I am Lying

crunch time

2009-11-26T02:28:31Z

It's crunch time at school, which in this case means 50+ pages to write in three weeks. Mercifully, only 10 of those pages will have to be in French, but they will be harder to write than the other 40.

Why are so many of those pages in English? Mostly because the teachers are making a first semester exception for me. I wish I didn't have to ask, but I'm definitely not confident enough to write that much that quickly in French.

Otherwise, the classes themselves are going well. The stuff I don't understand is usually not because of the French, but because philosophy is just plain hard. Sometimes it feels like my brain is a retired garage band. I hope I'm not just starting the band up again, waiting in vain to make it big. It'd suck if I don't make it because it's hard, but it'd suck even more if I don't make it just because, try as I might, it's simply not in my capacity.

I almost forgot that it's Thanksgiving tomorrow. I had to be reminded. weird!

A good thing and a bad thing

2009-10-27T20:22:29Z

Yesterday a good thing happened, followed by a bad thing. We went to an old palacial garden and in the little center, there was a group of local kids who were singing and dancing. They were teenagers with hand drums and loud voices, the equivalent of a group of American teens singing along to Weezer in unison, but I've never seen so much pure joy in my life. It was so much more physical and vocal than any get together I'd ever seen before. You know that little feeling of community you get when singing camp songs together? It's the same dull warmth, but turned up until it's hot and bursting out in sound and movement.

Eventually one of the kids, about 15 years old, approached us. Where are we from, he asks. It turns out he loves that we're from France. He has family there, he says. Little by little, his friends approach us with little questions and eventually, we're dancing and drumming with them. It was fun and completely unexpected.

That's the end of the good thing. The bad thing is that as we were leaving, he offered to walk us around. Sure, we said. He led us the long way, the wrong way I'd say, to our destination. At the end of the little tour, he waited a moment expectantly before reluctantly rejoining his friends. As we were walking away, he acted like he just happened to be going the same way before turning towards us and predictably, regrettably, asking for a tip.

The tip cast doubt on our whole interaction. Did he just start talking to us to get some cash? Were the dancing and the conversations just strategies to butter us up? I reluctantly gave him 5 dirhams (about 50 cents), despite the protests of my friends. Maybe they felt that if I didn't give him money it would remain a good memory of an authentic chance happening. He looked dissappointed by my 5 dirhams and asked for 20 dirhams. A construction worker we talked to the day before told me that he makes 110 dirhams for a day's work. There was no way I was going to reward this kid for walking with us for just 10 minutes. We said goodbye, kissed on the cheeks and, as we made our way back to the street, argued amongst ourselves about whether I should've tipped at all.

The whole thing left a bad taste in our mouth. In my opinion, I don't think his asking for a tip precludes sincerity on his part earlier on. It could be that he was pressured by his friends to try to get some money out of our interaction. Then again, trying to find a reason to trust him might just be a naive attempt to maintain our pride. But it's tiring mistrusting people all the time. It's tiring doubting every smile until it's proven it's worth. It's tiring being the privileged one in every interaction, always having to deny when it'd be so easy to give. It's bad for the soul to act like people are criminals until proven innocent. Sometimes it's better to trust people and accept that we'll be ripped off sometimes. We've had a lot of great times so far, and all we've risked was a little money and some foolish pride.

Moracco and first world guilt

2009-10-25T19:52:40Z

I know how to type periods now on Moraccan keyboards! And exclamation points!!

I was really feeling guilty about coming but now that I'm here, I feel great about it. The locals are incredibly nice, especially if you speak French (many speak English, but the irritating commercial kind "you buy you buy you buy!". It's hard to talk about anything outside of buying without French or Arab, it seems).

We were invited to eat with a store owner in an alley way during lunch. He went to get us food and made us mint tea while we all talked about life in Moracco. It was so gratious and it's definitely the high point of the trip for me so far. It was authentic, I think, but is anything authentic?

Tonight, we're going to eat with some guys we met in the train to Marakech. Apparently one of them is a local celebrity (he won a Moracco's top comedian Tv show thing), and we had a nice conversation. Afterwards they invited us to their house for a home made meal.

