OK, here is one for the Agatha Christie crowd out there:

I come home after a long day at work (and at the pub) to a supposedly empty apartment.

There are three small, oddly shaped, puddles right in the middle of my living room and, although it has been raining today, I live on the 4th of 6th floors (that is: neither under the roof, nor potentially close to any heretofore undiscovered Parisian groundwater spring). The wallpaper-covered ceiling above said puddles shows no trace of humidity.

[...]

Can anyone please point me to an explanation that doesn’t involve an incontinent Siberian tiger breaking into my place during the afternoon and currently sleeping on my bed in the back?

Today was the 6th of August, a special day for the Japanese people (I blogged about it a year ago).

Threading on this very tenuous connection, here are a few links of interest to japan-curious readers:

• Japan Pop socio-czar and unconsolable mourner of yesterdays, Marxy offers an insightful dissection of Fujiwara Masahiko’s Dignity of a Nation: ‘a book that openly calls for the end of democracy and the return of “warrior ethics.”‘ (yea, that’s what the Japanese write about when they are not busy building flying cars or giant cat-eared robots).
• Moresukine is a small webcomic documenting its author’s life in Tokyo from January to June of 2006 through a series of “assignments” submitted by his readers. It’s pretty entertaining and only ever so slightly orientalist. I found it via this guy, who used to maintain a most delightfully fucked-up repository of all things pleonastically weird and Japanese.
• Of course, the Links section above, holds even more Japanese goodness for you to peruse (both colourful words and insightful photographs).

In case you are wondering (you probably aren’t) about this sudden surge in Japan-related material: it’s not [just] me getting all mushy on a Sunday evening and missing people and places 10,000 miles away…

You see, August is also the month where one has to send in their application to take the JLPT in December. Being a glutton for punishment, and despite standing absolutely no chance whatsoever, I have decided to go for Level 2 this year. Well, I think I have. I still have three weeks of studious browsing of the Japanese web to convince myself that this money would be much better spent on cheap imported shochu.

Heard last evening, on the topic of male g-strings:

FdM: “I could never wear a g-string.”

N: “How would you know if you’ve never tried?”

FdM: “Look, I can’t even stand to wear flip-flops.”

I wish I could say that’s the weirdest thing I heard that night.

You know…

Breezing past some über-snooty Parisian nightclub’s door personnel, wearing your most casual Summer pants and flip-flops, may be the epitome of scenestery cool.

But is sure as fuck doesn’t make it any easier to dance in them.

I’m not sure if anything can still be done for the reputation of this blog, seeing how the past 24 hours have seen an unusually high amount of somewhat sensible, even possibly useful information put here. Frankly, I don’t know if my blogger’s ethics will ever recover.

I will try nonetheless.

Wars of the Geeks is officially over, silly inconsequent navel-gazing is now back for the month.

Let’s start by what should have been yesterday’s sum up of how to succeed at cooking an enjoyable Summer evening with friends. It goes a little something like this:

[steps sideways, does two entrechats and starts singing while tap-dancing to the beat]

• Some second-hand equipment purchased for a fistful of euros on the outer rim of the Internets.
• Cranberry juice + vodka + a splash of lemon juice + a dash of cointreau + a few wedges of lime + loads of ice, times a few gallons.
• One lovably demented masterpiece of a Japanese movie recommended by S. a while back.
• People (also: other people without blogs, but likeable nonetheless).

Shake but do not stir, serve fresh with cocktail straws.

Such a fabulous evening that our little Cinéma de quartier might very well be on its way to become a regular bi-monthly.

Then there also was yesterday’s recipe: another kind of enjoyable dish. Though it’s made of much harder-to-find of ingredients and I am not even quite sure I remember myself how the cooking process went.

If you absolutely want to try at home, I think it involved a bottle of contraband Absinth, eye-burning Japanese menthol eye drops, one of the most furious thunderstorm of the Summer and lots of Parisian girls running by in the street, wearing but thin blouses soaking wet from the sudden rain.

Also what appears to be a medium-sized rodent stuck to my living room table in a puddle of melted wax and solidifying liquor. But I will only be able to confirm that when I finish removing the few dozens glasses and beer bottles stacked over it.

I am back.

Or more exactly: I am back closer to an internet connection. Still somewhere down south, albeit in a more family-oriented settings.

These five days in the boondocks were absolute paradise and helped reminding me that, was the choice to come down between: big city and the internets on one side, friends, sun, fresh veggies, cheap wine and homegrown on the other, I’d easily slide toward the latter as a permanent way of life.

