Nouvelles du bord

Erased to preserve confidentiality...

It's a new dawn, it's a new day...

Erased to preserve confidentiality...

Dr Education nationale: the institution who made a monster..

I'm alive! Aliiive!" yells I.

And then hell breaks loose: Massive convulsions wrack the sarcophagus, damn near shaking it off its cradle.

"Where have you been?" says you.
"My blogging self was in a coma for 3 months" says I.
"I noticed. Well what did your real self do these past months???" says you.

Closeup on my face, I'm obviously remembering...

Fade in to...

Me studying for my second, big, major, tough competitive exam.

Fade in to...

Me realizing my brain can't keep up.
On my face you can read: despair.
My thoughts are: I'm not good enough / I'm not as good as everybody thinks / I can't live up to the expectations of the people I care for.

Fade in to...

Me unable to sleep at night.

Fade in to...

Me unable to finish my meals.

Fade in to...

Me breaking down nearly everyday.

Then...

April 17 to 20. Me taking the exams. Beautiful weather.
On my face you can read: relief. I'm not doing such a bad job after all.

Then...

Different scenes that show that for a month and a half, I'm waiting for the results of both exams. The anguish is becoming overwhelming.
Not a night goes by without a nightmare about the results.

Then...

The first results arrive: I'm allowed to take the second session of the first exam.

Fade in to...

The last results arrive. I failed for the second time. Only difference: this year I worked twice as hard, and I got abysmally low grades.
On my face you can read: the confusing and exasperating feeling of having suffered for absolutely nothing.

Fade in to...

I receive the letter that says when I'm summoned for the second session.

Closeup on the letter: my oral exams are to take place exactly during my brother's wedding.
On my face you can read: utter disappointment, utter disbelief, utter disjoy.

Then...

Me looking for another job, another future, another prospect. And finding them, too.

Fade in to...

Me applying for a job as a teacher for the french gvt. If I get the job, I'll be travelling around the world from december to may.
Me applying for a "Master 2", to finish my MA, in case I don't get the job.

Fade out.

Credits.

Prison Break

I used to be a free spirit...

and a juvenile delinquent

I loved cars and got caught for speeding...
...several times.
I even knew how to handle a detonator.
One day I organized a bank raid. Although I had arranged and rehearsed it to the last detail...
...my siblings didn't listen
...so things went horribly wrong, and I was sent to prison.
My brother and my cousin decided to get me out of there.
They finally did. We were worried that if they caught us we would all go to prison

...but we found shelter in a farm.

TO BE CONTINUED

Shakespeare sketch

With Hugh Laurie and Rowan Atkinson, and it's hilarious! To me, it is!
I'm working on Coriolanus and I needed a break...

Waning gibbous

Last night I was up until 3 a.m., and from my desk I could see the moon rise. It had a faint coral hue and it glowed softly. Just like a child, I felt immensely reassured to see it there, and it reminded me of the small orange night light my parents would plug in our room.

No show

I saw Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola today. I don't know what I think about it yet, which is usually a good sign.

I also recommend The Last King of Scotland, Babel and Das Leben der Anderen.
I have grown to enjoy films in which there are narrative gaps that are left to be filled by the viewer's imagination. When I was younger I was annoyed when something was not shown or told, but now I find omissions stimulating. At the end of Babel a depressed girl gives a written note to the man who comforted her, and later you can just see him reading it. I liked how it made me study his face for a hint of what the note said. In Lost In Translation, you never get to know what Bob whispers to Charlotte when they say goodbye. To me this narrative strategy has two interesting effects: it brings depth to the diegetical world the film creates by giving the viewer limited perceptions. You don't feel like a privileged audience, but it feels all the more real, because that is what we experience everyday. Secondly there is no better way to attract someone's attention on something than by not showing that thing. Turning the written note or the whispered words into definite, unequivocal meaning would be more comfortable (although possibly disappointing), but less intense. I definitely choose intense.

Rinko Kikuchi in Babel

C'est pas l'homme qui prend la route...

I'll be busy next summer.