In all of these interactions though, there's this slight tension in the air that smells like suspicion. Every time people are nice to us we have to wonder for a moment, "What do they want from us?" So far, we haven't had to pay for anything. The guy in the alley way bought lunch for 4 people, and asked us for just 10 euros, for example. Our two other friends were so suspicious that they decided not to join us and ate at a tourist's restaurant on a terrace.

philosophy conference in Nantes

2009-10-15T22:44:45Z

There are some days when I feel like my French is pretty alright and school is totally manageable. Every once in a while, I even feel clever. Most days however, the deep sweeping valleys of time between these peaks, my French comes out like a drunk pirate and philosophy feels like an enormous machine designed to destroy me.

The sucker punch of realizing just how much there is to know---how much knowledge I don't yet have (even the knowledge of what exactly it is that I don't know)---can take the wind out of me.

Yesterday I went to Nantes for a philosophy conference. It was completely in English so you'd think that I could understand everything. But I think I forgot how hard philosophy can be to just jump into without a deep knowledge of the background debate. They were fighting over a single thin strand in the debate between different forms of incompatibilism, and in the process they had split that hair into smaller hairs and were in the process of splitting those smaller hairs into I don't know what. It was energizing to hear the debate, but also humbling. It was as if this was a big concert with professional musicians and up to now I had been singing on karaoke night.

On an unrelated note, I don't understand phenomenology , and much less in French. However, in two and a half months I'm going to have a 4 hour timed test on it, so I'd better.

kindness of strangers

2009-10-13T14:20:48Z

This morning I woke up at 7:40am and panicked. I'd only managed to get to sleep three hours earlier and I must've slept through the 6:50 alarm.

I threw on some clothes, pecked Laura on the lips, and sprinted out the door and down the two blocks to the bus. Catching the bus was a photo finish (I was still running just as some of the last people were climbing in). The bus was absurdly full. Not quite Japanese subway full---that would require a uniformed man with white gloves to literally push people in as the doors closed---but it was still like entering the moist jumbled belly of a whale. The doors closed behind me and it was as if the bus held its stinky breath until it exhaled briefly at every stop, letting more and more people in each time. I was still catching my breath, trying to calm down and that's when I started to feel terrible.

A few minutes into the trip I felt like I was going to faint. I approached one of the lucky few with a seat, a high school kid, and said "Excuse me. I feel terrible. Do you mind if I take your seat?" He looked straight ahead for a second as if considering whether to ignore me, until finally he rolled his eyes and got up. That may sound a little dickish of him, but remember that at this point standing up meant being on an abusive date with the ten strangers around you. I only remained sitting for about ten seconds when, by the next stop, I felt so sick that I struggled out of the seat, through the crowd, finally escaping the bus, panting. On the chill autumn street, I immediately fell against the wall.

I used to get this all the time. In 6th, 7th and 8th grade, it happened once a year, freaking out my teachers as they called the ambulance. But it hasn't happened in years. Eventually, I found myself laying on the ground, trying to catch my breath, positioning my bag underneath my head... all around looking pathetic. That's when a surprising thing happened.

I'd only been on the ground for a few seconds when a stranger ran up to me. "Monsieur! Are you ok?"

"Yes, I'm. Fine." I said, between big breaths. I was immediately embarrassed that this stranger was so worried about me. I tried to slow down my breathing and I smiled, as if I often laid on my back in the middle of the sidewalk.

"You don't look fine. Should I call the ambulance?"

"No no no. It's really ok. I'll be fine in a second. Thank you, monsieur."

"Are you a student? Let me guess. You got a big test today?"

"Oh no, nothing like that. You can leave me here, I'll be ok in just a few."

He looked at me skeptically. "I can't just leave you here like this, you understand? Look, I'm going to the store and if you're still here in five minutes, I'll call the ambulance."

"Thank you, monsieur. That'll be great. Thanks a lot."

"It's normal." he said with a smile, and he left me, glancing back twice before turning the corner. I was blown away by his kindness. It made me wonder, "Is that normal?? Would this have happened back home?" My instincts say no. I fully expected to be ignored and the kindness of this guy went against those expectations. To me, that says something.

