least eight people are now known to have been killed by massive explosions at an arms dump in Albania, as rescuers continued to search the site.More than 240 others were injured in Saturday's blasts, which struck outside a village near the capital Tirana.
More than 240 others were injured in Saturday's blasts, which struck outside a village near the capital Tirana.
― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, 16 March 2008 21:10 (seventeen years ago)
Sometimes the headlines just write themselves...
Cat and mouse blamed for blackout
Albanians may have found a new villain to blame for the frequent power cuts that have been blighting their lives.The country's main electricity company says a cat chasing a mouse caused a 72-hour blackout in parts of the capital, Tirana.The animals ran into an area of high-voltage cables and were electrocuted, a spokeswoman for the firm - Kesh - told Reuters news agency."We took pictures because we've never had anything like this," she said.Power cuts have been endemic in Albania for many years.The authorities usually blame drought and the dilapidated state of the communist-era grid, which appears to be buckling under the strain of the extra demand caused by the Albanians' recent access to modern amenities.
The country's main electricity company says a cat chasing a mouse caused a 72-hour blackout in parts of the capital, Tirana.
The animals ran into an area of high-voltage cables and were electrocuted, a spokeswoman for the firm - Kesh - told Reuters news agency.
"We took pictures because we've never had anything like this," she said.
Power cuts have been endemic in Albania for many years.
The authorities usually blame drought and the dilapidated state of the communist-era grid, which appears to be buckling under the strain of the extra demand caused by the Albanians' recent access to modern amenities.
― Elvis Telecom, Monday, 19 May 2008 18:17 (seventeen years ago)
Is Al still president?
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 19 May 2008 18:20 (seventeen years ago)
http://www.deadprogrammer.com/photos/worker-and-parasite.jpg
― Gavin, Monday, 19 May 2008 19:12 (seventeen years ago)
Worker And Parasite was the first thing I thought of also
― Elvis Telecom, Monday, 19 May 2008 19:39 (seventeen years ago)
Nope. He retired from public office at the end of his five year term. Dr. Bamir Topi is the new president...
http://www.president.al/album/4976.jpg
― Elvis Telecom, Monday, 19 May 2008 19:54 (seventeen years ago)
http://www.president.al/album/4803.jpg
http://www.president.al/album/4725.jpg
― Elvis Telecom, Monday, 19 May 2008 19:55 (seventeen years ago)
That one story wasn't kidding about the building colors.
― Ned Raggett, Monday, 19 May 2008 19:56 (seventeen years ago)
Here's Alfred handing over power. Looks like he's got a speedboat waiting to take him to a beach resort or something.
http://www.president.al/album/4154.jpg
― Elvis Telecom, Monday, 19 May 2008 19:59 (seventeen years ago)
In Albania, Einstürzende Neubauten isn't just a band but an urban design principle.
The city of Tirana and an international jury announced MVRDV winner of the competition for the urban masterplan creating a new dense urban neighborhood with a park and public facilities at the shore of Tirana Lake, in the south of the Albanian capital.Tirana Lake is one of the highly valuable green areas of the city. The project foresees the regeneration of a 20ha site on the north shore of the lake by creating a dense urban neighborhood liberating space for a park, recreational facilities, new public spaces and ecologic interventions.The cantilevered and leaning buildings allow for a great variety of apartment types, shopping and offices and ‘echo’ the Tirana typology. The stacked and twisted volumes create spectacular public spaces and provide dramatic vistas. Clad in local stones the buildings turn into a series of ‘rocks’, the ‘Tirana Rocks’.
Tirana Lake is one of the highly valuable green areas of the city. The project foresees the regeneration of a 20ha site on the north shore of the lake by creating a dense urban neighborhood liberating space for a park, recreational facilities, new public spaces and ecologic interventions.
The cantilevered and leaning buildings allow for a great variety of apartment types, shopping and offices and ‘echo’ the Tirana typology. The stacked and twisted volumes create spectacular public spaces and provide dramatic vistas. Clad in local stones the buildings turn into a series of ‘rocks’, the ‘Tirana Rocks’.
http://bustler.net/images/uploads/tirana_rocks_mvrdv_04.jpg
― Chris Barrus (Elvis Telecom), Tuesday, 3 February 2009 02:26 (sixteen years ago)
Reclaiming the concrete mushrooms
http://cache-04.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/8/2009/10/500x_mushroom04.jpg
― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 21 October 2009 20:50 (sixteen years ago)
"Not Your Typical Picnic But an ALBANIAN PICNIC!!!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3MuVNe_mhA
― Stockhausen's Ekranoplan Quartet (Elvis Telecom), Thursday, 7 April 2011 23:19 (fourteen years ago)
King Zog of Albania - with His Three Sisters in Uniform. Tirane, Albania, April 25, 1938.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/4321e1d816b688c57c255583fb18f63c/tumblr_mojlgcn5YH1qz4txfo1_1280.jpg
― Elvis Telecom, Thursday, 20 June 2013 23:57 (twelve years ago)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_sworn_virgins
https://resources.koha.net/images/2023/March/10/Capture1678439916.jpg
― Monthly Python (Tom D.), Saturday, 2 September 2023 14:52 (two years ago)
I remember when they disguised Albania as a white space on an Interail map which I guess is fitting with that name.Maybe thought nobody'd notice it or something. But they were expecting everyone to get a pass/ visa whatever to go across the border so hered a bu7nch of people off the train I was on and made them spend the night in the waiting room .
― Stevo, Saturday, 2 September 2023 15:14 (two years ago)
🇦🇱 Opposition MP Flamur Noka from the Democratic Party tried to set the Albanian Parliament on fire.For weeks, the DP has been disrupting parliamentary sessions with smoke flares, following corruption charges against Sali Berisha, their de facto leader, who has been sanctioned… pic.twitter.com/y7vT6fgzCj— kos_data (@kos_data) December 4, 2023
Flamur Noka living up to his name
― anvil, Monday, 4 December 2023 17:35 (one year ago)
I hope all the locals systematically loot, rob, and grift him up and down the line...
"Jared Kushner wants to turn a wild stretch of Albania into a luxury resort"https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/ar-AA1oXrd0
― Elvis Telecom, Monday, 19 August 2024 07:00 (one year ago)
soccer in the good old days
https://www.theguardian.com/football/article/2024/may/16/football-in-stalinist-albania-inside-the-hermit-kingdom-book
― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, 7 November 2025 22:53 (four days ago)