France, Britain, and me in the middle

Twilight

2009-07-18T22:08:00.004+02:00

So I finally caved in and decided to watch Twilight, and finally see what the hell everyone was going on about. I'm watching in right now, and I've got through twenty minutes of a 2-hour film.
So far :

-I think kristen stewart is a terrible actress
-WTF is with all those kids fawning over her the first minute she sets foot in school(the guys are all over her, the teen journalist thinks she has really good ideas,other girl thinks she's funny)?That seriously doesn't happen in real life.
-The faces Rob pattinson makes when he first has to sit next to her in biology are AWESOME. He looks like he's about to throw up.
-Jacob is pretty hot. So is Edward when he's not about to puke. Which is funny because those two have been all over the internets for ages and I'd never seen the appeal.
-Why is everything so damn grey?
-Her voiceover is fucking awful
-Edward is bloody unpleasant

-and now he's watching her sleep
-turns down nice dude because edward is watching her,but supposedly is because she's going to Jacksonville
-Edward wants to know WHAT is in jacksonville!!!Not creepy. especially the part where he only knows because he eavesdrops. And then she falls over AGAIN and he scolds her because she's clumsy. Sounds rather like my father, come to think of it.
-Edward is a prick.
-I like the asian dude.
-Edward is telling her to stay away from him, because he is BAD. (sound advice, as far as i'm concerned)
-Bella is a Very Good Friend to the girls.It's very obvious. She tells the dude she turned down to ask the girl who likes him (Jessica?) to prom, and tells the other to ask Eric (asian dude) to prom since he's not asking her ,and we all know it's because he likes Bella. Jeez. (and her advice works!)
-And three vampires eat some fisherman. This is the second death after some guy was "eaten by animals" earlier, and for the moment they're the only interesting thing in this film.
-SUN!!!!
-shopping!pink and purple dresses!
-scary dudes in an alley start seriously harassing Bella, but Edward turns up!It's magic. Or stalking. And he wants to kill them because he knows the disgusting, disgusting things they were thinking.
-Edward says creepy things totally randomly.
-Trying to cut Bella some slack here, because hey, hard to believe and all that, but is she an idiot, or is it just me?Maybe he can't read her mind because....there's nothing to read!I'm mean. But seriously. Plus this blank slate vibe she's giving off is squicking me out.
-And now he's frustrated because he can't read her mind. Which is seriously disturbing. And she, instead of being, i don't know, relieved that this freaky dude can't hear what she's thinking, actually wonders if there's something wrong with her. Answer : YES.
-Really "romantic" moment where Edward goes "i don't have the strength to stay away from you anymore", and Bella flutters "then don't" is just hilarious. I don't get it. Seriously, this is the kind of sentence that should make a girl, or woman, think for a minute. Plus it feels sooo contrived. Might be the acting. It is not good.
-They've found the fisherman. Another "animal" attack. Bella's dad is sad.
-Bella's google-fu is awesome, and she has Understood.
-And she walks to the forest, and he follows her. And this is the lamest scene of the whole movie, up to now. Bella Knows!And she tells him! And she says 'i know what you are' and he goes "say it"and she says it!HE'S A VAMPIRE, you guys!
-Right, no, this is getting worse, he is running up to the top of the mountain so that she sees what he looks like in the sunlight. This actually, seriously blows. Vampires do not do sunlight, for christ's sake. And no place on earth is THAT cloudy. NO SUNLIGHT, Stephenie Meyer!
-SPARKLES!!!!!!Plus he opened his shirt so, you know, she could see him sparle properly. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.
-Edward is a tortured soul. Teen angst.
-Now he is showing Bella how much stronger than her she is; he is designed to kill, has killed people. Plus he wanted to kill her. he wants her blood!
But she TRUSTS him.
-her smell is a drug to him.Just say no, Edward!
-Bella knows he can control his impulse to kill her!Now what does that remind me of?
Oh yes. Women as guardians of sex. You know the drill. Women don't like sex, only give it up because they want marriage and babies, blabla, that men only agree to because they want sex all the time. Wev.Back to the mountain! (actually the scenery is lovely. Only good point here.)
-Now Bella's only fear is losing him!They're in love!But no kissing.
-And now they're lying in (wet) grass, staring at each other. THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE ROMANTIC. The sun comes out!He sparkles again!