It took just a few minutes for me to calm down enough to stand up, and a few seconds after that, the next bus rolled up. I still got to school early enough to review my notes like I had wanted.

Two things!

2009-10-12T01:08:52Z

First thing! My brother and his wife, Amber, are having a baby! I'm going to be an uncle, which feels less weird than expected. You can congratulate me because I'm feeling great about this, but I have to be honest: I haven't done anything.

Second thing! I'm going on vacation in Morocco at the end of the month. Ya know, that northern African country with the deserts and camels and super charming sand-colored cities featured in Indiana Jones. I'm very excited, but I can't help but feel guilty. I'm a graduate student and I should be using that week to study. Plus, there's the little detail of money...

Bonus third thing! I'm going to the city of Nantes on Wednesday for an English language philosophy conference.

Anti-American... food

2009-09-20T22:50:09Z

I just came back from a dinner party. I met this Japanese guy in my philosophy class and he was really excited to be able to talk in Japanese with me. So he invited me right away to dinner chez soi. Laura and I came, and we met his French roommate and his Spanish friend. It was a great dinner (he's a good cook), but I also got into kind of a heated exchange with someone there.

It wasn't looking good when one of the first conversation topics was about how Americans are offended if you don't speak in English in France. The roommate said, "It's happened to me several times. I'll meet an American and, say, his French girlfriend. We'll introduce each other in English and chat for a bit, then I'll address the French girl in French. Later he'll complain that that was rude. But this is France. We speak French in France. Isn't that what Americans say about their country and English?"

She had a point. I agreed that some Americans are prone to do that and laughed it off. It wasn't over though. Actually, my friend's roommate was alright. It was his Spanish friend who did not have a high opinion of Americans at all. America came up several times after that, and never in a good light. It was used as an adjective to describe bad commercial films and bad tourists.

I don't know why, but what set me off was when the Spanish girl attacked American food. I'm not excessively proud of American food or anything, but I'd just had enough.

It started when I responded to something she said: "That's surprising that you don't miss Spanish food while you're in France. Sometimes I miss food from back home."

"Oh really?", she said, as if I'd said that I miss prison life. "Because I find that food from the United States is just shit."

"But what do you mean American food, though?" Did she just mean hot dogs or was she including California rolls?

"Don't say American." she said, full of pity at my lack of tact. "You're from the United States. Americans are from two continents, not from one country." That kind of pedantry annoys the hell out of me and I told her so. I've never seen a French textbook that said that I shouldn't use the word "American" to describe someone from the states. After that aside, which ended with me saying "Ok, let's leave it" (Laisse tomber), we continued.

"American food is food from all the immigrant communities. Japanese, Italian, German, Thai, Chinese... Chinese-American food is very different from Chinese food from China." I said.

"What are you trying to say? Doesn't that mean that there's no food that isn't American? There are immigrants from all over in America. Chinese food is still Chinese.", she scoffed. She just desperately wanted me to play the role of the imperialist.

"Noooo, I'm saying that the Chinese food you find in America, for example, can't be found anywhere but in America. It's American food. You wouldn't say that spaghetti is Chinese and not Italian, just because noodle-making was brought over from China. I miss the food from my home country, and I'm sorry but it's not all shit." At this point, my voice was starting to shake from anger. As I type this, it doesn't really make sense that I was so annoyed so quickly. In my defense, this is after a whole evening of passive-aggressiveness.

What got me the most about the exchange was that she had this preconceived notion of me as this blind patriot, just because I was American. It's a kind of racism. I am absolutely capable of reasoned criticism of my own country, as anyone who knows me can vouch for, but with her, I couldn't escape the four sheer walls of her prejudgment. To try to have this conversation in French with emotion clouding my thoughts was doubly hard.

The rest of the night was good and, let me say, this kind of conversation is not at all normal. Most people I know here like Americans. The Spanish girl sat away from me after that and was nicer to me.

My first day

2009-09-16T20:16:39Z

Follow me, won't you?, as I take you with me through my first day of school.

