So, it's been awhile. I think I would have been content to let this blog lie, but I consider 12:30 too late be working and I'm still awake, so I blog. I mean, why not, right?

I'm in a library. There are 7 other people here - wait, 6, one just left - and somehow they have all clustered around me. I will clarify that i was here first, and that they clustered around me. And they don't obey library etiquette, there is clearly too much talking for them to be productive.

Just to the left of my computer screen some guy is hitting on some girl. I disapprove. Granted, she is hot, granted I understand the motivation, but come on guy: it's half an hour past midnight and there's a stack of chemistry notes in front of her. She's tired, you're tired, just let it be.

Well, 6 minutes is all I can justify spending on this - let it languish on the webpage with all of the other unread posts.

Goddamn it, I suck.

What about Maine?

I'm back in Maine and pleased to be so. I was gone just long enough for people to forget everything bad about me but still remember my name. With a fresh reputation, I look for ways to A) stop people from stealing my liquor and B) get into the co-op kitchen, with its fridge and full range stove. Across the hall yet forbidden, the Co-op kitchen has become the girl next door.

Continuing the metaphor, the bathroom is the weird old man who you think is harmless but then calls the police when you go to get the paper naked. Tomorrow I will buy a robe and flip flops, which should protect me from prudish attitudes and planters warts respectfully.

I am proud of my room. I'm not pleased with it - celebrities serve prison sentences in larger rooms - but I am proud of it. A sale at IKEA and a full warehouse at Puritan furniture have turned my institutional closet into a cozy hidey-hole. I can think of no better term for a room with more cushions than floor space.

Also, people complain about the weather here way too much; France is much colder and there isn't even any snow. Not to be un-PC, but Mainers shouldn't be less wind resistant than the French.

I have seen Geneva, I have seen Budapest. I will now rank them.

1. Budapest

2. Placeholder to further separate Budapest from Geneva

3. Geneva

Geneva sucks. It is the international city, housing the UN, UNICEF, the WTO, and the WIPO, granted. It has many fine museums, all of which offer free admissions, granted. The people there are polite and the watches attractive, granted. But there is simply no excuse for charging $14 for a fast food lunch and refusing to serve liquor after 9.

There were highlights: while I was allowed nowhere near the UN or UNICEF building, which is, strangely, the only one guarded with assault rifles, I was able to convince security guards to let me see the WTO and WIPO. I am ashamed to say that I rewarded their trust by stealing from a stack of policy papers outside the conference room, knowing full well they were for the delegates. I regret only not being bold enough to order something from the delegate bar.

I musn't forget the botanical gardens; Geneva is the only place in world where landscaping has brought me to tears. And I saw the Swissest watchmaker in existence: in a closet-size shop off the main drag he sits surrounded by ticking and clicking clocks, watches, and gears, quietly assembling a pocket watch with tweezers and pricing me out of his shop.

So, Geneva is someplace you can go to be inspired, to open your mind, and to marvel at what a unified Europe can look like, even if they are the hole in the European Union. Stubborn Swiss. Geneva is not, however, someplace you go to have fun. The second night, I went out with an Aussie and a Kiwi and our attempts to enjoy ourselves put us at odds with the fundamental nature of the city; we fought Geneva and Geneva won.

Budapest is another beast entirely, and one which I believe warrants an entry all its own. So I will close this, invite you to comment and encourage you to declare yourself an onlooker to my blog because it would feed my self-esteem.

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.