What a douche.

I received a forward the other day.

It was one of those, admittedly; fairly humorous “Men are so silly” forwards. And they are, girlfriend! It went along the lines of:

“Women showering: “Shampoo condition, exfoliate, scrub, blowdry, fluff, clean, exit bathroom”

Men showering: “Grunt; scratch balls, rince hair, leave shower, throw towel on bed. MEN ARE SO GROSS ISN’T THAT HILARIOUS.”

To begin with, I’m not as sure that there is a clean gender divide here. My wet towels seem to love to congregate on my bed, I shave my legs as little as possible, and I’m not a particularly fastidious conditioner-er.

Besides, without going into detail, I’ve had a fair few metrosexual boyfriends. Nosestrips and facial masks-type boyfriends. Anyways.

It occurred to me then that noone really has gone into Parisian showering habits:

IF YOU ARE LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE A SHOWER IN YOUR FLAT:

1. Turn on shower, stand outside shivering while water heats. Get spritzed by offshoots of faulty nozzle. Shiver.

2. Enter shower, hurt elbow closing plastic shower door. Hope said door doesn’t fall off.

3. Stand under trickling stream of nozzle. Try to imagine yourself getting clean. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking.

4. Apply shampoo, lather, bang elbows on plastic door. Ignore rapidly-forming bruises. Beauty (and Cleanliness) is pain.

5. Note soap suds slowly trickling down body. Double task! Who needs shower gel?

6. Feel fuzzy legs, grab razor. Begin awkard samba to try and reach legs in the 2 sq foot box in which you are standing.

7. Fall over. Get up, attempt shaving legs again, bending leg in ‘crouching stork’ position.

8. Legs half-shaven, feel hot water running out. Leave shower immediately. One leg shaven is as good as two.

9. Repeat process every 3-5 days.

Curioser and Curioser

Ah, Noel.

It's fairly calm, and anything but tacky. Damn you, Paris, and your overbearing good taste. I can only compare it to the small town of Nyborg, Denmark where I spent late November; a town full of people I adore, but also a town that decorates by attaching plush, life-sized gnomes to every building.

It's borderline horrifying. Essentially, the town hall decided to deck the halls with festive suicidal midgets. Nothing says 'Christmas' like small people trying to fling themselves out windows!

Now, Paris does let itself go a little bit, when it comes to storefronts.

Behold, the Moschino Cheap & Chic window on Rue de Grenelle:


What isn't fabulous about this? Adorable Christmas figures plunged into a life of destitution and crime after seeing their portfolios disintegrate: "C'EST LA CRISE" ! And on some basic level, everyone passing by is forced to realise that this is the only way they could afford those frustratingly cute aubergine dresses on display.

Thank you, Moschino. For reminding us of JUST HOW POOR WE REALLY ARE. (Note the gnome playing look out in the corner...maybe he'll migrate North to Denmark to off himself once his life of crime fizzles).

And then. There's Galaries Lafayette.
They've never disappointed in the past. They've been consistently creative and yet, it seems they've passed the 'creative' mark and gone straight to..well...uhh...drugs..



Oh YES, those really are babies smoking opium pipes on top of that mushroom. Now THAT is the spirit of Christmas, my friends: Newborns smoking Class A drugs. It makes me feel all warm and cozy inside.

The biggest question here is what this is supposed to sell? Crack? Baby dolls? Crack babies? I'm willing to guess this window has the opposite effect its designers intended:
Instead of ushering their children to see this window, if I were a parent I would corral my kids away..."SHIELD YOUR EYES, JIMMY, NOTHING TO SEE HERE! REMEMBER WHAT WE LEARNED ABOUT NOT ACCEPTING 'CANDY' FROM STRANGERS?!"

...Merry Christmas from Paris.

Secret socialist wins election!

Meanwhile, over in Paris, A PS (Socialist Party) poster notes, "Obama did it.."


Somewhere in Paris, a sad lonely Republican ex-pat is thinking to himself, 'If only we could have fed this to the assclowns running the McCain campaign BEFORE the election?' 

Ah, the desperate attempts to color Obama as a socialist (as if that's a bad thing?) and a Muslim (again, patently offensive to suggest that's a bad thing) didn't work. And he's our president. I'm so happy about this, people, I almost put an smileyface emoticon there. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Congratulations, America; this snobby ex-pat has god a bad case of hope and it feels good. 

The chicks are TOTALLY going to dig this.

It's become unbearable.

The only thing worse than waiting these 5 days until the election is being in a country where, surprisingly, people are allowed think about other things.

I've become a social pariah at dinner parties; if anyone dare utters 'America' I climb onto my soapbox, start gesticulating wildly and throw out overarching truths about the election. 

"La base américaine est un MYTHE crée par Karl Rove en 2004...!!"

I never realized how much I enjoyed pontificating until approximately August 2008. I mean, how DARE they have an opinion, they CAN'T UNDERSTAND MY PAIN. No non-American (save for maybe, Iraqis and Afghans, and a smattering of other nationalities..) understands the trauma of 2004! 

I don't care if you read the NYTimes MORE often than I do, WERE YOU IN PALM BEACH COUNTY IN 2000? I DIDN'T THINK SO.

I have become a woman obsessed. I compulsively reading every online media source that even vaguely provides information on the outcome.

Blogging about this any more would just feed the cycle of insanity. To distract myself, and you, kind reader, a potpourri of life these days...