I took the 9:40 bus. The class starts at 10:15, so I figured tha'd give me plenty of time and maybe an extra 20 minutes to find the right room and chat with the other nerdy early-comers. But, typically, I misjudged the time it took to get to campus in the morning traffic and the bus rolled in at around 10:05. 10 minutes before class.

From the bus stop to the philosophy building, it takes about 3 minutes. 7 minutes left! "Excusez-moi, je cherche la salle numéro 7?", I asked a stranger. 6 minutes left! Making my way through the hall, I hesitate between awkwardly numbered doors. There're 5 minutes left as I stand in front of what looks to be room 7 where "normes épistemiques" will be taking place.

No one's there. I spin around and look at adjacent classrooms. Marching down the hall and back up again kills about 2 or 3 minutes. A long look at the announcement board tells me nothing of changed rooms or cancelled classes. So I wander back to room 7, finding three students and a professor who had apparently just arrived, all with a minute left before class is due to begin.

Another 5 minutes pass before most of the class is assembled and he begins to lecture. 10 minutes past the scheduled start time the last stragglers wander in. The prof asks them to close the door with a smile. This seems a little last minute to me, but I guess this is normal?

My first class is alright. The French is hard, but not a disaster. I get through most of it and I embarrass myself only once: I raised me hand and asked who Romain Gary is, an example the prof was using. "Is he a football player?", I ask. There is light laughter from the class as he informs me that, no, he's a famous French author. Ok, so one strike, but no outs.

Afterwards, I have a little meeting with this prof at his office, just to introduce myself and catch up on the work I missed. We have a great discussion about the profession of philosophy in France. Apparently, most profs want to be published in Anglo-saxon journals, as he calls them. They spend a lot of time reading English-language philosophy articles and trying to write articles in English. Most fail to be published, apparently, but it's a dream.

It gave me pause. I *can* write philosophy in native English, after all. Or, at least, it's not the language that's holding me back, it's my lack of further philosophy education. I have something a lot of these professors work for their whole life and never quite achieve: good written English. How random and lucky it is to be born in an English-speaking country during the height of the American empire.

I ask if it bothers him, that English is the language of modern philosophy. He says no. French used to be the language of science and at one point or another in history, Latin, German, Greek or Italian. Now it's English and voilà.

My next class doesn't go as well. I just don't have the chops to understand what she's saying. The topic is Hobbes's Leviathan. She tells me to read the book in English and skip the French translation. In fact, most of my reading list is French translations that all my profs suggest I skip in favor of the English originals. I'll be reading fewer books in French than in English apparently. English really is the global language, I suppose. Anyways, I'll need the handicap because her French is a lot harder to catch than my first prof's.

I went in nervous, but after my first day, I think everything will work out. My French isn't as bad as I'd thought.

Now I just need to use: Le chat est sur la table. La souris est sous la table.

2009-09-15T07:17:20Z

Yesterday I was finishing up a few errands around campus. After getting my student body card, the next thing on my list was to go to the library to get some books. I didn't know where it was so, naturally, I had to ask someone. Let me repeat that. I had to ask someone where the library was. In other words, I was finally going to be able to use one of the first sentences I learned, one of the first sentences anyone learns in French: "Où est la bibliothèque?" Can you imagine my excitement?

This phrase has been drilled into my head with constant practice the first couple months I started studying, but I never thought that the opportunity would actually arise to use it. The words have been forming and perfecting themselves for years, never once being exposed to the light of day for its intended purpose. But now I would actually be able to use it. The time is now!

I approached the first person I saw, a girl passing by a big building, and I said to her: "S'il vous plaît. Où se trouve la bibliothèque?" Well damn. I asked "Where does one find the library?" instead of the perfect and simple "Where is the library?" that had been gestating inside me like an unborn baby.

As a kind of cosmic punishment for my wasted opportunity, she pointed me somewhere far away and, 30 minutes of aimless wandering later, I found myself back to where I asked the stranger my question: at the entrance to the library.

Unrelated:
I am skipping my English class this morning with the permission of the prof. In fact, I'll be missing English class everyday, for obvious reasons. Instead I'm finishing up the syllabus I have to write for the class I'm teaching this Thursday.

