We have a winner :: 10:37 PM :: easyjetsetter

Hexagon Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, you may recall my penchant for "Star Academy" and my grief at its demise, spefically that whiny little pity vote Gregory winning it.

Well, fret no more, I have a new favourite French TV show. It's called Clara Sheller, and it's bonkers and therefore sublime.

Imagine a cross between Ally McBeal, Will and Grace, Sex and the City, and This Life. Remove all the (intentional) humor, add a lot of soul-searching and a spot of porn, and you have Clara Sheller. There's big floppy polka dot hats, roller blades, headscarves, high heels, and big sunglasses. There's a voiceover at the beginning and the end about the meaning of love and it has secondary characters whose lives have no meaning other than the deeper truth they reflect about Clara.

Here's what I have gathered from the episodes I have seen: Clara is an OCD nymphomaniac who lives with her gay best friend. In her quest for love within 12 hours of each other she sleeps with her boss and her gay best friend roommate, who is also sleeping with a homeless juggler. She becomes pregnant, but since her boss has had a vasectomy it must be JP, pronounced "zhee pay," who is the father. Her gay best friend roommate.

Meanwhile, her best female friend discovers she and her boyfriend can't have babies. Clara, oblivious to the obvious solution of surrogate, aborts the baby (this is how you know it's not american TV.) JP is so mad he buys a puppy and throws it at her, asking her if she wants to get rid of it too. (It's a pretty annoying puppy. I would.)

Clara goes out and sleeps with someone else to get over the shock. Antoine seems to be the love of her life. But then she goes on holiday with her babyless friend and her boyfriend, and discovers the boyfriend is shagging a fat woman (in France, I guess being with someone who can't make babies makes you want to have sex with people who can, i.e. fat people.)

Here's where it gets weird: Clara and the boyfriend have a long chat about why this is all Clara's fault for coming on holiday with them, and she should go home. Back in Paris, Clara sleeps with her neighbour AND JP in the sort of threesome 60 year old retirees from Kansas dream about when they move to Paris and post on craigslist about. Antoine walks in on them and Clara just smiles and goes back to blissful post-coital sleep.

The next morning it becomes obvious that both Clara and JP are in love with neighbour Gilles. But Gilles has a constant stream of men and women coming through his flat, and so is a little hard to pin down. The babyless friend and the philandering boyfriend decide to get married as a solution to the cheating. (WTF?)

Eventually, through the magic of animal sex and no (filmed) conversation, Clara decides Gilles is the man for her (while he is also sleeping with JP) until he moves to Japan. Clara asks to go with him (NO SHAME that woman) and is (rightly) refused. He sends emails to JP only. We think Gilles is a bit of a bounder.

So, it's the wedding, like, the next day, and JP makes Clara do a speech, and the dog eats the pillows. Very metaphorical. There's a two week pause (all this seems to happen over like three weeks) and suddenly, Clara is turning 30. JP has thrown her a big party. She gets a Tshirt that says "my name is Clara, but they're looking after me." Well, quite. Care in the community and all.

But, guess who's downstairs!!! It's neighbour Gilles, whom JP has called to induce him to come back for Clara. There's some REALLY heavy breathing, which means they're REALLY in love. JP dances to Brazilian music while crying, and Clara and Gilles cross the pont neuf together, arm in arm, even though their apartment was opposite the eiffel tower last week.

It's fucking genius televsion. I can't wait for next week.

Newsflash: I'm a bitch, and a man. :: 09:28 PM :: easyjetsetter

So I took this test, which measures the "female" and "male" sides of your brain, empathy quotient (EQ) and systematising quotient (SQ.) I answered a bunch of questions, and here are my results.

SQ:
20-39 You have an average ability for analysing and exploring a system...On average women score 24 and men score 30.
Your score: 35

I am more manly in my brain than the average man. Hmmm... The questions were a bit mean to boys: "when I read the newspaper I am drawn to football scores and stock market indices" and "do you try to avoid household chores if you can?" It's a bit "one size fits all." Poor blokes, no-one stands up for them anymore and they're not allowed to stand up for themselves. Anyway, onwards to the female side.

EQ:
0-32 You have a lower than average ability for understanding how other people feel and responding appropriately. Most people with Aspergers' Syndrome or high-functioning autism score about 20. On average, most women score 47, and most men about 42.
Your score: 13

I am less able to empathise than someone with Aspergers' syndrome, an affliction whereby you can't read body language and misread cues constantly. See here for details.

I went to school with a lot of kids with aspergers', autism, a bunch of learning difficulties, high-IQs and Germanic nationality. The school provided small group teaching at the pace that the student could go, and all these groups benefit from such teaching.

This is why I have such an erratic academic career: I was streamed to take literature and language exams super early, and not broadened into things I found hard, like maths, physics, and chemistry (actually, I never took physics or chemistry because Alan M., the coolest guy in school who once actually smiled at me, said they were shite.)

Now, of course, I realise that I am more abnormal than Nick F. and Dominic J., who used to freak out and overturn tables if anyone asked to borrow their pens, and were the only people in my class with Aspergers'. Hmmmm.

Of course, this test included questions like "when watching animals suffer, do you feel pain?" and "when you see a stranger on their own at a party, do you think it is their responsibility to join in a conversation?" They were soft, sappy questions. It *was* in the Guardian after all.

UPDATE: Actual Factual directs me here. Very awesome.

I told you so :: 12:54 AM :: easyjetsetter

From Samizdata.

...a potential law...being voted on in the USA that says if you witness or 'become aware' that neighbours or friends have broken the law with narcotics (which presumes you are a competent judge of that), you will be compelled by law to denounce them to the police. Failure to do so means prosecution and the threat of a two year sentence yourself if convicted of simply minding your own business. Even if you disagree with the drug laws, you will be threatened with prison if you do not actively help enforce them against other people.

This kind of thing is what I meant about the ex-roommate's cocaine habit jeopardising my visa. They already do this to foreigners pretty much. And she couldn't understand why I moved out.

Cliche :: 08:24 AM :: easyjetsetter

Funny AND true. And appropriate considering Tuesday's post. I got it all a little out of sequence. But yep. Sounds familiar.

Pretty (and not so pretty) pictures :: 08:23 PM :: easyjetsetter

So, the wife posted her photos from last week. I don't own a digital camera (but since I am going to get a fan from Darty this weekend I am going to price them) so I am reliant on others' photos for my photoblogging needs. Finally, you get to see my flat



This is, obviously, me at the computer. It's a bit dark in the photo, but the flat is usually all bright and sunshiney from the two big windows you see. I should point out that they are the entire outside wall, and the flat is that length squared. Not including the bathroom, which is half again. Please note my "office" and the least ergonomic chair ever that I am sitting in. It's a good thing I sleep on a futon or I'd have astonishing back pain. And yes, that is my posture. Except normally I cross my legs too.



This is the view from the window. It's a shame that it's not taken from where I was sitting, because you don't see the scrolly pretty balcony things, and you don't see the rooftops and roof gardens across the way, nor the Paris sky. You do, however, see the famous begonias. Now dead. Ish.



I promised you a picture of me in the baseball cap - it also just so happens I am looking like an action shot for a tampon commercial in this one. My arms look scary muscly....I'm not that butch in real life. And I'm squinting at the sun.

Now for the money shots:



Even though I know Leslie is a good photographer with a manual, I am amazed at what she managed to coax out of a digital camera.



I think we all know what this one is.



And here's the only photo I took:



Hmmm, need more practice.

Among the photos is also the one of us with the French smoking wookie trying to strangle Leslie, but I don't feel comfortable posting Leslie's photo on the web (you can't really see her in the photo I took, so I'm hoping that's ok. Leslie! Let me know if not.) Plus, my eyebrows look weird in that picture.

Warning: losing weight can kill :: 11:57 PM :: easyjetsetter

GACK! I don't know what circumference my hips are any more, but sure as shit they USED to be over 40 inches. I suspect they still are, because my bottom has always been large. It makes a little shelf at the back, useful for storing things. It's like a spice rack.

However, the parental visit with a suitcase of summer clothes following decision to stay another six months revealed another round of astonishment at weight loss. It was, ahem, a mixed bag.

Bad news: smaller boobs. I was just getting used to having and utilising for maximum effect a larger cleavage. However, it was all an illusion brought on by pizza, and now all my decolletage emphasizing tops are BAGGY and SHITE.

Good news: a pink dress, bought at 17, tight from 18-20 and hidden in back of closet until now fits again. Perfectly. I am the same size I was at 17. It is a UK 12. There was a dress bought on my 15th birthday that is one size smaller than this, that I will be trying on when I make my first trip home later in the summer. Wouldn't it be thrilling to get into that?

I don't get it though, because between seeing my boss on the 13th of May and the 31st, she thinks I have lost more weight. During this period, I spent nine days eating the same as another person who put on 5 pounds in the same period. We had an entire meal consisting of eight kinds of cheese.

Has something happened to my metabolism? Mind you, my sisters both lost weight in their early 20s. Neither of them lived in the States though, and thus had a little less to lose than heffalump me.

I am from the shallow end of the gene pool: evil sister is, of course, the tallest, thinnest (size 8 UK) and prettiest, with the lightest hair, and finest bone structure. Middle sister is darker, but slim, (size 10 UK) and medium height. I, baby bear, am 5'2", very thick dark hair, and was, when I left the States, a size 16 (UK) and about 160lbs. My BMI was getting into the red zone, said the doctor.

