Fort de la Motte Giron

When Americans no longer need a military base, they condemn it, then pave over it.

When the Russians no longer need a military base, they allow the low grade iron to decay and hope that the low level radiation will keep away thrill seekers.

When the French no longer need a military base, they keep goats in it.

La Fort de la Motte Giron is a military base dating from the middle of the 19th century through 1950. Curiously enough, though during this period Dijon was attacked three times, twice by Germans and once by Allied forces, the fort has never been used, as none of the three armies saw any point in engaging the fort and instead contented themselves with occupying the town. Also worth noting that, despite extensive military construction, Dijon has not once held out against an invading army, though they have earned a number of medals for trying.

Today, the fort has bare walls, grafitti, no lights, and goat crap everywhere. The goats, while pleasant enough, are such tenacious poopers that unscalable heights and unplombable depths have been enshittened, thus limiting the fort's potential as a paint ball arena.

Connecting the fort to its satellites - small machine gun posts that today look and, thanks to the goats, smell like sewers outlets - are a series of underground tunnels which are almost cave-dark. French graffiti artists have, nonetheless, followed the frankly frightening furrows to their end; they are to be commended for their bravery but not their originality as their work is clearly derivative of American artists.

There was a HUGE dent in the fender

Walking along the rue de la liberté, a car is passing us slowly when a biclyclist flies down the road, straight into the front bumper. The biker is thrown off his seat and audibly smacks his face against the front windshield. The driver is understandably alarmed. The cyclist pushes himself off the hood of the car, climbs back onto his bike, waves 'My bad' at the driver, and pedals off. He didn't even raise an eyebrow.

Now, from this we can derive that France makes both bikes and cyclists better than it makes cars, because there was like a foot missing off the front of that fender. Only very slightly exagerrating

Also, I learned today how words are made. There is a council of learned men - I assume they are men - which carefully monitors the development of new concepts to apply labels to, particularly in the States. Thus, when we invented email, they invented 'courriel.'

They are assiduous; before the american word can cross the ocean, they have already
1. Created the word and
2. Instructed all government personnel, including all media, to use the French word in place of the English word and
3. Patted themselves on the back. Job well done.

Frustratingly, the learned council has discovered that 'couriel' is much less appealing to the French then is 'email.' Their solution to this has been to issue a synonym -

Mail electronique becomes 'Mel,' which is conveniently exactly how the French pronounce 'Mail,' so that when they hear the peuple dans la rue discussing their correspondence, the council can be assured that their authority is respected.

My First Weekend

So, my computer has made the sweeping decision not to recognize certain capital letters, regardless of context or program. This does not affect all letters – 'C' for example, is fine – but any hopes I had of beginning a sentence with 'you' went out the window with my capital y. This also means that I can neither put things in quotations nor use a colon though, for reasons that are unfathomable to me, my question mark is still operational. Thus handicapped, I still update.

Last night, I went to class, then to an antique show, then to see Bob Sinclair in concert, then to a night club where I danced and drank until 4 in the morning before finally getting 4 hours sleep on the floor of a german exchange student's dorm room. The antique show was amazing.

Literally every fantasy I have ever had about antiquing was realized. There was one table with surgeon's tools that looked like Victorian torture implements; there was a another table that I'm fairly was selling actual Victorian torture implements. There was a row of small bottles full of 20-70 year old liquor at 3 euros apiece. Next to the booze, something I thought was a bottle opener – nope, somethings from the gynecologist's.

There were delicate porcelain figurines forever engaged in sexual exploits. There were sets of ivory shaving kits next to binoculars and rifles that I'm fairly certain were used to hunt the elephant the shaving kits came from. There was a pale faced doll with a cracked wooden smile and dead eyes standing in a crib. They didn't have a sword cane that I saw, which could mean they only stocked really good sword canes, but they did have a sword inside a bucket of canes. Also inside the bucket was a cane with a vicious iron hook on the end and a rifle which apparently doubled as a cane, so, innovation there.

None of these, however, are things I would want to bring through customs, so they will stay here and in our collective memory. I left with a small metal imprint of Joan d'Arc and the happy thought that antiquing was cool again.

The preceding was a weak, weak post. I apologize: I was tired and I rushed it so I could catch a bus. I know that's not excuse and will try to do better tomorrow.

Thank you for understanding.

Terrible, terrible news: I'm losing my American accent. Just today, a large group of people was unable to tell my region of origin after I unleashed a stream of flawless French; when I unleash a stream, I want people to know where it came from.

Consider it this way: you meet, let's say a Russian, with a thick, thick accent, who sometimes can't think of a word, or who periodically misconjugates something. Bottom line, he's Russian, which automatically makes him cool in the states; good for him.

Now consider you meet a guy in the street who says, "When my father built our house, he look often for, eh, in the, eh...what do you call the thing that is where the, eh, [mimes for hammer] is put in?" Without an accent, this man is mentally retarded.

And not only is an thick, thick accent the only thing that makes an inability to form a sentence cool, it also means you get bonus points for everything you say correctly: when I, as mentioned earlier, let loose with a 3 sentence long, clause-laden, tense-jumping masterpiece of bilingualism, I should have had like a 5x multiplier, Such was not the case - they nodded and responded.

If anyone has suggestions for how to keep or even thicken an American accent, I will be more than happy to hear them; for now, I plan on listening to more Johnny Cash and hoping.