Funny how him sparkling makes me think more of christian iconography and angels than vampires.hm. Someone's got all this slightly mixed up! But no, he's pure...he doesn't eat humans!(at the moment). Could probably work in some redemption themes in there somewhere. But it smells of religion to me.A lot.

-Edward has smiled!Everyone knows they're dating!Other vampires are not impressed!

-In this world, vampires have no restraint as soon as they get a whiff of human blood.
Like dudes supposedly have no restraint because their sex drives are so high?boys will be boys?

-Bella knows vampires killed those two people. And they all have special powers.

Okay, after 1 hour,1 minute and 30 seconds of this, I give up. I will try and finish it another time, but this movie?Is bad. And I like a lot of bad movies. I am no connoisseur. But this is just fucking terrible. And it's creepy that this is peddled to teenage girls as a great romance. I'm still looking for romance here, people!

This makes me wait for the next episode of True Blood even more. I miss Buffy :(

Musings

2009-07-09T23:30:00.002+02:00

I was reading shapely prose today, first the post on the DLBs which drove me nuts, then followed the link back to "turn that douchehound upside down" in which hundreds of comments tell of daily harassment. By men.
But hey, everyone knows a woman can't tell of what happens to her in her daily life, right?

This probably rubs me even more wrong than usual, since something particularly...unpleasant happened to me not long ago. It was my best friend's 21st, and I crashed in her roommate's bed, a dude I've known since I was 14; never anything between us, and we've shared a bed after parties a good few times. Plus that particular night best friend had someone sleeping with her^^
But anyways. We chatted a bit; we were both pretty drunk, subject got onto sex. Every now and again he tries to get me to have sex with him; i used to treat it as a joke. But he knew I didn't want to, since I explicitly told him that if I had wanted to, i'd have made it known by now. I'm not shy like that. I don't want to fuck him, never have wanted to. On top of it all, he has a girlfriend of two years.
So I fell asleep. And woke up in the morning with no knickers on. Wriggled back into them, while realising some other dude that had been at the party had also been sleeping in the room, which really freaked me out, whispered "why the fuck was I not wearing anything on the bottom?" or some french equivalent, got a "i don't know" shrug of the shoulders, and got out.
You know what? i know he groped me while I was sleeping. I have vague memories of warm feelings during the night, but I am a very sound sleeper when tipsy. My body responded to whatever he was doing; I could see traces of it in my underwear. I can also feel it the next day if my clit has been rubbed pretty vigorously, and need I say i was feeling it then, and feeling completely confused about it?
But that I probably got wet and rubbed my butt against him or whatever while fast asleep? IS NO FUCKING EXCUSE for feeling me up when 1)I had while AWAKE told him i wasn't interested, 2)IN NO STATE to say yes or no.

I felt bad after that. Dirty. Used. Confused. Scared. I haven't seen him since.
I told my best friend that night. She said she believed me, and she saw how upset I was. i also felt the disbelief. "he would never do that". Well he did. I know he did.
He probably didn't think of it as anything. i probably "wanted it" "didn"t say no""likes sex so why should she mind""why would i do that to her, she's not hot enough for me"
I can hear it. He had no fucking right to touch me, and I fully intend not to see him again. Whatever friendship we might've shared is now tainted by this. In retrospect, I guess the fact that he still brought up sex every now and again should've tipped me off to his, but as I said, I took it in jest. After all, this was the dude, who is in no position to consider me "under him" jokingly once said so, when he found out I'd had sex with more people than he had.
But then the Best Friend said he did that to plenty of girls. Please tell me how THIS IS NOT FUCKING CREEPY??
I didn't know about it. Now I do.

D'you know, it's made me realise how lucky I have been that this kind of shit hasn't affected me much through my life.
Primary school was fine, although boys looked under my skirt the one time I wore one, but it seemed a game to me at the time. I found it funny. I wonder what the other girls thought about it. Their memories might not be so fun.

