danger de mort

well, if i die mysteriously or if im unable to post because im on my sick bed, its because of soy sprouts. i bought some about a week ago to cook with some noodles, they were rockin, but then they sat in my fridge for a week, and i kept telling myself, man, i need to use those up (fifo) but alas, i slacked. once a man to live and die by fifo, i was at the moment, face to face with the results of neglected produce. when i pulled them out of the fridge they were pretty slimy, had this foul bitter taste to them, and fart-like smell, but had not yet begun to create their own goo in the plastic bag, like other green vegetables do, so i thought i might be okay, i thought i could cook the sliminess and bitterness out, but to no avail. yes, i ate some raunchy sprouts with some noodles today... in the name of economy, conservation, and gastronomy, my GI tract will no doubt pay dearly. although i did douse the plate with a nice bit of siracha, maybe the chiles will destroy whatever microbes brought on by the sprouts. we'll see.

facebook gift of the day

facebook's gift of the day was a bloody mary. its sold out, so dont bother hurrying over to give the kitschy one dollar gift to one of your friends. thats right, its sold out. 10,000,000 according to the counter under it, but surely that has to be an error right? according to wikipedia ,

'the website had the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites with over 42 million active members worldwide and expects to pass 60 million users by the end of the year (also from non-collegiate networks).^{[3] [4]} From September 2006 to September 2007^[5] it increased its ranking from 60th to 7th most visited web site, and was the number one site for photos in the United States, ahead of public sites such as Flickr, with over 8.5 million photos uploaded daily.'

the amount of money made by facebook is ridiculous. The funniest part is they make it off of people like me and you from advertisements, "gifts" (an icon and a discription...a status symbol?), and now the marketplace.
Microsoft recently invested $240 million in facebook, in return microsoft will get exclusive adverstising for software on facebook. Soon facebook will unveil, a targeted advertising system that will most likely use profile information and applications to direct ads to targeted audiences. good or bad? Just because I'm listed as liking hamburgers does not mean I want to be bombarded by fast food advertising. or... maybe i want to know of the latest promotions at mcdonalds... also, wouldnt it be interesting to change your favorite music and interests on a weekly basis to see which advertising appears. facebook, i believe, is de facto big brother, that is to say regardless of how they use the information that they have, they have it, which in itself, is dangerous enough. in the past, targeted advertising was driven by cookies, which websites were in your history determined which ads you saw. im sure this is not the first case, but obviously it will be the largest, of people "willingly" donating demographic info to a company and that company using it for advertising purposes, (other uses possible). but this isnt mass mailing, m/f, household income, smoker/nonsmoker, how many times a week do you watch television, type of questions. this is data mining at its finest. They have gender, location, education level, hobbies, music, movies, and books. and with the terms of use from third party applications (those not created by facebook) like the politcal party, causes i support, and music i'm listening to now, they will be collecting even more. don't be fooled, no one in the business world with control to that information flow would just let it pass by undocumented.
Its possible that they will not only use the information on a single profile page, but if certain friends have a common demographic profile, and a common friend, then perhaps their friend falls under the same umbrella. (john and tim are both males 21-25 , they both like 50 cent, they have a common friend in frank, who, although is not listed as liking fifty cent, will see the same advertisement for fifty's new greatest hits album "12 hits for fifty cen" along with the other two. i dont really know why i decided to write this, i guess to let you know that facebook is not only making money, but they are gathering information to make MORE money and the terms of use allow them to do pretty much whatever they want with that information. last point. the $240 million that microsoft invested? that $240 million gives them a 1.6 percent stake in the company.. 1.6 percent.

saturday

woke up early, went to the flea market. THE flea market. puces de clignacourt has everything... everything. there was also some bad ass street art there. take a look at the stencils in this picture...
big ups to poch who hails from rennes.. if you go to pochoirs on his link, you will see the same picture i think...
i ended up buying this cast iron pot that needs seasoning for 5 euros and some sunglasses for 3 euros, case included. i tried hard to bargain and get a better cast iron pot that was a bit bigger, but the bastard wanted 15 euros, and i would give only ten. the cat let me talk to his boss on his cell phone, i tried to pull the card that i was a student, but he wasnt having it, so i walked next door and bought an inferior, albeit cheaper pot.
i came home and made some potatoes, lardons and an omlette. i thought about taking a picture about mid way through eating.