During my blissful stay in the heart of French Aveyronais region, I:

• ate lots of delicious homemade food including chlada felfel, aligot, moroccan brownies and much more.
• spent entire afternoons on a sun-drenched deck reading, chatting, smoking and overall doing absolutely nothing requiring electricity or a phone line whatsoever.
• stunk to high-heavens of lemongrass essence the entire time, but didn’t get bitten by mosquitoes once.
• spent hours excitedly exchanging musical tips and hundreds of bad-ass 70’s funk tracks
• had to climb up a ladder to get to my bed (when I didn’t opt to stay in a hammock outside).
• walked through a [small] open field of odoriferous plants with strangely shaped leaves and got to sample last year’s crop.
• realized that buying and fixing a house somewhere deep in the country, away from civilization, wasn’t only a way to live a healthier, cheaper and simpler life: there are a few perks on the side.
• spent a whole night playing poker while a fierce Summer thunderstorm raged outside (complete with flickering lights, blown fuses and all).
• met Chucky, the mellow schnauzer, who has never been quite the same ever since he accidentally ate half a pound of mushrooms found drying under his master’s bed.
• made two gallons of frozen margaritas and brought a few more converts over to the church of the Holy Citrus Tequila Cocktail.
• did many other things that shall remain safely out of read from potentially underage eyes…

Back in P-town this week-end.

In five minutes, I’m heading out towards south, way out in the French wilderness, far from civilization and high-speed internet access.

Do you know how many years it’s been since I spent 48 hours without Internet access? Neither do I.

See you at the end of the week.

When I moved in, a few months ago, I had little time to spend on elaborate interior decoration. One of the only picture on the walls was a gift from Martine for my birthday last year.

When I finally decided to put more effort into redecorating my place, I immediately thought of asking her for a few more prints: she promptly mailed me a dozen of them, which arrived last month, although I was too busy fighting deadline psychosis at the time to do much more than file them in a corner and wait for brighter days. At long last this week, I was able to shop for some framing material and start hanging them on the walls.

And they look absolutely gorgeous!

For some reason, I have a stupendously high proportion of pro and semi-pro photographers amongst friends and acquaintances, and they all have beautiful works to boast of… But some of Martine’s pictures, on top of their moving aesthetics, have this striking liveliness and journalist-like veracity that make you feel like you are standing a few feet away, inside the picture. Her pictures are the closest to a stroll through the backstreets of Tokyo you will ever get without buying a plane ticket.

If you are looking for stunning photographs to decorate your life and bring a corner of Kichijoji’s parkside coffeeshops or a wandering Tokyo commuter’s smile into your existence, here is your chance: Go pick and order now!

I take that back.

Hell, is a small but noisy rodent seemingly stuck between your bedroom ceiling and the neighbour’s floor, scuttling around aimlessly at 3am, only stopping every ten minutes to gnaw on stuff.

That critter is single-handedly squandering any tiny amount of goodwill Walt Disney may have ever earned his species.

You, my friend, have picked the wrong neighbour to fuck with. I’ve dealt with more resilient than you before.

Sartres says “others”.

I say: “others, checking out sales at a major Parisian department stores on a hot Summer day”.

On the other hand, that satin-lined tux is so gonna get me envious looks from every last pimp in the neighbourhood.

Yes folks, satin-lined.

And before I permanently close this exciting chapter of my life, I would just like to add…

[clears throat]

YYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrgg

Thanks.

Moving on.

Do I even need to bore you with detailed recounts of the ongoing motives for this month of particularly slow blogging?

Last week we had deadline frenzy, this week was oral-presentation-and-written-exam semi-frenzy, next week is final apotheosis of exams and masters programs’ applications. By wednesday, I should be all done and back to regular blogging, assuming my computer hasn’t been turned into a smoldering pile of melted plastic by the giant bonfire I am planning to light in my courtyard, using all the paper currently littering my apartment as combustible.

Ever since and until then, I am all work, very little play, and practically no blog to speak of.

However, yesterday night, I exceptionally took a short break to conduct non-studying-related activities, the exact nature of which shall remain prudently nebulous, except perhaps to mention they bore no relations to soccer whatsoever, featured role-playing aerobics, high levels of cross-channel cheekiness and female-on-male wrestling. Also resulted in my voodoo pin doll finally making an appearance in downstairs’ neighbour special 5am collection (see about wrestling, and ensuing loud thumping noises, above) as well as getting up this morning with a worryingly purple-coloured, very broken-looking, middle toe (see about same).