Busy taking oral exams (praying to God those won't prevent me from going to my brother's wedding), and then busy road tripping to Norway, Sweden and Finland with two of my friends for 3 weeks (praying to God we can keep it cheap), and then going to the highlands in Scotland with my parents (praying to God... nothing, I couldn't ask for more!).
I will need to keep summer 2008 simple... anyone wants to come visit?

So...

So I haven't posted anything in nearly a month. Main reason is because my entire (professional) future will be defined by the competitive exams I'll be taking in 2 weeks and again in 7 weeks. So I'm beyond stressed out.
I could definitely take a little time to write posts, but I can't seem to find topics other than the exams, and I really don't think that's interesting. But I do miss writing in here, so I think (I think a lot these days, don't I) that I'll try to write small posts every day, and keep it very simple. Fortune cookies type of posts!
So there!

The freedom of freedom Freedom

I wrote this in an openDemocracy.com forum back in 2003, and I thought it was funny, so... here it is:

I have re-written the last paragraph of the US Declaration of Independence, replacing every word that was borrowed from the French language by "freedom", so as to help the American people who eat freedom fries further deny their cultural ties with France:

"We, therefore, the freedoms of the united States of America, in Freedom Congress, Freedomed, freedoming to the Supreme Freedom of the world for the freedom of our freedoms, do, in the Name, and by the Freedom of the good Freedom of these Colonies, freedomly freedom and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Freedom States; that they are Absolved from all Freedom to the British Freedom, and that all freedom connection between them and the State of Great Freedom, is and ought to be freedomly dissolved; and that as Free and Freedom States, they have full Freedom to freedom freedom, conclude Freedom, freedom Freedoms, freedom Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Freedom States may of right do. And for the freedom of this Declaration, with a freedom freedom on the freedom of freedom Freedom, we freedomly freedom to each other our Lives, our Freedoms and our freedomed Freedom."

I know it's a ridiculous argument against French-bashing, but I couldn't help myself...

Brendon Grosjean

As I was walking home from campus at noon, I saw a woman with a stroller stop and start talking to her child. I walked past and saw that she was pointing at faces on a big tabloid poster, and telling her 3 or 4-year-old whose faces they were. It amazes me that some people -- including those in France who name their kid after their favorite tv series actor or character -- have such a narrow cultural horizon to begin with, that tv actually broadens it.

A license for tv.... 116 euros.
A library card.... 15 euros.
Intellectual curiosity.... priceless.

Some days like today are normal until you pick up the phone and learn what happened to a friend.

1-2-3-4

Okay so yesterday I went and interviewed one of the demonstrating fir trees. Their slogan is "1-2-3-4, we can't bear it anymore, 5-6-7-8, the forest will retaliate!" The spokestree said we should leave them be and buy fake trees, or change that tradition for a less barbaric one. "Don't you like being decorated?" I asked, and he said that the decorating thing is okay, but we shouldn't fell them. "But then again, he added in hushed tones, look how big-headed that one got by being the center of attention! He wasn't half as big when they brought him here...".
Before I left he said "if a tree falls in a forest, do you know why no one can hear it?"
"No"
"Because of the chainsaw!"
With lines like that, that one could probably run for president...

Odds and sods

I forgot to mention that at last winter is showing its head here in Nancy. It snowed all day yesterday, and today we're having a clear blue shiny beautiful cold weather.

(that's Place Stanislas invaded by fir trees demonstrating against Christmas)

Unfortunately, my oh so beloved neighbors haven't stopped drilling holes in the walls. Tomorrow I'm moving in the campus library with all my stuff -- they're not the friendliest people there but I'm sure they won't mind.

Priceless piece of history

I love this:

Monday January 15 2007
The Guardian
[...]
On September 10 1956, Guy Mollet, the then French prime minister, came to London to discuss the possibility of a merger between the two countries with his British counterpart, Sir Anthony Eden, according to declassified papers from the National Archives, uncovered by the BBC.

A British cabinet paper from the period reads: "When the French prime minister, Monsieur Mollet, was recently in London, he raised with the prime minister the possibility of a union between the United Kingdom and France."

At the time of the proposal, France was in economic difficulties and faced the escalating Suez crisis. Britain had been a staunch French ally during the two world wars.