I saw crossed my roommates on the way to the concert last night, thats pretty much all we've seen of eachother, they seem cool, and i think everything will work out with them.
tonight, i went to the same festival and saw so so modern, dirty projectors and deerhoof.
so so modern was nuts. three guys in wierd white outfits freaking out everywhere with korgs and synths.
dirty projectors were bad ass, they just redid a black flag album entirely. chick bass player, chick guitar player, both of whom sing BGV, the bassist was superfly, i met some american kids tonight, and one of them was trying hard to throw the mack down. i dont know if she was having it. but..there is always hope in dublin. the song rise above is incredible.
deerhoof was WILD, the bassist/singer was a late twenties (thirties?) asian chick that hopped around everywere and made strange hand motions. plus 81 is catchy if you check out their myspace page.

i know you like how freaky i get with my hyperlinking.

festival bb mix

i just got back from a free concert. it rocked. i dont know if it was because i had nothing else to do or because the three bands were that good. it was in an auditorium style seating i guess a bit like... i dont know, it went down to the stage, maybe howard auditorium?? anyway the three band were in order of appearance. la batterie ...... fujiya and miyagi ..... and pram
la batterie was hard core low fi and were pretty cool.
fujiya and miyagi kind were three guys, a keyboardist/beat guy, a guitar player singer, and a bassist. they kind of reminded me of a cross between gorillaz, david byrne, and beck. check out ankle injuries and collar bones from them. they put on a really good show. after fujiya and miyagi played there was an indie quiz put on by a very indie looking dude, i got totally ripped, i answered the question about who was the lead singer for pavement, but i was too far away. instead i answered the first name of the guitar player from spinal tap (nigel) how i knew that i dont know, but i got some totally alt buttons in miniature to put on my backpack or jeans. thats so indie and alt, i love it. no better way to revolt against the mainstream than with small kitsch buttons.
finally pram absolutely blew me away. it was like portishead and they had these incredible projections going on behind them.. listen to s ome of their stuff. there were around 6 of them in the band, they had a theramin and a couple of keyboards, a few macs, a trombone, some of those melodicas a drummer, a guitarist, and some other instruments. they were awesome.

thursday after school

its thursday and i just got out of class, and i can say damn. im tired. but its all good, after my two classes on friday, its vacation, umm a fall break of sorts, you gotta love that. sorry to dissapoint all of my loyal readers, but your working boy has nothing worthwile to add, except that, if you havent read confederacy of dunces, do so, and superman that ho.

gare du nord

this is the video from the morning i was in the metro.

internet

so yes, i have been reading confederacy of dunces, its finished now. thats why the last post was so well written, in the spirit of ignatius j reilly.
im about to get some food, and then sleep in my bed.

in honor of my new abode, i leave you with some collages of my room chez daban, where i stayed 29 days. wow. wow.

and for my last meal chez daban, a place that i hold dear to my heart, where i count some of my finest meals in france. catherine cooked a pintade, thats right, and then, she cooked some green beans in its jerces. uhhuh. then she added some small potatoes leftover from lunch. and you know jj made that special salad with the shallots, red wine vinegar and oil. you know that was fiya.





















¡yeh!

yermeh

So we see that when Fortuna spins us downward, the wheel sometimes halts for a moment and we find ourselves in a good, small cycle within the larger bad cycle. The universe, of course, is based on the principle of the circle within the circle. At the moment, I am in an inner circle. Of course, smaller circles within this circle are also possible.

- Ignatius J Reilly

And alas, I have procured a lodging, that is to say, i am comfortably quartered, in an ikea catalog. i am sharing an apartment with lucia a spanish teacher and her boyfriend, a german teacher. cosmopolitan? international? and how! Today is Saturday, and upon realizing that I have spent almost an entire month squatting at the Daban's, I knew that I couldn't stop until the need was filled.

I would, at this point, like to thank Jean-Jacques and Catherine Daban for their more than open arms, their impromptu language and culture lessons, the many meals, the many cheeses, the porto, the vino, the arte programs that we love to hate, the favors, the phone calls. the tolerance.

I think the saying goes that 'house guests and fish are good and well, but they both start to stink after three days.' Without getting into the figures, it's safe to say that I've been there longer than three days.

To diddy, jana, and the family, I introduced the Daban's to the asian salad, and dumplings, and i think that it was a success.

The rail workers union and other unions went on full or part strike on thursday the 18th, so there were no trains and barely any metros, friday it was coming back, and today is better but who knows if or when they will go on a hard-line full strike again. The government wants to reform the pension plan for rail workers, notably that they retire and get benefits several (3 to 5...maybe more) years before others in the public and private sector, the government wants to fix this inequality, and, who among us likes our privileges taken away? needless to say, the issue is very much unresolved.

