Glossary

Constructive dialogue: two high-ranking dignitaries (over 6 ft. tall) chat about this and that, while they arrange little, cute, colored cubes, make them look like buildings, each according to his own judgment. This tiresome work, which involves not only gray matter, but also the unique intuition and spark of the genius, becomes thrilling when a third dignitary shows up, with colored balls, and invites them to build something with those balls. Their fiery dialogue can be broadcast on television live, but not by a Romanian television station; finally, when the cubes and the balls fly away, to serve noble purposes only, the Head shows up and takes their toys away. The dignitaries are severely punished and sent out as ambassadors only to sunshine countries. Friendly and neighborly countries: every country in the world except for islands have friendly and neighborly countries around; the former USSR, apart from the friendly and neighborly countries composing it, has friendly and neighborly countries decomposing it. Relations are bilateral, trilateral, quadrilateral, or according to five-year plans, as the case may be. Some countries talks to themselves, but not because of a lack of neighbors: they just enjoy it. Other countries are friends without being neighbors, and there are so many neighbors that are nothing. Owing to important discoveries in chemistry, a proposal has been made for the border strip to be made of plastic, imitating both the field configuration and its contents: if it is a river, blue plastic is placed there, plains are green, and the devil is not as black as they say. Some countries wish to check the elasticity of these plastic strips, namely to put green into blue and push the mountain brown as far away as possible inside the country. Chemistry is such a great thing! Igaz?[1] Social protection: the care of a stepmother or of a wet nurse without milk for the disobedient child, known in written texts and in the mumbling on the parliament floor as "the people." This term proves beyond all doubt that some are deeply convinced that if you stick your finger in water, a hole will be made there. In effect, social protection makes the old, poor man feel young and rich, the man wounded in the Revolution feel he is the son of the one who shot him, and the unemployed feel he is the main shareholder at the enterprise where the former Communist party secretary is still a secretary, but of another party, which is still the old party. When it rains, those covered by social protection do not get wet, they can leave their umbrellas at home, because the government has arranged it so that raindrops will only fall when the protectees have got home. The weather forecast is a form of social protection: those who were warm before will be warm in the future as well. Moderator: radio or television host whose job is to cool those who get hot while engaging in dialogue and to spur them when they show signs of ideological or pragmatic laziness; equally, the moderator has the noble mission of asking questions that are longer then the answers. The moderator, if he is interrupted by his guests, must put them in their place, and he is the one who must interrupt them, especially without any reason at all, through words, coughing, paper rustling, and chair squeaking. Spiraling inflation: in other parts of the world, inflation does not look like a tornado; they have overcome this financial-tornado phase. Here, the tornado flourishes. Soon, paper factories will be unable to satisfy the demand for money (paper money), plus paints are very expensive, and, due to their quality, they overlap. This is why the dollar tends to decrease from 590 lei to 1,000 lei. A general phenomenon can be found with Romanians: their noses are increasingly bashed in, like those of fighters. The explanation is simple: they stare at shop windows for minutes on end, until windows get condensed, and the nasal pyramid gets shaped according the glass surface. Consultations with trade unions on pay indexation: the common man sees a doctor to consult with him, trade unions meet with the government for consulting – a disease of lords – and it all depends on the seriousness of the disease. Indexation must be understood by the masses as an exhaustive implementation of the moderate twisting in the claimed budget approved following the evaluation of probable possibilities of the unpredictable financial world market, twinned with the seismic situation of former Communist countries. The indexation of salaries and pensions is a form of social protection, mostly covering the unemployed and young pensioners in the oldest profession in the world and in another profession, which is equally old. As an image, those consultations look like tournaments. Trade unions on one side, government representatives on the other side, with the lances of their arguments placed on the table. At the presidential signal, the two sides rush to dialogue. The splinters resulting from crossing the lances serve to fix a definitive provisional communiqué. During this time, those who have work to do work, and those who have anything to steal, work. Indexation is the most direct way of teaching people about the worst the best way. War veterans in their memoirs call these trench indexations, when they talk about special situations. Summit: at first, mountain climbers crowded in, but they gave up because they did not have mountains. At first sight, the phrasing sounds slightly dirty, especially if we do not have any porno reading. We could, however, fill up the empty space at the tip reading some newspapers and making comments on some pictures in our own heads. A summit is usually held in the stratosphere, which is unreachable to human voters, even if they have oxygen masks. Nobody will know what they talk about and what they decide up there on the Olympus. But everybody will end up knowing. The results of those summits are felt like small earthquakes, which shake but do not throw up stones and bricks. In those areas history is poetry: "Yalta/Malta, the Ribbentrov/Molotropp Pact." We can hear imperfect sounds, but who cares, since the verses have been sealed and signed? Anyway, everybody travels for summits these days.
[1] True? In a neighborly and friendly language (i.e. Hungarian – our note).


by Cornel Udrea (b. 1947)