When Mr Mollet's request for a union failed, he quickly responded with another plan - that France be allowed to join the British commonwealth - which was said to have been met more warmly by Sir Anthony.
[...]
Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited

I can't figure out how this could have worked, culturally. The reactions to this so-called revelation (apparently it was already mentioned in Keith Kyle's book about Suez) on both sides of the Channel are eloquent. I know I wouldn't bother -- both languages are already in my brain anyway...
but it seems an armed conquest of one country by the other would be more believable than a peaceful union! I guess the European Union in itself really is an accomplishment...

Al'ud and al tarab

I went to a fantastic concert on friday night. It was oud virtuoso and composer Marcel Khalifé -- from Lebanon -- playing his "concerto al andalus" with the Gradus Ad Musicam symphonic orchestra. His son Rami -- a pianist who graduated from Julliard in 2003 -- also played. It was magical! Marcel ended with one of his ballads, and in the audience the arab speakers who knew it (it seems they all did) sang along.

Oriental music really is something I have to explore.

Freedom fries curriculum

Not many things I hear or see anger me. I am generally unhopeful about mankind, but rarely angry. However over the last couple of years, I have found that one recurring behavior invariably angers me: when people utter ridiculous and/or harmful statements with an obscene amount of assertiveness.

This kind of comment, I think, illustrates rather well what I call a vulgar blend of ignorance and self-confidence:

Wednesday, September, 06, 2006 9:10 AM
Uncle Max writes:

a few points

1) We are just pups. Just 230 years out of the block we are already the richest, most powerful nation in history. And we saved uncounted numbers of european butts 4 times in the last century.

2)Europe - especially the frogs - realize that with every breath they take and HATE us for it.

3)A story is told that in 1956 when france was loudly proclaiming its decision not to join NATO, French President General Charles De Gaulle loudly proclaimed that he wanted every American soldier out of France.

Replied then Secretary-of-State John Foster Dulles "Does that include the 100,000 buried there?"

History does not record the General's reply. Perhaps for once in his life he just decided to shut up.

To those both in this country and without who hate us, I quote the late Richard J. Daley of the great city of Chicago: "I'll see you at the Christmas party and I'll have mistletoe on the back of my suitcoat."

iow -
----------------------------------------------
source here

This is probably the zillionth time I have read something like that, and it is certainly not the last. Now there is no way the genius who wrote that figured such a subtle approach to foreign affairs on his own. Nor, I assume, did he learn about French culture and politics in a college debate team. So that leaves us with the media. Welcome on Fox Planet, folks!

What I am

Everyone who knows me knows I am a night owl.


"On dirait encore une de ces robes étranges de danseuses, où une gaze transparente et sombre laisse entrevoir les splendeurs amorties d'une jupe éclatante, comme sous le noir présent transperce le délicieux passé; et les étoiles vacillantes d'or et d'argent, dont elle est semée, représentent ces feux de la fantaisie qui ne s'allument bien que sous le deuil profond de la Nuit."

Baudelaire, Le crépuscule du soir

Nigel Kennedy - Tribute to Jimi Hendrix - Purple Haze

Enjoy! I certainly did.

The irony of it all

The most apprehensive individuals will notice that I was away from my blog for a number of rotations. And the most inquisitive of them will wonder what went through that brain of mine during all that time.
Well, something happened that I know will change the course of history. I have at last decided to acknowledge a fundamental feature of my psyche. My friends and family, nay, everyone around me has tried to make me own the truth about myself for as long as I can remember, and I have restlessly denied it with might and main. Indeed to acknowledge it is to accept it, and with that come tremendous responsibilities towards the world and towards myself.

The truth is, dear reader, that I am a genius.

I can almost hear my friends' sigh of relief, as I decide to take on this burden and face the consequences. A genius does not fail. I will not fail!

Well well, time for my medication. And so I leave you. :p

"The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history."
[Bertrand Russell]

My Jack Lament

After a week spent with my family, I'm back in town. I have to readjust my mind to the lonely, quiet, academic atmosphere of my place. I relish the fact that no one was waiting for me to come back, and I can really take care of myself. I am definitely going through a loner phase... which often happens in winter. If I was a shaman, I would have a bear for my guardian spirit!
I wish everyone a happy new year!