Returning to the apartment the news du jour, its pretty small, my room is REAL small, but we have a kitchen, with stove (huge), washer and dryer (huge) and the place is brand new on the inside. I guess my landlord and her husband flip apartments, you'll see when i get some pictures up.


-your working boy

sunday-wednesday

starting from today and walking it out towards saturday...I am in Paris, looking for apartments, still. no change there. Last night i tried veal head. enough said. My classes are really cool, its been really fun, but tiring at the same time. Its cool to watch the kids completely puzzled as you speak english and then all of the sudden understand, mumble something to their neighbor in french, and then speak some english. real cool.
Monday night, even though i was tired as hell from teaching, i went to go see derek trucks band at the trabendo, a really small hall in paris. he rocked, they opened with get out my life woman, and and proceeded to shred the whole time. they played favorite things from the sound of music and trucks absolutely tore it up!! you may want to watch the video in small size, check it out around the 3 minute mark. It was a great show, and I am glad I went.
Sunday morning, I was up really early and was in the subways and train stations. It was awesome to see these places that are usually crowded and noisy, and full of people, completely deserted. i took some pictures and then put it to the tune of beck's strange appartition. but i cant show it here, because of copyright restrictions. just believe it, it rocks.















Saturday afternoon, i saw an exhibition at the lazy dog. it was of a brooklyn artist named grotesk and razauno. they are from brooklyn and they had some posters and then the alphabet , ive included some pictures of my favorites.

wow

dammit!? lsu lost? wtf? im guessing miles and boys got the big head because they were ranked number one? damnnit. france lost to england in the semi finals of rugby...when it rains it pours...

paris in the morning

its a brisk 50 degrees here in cloudy paris, i sit, in the park of les halles, using paris' free wifi (no more mcdonalds...but its cold in the park...and big macs are good....anyway) just as i looked up i see, a homeless man pissing. (seriously i was typing about the park, i looked up and the clodo was peeing) while on the subject of homeless people, before i saw the guy peeing in the bushes, the classic caricature of a drunk homeless man with an umbrella for no apparent reason walked by, kind of had the hiccups, coulnt really walk too straight, but at the same time not stumbling, using the umbrella as a cane...straight out of a disney movie.
as for the apartment search, the mother of xavier's girlfriend has graciously accepted to be my garantor, which means she had to get about 40 pounds of paperwork including letters and tax reports and bank statements, and photocopies and all this other bullshit, so now i start the appartment search with a "dossier impec"
I watched big night last night, this movie about two italian brothers and their restaurant, chef used to rave about it, and he was right it was damn good.
hmmm besides the constant appartment search, i am partaking in the joys of immigration, medical tests, take a number, can i see your file please, im sorry i cant take your file today, on the first visit i give you a paper with the list of all documents needed and tomorrow you can come and give me the papers... whats that? im sorry, even if you have all of your papers today, this visit is just to get the list of papers needed. but i suggest you come back early tomorrow morning. aie aie aie aie aie.

wk street artist

on my last day in new york i had the pleasure of watching wk create this right across the street from georgia's apartment. afterwards i talked to him for a while and he gave me some advice about street art in france. la classe.

update.

the weather is cold, the apartment search is fruitless, alas, without a financial garantor that resides in france, i havent had much luck.

saturday night was nuit blanche ( a night without sleep), there were art installations, illuminations, and projections throughout the city, there were also several people doing street art along a road (¡yeh!) also france's rugby team won, which made the night all the wilder, a drunken fan in the subway congratulated all of the fans on a job well done (bravo les supporteurs) and the man driving the subway for a job well done (bravo le conducteur) i laughed...
i went and saw the schools where i will be teaching and the woman in charge of my school district gave me ANOTHER week to prepare, so i won't actually give any lessons until monday, but i guess that means i have to be prepared...damn.

i did not, unfortunately, get to watch the lsu game, since it was broadcast at 3 in the morning. i should have gone and tried to find a place to watch it, but no, didnt feel like wandering aimlessly through paris only to find all the bars closed.

i cant stop listening to girltalk ...never heard of him?? download or buy his album nightripper, it will make you laugh.

still no apartment, still kickin it with la famille daban. france faces off with the new zealand rugby team today. i guess it will be at around four in the morning east coast time on saturday when they play. the all blacks ar the new zealand rugby team, and they are sickgnar. here is their pregrame
and im guessing at some point tonight, im gonna have to find a bar thats playing the lsu game. at three in the morning.