Les said, the better II

Ah, so I was coming home from school, when the train pulled into a station filled with excited youths. They were jumping up and down, drinking champagne and singing. They got into the train car behind mine and started jumping up and down so the whole car was shaking. One woman, sitting near the window facing into my car, looked alarmed.

Some of the youths were wearing what looked like sports jerseys. There was drinking, confetti and merriment and jumping up and down and hammering on the inside of the car. When the train pulled into the next station, they all streamed, screaming, out of their car and ran to other cars on the train. A large number of them were soon standing near me. They sang a song that included the words “bon soir [something that sounded like école].” They seemed to be early college age.
Some attractive young women decided to greet me and the other students of my school. “Bon soir!” they said and kisses us all in turn. On the cheek, which is a normal french greeting.
I blushed.
At the next stop, they ran around again. This continued until Bastille, and then they all got off and headed off to party someplace else aside from the metro.
They’re students, but I don’t know what was going on aside from that. One blasé older man shrugged as the kids disembarked at Bastille. «C’est le weekend.»
Indeed. Happy whatever holiday tomorrow is!
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

here was even some evidence that women who drank lots of coffee — four or more daily cups of regular or decaf — faced a slightly lower risk for developing high blood pressure than those who drank little or none.

Winkelmayer said that may be because coffee has lots of antioxidants, substances which are thought to help protect the heart and reduce risks of cancer.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/11/08/national/a132928S65.DTL&feed=rss.news
Too bad it makes me all jumpy and stressed and . . . . I’m going to go brew myself some coffeeeeeee right nooooowwwww
Tags: Coffee, Celesteh

My friend at school is subletting his apartment. It evaporates for him next wednesday. So he decided that a good way to find a new place would be to go to University buildings and look for ads posted on message boards there. So yesterday, we went on a little tour of basements of the Paris Universities. I’m trying to cut back on my caffeine intake, so I don’t know exactly which schools I wandered in to. The institute of Art and Archeology’s building looks like Babylonian fortress. The building is a copy of some buildings in the archeology museum in Berlin. They have a copy of the greek temple frieze ringing the building and the front looks like the aforementioned temple, complete with winged lions on either side.

Some of buildings were impressive, like that one. Some, like the unguarded side of the École Normale Superior were ugly. None of them seemed new. The schools are all public, but many of them looked a lot like Columbia University in New York. They look like elite, Ivy league schools, which is what they are, even though they’re not.
i walked into the Sorbonne campus. It was lined with a gate and they had a security guard who was supposed to check IDs, but I guess I looked enough like a student and he didn’t stop me. They have a large courtyard in the part I was in. One end is a huge patriotic mural. There are statues above it that are plated in new brass or gold. On the other end is a domed building, with imposing stairs leading up into it. There are to larger than life statues next to the stairs. One is Pascal. I didn’t want to be too obviously sightseeing, so I didn’t take any pictures.

My fellow trespasser was a Marxist. “How many black people do you see?” He asked, angrily, “How many arabs?” From where I was standing, I saw one person with darker than average skin and I saw one black person earlier in the hallway.
The security guards were inside as well as outside. I felt their eyes on me, as if they could tell that I didn’t belong because I was too old, too casual, no backback, looking around in wonder, some reason. We left through a stricter gate where they were patting people down and checking every ID.
We looked at the books for sale in the bookstores right outside of the exceedingly posh, wealthy campus. Most were from the 19th century. A few got into the early part of the 20th. “It’s like a school from another century” my companion said. I felt lucky and privileged not to have gone to such a prestigious school for my undergrad, where I could learn new ideas, unencumbered by history or tradition but also old ideas, which I was free to ignore if needed. Music history and tonal harmony were required classes, but nobody demanded I write in those styles. John Cage could never have been associated with the Sorbonne, nor Lou Harrison, but both were attached to Mills.
In the United States, we have discussions about accessibility in education. I don’t know if this is talked about in France or not. For all the discussions, you could walk around Mills or Wesleyan and see it’s absence, but maybe not so pronounced. The entrance to the nice side of the École Normal Superior is though a set of two locked doors with a gatekeeper watching everyone who passes through. This would be controversial on most American campuses. The path through the booth included three stairs.
These schools are for the young, for the able-bodied and for the bourgeoise. Just like Wesleyan, but public. And the kids who graduate from the Sorbonne and other schools have guaranteed lifetime employment once they get out and become functionaries. They’re smart and exceedingly well educated and set for life.
Meanwhile, the youth in the suburbs continued to set fires, protesting their lack of access to education.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

So last night, round midnight, I was sitting around my home wondering if it was just so cold that I should go to bed. (Yes, I have heat, but it’s cheaper just to sleep at night than to run it.) I realized that there probably warm and toasty car fires going on right at that very second! So, since I’m an American, I tuned on the TV.