Middle school-well I was mainly insulted with variants of "nerd" and plays on my surname. By boys. And fat and ugly. Not a happy period. Oddly enough I got called a feminist a lot, because I was very vocal about girls being just as good as boys. Plus I got jokingly asked out; of course it couldn't be serious, i was fat and ugly!

High school was extremely satisfying on the other hand, since I grew out of my puppyfat and became pretty attractive; the dudes who insulted me in middle school tended to give me a bit more than a second glance then, and I had the satisfaction of thinking I wouldn't touch them with a fucking bargepole.

High school for me was from 14 to 17, basically the years I really hit puberty hard and turned into a woman, blabla, but I don't remember that much abuse.
I have to point out that I had a large posse of friends, many of which were male, and that helped a LOT. Especially as, in retrospect, I see that for teenage boys they were pretty damn nice about women.
I do remember :
-a couple of male "friends" trying to throw me in the river, not managing (mainly because I was definitely not against violence if necessary) and being thoroughly ridiculed by a teacher walking by, saying "you can't even throw a girl in the river, all three of you!".
In retrospect i can't believe that dumbass teacher just walked by when I was screaming and kicking their knees in.
-One of my friends warning me that her theen-boyfriend and one of his friends, both that I knew from middle school, were planning to throw me in the river if they saw me; that summer, i stayed away from the riverside because of this.
-at the swimming pool, a couple of arab kids, of about NINE years old came behind me and my group of girlfriends. I was lying on my stomach, in my costume, and I distinctly heard one of them say that I was in a perfect position to stick a dildo, and other such comments. I turned around and asked them how the hell they dared talk like that, and their sisters started screaming at us. It only calmed down when a couple arab dudes a bit older than us-I must've been about 17-got involved and told the girls and kids to back the fuck off- and then asked if any of us were single.
-The dude in the street who asked me if i'd go to the hotel with him when i was sixteen.
-a guy I didn't know spreading the rumour that I'd been in a threesome with a friend and a dude when i was 16
-Older guys expressing their desire to fuck me when I was very much not interested. An dvery much underage.
-oh my god I've just remembered my class(second year of high school) used to call me a cocksucker because they got their hands on a picture of me with a lollipop, and one of the dickheads actually asked my boyfriend of the time how it was with me. Plus they called me Clara Morgane, because my name sounds a bit like hers; she used to be a porn star.

Catcalls only happen to me when I'm out with other women these days, mainly in Marseille. I seem to exude a definite "fuck off" vibe. GOOD.

this just makes me so damn angry, and not a DLB of anger ;)

On Michael Jackson

2009-06-27T01:36:00.004+02:00

So, another one of a multitude of posts about the King of Pop.
I don't feel the same grief as many people around me, but it does feel..odd.

I didn't grow up during the height of Michael's fame; I never experienced the waiting for one of his albums, never got to think of going to one of his concerts, and now I obviously never will. I was fourteen in 2003, and watched the trial incomprehendingly. I'll never know if he was guilty or not; it's not up to me to say. I believe...I don't know what I believe on that count, but I'm not sure he was guilty, as I'm not sure he was innocent. What I am sure of is that he was profoundly disturbed, and needed help, and never got it.
I see people complaining a lot that these issues have been glossed over in the wake of his death, while others are going on about how he wasn't convicted so he must be innocent; now the second claim ignores what the justice system actually is, and I've not been seeing much evidence of the first, myself, but then I also find it impossible to not think of the darker sides of his life, whatever really happened. I'm not sure he was a child molester; I'll never be sure, I think, unless something comes up in the next few weeks, which is quite possible. But I'm fairly sure he had some extremely inappropriate attitudes which could've been abuse...no, I really don't want to go there. Suffice to say I'm not trying to erase all the bad-because there was a lot of bad-, but I'm also not going to be part of the people shouting "pedophile" like it's going out of fashion, although I can understand the furore at the perception of a child-molester "getting away with it". I don't know, I really don't know.