I have no idea what I weigh now, but two pairs of trousers and two skirts can no longer be worn because they fall down, and I consistently buy US size 8 (UK 12) from Gap, although in H&M I am still a 44 in trousers.

If it sounds like I am obsessed with weight loss - but please remember that I haven't consciously done anything. I'm just observing in astonishment as my waist reappears, shoulders unround themselves, neck retreat, and legs lengthen. I still eat like a horse and don't have any active sporting pursuits.

This is all about the five flights of stairs, the 17 kilo boxes, and the small small salary that means drinking anything other than water (when I'm not drinking alcohol) is a bloody waste of money. Note to Americans who wish to lose weight: kick the soda habit. And juice even. And milk. And live on the fifth floor. No lift.

I should write a dieting guide: "Live French. Eat French. Look French." I'd make a packet.

John Edwards blogs! :: 01:11 PM :: easyjetsetter

My erstwhile senator is over at Talking Points Memo's creator's new project TPMcafe.

French wookie murder attempt :: 04:54 PM :: easyjetsetter

The famous wookie shot. I now have permission to post this:

Not Dutch :: 01:29 AM :: easyjetsetter

Although the colours are. New redesign. I was getting a bit sick of too many blocks of color and too many icons for other stuff. Real bloggers write on white. Reducing down to white background, text in strong orange and blue, and safety card pictures. I shall be working on the banner, as I have NO graphic design software on this computer. I shall be asking the delicious Kat for her help. Should be finished Monday. Check back.

Pub Quiz Report #1 :: 12:44 AM :: easyjetsetter

Welcome to the first of a new weekly feature here at EasyJetsetter. But first, a wee note to send you in the direction of Tim Worstall's Britblog Roundup #16, featuring yours truly. I should be honest here and point out that in my crusade to be a little more "male" (pushy) in my blogging activities, I nominated myself. It took a bit of umming and ahhing about integrity and such, and then I thought, oh bollocks, once won't hurt, it gets someone whose opinion I respect reading. Of course, as comeuppance for my egomania, tabulas was down all afternoon. Go figure.

It was an evening for celebration: Audrey has returned from her first trip back to the states for a while, encompassing a wedding and a college reunion. Born in France, but American, she found the sign on a hardware store "see-through windows sold here" particularly amusing, invented a new word that is a combination between "binge" and "splurge" (blurge) and had a problem with all the touching, full-body hugs that Americans do. So we were welcoming her back (gingerly, at arms length) and, since we have a fair amount of Belgians (four) on the mailing list, we were also celebrating the win of a Belgian woman at Roland Garros, the French Open.

Update: asJulien points out, she is indeed french speaking, and three-quarters of our belgian participants are flemish. But, sorry Julien, she is STILL NOT FRENCH, no matter how much you wish she was.

In addition, I can exclusively reveal to you now that Audrey and Adam are indeed together and very happy, thanks to a certain someone that we all know and love (me) introducing them. They do not in fact live next door to each other, but overlook each other's balconies in the same building, and spent most of the evening whispering into each other's ear. Although it seems thoroughly unfair to me that you can find someone a few paces away from your front door, when others aren't so lucky on the distance front, I wish them all the best and expect a very nice present.

The quiz is held at the Highlander pub in the 6th arrondissement at 9:30 pm, and is generally packed, hot and smokey. I generally wear clothes that need to go in the wash anyway, as I always come out smelling really bad. Tonight's attire, in honour of my first painted toenails of the summer (deep rouge noir) was some very sweet black open-toed high high heeled mules, that just arrived last week with the parents. A lot of people said I was looking really good, by which they meant: a) your hair's been cut at last and b) taller.

I started going to this pub quiz because the boys that run funky paris invited me along, and when they went to Thailand for a month I had to make up a new team. The funky boys, as they shall henceforth be known, are now our arch rivals, the Thailanders.

Tonight was a very quiet night: Paris has been hopping all day, with the 2012 bid march and fair on the Champs Elysees (cool photos here at Negrito) and the final of Roland Garros, while the expat world has been watching the Lions play. So the pub was more sparsely populated than usual, which boded well for at least second place.

In attendance were: Audrey, Adam, Veronica, Mariann, Annika, Annika's brother Raoul and Katrien's friend Nick, whom none of us had met before, but no Katrien. We divided up into two teams, as the limit is five to one team. Mine was, of course, the Easyjetsetters, and the others based their team name on a mild stutter that came out of my mouth (blame the long island ice tea) when we were talking about spies: the CCIA.

The questions came thick and fast. Last week, we were presided over by a Frenchman who spoke very heavily accented english and who rushed through the questions, and every time the pub erupted into a mutter of anger at this lack of pub quiz propriety, he would shout into the microphone "please shut up! I am French! I speak not good English! I am the one who asks the questions! Shut up and listen to me!" who was replaced this week with a genial Scottish chap called Dave, who refused to believe I was from Glasgow, and delighted Adam by saying I was from England.

The format is generally about 30 questions, plus 10 pictures that are generally stills from films that you have to name. Tricky questions included one on what "hypnophobia" is, which is the only animal with four knees, and the actress whose name is an anagram of "a guys own riviera." In a sneaky move, the film stills were replaced with album covers.

Apart from a brief shouting match between me and Adam ("U2!" "Stone Roses!" "U2!" "Stone Roses!" It was Travis) the evening was relatively calm apart from me calling Adam racist for doing a bad imitation of Dave's accent. I hung my head in shame every time they made fun of his manner of saying "six" like a bunch of prepubescent mongooses, and almost died when Marian shouted "what about question dirty sex?"

We all switched papers and marked, and the Thailanders won to win a bottle of champagne (again!), the CCIA came second, to win a bottle of wine, entirely due to their stupendous team name, inspired by me. Where did the EasyJetsetters come you ask? Let me quote our host Dave: "And in fifth place, which in Scotland we like to call last...."

There is always next week.

I told you so #2 :: 02:03 PM :: easyjetsetter

As I mentioned before, those most anglo-saxon of anglo-saxon habits (read: protestant) tea and brunch (and, perversely, marks and spencers) are very chic here. Young urbanistes like myself drink tea over coffee. The Telegraph is a few weeks behind. They are not chic. This is why they have not picked up on the chicest brand of tea and have just wandered lazily into Fauchon. If I were researching this article I would have written the headline, followed by two words: Mariage Freres.

In keeping with my OTHER point, made here, about the French going in for blogs about food, here is a blog about tea. That's another "I told you so."

I feel there will be a lot more "I told you so" posts.

How to count in Japanese :: 07:12 PM :: easyjetsetter

When I read this post in my aggregator this morning, I did my embarrassing spluttery laugh and got coffee all over my computer. After I wiped it up, I thought about why I found this so funny.

The mayor of Tokyo has apparently been saying that nobody will learn French language because the French can't count. Now, he is not impugning the maths skills of an entire nation, rather their numbering system.

When counting in tens in France, one says dix, vingt, trente, quarante, cinquante, soixante for ten to sixty, and then the whole system goes nuts, and you call seventy soixante-dix(sixty-ten), eighty quatre-vingt(four-twenty), ninety quatre-vingt-dix(four-twenty-ten). As the post points out, Switzerland, Belgium (and, I think, Quebec?) use septante, huitante, nenante.

The French think that this is foreigners (albeit francophone ones) destroying their pristine language, but actually, the simpler form is the older, historically standard one. Parisian French replaced these "regional" oddities as part of their post-Revolution militant "systematising" of the world, that also gave us the metric system.

However, the writer is right, there is no excuse for mistaking a week for eight days and thinking a fortnight lasts for fifteen.

This is, of course, all very interesting, but why funny? Let me give you some background.

In general, when working in historical linguistics to do comparative reconstruction one goes into the field and builds up a corpus of "core" words, stuff that every language has, and doesn't have a synonym. These core words are things like "tree" and "baby" and the numbers.

Imagine the surprise, then, to my historical linguistics professor (the last real linguistic Structuralist* and expert in Hittite Craig Melchert) to arrive in Japan and be sitting attentively with his interviewee, pen in hand, asking her to recite you the numbers 1-10, and being asked "which ones?"

That's right, Japanese has two sets of numbers. And that's not, um, counting, the ones that depend on what kind of object you are counting. So, basically, a classic case of the coalminer calling the chimney sweep black.

Anyway, the Danes do it too. You don't see Tokyo mayors being mean about Danish, but then Japanese mayors aren't jealous of Denmark's strong retail foothold in East Asia, are they?

Little aside on French numbering and my transatlantic experience. For the last two hundred years, America and Britain have differed in how they count a billion (and, presumably, a trillion.) Britain used the so-called "long scale," which says that, just as a 1000 1000s are a million, so too is a million millions a billion, and, I think, a billion billions a trillion. In America, the short scale says a 1000 million is a billion, and a 1000 billion is a trillion. This is why the American national debt seems such a scandalous amount to Brits.

What does this have to do with the French? Well, as English-speaking world has adopted the short scale (including some major British media outlets), France has settled on, of course, the long one, in opposition to American imperialism no doubt. More fun with big numbers here.

*I should point out that one of my favourite things about my majors was that as I went on, I realised that both comparative literature and linguistics, when you get really far on, are built on one philosophy: "structuralism." Signs and signified and binary oppositions and all that. It all started with linguistics.