1. Oh angst, thy name is some dude named 'Aaron'



Waiting in line for my flight to America the other week, I became aware of this gentleman in front of me. Fat, plumply, large, loud, American and about my age. He's wearing a backpack with HUGE tags from various ski resorts in North America. Now, we all know how I feel about self-glorifying skiiers. This guy already was already creeping up the douchebag scale.

Then, seeing a way to skip the line, picks up his backpack and says to the patiently waiting queue:

"AU VWA, SUCKERS!"

...it was precisely at this moment, when I was silently willing his head to explode that I noticed his HAT. Fresh off some Oktoberfest (totally AwEsOme wOoOo) drinking tour, he felt the need to BUY and WEAR a hat with a Little Plush Beer Stein glued to the side.

Not only that, the Little Plush Beer Stein had a plume attached, representing, of course, beer. On a hat. I never thought one sartorial object could say something so clearly, but apparently this hat CAN say ' I enjoy the fact that I have a beer gut at 21, don't shower, and have the intelligence of a raccoon. Also, I really enjoy Phish and Guster."


2. Where have all the Good Men Gone...?



...they've been processed, canned and sold for 2 euros at a market in Belleville.


3. For Your Moment of Zen, a great moment in the history of American song, brought to you by A.W. and M.K-S, at the Morikami Gardens in Delray Beach...

"French public said to support Obama's exit strategy"

...toward a lasting paix in Iraq.

Putting the "ass" in "canvassing"

As a general rule, I prefer "grumpiness and cynicism" to "hope and ideological motivation."
But the idea of Barack Obama as president makes my Eurosnobbish heart warm over. So, finding myself in South Florida a few precious weeks before the election, I decide to talk to strangers and get heatstroke--for the cause.

I show up to the Obama-Biden headquarters located in the Bermuda Star of David of south Florida: the intersection of Delray Beach and Boca; a half mile from the Kings' Point complex, and East of the everglades.

I'm greeted by a 20-something at the door, cute in a sort of annoyingly motivated sort of way. "WHAT AN ADAWRABLE BOY!" an 80-something volunteer would exclaim later. (I was waiting to hear "I'm gawing to intraduce him ta my granddawtah!" but alas...)

I say I'm willing to canvas, and he shuffles me over to a table with an attractive middle aged woman. I ask where she's from, she says Boston. Originally? Lebanon. I'm immediately excited; start talking about my aborted year in Beirut, etc. Then it occurs to me...

...They're sending a blonde and a Lebanese woman out to canvas in Boca Raton. Boca. Raton.
The 'more pro-Israel-than-Israelis' heartland. The Hilary-or-die democrats. The target of the Great Schlep!

Nevertheless, we pile into my car with Obama buttons and our mail-in ballots, and get assigned to a neighborhood picked at random.

Knocking on the first door, we speak with a nice, young black guy about mail-in voting. We chat, he fills out a mail-in ballot request form.

As we're leaving, my canvassing partner declares in a loud voice:

"WHY THEY SEND US TO BLACK NEIGHBORHOOD, BLACKS ALREADY LIKE OBAMA."

I mumble something about pushing early voting and we keep going. We knock on a couple more doors, everyone is really nice and receptive, and I'm feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about America, racial harmony, and the future of the world as a whole. THEN Faiza offers another piece of wisdom:

"BLACK PEOPLE WHY THEY ALWAYS SO ANGRY?"

"What's that?"

"FOR EXAMPLE THAT BLACK MAN HE LOOK SO angry LOOK AT WAY HE ANSWERED THE DOOR..[continues rambling]..."

"(Silence)....uhhh..."

REALLY, Obama volunteer?! Although tempted to point out the obvious--that we were volunteering for a man who happens to be black, and in fact the old white man is the 'angry' one, I was shocked into silence. I'm willing to accept that I didn't understand the nuance of what she was trying to say, but I think I got the gist of it.

Clearly, her feet are in the right place, but I don't quite buy the "I'm voting for Obama, so I can be as racist as I like." It's worse than the "Some of my best friends are...(black/gay/et al.)" rhetort, which has never held any water, and is even sadder on the eve of this election.

Sad, strange, or just plain depressing, the experience is noteworthy because the first place I have heard pretty openly racist remarks firsthand was....with a volunteer for Obama.

Oh, America.

UPDATE! Well, hello, Gawker, way to reiterate the scary/fascinating phenomenon of Racists for Obama

One million tiny plays about France, #1

(Idea lovingly ripped off from a column in The Guardian)

Two Parisian boys, just returned from August vacation in Manhattan, practice their English, discuss their futures.

Jean-Pierre: Thibault, how are you going?

Thibault: Ugh, I go well, but the research for the work, she makes me shit. 

J.P.: You don't have the chance, you should prepare to the E.N.A. like me. This is the work of the real aristocrats.

Thibault: I find what you do completely undickable. I don't dick any of it. 

J.P.: But why you don't want to become a functionary? Do you want to work more than 35 hours a week?

Thibault: Of course not, but I don't want to work with those shitters. The idea of this makes me shit more than the research for work. Maybe I will to move to London?

J.P.: 'a'a'a'a'a'. And eat their food?

Thibault: This is true. And make love to their women? 

J.P.: There is perhaps something there. They have never had a real lover with 'Ze French Touch'. 

Thibault: I will make my little English take her foot. 

J.P.: Ah yes, she will climb the curtains. 

Thibault: It's decided. I move to London.