I can never drink Orangina again

And this is why:

How to dislocate ribs

A step by step guide by my sister Robin...

Robin's blog

I went to the Sorbonne today but would have had to cross the student picket line to go to class. Didn't seem worth it so once again the strike has foiled my attempts to be a good graduate student.

At least the suburbs are on fire again. I came to France in a good year!

Language embarassment of the day: I was trying to fix the printer in the office of my archive and I mixed up the word "brouillon" with the word "brouillard." Instead of saying that there was "scratch paper" in the printer, I said that there was "fog" in the printer and that was the message that circulated the building until the computer technician came in to fix it. Normally my humiliations are just in my own head but this one will last for many more weeks I'm sure. Oh well.

I'll write more in a few days once I get this other grant proposal in hand... why do I want to go to Algeria again??

When everything is on strike and you have too much time on your hands...

I watched The Bourne Identity this afternoon (still one of my favorite action/spy movies) and discovered that the final scene in the Paris apartment when Matt Damon takes out Chris Cooper (unfortunately leaving Julia Stiles to perform in future Bourne installments) and drops down several flights of stairs on top of a dead body takes place in the courtyard about 10 feet from my apartment! And you can actually see my street in the movie, and several shots of the cafe that I steal my wireless internet from. It's like sort of being famous without the paparazzi!

I also spent much of the day googling people from my past and on a whim googled myself. There are lots of strange entries, but also a photo taken from the FB reception at the French senate building just to prove to you all that I am in France, drinking lots of alcohol (I think this was about my third glass of champagne - open bar!), and fulfilling my duties as a FB fellow by smiling for pictures:



What a productive day I've had!

Star Academy!

Fortunately I have a television in my apartment here, otherwise I would be very bored indeed. The only problem is that it gets four channels on a good day, and sometimes they can be very blurry. But perhaps this is a good thing. I'm already sneaking home from the archives in time to catch Crossing Jordan (dubbed into French of course) and Verliebt in Berlin (German Ugly Betty, also dubbed into French). In the evening I can dine with a fine selection of American medical/scientific/police programs, as they show every single CSI, Cold Case, or whatever other Jerry Bruckheimer telelvision crap exists. Unfortunately the dubbing just highlights how crap the writing is, so you can imagine my delight a couple of weeks ago on finding a program on the people who restore France's chateaux and antiquities. The tour of the Sèvres china workshop was fantastic!

Anyway back to the main topic - Star Academy. I have never actually watched an episode of American Idol, but I have been fortunate to catch several episodes of the French version, Star Academy. It seems to be on at all hours of the day, in a Big Brother-like fashion, following the contestants around the chateau they all live in with hidden cameras to catch the little divas strangling each other. It's a fairly big production, but I was pleasantly surprised with the talent of the contestants, as they only accept people who actually play instruments and write their own music. I don't know if American Idol does that. But every week they have the big show with famous "musicians" who come on and perform with the contestants. The last couple of weeks the headliners were Celine Dion and Kylie Minogue (who are the "godmothers" of this year's show). Both were fine. While I don't always admire their music, I can certainly appreciate their popularity.

This week, however, was a bit of a horror. The major headliner this week was Johnny Hallyday. Who is Johnny Hallyday, you ask? Well.

He is by far the most famous rock musician in France. He is very old, not very attractive, not a great singer in my opinion, and just generally creepy. Nobody knows him outside of France. His main claim to fame among Americans is probably that he is the uncle of Michael Vartan, who starred with and dated Jennifer Garner from Alias before she married Ben Affleck (does anyone else thing she'd make an excellent best friend?). His music tends to be pretty crap, as most French rock does. My dad has a theory that a language needs lots of hard consonants to make it good for rock music, which of course French lacks almost completely. It does, however, make for some nice lite-pop ballads! Johnny's new album features his attempt to become Johnny Cash. He wears all black, also has the name Johnny, and plays acoustic guitar while singing a song called "Always," which is in French except for the word "always," which pops up every chorus. It's pretty horrible and they keep showing the music video for it on TV after German Ugly Betty so I have to be pretty vigilant to change the channel quickly otherwise I have to hide out in the bathroom until it is finished. But the French adore Johnny, one might even say worship him. I may not get my residence permit if someone from the Interior Ministry finds out that I am disparaging him in a blog that about four people in the United States read! It might in fact be a Homeland security sort of issue.


The other big act of Star Academy last night was Tokio Hotel, the teenage German (rock?) band with very architectural hair. I sort of thought they were a bit of a joke for a few weeks after I discovered who they were, but apparently they're not. It is very cold in Paris right now (we might see snow tonight!) but the announcer of the Star-Ac said that teenage girls had slept outside the theater for three nights in order to get in to see Tokio Hotel. And in the broad camera sweeps of the audience, there were several teenage girls with bangle bracelets all the way up their arms weeping convulsively in the audience. I do not understand. Apparently it is somewhat like what happened in the US when the Beatles arrived. But at least the Beatles were singing in English. I don't think anyone has any idea what Tokio Hotel is singing about since it's all in German. But I have to say, one thing I really appreciate is the way in which the lead singer has created the ultimate smoky eye. I experimented with the smoky eye for several months when I was a Kit Kat Girl in our lavish production of Cabaret as an undergrad. It really is a challenge to not overshadow (if you do, you look like a raccoon).


