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Look who’s come crawling back. That’s right, me.

A recap in bullet points

-The people I work with recently discovered that I have a website and read it one morning this week. Interesting development.

-I started drinking around 3:00 that afternoon.

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-I must remove the name of the company that previously named in my most recent entry, sometime in September (perhaps). It came up in a google search for the company’s website. You know that company with the jazzy name that you just can’t stop thinking about. <>

-They’ve given me business cards, what was I to do? <>

-Did anyone see the brawl between the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers? I saw highlights. It was epic. I will come back to this. It was savage and fascinating for me.

<>-There is a very real possibility that I should close down this ironically nearly defunct blog. <>

-Is this a bad thing? <>

-I have written a lot of good shit over the past nine months (How long have I been here?) I wish you could read some of it. I don’t know how this would be possible however. <>

-I have stepped in a lot of shit over the last 15 months. This is a subject of much discomfort for me. <>

-I am no longer capable of maintaining contact with friends using the medium of e-mail. I am sorry. This is nobody’s fault but my own, I take full responsibility for it. Expect to hear from me in a year or so.

-I am possibly serious about that.

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-Our apartment has no heat as winter draws nigh. For me time is seasonless, as are the days of our lives. <>

-San Francisco. Just for the hell of it. <>

-At any time, my crazy cousin, with whom I share in an apartment with no heat, will walk in…he has just walked in…and begun to talk about n’importe quoi. This just actually happened. <>

- I made him leave, but he broke my flow. <>

-Don’t you hate how French people are really French? <>

-I feel I should compile material for a Catskills style comic monologue in which would simply make broad general statements about the France/ America dialectic. <>

-There’s a real dialectic here, I assure you. <>

-Here’s a good one: don’t you hate it when French people beg you to say something negative about America (which is inevitable), just so they can pile upon your criticism with 37 more well rehearsed and media-induced criticisms of their own? <>

-I should have found a synonym for ‘criticism’ in the last sentence, to avoid using the same word twice. <>

-Can I tell you how many absurd grammar rules and rhetoric about the English language I have dispersed amongst the French users of (insert company product here)? <>

-‘This is not a grammatically valid construction’ is a sentence I am very comfortable writing. <>

-I like to think that Philip and I have indoctrinated a group of people who think it is appropriate to bandy about such catchy phrases as ‘I’m not too keen on telephone negotiations’ or ‘I wear the pants, here’ in tense business situations. <>

-Philip is one of the people I work with. I should have mentioned this earlier. He’s an American, and he is not blood-related to me. <>

- I have to detail my geneology at some point. Family is everywhere. Everywhere... <>

-The French are knee-deep into American pop-culture and generally admirers of most aspects of this pop-culture in an annoying way. This may be the result of the outsourcing of such shows as ‘Airwolf’ (‘Supercopter’), ‘The Dukes of Hazard’ (Sheriff, fais moi peur), ‘Happy Days (Appy Days?) and ‘Starsky and Hutch’ (StarkiUtch’) to French television, which greatly influenced my French generation age-bracket. Culturally and politically, however, it’s fairly safe to say they are categorically opposed to every single facet of American policy. <>

-Korea is an interesting contrast. I’ll have to come back to that. <>

-Cousin alert!!! The P-diddy is back and he’s started yelling to me about poetry and his fantastic adventures of the street directly outside our apartment for the last 10 minutes. He does his best to make sound exciting and dangerous and intense. Nothing doing for me. <>

-He will not stop talking. <>

- Once again he is impossible to stop. He is will not stop, this mad one. <>

-We have switched to English and he just said ‘Crazy Life About’ Ooh. Some of the things that French people say in English kill me. <>

-I can’t remember any of them right now. <>

-‘Why that?’ P diddy asks. <>

-‘That’s for the best’ is one of his favorites, and mine too. <>

- I figure if I’ve named names up until this point (maybe I should use acronyms?), why stop now? I’m not trying to call anyone out, just writing about some personal shit, you know. <>

-Right?

-This kid Boulou is also a ‘sacre personage’. He smelled horrendous tonight, but he really made me think.

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-That literally means “he is a sacred personality” You see how rich is the French language. Beautiful. Confusing, but pleasant when spoken by French people who know how to speak.)

-Boulou’s English favorite catchphrase ‘ is ‘That’s a fucking good soup!’