Unrelated 2:
Apparently, almost 3/4ths of American physicians support a public option or a single-payer system. See.

"What's wrong with socialism?"

2009-09-14T07:19:57Z

Soon after arriving in France, I went on a weekend trip to the Morbihan department, just south west of Rennes. Laura and I stayed at our friend Tangui's house.

I brought some nice wine from California. Tangui and his dad drank deeply and his dad said, finally, "It's good. It's a wine for pleasure isn't it?" There was a subtext there that I could detect but not decipher. Isn't all wine for pleasure?

We ate traditional galettes, which are savory buckwheat crepes, with eggs, ham and lots and lots of butter. I mean, big yellow shards of butter, twice as thick as the galettes skins that they were wrapped in. This much butter in our food is kind of unthinkable back home in the states. I said as much and this led to a much more interesting conversation about the healthcare debate.

"What do the French think about all the protests against healthcare reform?"

"We don't understand it. They are protesting against socialism but if they think that's socialism, they don't even know what socialism is. Besides, what's wrong with socialism? Why is it such a bad word in the states?"

Ok, I'm going to leave the ensuing hour-long conversation aside. Needless to say, I came off comparatively conservative. The next question I asked was: "So let's say that an old lady breaks her hips. How long will she have to wait to get it replaced?"

"Why would she wait? Doesn't she want to get it fixed immediately?"

"No I mean, aren't there waiting lists?", I said. I mean, this is one of the big arguments against "socialized medicine" and I wanted to make sure I got a proper answer.

"No. I've never heard of waiting lists."

"Ok, well, let's say a young person has to get hip surgery and a 90 year old has to get hip surgery. Who gets it first?"

"Whoever got hurt first. Besides, the other wouldn't have to wait very long." (Really?) "Well, for some things. Maybe for an organ transplant, they might have to wait for an organ. You could wait a long time for a kidney."

So much stuff to write, but I'd better just go and get started with my day rather than type it out. The coast was beautiful.

leaving soon

2009-09-08T05:41:36Z

T-minus 5 hours before leaving. I'm finally departing to France after weeks of delay, and yet in some ways, it still feels too soon. In other ways, I wish I were already there.

My mom made sukiyaki for the soubetsukai (going away party). So delicious. I'll miss having quality Japanese food every night.

I feel like I'm risking a lot this next year, and I can only hope that I'm prepared. I'll be studying in a language I only recently got some handle of, and living partially off of my savings to do it. I'll be starting days behind the rest of the class to boot. But it's still a lucky situation, getting to live and study overseas. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Bye everyone. Wish me luck.

Obama's speech

2009-09-08T00:03:18Z

You may have heard about the controversy over Obama's speech to schools. He tells kids to stay in school and work hard but parents are worried that he is "trying to indoctrinate their children with socialist ideas". A digg comment I found sums it up:

"You know who else said to stay in school and listen to parents?

Hitler."

a long rambling post about securitized life insurance policies

2009-09-06T05:14:01Z

This makes me mad. We need to regulate these guys. It might not be as bad as the other securitizations wall street was doing (many of which were instrumental in killing the economy), but it's the same type of thing. Basically, they want to buy insurance policies from people who are likely to die. Investors will continue paying the insurance premiums and, when the policy holder dies, the investors will get all of the money. These life insurance policies will be grouped together in securities and then sold off like stock. In other words, wall street will gamble on when people will die. As a very unfortunate aside, investors will also have an incentive for people to die.

Wall Street is a large self-interested institution, gambling with unknowable variables to determine unfathomably complex future outcomes. Just as a command economy inevitably fails due to human error, trusting in Wall Street's ability to assess and manage risk in this way seems to me to represent misplaced faith.

One thing I particularly don't understand is this blind faith in the unmitigated "free-market" (amongst, let's be honest, the right). More free-market and no regulations: it's ideologically potent just because it's easy to understand. (My feeling is that any president and any congress, Democrat or Republican, would have passed an economic stimulus plan, but people confuse Keynesian economic policies with "socialism".)