Therefore, in the spirit of keeping things even with my time, I thought I’d take some to post a few scattered notes I just found this morning in a forgotten corner of my apartment, impaled on a dead rat with a sharpened stiletto heel. I reckon they might be my working notes from two weeks ago, during the finishing line of my first deadline grand slam. Do not worry if you don’t understand much, or anything at all: it might just be that you are a) slightly less psychotic than I at the time and b) somewhat below ‘pathetic’ in your general level of geekiness…

Excerpts from dr Dave’s Working Notes: June 4 – June 11

[omitting: various doodlings of dubious artistic values and possibly offensive graphic nature, certifiably random combinations of symbols not identified as meaningful in any human languages, text fragments dissolved beyond recognition by stains of what appears to be high-grade alcoholic beverages]

Sunday 06/04

9:14 pm – Hmn. I wonder which month is today.

Oh my.

I think we have just entered official freak-out deadline rush season.

Monday 06/05

3:24 pm – Interesting fact about computer labs and thermodynamics: a balmy outdoors tropical-jungle temperature seems to turn into slightly uncomfortable bone-melting heat in rooms filled with two dozen cheap PCs running 24/7.

3:46 pm – Attempt to refurbish some of the older computers’ fan into more useful human-cooling activities thwarted by nosy sysadmin. Perhaps it’s time to get ssh going and work from home.

(more…)

When asked about what it is that they like most about Japan, the Japanese will often gladly inform you that one of the top reasons their country is so great is that it counts four distinct seasons in a year. Reaction upon learning that, indeed, most countries of the civilized world also do, ranges from genuinely surprised to incredulous. They also think the song you may know as Auld Lang Syne is an old Japanese ditty, so great at announcing the closing of public places that some smooth-voiced Italian-American singer decided to cover it in English…

Anyway, about the season part: I think they may have been onto something. Four seasons has become a rarity in our pre-apocalyptic, globally-warming world. As I recently discovered, places like Paris have already switched to a much easier to maintain two-season yearly schedule. Translated, they would be something like: Rainy, from September to May and Balls-Hot, from June to August.

If I might have some regrets over skipping Spring on the way, you will not hear one single complaint from me about finally leaving Winter behind. Instead, let me tell you how my first Summer evening of the year went.

Yesterday was the much anticipated downgrade from code red to code orange-ish yellow on the Deadline-o-meter. A moment eagerly awaited by my liver for the past two weeks.

All that was left between me and an entire evening of drunken debauchery were a couple paragraphs of cognitive linguistics rambling and a few chores to take care of. Of course, by the time I finally left my place with one errand still left to run, the clock was ticking 11pm. Hopeful nonetheless, I grabbed my trusty iPod, a half-empty pack of menthol cigarettes, some cash and dashed out, phoning my friends that I would be meeting them shortly thereafter. Note the cigarettes: they are important.

(more…)

One step up from cheating googling up references for your university assignment:
Posting the entire project requirements to a few newsboards and wait for generous math-loving souls to do it all for you.

An idea that apparently befell a few of my classmates, a cursory Google query tells me. However: none of their gullible benefactors have so far made contributions to their cause of high enough value that they’d help mine (beggars can’t be choosers), so I guess I’ll stick with the initial plan, gear up for a few days without sleep and do it myself.

To the point: Now being the end of May, the end of May being apparently such a nice and round date, than it was deemed the ideal deadline for every single of my university projects, essays, assignments etc., me having as usual spent most of my recent times procrastinating or taking part in entirely unrelated activities…

Anyway, I’ll spare you a few extra steps of sweat and tears in the process, but the conclusion is: blogging will be slow this week… Sorry…

Team, we need differential diagnostic, NOW:

Patients #1, #2, #3 and #4 – a family – let’s call them the Lamiaceaes, were admitted in mid-April: sharing a rather small room, but healthy and showing no sign of infection. They were kept indoors and put on a steady diet of H₂O, administered twice daily.

Within days following their admission, they showed signs of discomfort: all limbs progressively went numb, patients could no longer stand upright without assistance. Their health deteriorated exponentially over the course of a week. Finally, patients #1, #2 and #3 all underwent cardiac arrest, followed by acute dehydration, to be declared clinically dead on the seventh day after several failed attempts at resuscitation. Patient #4, youngest member of the family, entered a vegetative state but, in the end, miraculously survived: he emerged from his coma a few weeks later and has been making such an encouraging recovery ever since that doctors have allowed his relocation to the outdoor patio.

It was diagnosed at the time that overcrowding of their room, conjugated with possible lack of fresh air may have caused the sudden and unexpected death of all but one of the Lamiaceaes. Endemic condition or residual infection caught at their previous place of residence was not completely excluded, albeit impossible to prove and somewhat invalidated by the survival of the weakest family member.

Patient #5, whom we shall call Basil, a large-sized fully-grown adult, was admitted two days ago.

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