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-Apparently there’s a story behind it, but I think it stands up for itself, out of context. <>

-Is he going to read this too? I am a little concerned. <>

-This man is drunk or high in statistically every instance in which we encounter each other. His drink of choice is a whiskey coke, but he’s willing to mix it up and drink basically whatever you put in front of him. <>

-Even when I’m sober, I have real problems understanding Boulou. When he’s not sober, forget about it. The guy is totally incomprehensible. You’ve got to meet him to truly not understand him though. One of a kind. <>

-He talks a lot of mess about Sarkozy, the French minister of agriculture (Or is it Justice… they both have equal say in the parliament. <>

-I’ve learned only that the French system is riddled with problems of corruption and racism and bureaucracy and money but is still exponentially better than ours . <>

-I think I can intimidate people by speaking English loudly. P-diddy has fled. <>

-On the other hand I get easily alarmed by sketchy Parisian groups who yell loudly. I am also get rattled by the congregations of certain ethnic groups. This is wrong. <>

<>-I recently attended a circumcision. It’s the second ritual penis cutting I’ve witnessed in in the 3 and half years I’ve lived here. All the prayers and yamurkles (Spelling?) and all food and everything and the crying and the bleeding and all that stuff of whimsy and lore. So much Judaism <>

- Yarmulke is the correct spelling. Thank you Microsoft Word SpellChecker, for bringing that culturally diverse knowledge to the table.. <>

- I work in the software industry in some way. That’s fair to say. <>

-It’s so hard to put a name on what I do. I’ll just assume you understand everything. <>

-Finally went to Spain with one of the cousins. Raphaele. She’s a fun one. Saw some museums, paintings, a particularly verdant (spelling?) train station in Madrid. Very humid. <>

-I took some pictures. Maybe I’ll replace one of the 800 pictures of myself of the ‘bloog’. Not so subtle. <>

-There’s a case to be made for subtlety. <>

-Shouldn’t talk about money or payment issues on the old ‘bloog’. That’ll come back to hurt you. <>

-Generally, I think one is better off avoiding the topic of money in almost every phase of conversation and possibly even in every phase of life. Unfortunately, it’s impossible. There’s a paradox waiting to be written here. <>

-I appreciate the sort of cultural awakenings I experienced in Madrid. For example, did you know that the painter ‘Pablo Picasso’ is actually Spanish? This whole time, I assumed he was American because, well…yeah. <>

-One observation. Lot of pork consumption in that country. Difficult to avoid the tasty pig meat. <>

-That was disgustingly evocative for me. <>

-Recording session tomorrow morning. Going to record some good ones. Recording sessions, wherin some of the elite members of the GG pedagogical squadron go to the studio and lay down some vocals for the hot new GG episodes, are always memorable. <>

-That last sentence would have seemed like a physical impossibility just 37 months ago when I came to France, but there it is, clear as day. It might even be a grammatically valid construction. <>

-When I write about a given topic in a text to help French people learn to speak English through e-mails of 10 minutes a day, I am encouraged to be as stereotypical and caricaturiesque (real word?) as possible. Or maybe I take it upon myself at this point. That line is a bit blurry. <>

-I wrote an episode in which an Irish man (his nationality is completely incidental to this anecdote, mais quand-meme. It’s France) travels to China to determine if the factory which has offered to produce glass bottles for the perfume company for which he works, properly treats their workers. It plays out rather ambiguously as the factory owner, one Mei Tsing Lee, voiced by a French woman of Cambodian origin who does not speak English, assures Kevin that, and I quote, “Everything is OK at this factory”. (In my head I envision her giving Kevin a big thumbs-up sign here) <>

Meanwhile, in the background of the audio file we hear the faint sounds industrial machinery pounding away, while Michelle, a member of the GG power team, yells harshly in Chinese at an unsuspecting worker who was presumably loafing about. There’s a word for this kind of story in French: limite. C’est vraiment limite.

-Here are some additional nuggets from this little vignette in no particular order:

‘You need pencils? We make pencils. How many do you need?’

‘I am delighted you like our traditional Chinese cuisine’

‘Gu-Chen? He is very powerful. Strong hands. Good.’

-I can’t stop laughing right now.

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- I am unquestionably going to hell. But do I really believe in hell? This should be explored. <>

-This episode, affectionately titled ‘China’ in our database, also spawned the infamous ‘Lucky Duck Airline’ debate, which confused and caused consternation amongst GG users and GG team members alike. <>
-I’ll just write that one of the possible responses for a question about Lucky Duck Airlines was, and I quote ‘I am flying through the air like a water fowl’. <>

-Let’s keep in mind that I am a responsible and key member of a budding young enterprise, who has spoken publicly (Remind me to come back to this) and is possibly headed for great success, knock on bois. <>

-I have business cards, yet I write angry e-mails about subjects like ‘Lucky Duck Airlines’. Now there is a paradox. <>

-At this point I am writing primarily so that the previous entry will be archived as quickly as possible. <>

-Seriously, the fight at that basketball game was shocking. The implications… this is an issue of major interest for me. If anyone taped this, I am interested in viewing the footage from different angles repeatedly. The humanity of it astounds me. No words. <>

-Commisioner David Stern. Tough cookie. <>

-I have to make mashed potatoes for 12 for Thursday night’s Thanksgiving celebration. With roasted garlic. Promises to be interesting.

I’ve taken up chess. In revenge, I’ve abandoned every other pastime I have pursued. (Smoking is a notable exception)

-No. I still watch TV and follow American sporting teams, and have recently discovered Curb Your Enthusiasm, a revelation. So inundated with humor and intelligence and Judaism and surprise and celebrity cameos, it’s the best.