All in all, I think I'm stuck waiting for the next installment of patrimonial restoration documentaries before I will begin to enjoy television again. Is television in the rest of Europe this bad? My only other experience is the Netherlands, which actually has pretty good tv since they just import things and don't dub them. Obviously England has the BBC and things like EastEnders, but what about Germany, Italy, or Spain?

The SNCF should pay for my hip replacement

Once again the entire transport industry has decided to strike. Of course that means vacation days for me since I learned during last month's strike that archives are closed and libraries don't deliver books on strike days. So not a huge deal really. Except that one of my sister's friends was in town for a scientific conference out in the suburbs on a train line that completely stopped running. So she came back into Paris last night to stay with me and then we had to walk down to her hotel by the Eiffel Tower. I would draw a map, but I am not so technically proficient with blogger to do that, however it is worth noting that the Eiffel Tower is across town. Two hours across town. And it's cold today. And I walked home again.

All of this to say that my bad hips are acting up again and I can now barely walk after going to her hotel and coming back home. Since the strike is being orchestrated by the train line unions, I think that they should then pay for my hip replacement surgeries when I need them... it feels like it could be in a few weeks! It has convinced me, though, that instead of trying to walk across the city to the library tomorrow, I am just going to work at home. I wish I had CBAM's heating pad though.

The students are also beginning their strikes now. Their favorite method is to block train stations and force them to shut down the electricity on the train lines, blocking entire regions. Except that's pretty ineffective if the train conductors are on strike. These unions should perhaps talk to each other in order to avoid such redundancy. But last night I was coming out of my class at the Sorbonne (yes I am taking a class at the Sorbonne) about 6 pm, and there was huge crowd of several hundreds of people blocked at the door. We were let out about ten at a time and then once we got out, I realized that police in riot gear had blocked off the entire street and were checking everyone's bags before they were let out of the street! Insanity! I felt for the first time like it was 1968 and they were waiting for students with bombs or something.

Anyway. Vacation day tomorrow with lots of yoga to try to stretch my body back out. Hope things in the US are going a bit better.

How do you know if you have the Pox?

At the risk of grossing you all out, I am going to write an entry about a weird condition I seem to have developed. I will not, however, compound the problem by providing images.

As CBAM often points out to me, I really should be dead by now. I have been plagued by a lifetime of weird illnesses and medical problems (although not as weird as my youngest sister who has had most of her internal organs removed and was recently diagnosed as having both a kidney stone and several dislocated ribs, although how one dislocates ribs I know not). Ever since I got to France my skin has been behaving in not so lovely ways - perhaps from stress, although more likely from the heavily scented laundry detergent one must buy here. Alas, Tide Free has not made its way to the Continent yet and so I really have no other option than to use what they have here or not wash my clothes.

This last week, however, I have gotten little red bumps on my neck and chest. They are not behaving like pimples or a rash so I can only assume that I have somehow gotten Monkeypox, or some other variety of pox. I am no expert in medieval diseases, but I do live in the neighborhood in Paris known as the Marais (or "the swamp" in French) and in a very old building, next to the medieval quarter. Although one of my favorite history books includes details on how the French cleaned up this swamp through the wonders of a magical, modern sewer system (including free tours for the ladies and gents), I am still of the mind that the miasma of disease is still floating around my building. Hopefully, though, my twentieth century immune system will prevent me from dying, as I would have long before in the medieval times.

All of this probably goes back to my long history of allergies to very strange things. At first it was strange foods (broccoli?) and pretty much every plant that has ever grown. Then after a wilderness expedition of several weeks with the National Outdoor Leadership School, during which time I became the legendary "girl who destroyed her own feet," I developed staph infections in both of my feet, which killed off what little immune system I had left. I then proceeded to go to college in Texas (a state that I am very allergic to) and kept getting sick with strep, sinus infections and everything else. The weird part about the whole thing is that every time I would get an infection, I would also break out in a rash. Nobody could explain it until several months later I visited a dermatologist in Cheyenne (who is notorious for her uncontained excitement every time she gets to use a scalpel) who quickly proclaimed that I was in fact "allergic to infections." I then took antibiotics for several months and did in fact seem to be cured of this weird allergy.

I am happy to note, however, that I have really not had much trouble with migraines since I got to France. Perhaps it's the lack of contact with New Jersey that has saved me or just the thought that if I see one more doctor who looks at me as though I was hysterical or have a "wandering womb," I will probably prescribe myself a rest cure and then end up like Virgina Woolf (I must add that while Unity Mitford had a much more dramatic (and botched) suicide attempt when England declared war on Germany, I would rather go out like Virginia Woolf).

The good news is, I did finally get my bank card and the proper form to turn in my residence permit, although the prefecture called the FB office today to inform them that since it took so long to get this form, I must now turn in more recent documents attesting to my living situation. Grrr. It's their own damn fault for changing the rules!