Channel 1 was showing a French movie. Channel 2 was showing “Cold Case” (The case of the murdered white woman who lived alone followed by the case of the murdered black woman who expressed sexual otherness). Channel 3 was showing a reality show set in Prague. Channel 4, which is always fuzzy shows nothing but football day or night. Channel 5, the arte channel, was showing an angsty american woman artist talking about something. Channel 6, the commercial channel (M6), was showing an old movie with people in funny hats inspecting a chamber pot.
Meanwhile, more cars were burned than ever. And one person died (the first and only one) from injuries received on Friday.
I don’t have cable or anything. But there were no program interruptions. No live pictures of burning cars. No live views from the nine helicopters flying over the suburbs. Liberation and Le Monde were not posting live updates to their web pages.
This may be one of those cultural differences I’ve been reading about.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

More than 1200 cars were bruned last night, a few of which were actually in Paris, near the Place de la Republique . . . Hey, that’s my neighborhood!

I saw a LOT of flics around there this afternoon. Several police vans. (Maybe somebody had his feet on his seat.) A few other cop cars were on their way. I didn’t see any smoking remains of cars, but I wasn’t looking until after 5:00 pm and I can’t imagine they would still be there by that hour.
I don’t talk to real French people very often, so I don’t know how on their mind this is. It wasn’t overwhelming Radio France until today and was growing in Liberation’s RSS feed, until it finally, today, outnumbered other stories. I have no idea where it was in print newspapers and I don’t know if people are talking about it. Right now, It’s all over Radio France. I went out for dinner last night at the restaurant across the street from my building and the restaurant was packed. Oddly, it was packed with Americans(!). My apartment building is next to a Hotel which seems to have a mostly American clientele. The food was really really good Lebanese food. The laso had Lebanese wine, which is kind of a surprising thing to exist . . .. Anyway.
This uprising is very strange, because I just can’t imagine it in the USA. They would have been shooting rioters by now. Also, it’s really brilliant to be sending guys on motorbikes out with molotov cocktails. In an alarming sort of way. How could you stop that? So it’s partly shocking because of how un-violent the “violence” is. Partly shocking how the cops aren’t escalating things in the way they would at home. Partly shocking because this never happens at home. Why shouldn’t oppressed people burn cars in the USA?
Ok, so, since this is now close to my abode, I’m making sure that Cola and I always carry our passports when we go out, in case we get stopped. Tomorrow, when the BHV opens again, I’m going to go buy a smoke alarm. And aside form that, I don’t know. I’ve been around Republique around 2:00 AM and there were a lot of people out. The fires there were apparently set near 3:00 AM. I don’t feel unsafe as long as it’s crowded. And . . . well, this is just part of life here. Nobody seems to be freaking out.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

The best coverage on the Iraqi war and the Israel / Palestine conflict comes from France. The best coverage of the French riots is by Al Jazeera. They’ve got a timeline. It ends before last night when 900 more cars were torched (or some number, I think some of the numbers I’m seeing are cumulative and are being mis-reported in the English-language press as nightly totals). Anyway, between 1000-2000 cars have been burned so far, since this uprising started. Apparently burning cars is a fairly normal happening in poor areas. And a handicapped woman was injured when her bus was set on fire and she couldn’t get out quickly. (Reports that she specifically was doused with gasoline while trying to exit the bus seem exceedingly unlikely.) But so far, most “violence” has been limited to property damage.

It’s looking like 1968, they say. Rumors are flying. I think Liberation has the best coverage aside from Al Jazeera, but they suck for trying to get a big picture or find out how many cars have been burned. There’s some word that riots will continue until Sarkozy, the Interior Minister who called poor youths ‘scum’, steps down. There’s also word that rioters are organizing via blogs and cell phones to motivate youths in other city to set fires and to keep track of police locations. And a lot of what passes for news is a whole lot of rumor.
The French police are not reacting like the American police would. No rioters have been shot. They didn’t even bring out helicopters until a night or two ago. The political rhetoric is unfortunate, but the actions of the flics seems somewhat restrained. Maybe because they’re in the spotlight? Maybe because they actually got shot at recently? Maybe because they only feel bravado when they outnumber their targets by mass numbers? (I read a news story where a kid complained because the police called for backup to give him a ticket for having his feet on the seat in the subway. Three police vans showed up, he said. So, if it takes three police vans for feet on your seat, they would need at least 12 per rioter . . ..)
Sarkozy should resign. His replacement, hopefully, can enter into dialog with the rioters and maybe there’ll be calm.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh

I had been thinking queer visibility was really low here, but then I saw two lesbians (you know what i mean) on tuesday and a queer looking womean today and I thought I saw three drag queen on tuesday also, but then today I was looking at a picture of Camilla Parker Bowles (the royal person currently visitting america) and I thought she was a drag queen. While this would explain why the royal family wouldn’t initially let charles marry her, I can’t beleive they tabloid press wouldn’t have picked up that story by now. I think I have my queer meter set on over-sensitive.

But at least one of the people I spotted really was a TG hooker, wearing these incredible clear plastic platform shoes, big enough to keep goldfish in and wearing a metal belt with bells on it that rang when she swung her hips. I could fall in love with a girl like that if I weren’t already in love with a girl not like that. As Lynn Breedlove once sang, “I’m a tranny chaser. Give me chicks with dicks. I’ll bring them beer and dasies. And lollypops to lick.”
I said something to a guy at school about how Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for cross-dressing and he said, “You must feel very proud.”
For her martyrdom, he meant. I guess I’m not very subtle.
Princess Di was totally hot. I don’t know what was Charles’ problem.
Tags: Paris, Celesteh