But he still was an important feature in my life.

You see, i grew up in France, in an english-speaking household, with an odd mix of cultures that's up to this day impossible for me to define. My family observes very few traditions; I can think of two indiscutable ones, a swedish Christmas eve smorgasbord at my grandmother's, and an English Christmas at my house, with no presents until after lunch and roast and christmas pudding and the like. My mother only cooks traditionally english food on such occasions, and other than that I think we were more brought up according to French usages than English ones, but I don't really know. The main difference I had with my friends growing up was the language and the fact that they all had a lot of relatives living nearby; I often envied my best friend's family reunions, while she still actively avoids them.

So the main way I related to my roots, up until I turned fifteen and first went to Scotland without my parents, was through books, music, and films. I turned fifteen in 2004; we'd had internet for years, but we only got broadband in 2006, so before that watching stuff online was nigh impossible, and we didn't yet have english-language channels, so most of the movies I saw were french-dubbed; it took me ages to get over watching Friends in English, for instance. Books on the other hand were in no short supply, and to this day i read mainly in English.

But music was something else.

When I was little, even in France(I say "even" because as a child it seemed like i was so very far from everything I'd known before) everyone knew Michael Jackson. His songs came on at every party; they still do. He was ubiquitous, he was the King of Pop. My dad actually used to live with one of his choreographers in the seventies in LA, of all the odd occurrences.

It's a very odd thing, how I relate to his music although it's in no way of my generation; an odd thing to watch my brother, who's only three years younger than I am and yet to who MJ's death is just a big thing for old people. But then my brother was always very much more French than I was...
I can't hear a song of his without it bringing back memories of my childhood; happy memories. And I can't listen to I want You Back without being sent right back to the Best Friend's old car, two years ago, when we drove from here through northern Italy, all the way from here to Venice and back, with her old CD player in the back of the car and that song blasting out from a 70's compilation CD. Good times.

Him, Elvis, Kurt Cobain-they were what I grew up with, they were what made me stop and think "hey, I'm part of this culture too". I watched his (old by then) videos on MTV, watched the new ones when they came out in '01. I taped Kurt's last live performance when it came on TV in 2004. But Kurt was more during my angsty teen phase, unsurprisingly enough; Michael Jackson was my childhood. Through his music, a part of me stayed connected to who I was, even when I was hiding the fact I spoke English from everyone around me and tried to be as French as i could.
And it made me happy, and made me dance, and it still does; and for these things I can thank him, and hope he rests in peace, and leave the darker aspects of his life well alone, while hoping those around him can have a peaceful life.

(Edit : Holy Shit, he actually made the intertubes crash.Insane.And there's not a blog or website that I've yet seen that doesn't mention his death)

In love with an idea

2009-06-18T01:12:00.002+02:00

This happens to me a lot.
It's been nearly two weeks since that weekend in Scotland, and I never did hear from John, apart from his confirming me as a friend on Facebook. I'm not too fussed now, but I'll admit to being annoyed, and confused.
Probably because he seemed so damn interested. Dude, don't tell me you're going to write on FB if you're not going to, don't tell me "why d'you have to live in France?" in a wistful voice, don't tell me you've had the best time.
I'm not going to have a nervous breakdown over you, don't you worry.

I have a few ideas on the subject, the first being that boys often have a certain idea of girls, and so say this kind of stuff to appease them, i suppose; the famed "i'll call you" when they have no intention whatsoever of doing it.
i don't know, I just find it so dumb, as do many women I know. What's the point of making me expect something more? It doesn't really matter to me either way to start off with, and if I don't expect anything I won't be disappointed. But since I'm expecting to hear from you, I can wait and wait and get all paranoid and shit, which is time-consuming and a pain in the arse.

i'll never understand the logic, I must admit.

But then I've been hearing a lot about John, and apparently he's somewhat of a ladies' man, and tends to sign off and not give any news. Seems kinda stupid of him to fuck me in that case since his sister loves me to bits. Men can be very odd.

