Marseille Monoprix Scene

Vieille Dame (watching the thug in front of us carefully place forty forties of Heineken on the conveyor belt): Oh, ma vie!
Me: (smiles, carefully shifts bags overflowing with Kookai and kakis)
VD: Vous êtes bien chargée!
Me: Moi, je suis forte.
VD: Qu’est-ce que c’est votre signe?
Me: Um…je suis Vièrge?
VD: Il ne faut pas changer!

moi, émoi

In Paris Jennie and I summoned up our past with champagne and navettes, which while lacking the coquettish religiosity of cookies en coquille at least connote a textual shuttling back and forth. Alexandre played us a sonata; later, we clamored over his little English phrases. Romain called to say we could never go home again; the apartment en bas burned. Manon gossips that it was the landlord's drunk ex-wife, but Romain diplomatically assures me that on ne sait pas encore. I came back to collect my things to discover the lock blocked with an invisible sliver of glass. My key did no more good than when I repetitively enter the clé for the wireless internet. Later Romain, after admitting himself keyless and for once at my newly-keyed mercy, keyed up the exchange by mocking my atonal accent: Too-ahh-un-klay? Shut the fuck up.

Unsurprisingly I feel much more intimate with my roommates since relationships turned textual. Even Romain resorts to text message slang when having to tell me for the fifth time that he’s not there to let me in. Marwan announced on my wall, “I am your real/cyber friend right now!”, and Manon scrawled on a pink post-it, “QUI A MANGE MA MANDARINE???”, under which was written, “C’était moi, ça te derange?” and over which was written “OUI!!!” A new note was then posted, reading, “Si tu veux on peut partager les tampons, serviettes de bain…” followed by a vulgar view of an animal with the appellation “Romain"...for a little while our refrigerator was like a virtual Facebook.

Marseille Bar Scene or Lesson on the Present Perfect?

"I've never killed a kangaroo."
"I've never kissed the teacher."
"I have had syphilus."
"I've never slept with the teacher."
"I've never eaten oysters."
"Have you ever been pom pom girl?"
"I have had sex on a mountain."

Answer bank: Marseille bar scene, lesson on the present perfect

Gesamtwerk

If you have talked to me within the past 5 years, you probably know that my main passion in life is rewriting pop songs to make them safer for children and teach them positive lessons. I wanted to share the ones I have come up with so far so that you can share them with your children, and extend an invitation to you for any suggestions to put on my album.

1. Let's talk about snacks, baby
2. I'm nice 'cause I share (to the tune of "This is why I'm hot")
3. "If you wanna meet my brother" (to the tune of the Spice Girls song)
4. Cuddle Up (to R. Kelley's "Double Up")
5. Everybody Use the Potty (to the tune of "Everybody Rock your body")
6. Call on Me (to the tune of "Call on me," but the remix is about waving your hand in class eagerly when you know the answer)
7. I'm bringing Katie snacks or I'm eating healthy snacks (to the tune of "I'm bringing sexy back")
8. Trying to make me go to pre-school (to the tune of "trying to make me go to rehab")

If anyone had any confusions, this is obviously not Katie.

Seuils

On Friday the teacher told me, dreamily, that she had to go upstairs “for trip to England,” and Ynes, instead of correcting her essay on her dream life (“I have no dream, I am girl perfect but I will say about girl perfect too Paris Hilton”), took this as an opportunity to splay herself, lollipop in mouth, on Amir’s desk. I let her do her thing…Amir wasn’t really into it anyway, Ynes has serious skin problems. I was helping a beautiful delicate girl named Camille when a cry started up chez Ynes; she was straight up kissing Margot (not as sassy, much better skin). All the Arab boys were all “Lesbian! Lesbian!”, all the white boys were all “Be Quiet Please!”, I was all, “Sexuality is a continuum…” I told Ynes she should be more like Camille, who was a very good student and probably didn’t eat much sugar…Ynes was like “Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes, No,” a joke which I only enjoy(c)ed in retrospect.

Later Liz texted to ask if I was feeling extra textual. I wasn’t sure if she meant extremely textual or hors de texte; the opposite meanings cleaved. My frequent searches for “Marwan” break Facebook, rendering the Search function temporarily unavailable and proving him a force more powerful than the internet…finally he divinely intervened to friend, and duly poke, me. “Tu vis sur internet,” Romain said solemnly, and since I often confuse Roman-featured Romain with the romanesque romans I read, I assumed he was using the passé simple of “voir” instead of the simple present of “vivre,” which explanation he graciously accepted in his vast nobility.