It's not very fashionable now, but it's a very useful system to begin looking at language, literature, thought, culture, behavior etc. Umberto Eco is a structuralist. Noam Chomsky hates the structuralists. Vladimir Propp, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault and Christopher Pike, however much they may hate to admit it, are all structuralists.

I should also point out that while everone else is reading Alexander McCall Smith's "Number one Ladies Detective Agency" I MUCH prefer the much subtler humour of the "Portuguese Irregular Verbs" series, which details the calamitous life of a German linguistics academe, who has produced one work (the aforementioned "portuguese irregular verbs") which sold 200 copies, which means, in the heady world of German philology, that he is a great success.

So, basically, I am saying that I don't care if you think I am a linguistics geek, because it's true, I am, and proud of it.

Monkey Prostitutes :: 10:10 AM :: easyjetsetter

From the NYT (registration free but required) via Freakonomics(world's worst book title for a bloody good book) about the recent news on monkeys using money.

Something else happened during that chaotic scene, something that convinced Chen of the monkeys' true grasp of money. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)

And we're surprised because...?

I believe we have spoken before about the link between economic systems and sex on this site. It's creepy for us to think about, but if economics isa system for studying how scarce resources are allocated, then surely sex is, of course, as subject to economic pressures as, say, the labour market.

Kind of a mood-killer though. Those poor monkeys.

UPDATE 11:19: I should use post titles like this more often, you should see my stat counter....

Me me Meme :: 08:12 PM :: easyjetsetter

From L'ombre de L'olivier, Of course, like everyone else, I hate this meme thing don't believe in them, blah blah but I am secretly (oh wait, it's on my website...doh!) pleased to have been asked. Well, this is about books, so it's forgiveable.

Number of books I own
Difficult to say. I have them in three countries. It used to be about 1000, but I had to sell my library (aside from some precious ones) built up from a literature degree when I left the States. I now have no proof that I read any of it. I have about 50 stored in the wife's basement, about 300 at home in Glasgow (mother! Get those blasted shelves fixed!) and, um, 8 here. I joined the library and I buy books and sell them on. Plus sodding Roddy (he who has taken to living underground, the freak) still has my I am Charlotte Simmons. So, nine.

Last book bought
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, in November, since passed on to Marion, a French friend who likes Jane Austen, and then to the wife. I told you I was poor. I no longer buy books. I go to the library. My DAD, however, has bought me several: last week, Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War, because, well, see the Somme post, and also, I think Niall Ferguson is a sexpot.

Last book read
It was a gift from Okie, a signed copy of Jeanette Winterson's, Lighthousekeeping. Very lesbian. A bit self-conscious, but ok. Like Oscar and Lucinda, by Peter Carey (which I love) but lesbian. Before that, it was an Alain de Botton book I had not yet read, and got out of the library in French, Essays in Love. I mention this because it occasioned an astonishing and wonderful coincidence that I might tell you about one day. Before that was Why 60 million Frenchmen can't be wrong: why we love France but hate the French. Despite the obnoxious title and wimpy first half, the second half is an awesome, albeit badly written, primer on how the French State works, and WHY it ended up that way. I need to get that back to you actually Adam....

Five books that mean a lot to me

The Leopard - Giuseppe di Lampedusa
How an individual reacts to the perceived decline of civilisation.

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
How a civilisation declines. When good wins, it is still never the same again. Something someone could have told Peter Jackson.

The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki
New Yorker financial page guy writes a Gladwellesque book about decision markets.

The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
Has. Me. Sobbing. For 100 pages. Every time.

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Everything the EXECRABLE Da Vinci Code wishes it was, and written by another comparative literature/linguistics person. Very cool.

Five bloggers to tag
Ummmmm, I'm going to spread this out of France. Justinsomnia in California, In Actual Fact in Germany, Romanus Yankeus(it's about time he wrote something new...) in Italy, Fi on her round the world trip, and Roy, cause he's the boss of Tabulas, although he's in NC.

Update: Sneaky sneaky Justin put his response into his comments. Next one in with a response from Germany. Rome Yankee copped out and sent an abbreviated version in the email:

Currently reading: A Short History of Just About Everything by Bill Bryson
Last Book: Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins
ReReading on the side: Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski

And here's Roy's response. Nothing from Fi, but then, she's in Thailand.

One of my headaches... :: 06:18 PM :: easyjetsetter

It starts at the top of my neck. It's like a little mouse nesting there. But with really sharp teeth. I take the first dose of pills at this point. Knowing what's coming, I got to bed as the next step of pain starts behind my eyes. I wake up because the curtained room is too bright at sunrise. I can hear the electricity in the building humming, and the people leaving their apartment three floors down bang the door... it feels like they hit me with a cricket bat.

And when I get up, it's everything. The running water, the birds chirping, the coffee brewing, all make too much noise. I take another two aspirin, eat some cereal to cushion my stomach, and, with a grimace, switch on the computer. It makes a noise like the Inquisition is torturing anabaptists with a whisk repeatedly heated in the fires of hell.

After an hour or so of looking at the screen, I have to switch everything off and lie down to let the next round of pills take effect. A half hour or so later there is a knock on the door.

In my fug, I assume it's the filmmaker landlord come to tell me how to overcome a headache in his usual dictatorial way, but it's a chap dressed all in black with a chimney sweep brush over his shoulder, like the ones in Mary Poppins. It might have been the drugs and therefore an hallucination, but I had possibly the most surreal conversation ever.

"I'm here to clean the chimneys"
"Um, I have no chimneys."
"Sure you do. Everyone has chimneys"
"No, I really don't"
"May I come in? I need to see your (word I don't understand)"
"Um, ok."
"You don't have any chimneys!"
"I know..."
"What is this place? It's really small?"
"Well, it's part of a larger apartment, a room that is being lent to me for a few months"
"Are you a student?"
"No, I'm an intern. Um, would you mind leaving?"

At this point I reposition my keys in between by knuckles and try to remember the five weak points of the male body... He spies the pillow I have been using to block out the light over my head on the sofa where I have been lying.

"Were you sleeping?"
"I'm just not well"
"What's wrong?"
"I have a headache"
"Well, you know, I only do this part-time, usually, I am a sports teacher, and I specialise in shiatsu."

I suddenly see where this is going....

"Good for you, now, since we've established that I don't have any chimneys..."
"I could give you shiatsu. It relieves stress. It must be stress you're feeling."
"No thank you."
"How old are you? 17? 18?"

Now I got angry.

"For fucks' sake, I am 22, I don't have a chimney. Please leave."
"I just was looking for some hospitality. Five flights of stairs and noone to talk to...."
"Goodbye!!!"
"Ok, but shiatsu's expensive and I can do it for free..."
"Goodbye!!!"

And with that he was gone. I am never answering the door again. How did he get into the building? There's a door code and then a locked door. Nobody's got a fireplace!

The son of a friend of my Mum's came over to pick up some suits on Monday night, and when I brought them down into the courtyard he said "This is a really dodgy area you're living in, I got propositioned twice on the way over here." Nonsense, I chirped, it's perfectly safe, their bark's worse than their bite, the shopkeepers look out for me, and anyway, the building's secure.... It's not nice being on the receiving end of "I told you so."

iPods for all! :: 06:46 PM :: easyjetsetter

I think we all are a little in awe of the power of the iPod. Certainly, I get a little pang of jealousy when I see people with those white ear buds in. Especially when she's paid 16 quid for it.

When my company wanted to increase subscription to our e-newsletter, we offered an iPod to the top referrer. When U2 sponsored their own black and red version of it, they realised that the publicity from being the iPod band was worth more than a fee, and put themselves on there for free.

What are they really? The waves the iPod shuffle has made in particular has the digital music industry baffled, because it is essentially a small flash drive, with no track control, like the first digital music players available years ago.... They're not compatible with any software other than iTunes, they take song files in a format that wasn't popular until they popularised it...and so on.

Now, we see Louis Vuitton iPod covers, and competitions for designing food in the shape of iPods! And all because they're sleek and pretty and minimalist.

Today, I was browsing and came across this article. At first, I made what I like to call my "middle england" face: how frivolous! And they're bribing those children to go to school! Frightful! It would never have happened in my day.

But then I caught sight of myself in the mirror and realised I looked like my evil sister, and so thought about it. And you know what? It's a fucking genius idea. For three reasons:

First, it incentivises education! Seriously, when you think about, school (and by extension university) is just a long-term bribe/incentive in exchange for a bigger, even more long-term bribe/incentive: a well-paid job. But when you're 16, you don't particularly care about unemployment, or about the long-term. What you care about is being uncool. This is why I studied linguistics. Oops.

Not having an iPod is pretty uncool if you're a kid. I mean, so is going to school over the summer, but I think the uber-cool of the iPod trumps even this. And what other chance do these kids have of getting an iPod? They could work all summer at McDo's and then spend all that money on an iPod. Or they could work all summer through this programme, be more employable and get an iPod as well! I think you call this internalising opportunity cost, but I'm a late economic bloomer, so correct me if I am wrong.

Second, the government could have just paid them for doing the course, and the kids could have bought their own iPod. Howver, as noted above, anything involved an iPod gets you in the headlines. Their enrollment numbers, now low, will become oversubscribed. If this programme is successful (and everyone's watching it now) it will be replicated across the country! An army of iPodders! Can you imagine it? Oh, yeah, and a lot more kids qualified for actual jobs...but that's just a bonus really isn't it?