The actual intellectual leaders of market liberalization aren't as extreme as this. They favor free-markets but would never argue something as ridiculous as the idea that "more government is always bad". To them, increased government is a necessary evil that we use only reluctantly. The key difference is that they can be convinced that sometimes it's indeed necessary.

The result is that the conservative intellectual community is actually less extreme than the ridiculous pundits, the angry zombie mobs they incite and opportunistic politicians.

I'm in! (oh crap...)

2009-09-05T09:21:24Z

The whole saga starts with me sending my application to the university of Rennes 1. On time. They lost it. In fact, I sent it with a tracking number, but they still couldn't find it. So I resent it (that is, I sent it again, though I resented doing it).

They lost it again. I sent it yet again with growing worry as the first day of school approached. Then the first day of school came and went. There was still no response except to tell me that this time my application was at least being processed.

This morning I finally received my acceptance letter from the university. I'm in!

Now I'm just nervous about studying philosophy in French, which is what I should've been worried about this whole summer. Oh man, this worry is even more nerve-wracking. At least when the university was abusing me, it was mostly out of my control.

I leave early on Tuesday the 8th.

up

2009-08-16T04:35:01Z

I saw "Up" with my family today. Even though I was already expecting great things from Pixar, it still surprised me in the best possible way. The wordless love story in the first half is just, wow. In fact, the whole first half is so economical and poetic that I don't think I've ever been so moved by an animation.

Visually, I loved how they played with heaviness and lightness, both physically and psychologically----I mean, Carl literally drags his house over his head through half the film. There's a fairy tale element to that that I like. Then it descends into kid movie wackiness for a while, but it was still an amazing work. Really, it was almost perfect.

Also, yay for there being an Asian American kid.

Write or call your congressman (perhaps)

2009-08-15T09:01:31Z

After finishing "The Future of Freedom" I find myself much more sympathetic to politicians.

If you guys care about health care reform, consider calling your representative. Or writing. It'll take 5 minutes. This thing might fail, but if it does at least we can say "I tried".

If you're worried that your effort will have no effect, don't be. Politicians are highly responsive to their constituency since so few of them actually vote. Upon receiving a letter, congressional staffers use formulas to determine the "weight" of an issue and tally up the results. These formula results can dictate future policy. In other words, each person who writes has the political power of multiple people. "Caring" is the new "male white landed gentry".

Here are some tips.

Laura's drawing

2009-08-14T09:41:55Z

Photo 358, originally uploaded by robot_yui.

I think it's a pretty neat style she's working on.

can't stop thinking about politics

2009-08-13T08:23:56Z

Ya know, I was pretty annoyed about the extreme-right yelling that any tax increase is socialism and that there were going to be death panels who decide if grandma will live or die. Mix that in with all the unsavory racist undertones being pushed and it's downright depressing. I mean, what if these guys win?

Then I realized. This could turn out to be a very good thing.

I mean, with all these insanely outlandish claims, I think even average Americans will realize that Obama will not usher in a new age of old Russian style communism. They'll finally look just plain crazy. (Right? Right?) So, by extension it'll make any opposition to healthcare reform seem crazy, smoothing the way.

It maybe doesn't help that I'm in the middle of Fareed Zakaria's excellent "The Future of Freedom", which argues in part that we don't really want democracy as much as we say we do. I have to agree.

Art Show

2009-08-12T05:00:58Z

anatomy of words, originally uploaded by robot_yui.

Here's a piece from that little show I was in. Everyone's stuff there was really amazing. Thanks for everyone who swung by. I really appreciated it.

I made 7 pieces in total. You can see the rest at my rarely used flickr account.

I will be very angry if we don't pass healthcare reform for stupid reasons

2009-08-08T18:23:14Z

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/08/us/politics/08townhall.html?hp

Great. Real life has sunken to the level of an internet forum.

I wish there was an honest opposition to the Democrats. One which had integrity and intellectual rigor. We need one. There's a lot to be said for a regulated but free-market health plan, like the Dutch have. They have no public option and we should be talking about the merits of that when placed in the reality of our culture. I wish the level of our discussion was somewhere along those lines, not comparisons of the democratic party to nazis or communists.