I spent the weekend in Cambridge getting wankered with Jamie and some other chavs in bars of mythic nomenclature, discussing Lacan’s wanton equations, the Prussification and Proustification of Nietzsche, and why Nietzsche and Jeremy Kessler are against public education. I hitchhiked to the airport with some Dutch chavs catching the EasyJet back to Amsterdam. At the terminal I explained to the cashier ringing up my candy that instead of converting my extra pounds to euros I was converting pounds to kilos; that got a grunt.

After arriving in Marseille too late, hors d’horaires of the navette, I’m back in my propre appartement propre, poking Marwan, reading about la jalousie persane and, with my carnet épuisé, writing vignettes in the paratext of the Persian Letters. The last entry, évidemment, was written by Ice Cream Girl...Happy Hannahkah baby.

Hold on to your teenage daughter

Sorry for the delay; for those of you who aren't Katie, I had to skip work yesterday to take Josh to the zoo. I also missed the annual DANY holiday party, where everyone grinded with each other and Mr. Morgenthau and all around got their respective flirts on. Josh and I had a little holiday party of our own that consisted of him setting up a fishy tank in my room for about 3 hours in his adorable, autistically focused way while I made him my fiancee on facebook, if but for a brief, sweet moment/ I guess I had even more fun than that--when I rolled into work at 11 this morning, a few coworkers thanked me for writing "hey hotay ;)" on their walls very late, which I had no recollection of doing.


There are 2 main things on my mind these days--winter break and weightlifting. Josh M. and Josh K. are taking a 10-day vaycay in paris in january. Which honeymoon would I rather crash, I really can't decide. Although if Liz is going to Vienna I guess that settles things right off the bat--jk, love ya liz-a-licious.

(my coworker who said that thing about 3.8 gpa's being the cutoff just told me i'm "so hot right now," as i sit at the front desk answering other people's calls with one hand and picking my ear with the other. she also always says "heart it" and signs her emails "kisses" because she went to harvard but is still down to earth and girly, like alexandra parfitt)

as for weightlifting, a trainer at the gym with some unpronounceable hispanic name who insists on being addressed as "big e" approached me mid-deadlift the other day. apparently, while watching my "form," he came to the natural conclusion that i would be the perfect partner to train with for a bodybuilding competition. when i told Josh, he told me that big E had been hitting on me. of course i became livid that Josh didn't believe someone could possibly think i was good at something other than doing it, and, as punishment i told big E that I would be honored to enter the bodybuilding competition with him. so now i am training several times a week and taking 12 different supplements from GNC that give me insane fits of rage. Big E texts me regularly for encouragement; i just got one that said "hey whats up have u done any mussle resurch?"

work is getting so fucking boring. at first it seemed so stable and healthy to have this regular schedule. now every morning when my alarm rings, it's just ridiculous. i can't wait to quit and move to marseille with my mussle contest money.

le cru et le cuit

Mais si Julien l’eût aimée, il l’eût aperçue derrière les persiennes à demi fermées du premier étage, le front appuyé contre la vitre….

-Le Rouge et le Noir

Speech follows writing and I’m literally (physically, bodily) losing my voice; cigarettes remain my pharmakon of choice. I roll my own now, a heady mixture of tobacco and herbes de Provence.

For a while I thought life was punless. The only différance I savor in this vegetable world is that of slowly roasted sweet potatoes, and I sometimes even ruin it with raw radishes. John, something of a snide sniper, led willing assistantes up the winding, windy hill from Castellane. We sullenly smoked and for some reason sipped Scotch while Liz converted American GPAs to British (“You need a 3.0, which is…what, a 2.2?” “B,” John said flatly). These are dark times; when I turn on the Music Black channel, desperate to sing along to “Ayo Technology” with Marwan, I’m greeted with a literally black screen, void of the promised two hours of “Hits Black.” J’en ai marre de la technologie… My references are more subtle than accurate, more sentimental than artistic. If he had loved her he would have glimpsed her through the persiennes, but he was blind, not even jaloux of the jalousies!