Seriously, can you imagine what it would be like if all the kids that were failing/being failed by the system in Britain got excited about taking part in something that develops skills like this? Can you? No, of course you can't, because it's never happened before. But, thanks to the power of Our Lord Steve Jobs, it could...

The third point needs a little more background.

This story made me rethink this older one about the evil university 8 miles down the road from us who used to be good at basketball.

Putting the "free" part aside for an instant, considering that at $30,000 in tuition a year that is really a relative term, by effectively making iPods a required purchase (you an bet your bottom dollar that tuition was raised to cover it) Duke was creating a culture of early adoption of new pedagogical techniques.

Professors are entitled to a free iPod themselves if they can prove that their course plan includes heavy audio-based content. So, it's like a big carrot to get stick-in-the-muds to be a little more imaginative in their teaching tools.

Without a class full of people with iPods, there would be little point doing so, but with them....who knows what auditory learner who had been struggling with schoolwork based on reading and visuals only was suddenly made top of the class? Suddenly, your headline grabbing PR stunt stopped a student from falling through the cracks...

Now, if only this college in Britain could do the same, since you can bet your first born that those 16-18 year olds are people who left school at 16 because traditional teaching methods weren't reaching them. If they're going to have iPods anyway why not take the chance to experiment with a new kind of learning and maybe help them like school for the first time in their lives?

So say it with me, loud and proud: iPods for all! (Except me, I have Windows ME, which is incompatible with iTunes. Sigh. At my old job I had a powerbook. But then, we were state-funded.)

If only Mr. Consumption (Tony Blair: trillion pound consumer debt, TB, tuberculosis, geddit?) read the blog eh?

More on Asperger's (or I told you so #3) :: 01:40 PM :: easyjetsetter

Following the sappy Guardian test that I took that proved I was a bitch and a man, I got pointed in the direction of a couple of articles about Asperger's syndrome. Now, obviously, I am aware that I do not, in fact, have it, and that to those that do it can be debilitating and soul-destroying, but further reading always opens the mind.

This one from Wired goes into the history of Asperger's and its more difficult cousin, autism, and how people who used to be loners and losers and therefore undesirable breeders are now highly concentrated in areas like Silicon Valley (and the RTP?) and therefore meeting other afflicted people, marrying and having highly afflicted kids.

This second one is from Tim * this morning. It's a new spin on the old "madness/genius" link. Also, I never knew that having an "unusually large head" was a criteria for having Asperger's. I have a massive head. Hats don't fit. Seriously. I'm not like Arnold, but I do have a really big head. Please, no jokes, I mean that literally people...

The last two I have for you are a follow up on the breeding thing from the Wired article. While yes, high tech areas are creating hotspots of inbreeding for genes that would otherwise die off in a lonely garrett smelling of cat pee and covered in manic scribbles detailing the GUT** of RISK, there is a corresponding increase in the social value of dating a "geek." Perhaps culture compensating for mother nature? See the grandmother effect to see culture and genetics cooperating to create a more perfect society.

So, to convince you to do your bit for mankind and date a geek, here from Craigslist is a "why" and here, from Emily Hambidge, is a "how." My favourite bit from the second article is the "I'm blogging this" T-shirt.

Things to take away from all this: like dyslexia, autism and its cousins are a sliding scale, somewhere on which all of us fall. We are none of us not dyslexic, or not autistic, just less so than the people who we deem"abnormal." This is something I learned at my "special" school. It really opened my mind to what some people call "mental illness" and others call "learning difficulties," and I just accept as being things about us that are different, like hair colour, a propensity for addiction or a tendency to alzheimers (more on the latter later.) But it is not a coincidence that I spent ages 9-15 socialising with "abnormal" people and today most of my close friends have been through some kind of depression/anxiety/therapy/psychotropic drugs phase. I think I am probably more understanding about such things than most.

*Is there a particular reason why so many British bloggers are named Tim? Is it a generational naming thing, like the high proportion of american girls born between 1980 and 1985 called Katie?
**Grand Unifying Theory. This is a technical term. As is VLT (Very Large Telescope.) You can't say geeks don't have a sense of humour.

God Bless America :: 03:21 PM :: easyjetsetter

From Audrey, as described last Sunday.



Someone yesterday nearly had an aneurysm when I said the phrase "that is one of the many reasons why I like America so much" and practically gabbled his gratefulness to meet someone who actually likes that country.

Yes, it has problems, notably the current resurgence of the batshit crazy religious right, like a Third Great Awakening, but America is more tolerant of difference, more dynamic, more into the individual and his rights, more into freedom and liberty and all the things I like than any of the so-called secular democracies of Western Europe. They do much better Mexican food across the pond too.

And, although the portions are too large, I like being able to pay for one meal and get two, by virture of eating half and taking the other half home in a polysterene box for later. You get funny looks if you ask for that in Paris: "mais on fait pas ca" or, the even more dismissive "mais cela n'existe pas."

There could be less hugging. And fewer shorts and no more mullets. And, um, more Green Cards for Scottish twenty-somethings with a liberal arts degree. Apart from that, it's a pretty neat country.

I was sitting in Okie's apartment the other day waiting for the ladies of the American Church to come over and proof-read. We made real sweet iced tea, talked in our drawls and listened to Steven Sondheim when suddenly a thunderstorm started.

I had a moment of such supreme Proustian ricochet back to spending stormy summer afternoons of freshman year on my dorm porch in rocking chairs with tea. The sharp pain of losing that hit me all over again and it nearly took my breath away.

*Sigh* I miss y'all.

Pub Quiz Report #2 :: 07:11 PM :: easyjetsetter

Yes. It's Monday. Not Sunday as promised. Before you switch off your browsers in disgust, I should mention that, on the whole, I was doing you a favour by not writing last night for reasons that will presently become clear.Last week's installment saw the EasyJetsetters coming fifth out of, well, five, teams.

Before we begin, a word on competition. I come from a long line of alcoholics. Where the drink has not consumed the lives of my antecedents, some other addiction has taken over their lives and rendered them paranoid, twitchy, vicious or mad (or all four.) I live in fear of becoming one of them, and therefore try to channel these obsessive tendencies into more "healthy" pursuits than, say, making my neice cry on her birthday (Thanks Auntie Iso.)

It started with Monopoly I think, which is ironic, since it is itself a perfect representation of free market economics in a game, and thus, a competition about, well, competition. I used to hide my 500 note in my pocket so that I would not be tempted to use it until I had to. Of course, when I withdrew it at just the point where all my other assets were spent or mortgaged, I was invariably accused of cheating and sent to my room, thwarting my ambition, and inspiring a footstamping, howling tantrum about how I only was trying my best to win.

The obsessions progressed rapidly to Trivial Pursuit. I had the Genus set in the States and would bribe my friends with home-cooked meals to get them to come over and play with me. Some suggested that I read and memorised the questions, but a truly competitive person will never cheat, because cheaters aren't really real winners. In March, a trip to London saw me bully Jim into staying up until 4 am the day before he had an exam because we were not going to bed until I won, because he claimed to be unbeaten at home.

Then, my competitive streak found its apogee in the pub quiz. I have participated in four different pub quizzes over the years. And a pattern is emerging. Let me put it this way: my lust for victory overrides social niceties.

I delegate the pen to Audrey because I have mad axe-murderer handwriting and she writes the French way, all curly and pretty, but at the first sign that she is not writing the answers fast enough for my liking I will leap across the table and forcibly extract the pen from her clammy mitts. When I think I have the answer I knock over drinks, make "ooh ooh" noises while flapping my hands around my head, and give death looks to those that dare to disagree. It was at the pub quiz that that German guy told me "I could never go out with you because I'd be afraid you'd hit me if I said something wrong."

Now, mix in this competitive streak with something that lowers social inhibitions like, oooh, let's say, alcohol and you have a very badly behaved EasyJetsetter indeed. I have four words for you: Long. Island. Iced. Tea. It was a bit like the first time some poor schmuck spilled drain cleaner, nail polish remover and blonde hair dye together and lost his eyebrows and a significant portion of his nose.

It did not help that we had a belligerent host last night. Jimmy, part owner of the Highlander, spent the entire time reading the questions cursing the "stupid fucker who wrote these pish-easy moron questions" and who would make up his own additions. Admittedly, the scores overall were higher this week than last, showing perhaps some grade inflation.

I had arrived late, as I got held up with the printer in the 15th, and got in at ten pm to a big cheer from all my quizmates, which was nice. In attendance were: Katrien, Audrey, Adam, Nick, Olivia, Mariann, Mandy, Stephen, Annika, Alex (Adam's friend, who was introduced to me as "rich and good-looking") and a couple of others from their office. As I was late, my team had saved me a seat but also already picked a name, so we were, disturbingly and painfully, "The Burning Sensations."

When I went to the bar to get my drink I almost attained pub quiz zen. Jimmy was complaining that he didn't want to read the questions, so I offerred to do so...the ultimate power! However, he misinterpreted what I was asking for and shouted "Look, I'm not serving you fucking beer!" So I scuttled away, hopes dashed.

The broad and somewhat slurred Glaswiegian accent of our host meant I had to translate for the other team, and at one point Jimmy told me "shut the fuck up, Yank" because I had to talk rather loud to reach the other end of the table (I had finished my first Long Island Iced Tea by this point so I was not the best judge of appropriate decibel levels) and apparently my Merkin was coming out.