The Republican party is getting scary. They're pandering to all the conspiracy theorists and extremists. I was wondering why they continue to play footsie with the "birther" movement (those who believe Obama was not born in America and that there's a vast conspiracy dating back 50 years to get him elected. Seriously).

Then I realized. Increasingly, that's part of their base.

I like this comment I read on a digg article. Here it is:

What message would you have us refute?

Obama wants to euthanize your granny?

Obama wants to take away your Medicare?

Obama wants to give free health insurance to illegal aliens?

Obama wants the government health plan to pay for abortions?

All of those talking points are pure lies. When Congressmen pointed out at town halls that they are false, and tried to explain the truth, the screamers simply called them liars.

These mobs have no message to refute. Their intention is to prevent civil discourse, to prevent anyone else from saying anything. Nothing more.

Oh, and if they have the opportunity to beat up some people they don't like, they'll take that opportunity, too.

They are nothing more than brownshirts. And you are trying to defend them?

I know it's tacky in politics to take sides. It's considered reasonable to take the middle route between two extremes. But the truth is biased. Sometimes it's great to take into consideration an honest opposition and challenge your views. Other times, the opposition is ridiculous, a shambling zombie force at the whim and will of demagogues.

Art Show

2009-08-05T08:38:03Z

artyourface, originally uploaded by robot_yui.

I am in an art show this Saturday with other fabulous people! Please come and support us. Featuring: major hang-outs with us. Hope to see you there!

Also this amazing poster was made by Chris, Hannah's boyfriend, who set this show up.

Application problems

2009-08-04T03:01:16Z

The application I sent to the University of Rennes was lost. By them. Somehow. I had mail tracking, and according to the postal website they definitely received it. But who knows in what part of the bureaucratic pipe it's blocked in now. And now they are on summer vacation.

So I need to resend it. There are other problems with this that I don't even want to get into, a whole series of dominoes that I thought were falling as planned but never even started. Basically, my being in France next year is in peril.

The good news is, my chances of getting into school are still high and they will still look at my application as soon as they can. But that is still too late for my taste.

The address again

2009-07-11T01:16:48Z

My sister wasn't even close. It's apartment number 214!

My last friends only post has the address and my sister's phone number.

Frenchie food party

2009-07-01T22:03:16Z

So I was able to get all the food into the country in non-gross ways (Sally that is gross). It's not a lot of food, but I'm excited to share it.

Taking into account family, friends and my sister (who's apartment I'll be using), I think I've found a good day:

Friday, July 10th at 7pm in Davis

Y'all be invited. I'll post the address soon. If you find the food gross, you can always come and just try a little and then make fun of it and, by extension, me. I'll have no recourse but to say "oh la la" and twirl my mustache by the edge of my index finger and thumb.

If you can bring a bottle or a little thing to snack on, I'd appreciate it but it's not necessary. Looking forward to seeing you all there. Let me know if you can make it.

"food that'll make people think your food budget is as big as scar face's coke budget..."

2009-06-22T08:57:39Z

Hello friends and lovers,

I go home in two days and up until Saturday, there was a lot of pressure and a lot of stuff to do. I finished my grad school application in the nick of time, came back from a two days long trip to Jersey Island with 21 kids (this could be hours of anecdotes on its own), and went to a lot of various goodbye get-togethers.

Yesterday there was this amazing music festival where all the local bands play out in the middle of the street. The whole town was filled with every conceivable genre of music. Every street corner was a stage and the crowds stringing one performance to the other never thinned, from street to street, all the way up and down the length and width of the city.

THE DEAL

Ok so, here's the deal: I bought the provisions for the Frenchie French party I want to throw (and I want everyone to come to). I bought some fancy apéritif and wine and cider, even some 30 month old comté (cheese) and some other amazing things.... but I also bought some cured sausage. I want to bring it in, but I'm not sure if it's allowed. Does anyone know? Losing 30 bucks worth of cured artisanal sausage at the airport would break my heart. And I really really want to share at least this tiny part of my life here with you guys back home.

So what's the best way to bring it back?

Also, in case your hipster radar is broken: