… something about serving it cold while listening to 100 Watts of bass-heavy electroclash?
Guess what the French Post finally delivered to my doorstep this morning (don’t ever use their “48 hour” delivery service if you fancy seeing your stuff in less than two weeks)…
How ironic my brand new speakers should arrive on the morning following one of my dear neighbour’s bi-weekly all-nighter.
9:30 am couldn’t be too early to run a full sound-test, now could it?
Initially, it sounded like an easier and less time-consuming alternative to ordering from the place downstairs.
I know you (all three of you) are eagerly waiting for more heady insights on French society seen through the prism of a dusty ten-volume political theory handbook, but my aspirin ran out mid-sentence and I have been busy doing other things. Things such as getting woken up at 6am by timezone-agnostic Japanese flight attendants calling to ask if I need green tea brought over and wondering why I sound sleepy. So we’ll be taking a break off socio-politico-froggy-bashing and resuming in a few days.
Instead, today is Musical Quiz.
Not any musical quiz: Catch-the-sample musical quiz!
While blogging the most mundane details of my daily existence, there has been a plethora of more serious topics I have been wanting to discuss for many weeks now. Just never found the time or the motivation to dig up all the data and roll it into something coherent and mildly interesting. At long last, and in no small part thanks to the wonders of modern urban warfare on academic grounds, I am about to fill up my quota for heady controversial postings on France, for the whole year at once.
Hang on to your baguette and pop a few aspirins, because today we are not going to focus on recent anti-government demonstrations, nor on the ongoing work-law reform that prompted them, or the already fading debate over France’s antisemitism, its suspected racism, the fuss over the Danish cartoons or the ever recurrent theme of freedom of speech and limits thereof in the birth country of Mr. Arouet.
No. Instead, we are going to talk about all these issues at once, and even attempt to weave some sort of grand theory throughout.
We are about to set some new record for lengthy pomposity on this blog and you will soon be longing for my endless digressions on weather and French flu medication, but you must realize I currently live in France: over here, it is uncouth not to have a strong opinion on every matter political and shout it as loud as your understanding of the material is thin. Besides, I see no reason to leave the business of spouting inane drivel on foreign countries, solely to the local pros.
So let’s begin:
dr Dave: Hello?
Unknown Feminine Voice: Hello. May I speak to Mr. X?
drD: May I ask who’s calling and the purpose of your call?
UFC: I am calling for an invitation… Is Mr. X there?
drD: Who is asking?
UFC: … on behalf of Acme Inc. I would like to invite Mr. X to a one-time offer with…
drD: Mr. X is not here. He is currently serving time.
UFC: …
UFC: …
drD: FOR HUNTING, STALKING, HACKING TO BITS AND CARVING HIS INITIALS IN THE STILL-BEATING HEART OF THE LAST TELEMARKETER WHO CALLED WHILE HE WAS IN THE SHOWER.
UFC: …
drD: Did it with a rusty phone antenna too.
drD: So who did you say you worked for again?
I just got a brand new handheld Japanese dictionary. It’s very complete, using one of the best database out there, smaller than a few credit cards stacked together and I paid 20,000 yens for it.
Oh, it also plays mp3s.
And movies.
In fact, it does a whole lot of things, pretty much anything I want it to do, provided I have time to write a program for it.
It’s an iPod Nano, running µClinux, thanks to the brilliant work of the iPod Linux team.
The question is not: “How could fifty guys and a couple crates keep 50,000 students off university for a week?”
No.
The real question is: “Why would one build a campus in the middle of Paris and surround it with a moat?”
Will any of you sharp visitors throw in a supposition as to which part of my stupid laptop is not working as it should, today?
As you no doubt caught on by now: a glyph crucial at communicating in writing most linguistic constructs of latin origin, is outright missing from this post’s body. That tiny plastic thing on my laptop that usually allows for input of this particular symbol, is constantly snapping out of its spot, foiling all plans to lay my thoughts in a straightforward phrasing without using such unnatural turns of words. My vocabulary has abruptly shrunk to dramatically small proportions. And with it, so has my sanity.
Having no motivation nor skills to commit a full book in this fashion, I shall stop torturing my brain for words, right this instant, and ask you to kindly wait until I fix this quandary for a dispatch of any actual worth.
And thanks go to this guy for unwittingly prompting today’s trifling contribution to this blog.
If you hold back anything, I’ll kill you.
If you bend the truth, or I think you are, I’ll kill you.
If you forget anything, I’ll kill you.In fact, you’ll have to work very hard to stay alive, Nick.
Do you understand everything I’ve said?
Because if you don’t, I’ll kill you.
I’m deeply sorry that my first post of note in weeks must be about such a pedestrian topic, but I feel it is time to publicly edict certain rules about commenting on this fine piece of thought-challenging writing we call our blog.
Ironically, while strait-laced spam (you know the kind: congratulation on the neatness of your post punctuated by a recommendation for this interesting site about horses playing texas holdem’ with mature grandmas) is no longer an issue, “semi-spam”, or plain non-spam-but-moronic comments have become a real problem. I blame Google, and the thousands clueless imbeciles it washes up on my shores daily.
For the first time in History, it is possible to get a glimpse into the collective IQ of a sizable share of this planet’s population. And trust me: it is rather depressing. Not that I had much doubt left, but this shall go a long way in reenforcing my personal opinion that, as a species, we are frighteningly dumb. How we managed to make it thus far is beyond me… and a strong argument in favour of Intelligent Design theories… I mean, there has to be a God out there. A God that, for some unfathomable reason, is personally attached to the survival of a species who considers “I like cats!!!!11111” and “u R s0 kewl!!!” to be the best possible use of nigh-boundless, worldwide inter-communication.
Don’t get me started on Google queries.
I am starting to suspect that the depressingly sturm-und-drangish overtones of my late high-school years’ musical tastes weren’t as much due to post-adolescent hormonal overload as I used to think:
Go to the Bay Area or Tokyo and, on more days than not, shiny sun and cloudless blue skies practically beg you to sit on your patio, beer and joint in hand, listening to some deep house by Miguel Migs or Jenö.
Parisian weather from September to June, on the other hand, leaves you with no other options than sit in a corner of your apartment and entertain thoughts of killing yourself while listening to Saint Etienne’s entire discography.
Granted, last night, particularly its 2-to-6-am part, might not have helped on the freshness factor.
Must stop drinking Irish Coffees and stick to straight whisky from now on.