This is how we know my inhibitions were gone at this point. I shouted: "I'm not fucking American" Jimmy: "Whit the fook are ye then?" Me: "I'm Glaswiegian" (whole pub laughs) Jimmy: "If yer frae Glasgae come oop here and get a shot." When I arrive at the bar he says "Oh fuck, not you again, bugger off." And I went away shotless.

Anyway, towards the bottom half of the second Long Island Iced Tea I stopped particularly caring about the pub quiz, and started exhibiting typical behavior of the inebriated, stealing people's camera phones to take pictures of myself in various poses (not those kinds of poses you sick puppies) and spent the entire answer section regaling Jon and Alastair (two of the funky boys) with stories of my disappearing boobs and my thoughts on the circumcised vs. the intact penis.

I don't think we won, but I drank some of the funky boys' champagne... which, in retrospect, was a mistake. I think the burning sensations did quite well though. Like, fourth, or something. But there were at least eight teams this time.

Warning: this product may contain solipsism :: 08:16 PM :: easyjetsetter

Self-presentation. It's a bit of a bugger isn't it? I'm not just talking about remembering not to pick your nose in public*, or dry-cleaning jackets before a job interview**, I'm talking about who we are, really, when you get right down to it.

I'm going to apologise in advance for those of you who come here hoping for a little light entertainment and, in particular, all of you in search of "monkey prostitutes." This could get a little navel-gazeresque.

In a 1984 study of computer mediated communication, considered the first of its kind, Naomi Baron found that people, when asked to give their medical details to a computer rather than a person, or even with a pencil and a form, were more likely to be honest and to give more details when submitting these details on a computer. Participants were made expressly aware that the same specialist would see their details whatever format they used. It is therefore a bit of a trope in the world of CMC that people are more likely to be honest and go into more detail online than face-to-face.

A quick glance at a Craig's List personal suggests that this may not be so. "30" means 50, "well-educated" means he bought his diploma from somewhere in Nebraska, and by "intelligent" he means easy. This kind of thing gives rise to the alternate, rather more prevailing, theory that online interaction encourages people to lie about who they are.

I've always rather thought that online we see magnified to an extreme the way people present themselves in real life: i.e. entirely dependent upon what outcome they want from their interlocutor. Baron's study was perhaps using the wrong kind of environment, it is in a patient's interest to tell the doctor as much as possible about what ails them, so that the doctor has a higher chance of making them better. On Craigslist, as in job interviews, self-presentation as better than one really is has the possible consequence of catching a better girlfriend/gainful employment than we may necessarily, objectively, deserve.

I certainly know that I change how I am around people. I am a very different Easyjetsetter around my parents to around my wife, and different again in a job interview, or on a date, or out for lunch with some buddies, or even, *gasp*, on my blog!

Even in these scenarios I'm showing people, to a certain extent, the "me" they want to know, because, like most of us, I just want to be liked. The "me" I show in a job interview for a right-wing think tank will necessarily differ from the "me" I show on a date with someone who owns a "coal not dole" badge. Which calls into question, frankly, who "I" am.

Am I a composite of all these people I can show? But what if I were an actor, or a novelist, creating first person characters that were only tangentially related to my "self"? Are they still part of the gestalt entity that is, well, me? When I blog, you get the way I feel and think about things during that particular 45-odd minutes on that particular day, but also filtered through the light-heartedly erudite tone that I decided to create for this blog long before I sat down and got to grips with CSS. So who am I, really, when you get right down to it?

Now, for those of you that know "me" you might be rolling your eyes at this point and saying "oh bollocks, she's been listening to Radiohead with a black poloneck on again" and you'd totally and utterly right. But stop a moment and ask yourself, which "me" do you know? Eh? Eh?

The only thing that is consistent across all my personalities (modes of self-presentation) that I can think of is "talkative." But, as was pointed out to me at lunch today, that can convey confidence, nervousness, erudition, idiocy, in fact, a whole gamut of personality traits, depending upon (and this is where we get all hermeneutic and post-modern on you) the prejudices (or Bayesian priors) of the person I am talking too much to about talkative people. Nothing to do with "me" or my "self" at all really is it?

I've read Freud, I've read Kant, and I've read Foucault (actually, I skimmed the Kant. It was full of, ahem, cant). I know my "self" could be just a sublimation of my sex drive, just a trick of the light in my perception of the world, or just a product of society. I know that simply by asking these questions, Descartes would say I was openly affirming that the "self" I wonder if I even have definitively exsists.

What it comes down to though is a binary opposition that can be neatly split into nail polish and Nietsche. Someone once used this comparison to call me "the most shallow deep person" she had ever known. It is possibly the nicest compliment I have ever received (although it was not intended as such) but has unfortunately proved a strong meme for demonstrating something that is very difficult for me.

Am I a) social, outgoing, chatty, flirty, fun, popular, into fashion and beauty, wanting to do well so I can buy things to keep up with others, like parties? or b) serious, mature, well-read, intellectual, involved, studious, hard-working, philosophically idealistic? This is a real division in my life, and I find it really really hard to balance the two. I often wish I didn't have the nagging feeling every time I was acting out a) that b) was screaming in some corner of my psyche, and vice versa.

I seem to attract people who are uncertain what they want out of life or who they are. My first two friends (Roddy and Jee) when I first moved to Paris used the same phrase within a week of each other: "you know, what I really love about you is how you know exactly who you are and where you're going." This was during a period of immense upheaval and uncertainty, mixed with not a small amount of depression and anti-social (and somewhat promiscuous) behavior due to lonlieness, separation anxiety (from America) and frustration. Funny that I was going through all that under the surface and yet appealed to these people outwardly because they thought I was the exact opposite of all the things I was feeling....

Anyway, suffice to say, I feel like another moment of immense upheaval coming on. I'm learning to recognise this feeling, through its effects: I feel despondent, unmotivated, anti-social. The Radiohead and the poloneck are symptoms, not causes of a growing sense that everything is about to change again, suddenly... And I'm not even sure in what direction, or even, really, anymore, to what purpose.

That's right people, I have three job interviews lined up for Friday. I think going into the interviews and asking the question "who am I, really, when you get right down to it?" is not the best idea... But then, according to Roddy and Jee, I come across as most confident and together when, inside, I'm weeing myself in terror.

* Don't worry. I don't do this. Not in public anyway.
**Why France? Why 48 hours? The rest of the planet manages to dry-clean items in 24 hours. What is wrong with you people? Why must you be different France?

Blood. Sex. Morality. Whatever. :: 12:43 PM :: easyjetsetter

This is an email I wrote someone who was stupid enough to ask "sin city, what's it all about? I'm supposed to go and see it tonight." It may contain some errors, as I am not about to waste a very busy day editing nicely. It is reproduced here in all its erroneous glory, and if you have a problem, comment:

Oooh, that was a silly question to ask, now you're going to get a wee lecture.

Sin City is a film based upon four of the Sin City series written and illustrated by Frank Miller. The original series was a set of short stories, interwoven and with recurring characters, and the film mirrors this set up. The film is directed by Robert Rodriguez, he of desperado fame, a man instrumental in popularising the DV format, which will ultimately drive a crowbar between the studio/filmmaker relationship. Rodriguez makes all of his films with incredible speed and crazy low budgets out of a shack in Texas.

There have been a spate of very good comic book films recently. The format lends itself very strongly to film, with a sparse dialogue (no space) in comparison to other "books" and a storyboard set-up already there. And as Comic books have become increasingly heavweight intellectually, and not just about men in tights, comix films have become increasingly popular. Now, obviously there have been some dreadful humdingers, mostly marvel based stuff, but that's because marvel's greed rushed it all out. But look at Spiderman. Actually, no, look at Ghost World. It is the closest analogy to Sin city, in that it was a series of stories made into one narrative, and while the plot was changed around a lot, the general consensus is that because Terry Zwigoff (correction Dan Clowes wrote, Zwigoff, of course, directed) was given screenplay rights, the look and feel and ethos of the comics was kept. And with a comic book where the "world" created is possibly the most important thing, that's a difficult thing to do.

What makes Sin City different is that Frank Miller would not sell the film rights until Rodriguez shot a short with Josh Hartnett In DV to show him how the film could stay true to the comix. In addition, Rodriguez invited Miller to co-direct with him, giving him a level of control not generally reserved for authors. The directors' guild fired Rodriguez for this, with the consequence that several studios cannot legally hire him any more. Doesn't bother Rodriguez though, and he went on to make Sin City. There were some threats to actors about if they were in the film they would be excluded from the screen actors guild, which never materialised, and didn't stop a panoply of big names and very talented people from taking part. Finally, Tarantino and Rodriguez have been having a bit of a spat about DV. Tarantino is a total purist, and Rodriguez invited him to direct a car chase in Sin city, just to prove that DV was actually liberating and therefore not just as good as, but better than, regular film. Tarantino is now a raving convert. So, politically, for Hollywood, this is a very exciting film.

