Into Other Dimensions

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070904/ap_on_re_as/russia_word_ban

MOSCOW - The mayor of a Siberian oil town has ordered his bureaucrats to stop using expressions such as “I don’t know” and “I can’t.” Or look for another job.

Alexander Kuzmin, the 33-year-old mayor of Megion, has banned these and 25 other phrases as a way to make his administration more efficient, his spokeswoman said Tuesday.

“It’s a suggestion to the staff that they should think before saying something,” Oksana Shestakova said by telephone. “To say `I don’t know’ is the same as admitting your helplessness.”

To reinforce the ban, a framed list of the banned expressions has been hanging on the wall next to Kuzmin’s office for the past two weeks, Shestakova said.

Some of the other prohibited phrases are “What can we do?” “It’s not my job,” “It’s impossible,” “I’m having lunch,” “There is no money,” and “I was away/sick/on vacation.”

Kuzmin, a businessman who was elected mayor 1 1/2 years ago, wants to “shake things up” in Megion, a town of 54,000 in the Khanty-Mansiisk region, the spokeswoman said.

The region, located some 1,500 miles northeast of Moscow, produces more oil than the rest of Russia combined. As world oil prices have risen sharply in recent years, the region has flourished, and in stark contrast to the rest of the country its population has grown at the rapid rate of more than 7 percent annually.

But construction has not kept pace, and the lack of adequate housing is one of the town’s most serious problems, Shestakova said.

“Town authorities are there to make town residents’ life comfortable and prosperous,” Kuzmin, a trained oil engineer who studied business administration in Canada, said in a statement posted on the town Web site. “Town officials must work out mechanisms to solve and remove problems, not to avoid them.”

Officials who disobey the ban while in the mayor’s office “will near the moment of their departure,” the statement said.

Providing the mayor with wrong or incomplete information, or being late in reporting important information will be considered an attempt to undermine his work, it said.

Anna Borovikova, the mayor’s chief of staff, said the novel approach has improved discipline.

“Before, it was so easy to say `I don’t know.’ Now before reporting to the mayor we prepare several proposals on how one or another problem can be solved,” Borovikova said.

At first it was hard to remember not to use the banned expressions, she said, and they “slipped in sometimes.”

  I watched an odd movie the other day - well part of it anyway. I don’t recall the title but it was about a girl who felt a soul connection with a local rock star, and she said things like, “He’s singing in code to me…” and then she etched his name into her forehead, but backwards because she was looking onto a mirror at the time.It reminded me of things I had read about Elvis fans. Some of these women said they felt a connection with Elvis, as if he were singing right to them. I have a friend who swears that since childhood she’s had dreams of herself running through a forest with a dark-haired boy of the same age who she is convinced is U2 lead singer, Bono. She says she recognized him instantly the first time she saw him, as the boy in her dreams. She’s no stalker, but has gone to a concert or two. And she doesn’t write him fan mail or anything. She just quietly enjoys his music, and is actually in a happy relationship with her boyfriend. She has no expectations, or explanations. It just is what it is - a dream of her running with Bono, and I think it might be a past life connection or something.I had a woman come to me for a past life regression. We found out she’d been a jazz singer in Paris - early 1900’s. In her regression she said to me, “The guy playing saxophone is very familiar to me…as if I know him…” Then she said, “It’s Bill Clinton.”