Sara: Yea, he is a bit strange, very moody, the autistic kind, you know… talks a lot, all the time…

Dave: Autistic? talks a lot? That doesn’t make sense… Wouldn’t an autistic temperament imply that he is overly quiet and keeping to himself most of the time?

Sara: Absolutely not! What are you talking about? He’s autistic… Has those weird fits of enthusiasm, gets excited about the smallest things, you know, the way autistic people often behave…

Dave: OK. You aren’t making any sense. We can’t possibly be talking about the same definition for autism, real or pretend.

Sara: Autism??? Who talked about autism, he is autistic: he makes aut, he’s an autist… He paints mostly.

Dave: Oh…

Had a couple hours to kill and rain to take shelter from, yesterday in the afternoon… So stepped in for a stroll…

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Guess what this year is?

Why, you’re right my friend, this year is French Presidential Election Year !

In May of this year, to be exact, the French will vote to elect a new Président de la République.

Under France’s current constitution, the president controls the executive branch and has power over foreign and domestic policies. Unlike the US, however, he can (and often did, over the past 20 years) end up with a government from the opposite party, as the National Assembly has the power to vote the Prime Minister (and his ministers) out. The President can decide at any moment to dissolve the Assembly and call for a new election (which he traditionally does as soon as he is elected, I think, unless such an election is already scheduled).

Thus you have a Janken-like circular structure of power, where the President still holds an advantage, being the only immovable piece of the game (5-year mandate and a pretty good immunity from prosecution, as Mr. Jacques Chirac will tell you). At all times, and regardless of the Assembly’s majority, it is customary for the President to keep his role of representation abroad, along with final say in matters of foreign policy (not unlike the POTUS). Domestic policies are his, only so long as his party holds the majority at the Assembly.

Anyway, enough with the boring talk about French political institutions. On to the only thing we may care about: Who will it be?

The answer, with a fairly high rate of certainty: either Nicolas Sarkozy (”Sarko” to his fans and enemies alike) or Ségolène Royal (”Ségo”, to same).

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Dave: So things didn’t work out with D.?

Michèle: Nope. I really have a hard time with relationships, these days… Girls are so fucking complicated.

Dave: You mean boys are easier?

Michèle: Of course. You guys are so easy. [makes brain-switch-off motion] So unchallenging it is restful sometimes.

Dave: Alright, then stick to guys.

Michèle: Meh. Girls have nicer ass.

Dave: Right. Plus sometimes guys wanna cuddle after sex.

Michèle: Yea, what’s up with that ?

Frankly I think i’m becoming a one-man Las Vegas

Pic 1: All Parisian trains have 4-letter call names made to be somewhat legible or intelligible (”PAPI”, “MEME”, “KRON” whatnot). We thought this one was pretty funny on an 11:59 train.

Pic 2: I think this is supposed to be one of the Blues Brothers (the other – equally scary – one was in another side of the bar). They sure would look better in a haunted house than a regular drinking establishment.

Haven’t played that damn thing in so long. Got my ass whooped…

With P. & T., at Cafe Lea

Wherein the author unabashedly stares at his navel while describing in painfully boring details his past and current academic endeavours under the guise of introducing some of the topics bound to become a fixture of this blog.

As morbidly obsessed faithful readers of this blog may remember, I made a decision 18 months ago to go back to school and try for one of these fancy post-graduate degree in Compooter Thingies.

As it happen, my original bachelor was mostly centered around Mathematics and Physics, two sciences that turned out to make for infinitely more entertaining conversation topics than university majors (also, it was sorta interspersed with half a dozen other totally unrelated course of studies). Having come to develop uncontrollable rash-like allergic reactions to the mere mention of either topic, it sounded wise to shift the focus of my academic pursuits over to a slightly different major. Hence Computer Science, or to be exact: Artificial Intelligence (which is, to paraphrase some guy, as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes). As for the “going-back-to-university” thing altogether, it was mostly motivated by the pointed realization that, of the entire spectrum of available jobs, university student was the one I was most happily fitted for: After being a corporate droid for many years, a beach bum for another couple, I figured being paid a [rather mediocre] salary to work on cool research projects while learning semi-interesting things, sounded like a very fun way to pass time before retiring to a desert island in the Indian Ocean. That and the possibility that I may one day be responsible for the enslavement of humanity under the cold, merciless dominion of superiorly intelligent thinking machines.

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Cutting edge fashionista and all-around nice guy, Kheir Eddine, in one of his more subdued outfits…