Now, I am, I freely admit, a comic books' geek (although not crazy obsessive) thanks to a class on post-modern comix I took in college, and my general knowledge of comics is not as encyclopaedic as perhaps it could be (partly because obsessively collecting requires a slightly larer budget than I have - I don't have health insurance at the moment, for example...panel-based reading material is far down the list of things I can't afford) but Sin City and Frank Miller, although I have not read them, are very important in the larger comics world. It is quite rare to come across a comix artist who also writes his stories, and when they do, they tend to be graphic novels types, intellectual heavyweights like chris ware and art spiegelman and well, Dan Clowes... Sin City, if you care to google and look at some plates, is an incredibly beautifully drawn series, self-consciously noir, a dystopic artistic musing on what is left of morality in a lawless society.

Oh, and the baddies are called Roark.... I guess Frank Miller doesn't like Ayn Rand much. Choice quote, made me guffaw: "It's once you get people accepting the lies you tell them even when they know they're lies, then you've really got them by the balls." And we all know what happens to balls in Sin City....

So, now, to the film. I've heard mixed reviews from people who know the books. Some believe it lets down the art, some believe it lives up to it as no comic book film has. Everyone agreed that the acting was pretty shit. But then, it always is in noir films no? Everyone mentions the violence. Everyone mentions the beauty.

And what do I think? Well, the scenes are stark and rich, all at once, messy and clean, at the same time. I found myself gasping at the beauty of things that in real life are disgusting. It is very very violent. Very amoral. Immoral, etc. But beautiful. And somehow, moral. There are absolutes. There's a great bit (without meaning to be a spoiler) where the Cardinal likens the rituals of cannibalism to the Eucharist, making it ok because it's a religious experience, and the mad, ugly brute Marv. says, "I dunno, all I know is eating people is pretty fucking weird." Choice.

I think the axe that Miller has to grind is that right and wrong can occur in unlikely places. The baddies are frightful charicatures. The goodies are complex and difficult. There's a lot of nudity, there's a lot of blood, sometimes white, sometimes red, sometimes yellow. But, surprisingly, it's very, very funny. A guy's hand, holding his gun is cut off, and to get his rigor mortis fingers off it he has to pry his fingers open with his teeth. It's hilarious.

Things I objected to: Alexis Bledel saying "cock." That kind of freaked me out. Clive Owen's accent. The irish characters. Things I loved the most: what is chosen to be highlighted in colour, where the rest of the film is bled dry. Sneakers. Lips. Eyes. A skirt. It's awesome.

I think it's a real leap for Rodriguez, a real leap for Comic Books, a real leap for movies. I can't help but feel we're at another one of those crossroads like in the late 70's, where we're about to see film redefined. Just as Lucas & Spielberg took earlier "genre" films and made them new with new tools, Rodriguez is taking noir and making it more than noir ever dreamed of being. I want to see more films like this. It won't necessarily be more "intellectual" but it will be richer, and darker.

Of course, I could still be on an adrenalin rush brought on by the violence in the film and this is all horrific hyperbole. I don't particularly care though, this is how movies should make people feel.

See, you got me excited and I wrote a book. Enjoy.

UPDATE: Lots more, more accurate, info here.

Peeing myself in public :: 03:44 PM :: easyjetsetter

Something happened to me last Saturday, and I wanted to share.

So, I was picking up a) concert tickets for Orange in July (Tales from Hoffman in the roman amphitheatre) and b) Foucault's Pendulum (for Nosemonkey's virtual bookclub.) I was in FNAC getting my tickets, and did my usual scan of the Belle & Sebastian section to see if they stocked the Lazy Line Painter Jane EP (a kick arse song.)

Well, that had something even better: Push Barman to Open Old Wounds, the complete EP collection including the aforementioned LLPJ, but with much MUCH more! I had to cross my legs to stop myself from making a nasty mess. I slapped the cd on the counter and paid.

Only upon exiting the store did I remember the secondary purpose of my trip and that my relative poverty (I am relatively rich compared to, say, Bolivians) meant that I could either have the cd or the book. Not both.

But I thought, fuck it, and went off looking for the book anyway.

Wouldn't you know it? It appears to be out of print. It's not in any of the english language bookshops, and I could never read it in time in French. So fate made the choice for me, and left me 20 euros richer than I would otherwise have been had my feckless, reckless spending got the better of me.

But during my forays into bookstores, I nearly weed myself for the second time that day. I was browsing Galignani, my hands shaking like a heroin addict in the methadone cabinet, and what do I see, but this.

Isn't it beautiful? Doesn't it make you want to lick the spine of each and every little perfectly designed mini-book? Isn't your bladder control taking a beating too?

But alas, at 136 euros, well, well, well, beyond my petit budget...I can, however, buy it on amazon for 63 pounds. However, as I hover above the "pay now" button, I hear my mother's voice saying "That's your grocery bill for the next month" and my father's saying "You've read most of the books that these come from. Surely your money would be better spent buying the works you haven't read that are included here?"

Both voices are right, which is probably why I talk to my parents less than I should: to try and stop the voices.

I resisted dear reader. I did. But LOOK at them! I don't know how much longer I can hold out. Aren't they PRETTY? Aren't they PERFECT?

Oh bollocks. I don't have the shelf space anyway.

Frogs, Yanks, Limeys, Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys & Rostbifs :: 10:51 PM :: easyjetsetter

There's a bit of a proverbial cowpat impacting through the air conditioner between Britain and France at the moment. As mentioned previously, now that someone has mentioned Britain's rebate, the common agricultural policy has reared its ugly head, and everyone is either screaming or sulking. Of course, they will all be sent to bed without supper. For much more informed and objective debate on this, visit Nosemonkey or EU Rota, linked to the right.

For the one-woman juggernaut that is EasyJetsetter, such in-depth analysis is to be met with a spluttery laugh and an estuary english "yeah right!." I have now lived in three countries. I have defended each of them at one time or another, and I have lambasted them all at one time or another too. I'd like to share with you some of the stereotypes I come up against, and evidence I have seen, smelled, or heard supporting or refuting each of these. There will then be a "true" or "false" verdict for each stereotype. Feel free to disagree. That's the Joy of Comments.

Claim: Americans are fat
In my general experience, young Americans are very sporty and do athletic pursuits to a much higher age than Europeans. This keeps them slim, but they need to eat a lot to keep their energy levels up. When life becomes a 60 hour week, this often, though not always, transforms into spread. And then spread some more. Also, the proportions of people considered "fat" are much higher in the States than in Europe. The portions are huge, they do not walk hardly anywhere (they can't often) and I put on three dress sizes in four years.
Verdict: True, but with good cause.

Claim: French are thin (and stylish)
I have indeed lost weight since moving here. French women do tend to skinny. But they work at it. Not so much in the sports sense...They prefer "loisirs" over "sport," so a bike ride in the forest rather than in mud. You should see the products they buy, diet water, diet pills, diet creams, diet diet supplements... And by "stylish," what is meant is that the idea of beauty here is "classic" not "trendy." There are probably analogous proportions of stylish people, but since their style is of a type that is pretty universally recognised, it seems like more to visitors. There are just as many awful dressers in France as elswhere. And plenty of fat people. They just hide.
Verdict: False, it's just a tendency, not a rule.

Claim: Americans are obsessed with money/French people are lazy
These two are intrinsically tied up together. As far as business practice goes, these countries could not be more different. A seriously fluid labour market in the states (with a Rigidity of Employment Index of 3) means people have to push and push and push or they will be fired. Gotta be efficient. Gotta be productive. This is why America is very rich.
In France, doing business is still quite genteel. The employee is heavily protected by the state, so once you get a "contrat de duree indetermine" you are home free, and can do your job nicely, get home to your kids at a decent hour, and so on. French business culture is based upon building relationships over long lunches and drinks, chatting about nothing until later. They don't discuss money until they have to. They don't like that Americans discuss it first. They don't like that american question "so what do you do?." Emails are treated like letters, with delays of sometimes weeks before you'll get a reply. To get a reply quickly, you have to call first. This is partly why France is not as rich as America.
Verdict: True, but replace "obsessed with money" and "lazy" with "part of a highly competitive job market" and "live under a social system that allows them to care about things outside work" and you have the truth.

Claim: British people are all a cross between L'homme au chapeau melon, the Queen, Sherlock Holmes, Hugh Grant and Mr. Darcy
Please. This one is just ridiculous. The only person who is still Ye Olde England is my new friend Blimpish. And John Major. And expats. Who all love crumpets, bacon sarnies, and M&S. Oh, and my Mum and Dad, which makes them rather sweet. Mum listens to the Archers (a radio soap about farming) and is a member of the Royal Horticultural Society, and Dad has the kind of quiet, sad hobbies that would not be out of place in an Enid Blyton book, stamp-collecting, chess, WWI & II history and lepidoptery. So what is Britain today? Sadly, I think you have to read "les nouveaux anglais" to find out. I am far too biased...I don't live there any more for a reason, remember? I'm sure it is not as bad as I think, but I haven't lived there for five years, and the Britain I remember was influenced by a peer group who loved drinking, drugs and fucking without thought to consequences, moderation, or even really enjoyment even, just on automaton, and with a contempt for anything other than that. Not, probably, true, but still, it's what's stopping my return...that I'll be a miserable loser again.
Verdict: False, sadly.

So there you have it. I've not got a national soul, and a few stereotypes of my own, but I know what they are and tomorrow's trip on the eurostar might give me the opportunity to change them in the coming months. The path to enlightment, after all, must begin at home... Have a good weekend everyone.

A kick in the stomach and a rising feeling of lightness :: 10:49 PM :: easyjetsetter

I felt that special kind of dizzy getting on the train to go home: like a first kiss almost, full of pregnant possibility...

It's definitely not what I planned, but often the most exciting things just happen to you, like the move to the States. I'm not sure where these possibilties will lead to, or even how to get to the place I don't yet know if I am going to. It could be the best thing that's ever happened to me, or the worst mistake of my life. I feel like what is being dangled in front of me is too easy, and there'll be difficulty and regrets along the road. I don't even know what I want, necessarily, though I'm scared of ending up like Tantalus, reaching for it and watching it disappear.

What I am trying to say is that the interviews went well, and that there's a possibility (not yet a probability - it will take a wonderful coincidence almost without precedence of timing and luck) that living in London might not be so bad after all...

I told you so #4 :: 02:44 PM :: easyjetsetter

The telegraph is behind the curve on expat life again. I was all over this on Thursday, and they only catch up today.... They need to pay me for their story ideas.

Pink Knickers Pick Knickers Picnic :: 11:28 AM :: easyjetsetter

Say that after a few glasses of Pimms....

You might have noticed a wee picture up the top of my blogroll.

This Saturday, rain or shine, be there. None of you have an excuse, as bloggers, commenters, lurkers, shirkers and sons and daughters thereof are invited. Bring enough food and dishware for yourself and you can share if you like. People are coming from switzerland...

If you want to come, go email Antipo or Petite to get the secret code to the invite....

I'm a real bloggeuse! :: 01:13 AM :: easyjetsetter

Post up at the Sharpener. I guess it's no secret what my (first) name is now...Everyone who links to me knows it. You probably all know it. And if you didn't, you do now. But keep it away from the body of the blog eh?

Canicule redux :: 08:17 AM :: easyjetsetter

It is hot. It is really really hot. It was stifling ay 10am yesterday, and I couldn't stand in the sun on the pavement. I had to spend the afternoon lugging 17kg boxes up my flive flights of stairs in the heat. I drank about 4 litres of water to get over it. All I wanted to do was lie down with the curtains closed in front of the fan with a facecloth full of ice at my neck.

I learned how to convert temperatures and realised the last time I sat through this kind of heat without airconditioning was during the canicule, the big heatwave in 2003 that killed all the old people. That was in July and August and it is currently June. Please notify someone if I don't post for more than three days. Although, in this heat, the neighbours would clock I have popped my clogs fairly quickly. I doubt they'd care though.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to lurk in Picard, a frozen foods store. Not that I have a feezer to keep things in. It's just nice and cold in there.

UPDATE 6/22: Monjo asked me this:
Are there any stats for how many fewer people died in the following winter after that heatwave in France? In the UK it was around 2000 extra deaths in the summer followed by 20k fewer deaths in the winter.

So I, in my geekdom, did a spot of investigating over at INSEE, and found this:

I just checked INSEE's demographic reports for 2003 & 2004, and 2003 saw a substantial net increase in deaths over the whole year and a stable birth rate. 2004, however, saw a net decrease in deaths, plus a falling birth rate, prompting big pension worries.

I reckon 2004 is as much of a canicule induced anomaly as 2003 however, because a) people that were frail and could have expected to die in the next 18 months were hastened off the mortal coil by the heat and b) nobody felt like shagging between may and september 2003 because it was too hot, leading to few births between February and June 2004.

Dratted Druids :: 08:47 AM :: easyjetsetter

Today is the longest day of the year. This far north (in comparison to NC, not to, say, Morayshire) that means it is still daylight outside at 9:59, as I start to write this. June 21st, the summer solstice, has a special meaning in France. It means it’s time for the fête de la musique.

Imagine a city where every arrondissement had at least ten bands or music groups playing in the halls, bars, and streets. And that’s just the official ones. The city is hopping with music, with people wandering around, drinking in the party atmosphere. It’s all free, it’s all provided by the government (who won’t allow crucifixes and chadors in schools but go all out for a pagan holiday…sounds fishy to me) and it’s the last time for a while I’ll be able to enjoy it.

So, what are my plans you ask? Well, let me give you some samples of what my friends said when I suggested that we go and wander around all night and get drunk and stay up until dawn, because we’re young, free, single and fabulous.

Response #1: I have a business trip to Vienna.
Response #2: I have a dinner/party/soiree already planned
Response #3: It’s just a bunch of bands, what’s the big deal?
Response #4: I have to give a presentation at work tomorrow that I haven’t finished yet
Response #5: I have to clean my apartment.

I asked others, but they all came up with a variation on these themes. My (least)favourite is #5. However, I am one to talk, because I just took advantage of the deserted streets around here (no bands in the immediate vicinity) to do my laundry in record time. That’s right, while others are bopping and boozing, carousing and quaffing, I shall be folding pairs of socks together.

I’m such a loser.

It’s for the best though, as recent circumstances have conspired to force me to axe the ‘going out’ column in my monthly expenses and shift all that cash into the ‘travelling’ section.

I’m still sulking though.

Now I am going to take a bath and put on ‘I might be wrong’ pretending that Radiohead are headlining in my courtyard.

You all suck.

UPDATE 1:36am: Of course, I had a lovely evening, clean sheets, clean flat, clean pyjamas, clean me, a good book and some new tea to try. Except I could have done that any night and not had to listen to the whoops of people having more fun than me.

On the other hand, if I were out, I would not have heard my phone ring and would have missed a call from someone important to me who I don't get to actually speak to very often. So it worked out ok.

Boulversements :: 09:53 AM :: easyjetsetter

On Saturday I went to IKEA with Adam and Audrey and bought a nice swivel chair to replace the least ergonomic chair ever (comparative photos to follow), because even the shittiest futon was failing to ward off back pain. The swivel chair is an attractive shade of blue, has wheels and can be raised and lowered. It cost 40 euros.

I did a spot of shopping on Monday. I got a really big bottle of jif oxy gel multi surface cleaner. I never knew my bath was white, I assumed it was supposed to be that yellow grey colour. This may not be thrilling to you, but I like things clean and dislike cleaning. Any multipurpose/minimum effort product has my vote. I am a swiffer devotee, and use disposal wipes to dust. I also bought 50 bin bags with proper ties and 10 rolls of loo paper.

I mention this not because I am competing to be the most boring blog in the world, but because I wanted to point out that it is bloody typical that once you make long-term investments in a place (awkward to transport chair, jumbo packs of domestic materials) you are almost certain to be leaving within a few weeks.

That's right, easyjetsetter will be posting from London come August 1st. I have handed in my notice, to the boss (she has a blog to the right 'Just Dazzle', new and pretty) and the filmmaker landlord. I have accepted the position and I have been trawling craigslist for sublets, as this is a six week thing at a think tank, and I am still working on the long-term for the autumn (see last Saturday's post.)

Nevertheless, it's all change. Again. I'll be leaving a place I love. Again. I'll be losing a home. Again. I'll be leaving friends behind and finding out pretty quickly which ones are real friends by who writes and who forgets. Again. I'll be starting afresh in a brand new place where I know nobody and climbing my way into a new, strange culture. Again.

I've made a choice to live this way. But it's not really easyjetsetting at all....

Now, I know I am just a girl... :: 10:31 AM :: easyjetsetter

...and not supposed to have strident opinions, and if I do, people will think I am male, but my goat has been got. High dander, I think the phrase is.

This post was originally a looonngg comment on this post, which in itself was a response to this speech.

"That speech by Theresa May enrages me. Andrew's right, there's a lot of the good stuff in there that is missing from the Conservatives that could take them to reelection if they listened to Theresa.

But while Andrew can dismiss the way she feels obliged to couch her central argument with fluffy friendly feminism, I cannot. I am a girl, and she just lost my vote.

I can't be doing with the kind of feminism that sends me the message that I am a victim and deserve to be empowered by virtue of my extra X. There are plenty of victims out there, of both genders, with real problems. This sort of talk tells women they are innately weak by virtue of gender (culture) or sex (biological), by suggesting they need help to succeed against men.

I don't want to be against men. I want to work with them. I want to do better than them, sure, not because they're men, but because I want to do better than everyone.

I don't want to be courted because I am a woman who votes. I want to be courted because I am a citizen who votes.

If I ran for office*, I would never, ever, ever want to have to even suspect that the reason I was on the candidates list was because I was female, and not purely because I was qualified.

I particularly despise the concept of quotas, not because I don't want to see more women in politics, but more than seeing smart women in politics, I want to see smart people in politics.

I do not give a rat's ass what kind of genitals they have, as long as they have a more important set of organs, a brain and a heart, working together and balancing out.

Nobody ever suggested Maggie thought the way she did, and succeeded as she did because she was a woman, she thought the way she did and succeeded as she did because she was Maggie.

By yielding to the temptation to play the female card, Theresa May is weakening her position: she will be pigeonholed as women's issues thinker, instead of a thinker.

That is all. She made me cross."


As long as all the women in the Conservative Party continue to frame their thoughts as being "women's thoughts" then lists of rising stars in the party will continue to look like the list compiled by the telegraph in late May: all-male. (I can't find it...it's been pulled - anyone got a copy?)

This reminds me of what happened with Michael Kinsley and Susan Estrich last spring. Anne Applebaum had the best reply to the whole mess. I might send Ms. May a copy.

UPDATE: ARRRGH no, look what I found.

UPDATE II: Oh, and another thing in the opposite direction, while I am talking about feminism and satan's works. I would like to voice my support for poor Larry Summers: forbidden to even speculate as to why women aren't making it in science and maths as much as men, and forced to take sensitivity training.

For a start, research shows that if women take science and maths at university, the same percentages of them go on to higher things in the field as men. It's what happens in High School that turns girls off science and maths that should be examined. I suspect it is women like Susan Estrich and Theresa May who set up low expectations for us by telling us we need help to be good at "boy-like" subjects.

Another reason I dislike the sappy Guardian EQ/SQ test: girls aren't "supposed" to like complicated systems, and are "supposed" to feel animals' pain. If anyone had read their Foucault they'd know that it is public discourse like this that inscribes our gender culture more than anything. Judith Butler has a lot to answer for too. Although she's funny about drag queens.

UPDATE III: Good article by Steven Pinker, who, although old now, is another of my academic celebrity crushes (along with Niall Ferguson and Steven Levitt)

*Forget it Dad. Never going to happen.

Pub Quiz report #3 :: 12:26 AM :: easyjetsetter

You might have noticed that it is two weeks since I posted a pub quiz report, and that is because I was saving my brainpower for this evening's WIN!!!

I can't go into details now, as there is champagne to be drunk and a groupie waiting for me backstage. Victory is fizzy and cold.

However, I wished to tell you all about two of Adam's contributions to the unagi (his team, made up of himself, Audrey, Katrien and Blaise, Audrey's brother) and the egomaniasses (my team, me, very drunk Nick, and a mystery guest): he inadvertently helped the egomaniasses by involuntarily playing air guitar on a question asking us to name the song and artist from the lyrics "say your prayers little one, don't forget my son, to include everyone" which revealed, of course, that it was, in fact, Metallica's "Enter Sandman."

He subsequently buggered his own team on a question about the one-legged pirate hero in Treasure Island, exclaiming "I've read that book" and then insisting that his unagi team should answer "Captain Flint," which needs no more ridicule than Adam already earned. The team name next week is, of course, "Captain Flint."

Oh, and of equal importance but not as gratifying (sorry Tim, but I've been working on winning the pub quiz for a few months now: I had to bring in a ringer from Germany known to you, but who 'may not be named'...) I got into the superlative (mentioned in the telegraph!) Britblog roundup, this time without asking.... Fame, fame at last....


"Over at The Sharpener they’ve let one of the girlies in to post and she’s brought the tone and quality up markedly. Excellent piece."

I just wanted to thank the Academy and to let everyone know I am available for interviews and photo shoots, but will never forget where I came from. Even if my accent means nobody believes it is Glasgow.

Weekend News :: 06:39 PM :: easyjetsetter

Dear Friends in DC (Hi Erin! Hi Aaron!),

Euan Blair, offspring of Our Thespian Prime Minister, Is coming to work for the chairman of the house rules committee (but he might work for a Democrat too...) Please smack him if you see him in the corridors of power of the Raeburn building. He contains half the DNA of a smarmy lying managerialist opportunist who treats my country like it's full of idiots who won't notice he's dismantling 1000 years of increasing democratisation and liberty as long as he does it with a concerned expression on his face. I think that deserves, at the very least, a punch in the goolies, to ensure the line stops with him.

Thanks! Kisses!

On another note: Sarkozy, ever the expert at making what appears to be a populist move that actually serves his anglo-saxon model motives very well, has called for a freeze on EU expansion to sort out the internal problems. The Demos likes it (no Turkey yet!) and it also (amazingly!) makes sense (e.g. Constitution should have been dealt with before enlargement - file under Polish Plumbers.)

The cover of one of the weeklies here in France comments on the EU presidency shift to Britain for six months. It shows Chirac on his knees in a gimp suit chained to leather-clad Blair standing over him with a whip and an evil grin, superimposed on a union flag. The headline? 'How can we take six months of this...'

I'm going to Brussels on Friday for an exam for a job in the heart of the beast: the EU parliament. I applied for this in, ooh, November? It closed in January, and only now do I get notification to attend for the written stage, four days before the exam... A multiple choice section on the history and structure of the EU shall be included.

'Do I really want to work for such an ineffective slow and useless institution?' libertarian EasyJetsetter asks herself. 'Have you seen what they want to pay me?' replies EasyJetsetter the egomaniarse.

UPDATE: I am the #1 result for "awful dressers" on google...

Pussy-whipped :: 12:09 PM :: easyjetsetter

I wrote to my MP about the ID cards bill vote tonight, pointing him in the direction of Robin Grant's post pulling together objections. Rather suspiciously speedily (he obviously gets a lot of these no2id emails and has a standard reply - I would do the same if I were a consumate politician) I received this in return.

"Thanks for the email. I will send a considered reply shortly, but since
today is the day of the second reading, I thought I should let you know
that I will be voting for the bill tonight (as well as speaking in its
favour, if I'm called).

The LSE report was utterly unconvincing: if the costs really did spiral
as they claim, the government wouldn't go ahead with the scheme anyway.

But the main reason I will support the bill tonight is that I was
elected on a manifesto which contained a commitment to ID cards. I
therefore have a mandate - indeed, an obligation - to support this
bill.

Thanks for contacting me.

Best wishes

Tom Harris MP
Member of Parliament for Glasgow South"

Let's begin with the obvious: I'm sorry...if the government knew the costs of some hypothetical project were going to spiral out of control they wouldn't get involved in it? That makes perfect sense. Thanks for clearing that up.

I am not even going to bother to reply and mention the fact that while we are told that the scheme is intended merely to bring us in line with international standards for passports and ID cards, Chris Lightfoot points out that one of the reasons the costs are predicted to be so high is that the proposed scheme for tonight goes far above and beyond what is required, in terms of storing biometric data and the existence of a national register, and that if Mr. Harris wished to make sure the costs stayed down on an effective ID card programme he would vote against this bill and fight for another, less all-encompassing set of standards.

No, I won't reply and say that, because he won't be interested in how we can alter the ID cards bill to make the programme less comprehensive, less expensive, and, possibly, more effective because it is more palatable to people who support things like, um, well, civil liberties and other such idealistic teenage fantasies.

No, I won't reply, because I noticed something. I have added italics to one line in the text so you can see it too. I highlighted it not for what it says, but for what he doesn't say. He doesn't say: "I will support this bill because I believe in it."

In the States, thanks to the existence of primaries, candidates must present themselves as people before they are a party representative. Their job in the primaries is not to be the best Democrat or the best Republican, but the best candidate. It is only in the runoffs that you see people voting for a party and not a person.

British candidates are subject to the planks in the platform of central party office. They are, by running for the Party, explicitly agreeing to everything in a centrally drafted document. Candidates often have their advertising and their literature designed for them, and it's up to the candidate to distribute it effectively.

This happens to a certain extent in the States, but the size and disparate nature of that country (as well as the typically strong local ties expected from the candidates) means it is much more diffuse, much less explicit, much more subtle.

Tom Harris does indeed, therefore, have an obligation. And it's not to his constituents. It's to the Labour Party. He owes his election (he says reelection on his website - not strictly true, he was MP for Cathcart and after redistricting ran for the new constituency Glasgow South) to them. If he wanted to win in Glasgow South he had to run with the Labour Party. If he wanted to run with the Labour Party he had to swallow their manifesto whole.

He's right, he can't afford to rebel. He's not high-up enough, not well-known enough, not entrenched enough in his seat to risk that valuable "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" relationship with the Labour Party. You have to tow the Party line a long time and receive the media attention their advantageous position can bring you before you can consider rebelling and making your voice heard. And even then, there's no promise that your rebellion will not silence your political career.

And with 356 Labour MPs, a greatly reduced majority, and the support of only 22% of the electorate, how many can afford to speak out and risk making their Party, to whom they owe so much, look ineffective and weak, unable to pass legislation that was a central plank to their platform? Not enough is the answer. So what's the point of sacrificing his influence within the party for something that it's possible nobody else will join him on the knife edge?

He's doing what's most pragmatic now, and maybe one day it can be about ideology. Yes. That must be it. We must believe it is with the best intentions that he'll be voting for a bill he can't bring himself to say he believes in on its own merits, quite apart from his party whip's wishes.

Why isn't that a good enough answer for me?

Another useless idealistic teenage fanasty I suppose...I'd better get back to voting for my least favourite person in Big Brother (a more effective and democratic exercise than May 5th) and stop worrying my little head that my representative cannot, in fact, under the current system, represent me.

UPDATE: Passed for second reading. Possibly with 20 Labour MPs revolting (actually, they all are revolting, but let's not start with partisan rabidity shall we?) including, I might add two new MPs Linda Riordan and Katy Clark. That's new MPs Tom, not new-thanks-to-redistricting. Grow a spine.

Money quote: 'His colleague Lynne Jones said the bill was "dumb" and should be "killed at birth".' Heh.

Oh, and just for balance, here's another anti-ID cards post from the other side of the political spectrum from Robin. Read the comments, where people talk about the good fight that will follow.

And in response to the comment about european countries, I wanted to let everyone know that here in France, while you are not technically obliged to carry an ID card, if you are asked for it by the police and cannot present one on demand, and if you have less than 2 euros on your person, they can arrest you for vagrancy. Not kidding. There's a reason all the beggars ask for two euros.

Now go here and see how another country does "voluntary" ID.