But there you are, I am definitely not heartbroken, which would probably surprise him, and I'm looking forward to the Best Friend's 21st this weekend :)

Singlehood

2009-06-09T19:51:00.002+02:00

Title says it all. I am officially single again, after another argument with JJ made me say that this was it.
I know it's the better choice; he's been making me feel less than for a while now, he was going to dump me in august anyway, it's not as if it would have been very different. I still feel a bit weird about it though. I'm terribly bad at breaking up with people, unless there's a really definite reason, something I can point out that's immediately recognizable.

I'm trying to figure out how much of this was triggered by my weekend in Edinburgh, but if truth be told i've been thinking of ending it for a while, and just never had the guts, which is why i needed an argument to do it.

and the problem is he just won't stop talking to me now, what with texts and emails, and i need some space. And he's not even saying he wants me back and stuff, he's only said "well, i love you but i won't beg" man, i don't want you to beg, i want you to stop talking to me until I can deal with it. Like tomorrow. Although knowing that he actually didn't want to break up with me would've been nice, I'm definitely not convinced, but i'll survive.

I just need some time to figure this out. I have so much shit to figure out at the moment, it's not even funny.

Up close and personal

2009-06-09T14:09:00.003+02:00

So, last night I got back from a weekend in Edinburgh, which is one of my favourite places, and man am i depressed.
I went there for my lovely JB's 21st birthday party, and ended up spending three days partying and not sleeping much. I am completely shattered.
And I managed to end up cheating on JJ, but since we started arguing as soon as I set foot on French soil, I'm not feeling so guilty about that at all.

I'm just so tired. I had such a great time this weekend, I met some really lovely people, including JB's brother, John, the guy I got with, and it's such a brutal crash being back here, having to work and write my report and having JJ go on and me and all that. I just don't want to deal with anything, and I want to go and spend my summer over there, away from everything here.

There's always a place for me in Edinburgh, and that's the nicest thing ever.

So back to John...well it was great fun. It felt so good to sleep with someone who's actually really enthusiastic about sex, as opposed to JJ only really wanting to when we haven't seen each other for at least ten days. I always feel so bizarre with him, like there's something wrong with me. Plus his rebuffing me doesn't do my ego any good at all.
Yes, i know, I'm a bad person, blablabla. But hey, I'm happy with it, and he'll never know, so there.

I just want to go back there, and it's not for John. It's just because I love Edinburgh, I love the people there, i always have so much fun (no comments on that) and it just feels so comfortable. I don't know. It's a home away from home, I guess.

Funniest moment : picking up one of JB's welsh mates at the empty airport, and seeing this familiar woman walk towards us with two policemen, and then JB goes "oh, it's Susan Boyle" really loudly, in a surprised voice, and then Susan Boyle waves at us. And i was looking behind to see who she was waving at, while JB was turning red, and Sa was giggling away. A right trio of fools we must've looked, but it was funny. Plus now I get to go "oh...it's Susan Boyle" at JB any time, and she laughs. There was my claim to fame for the weekend^^(and she looked a bit spaced-out, but otherwise fine, to me. Very smiley.)

In memory of Dr George Tiller

2009-06-01T22:52:00.005+02:00

I'd never actually heard of Dr Tiller before this, and I've been learning pretty damn fast. It's things like these that make me so damn thankful my parents didn't decide to raise me in the US.

He was shot in a church because he provided late-term abortions, saving women's lives.

I don't understand how anyone, much less a "pro-lifer" can justify this. Pro-life, my ass.
I'd never clearly before understood the extent of the harassment women, nurses, and doctors in the US face when dealing with abortion.

I don't understand the black/white mindset in general, but this makes it even more crazy. Can these people not read? Do they not know why people are allowed late-term abortions? I mean, maybe I have supernatural abilities because I have a vagina and so might face this situation, but seriously. How can anyone be so settled in their narrow little conceptions of right and wrong, of life and death.
I wish I could be at a vigil right now. I wish I could scream at all these people, browbeat them into being afraid as they try to do to women. I've never wanted to be in the US this badly, I think. Sad, isn't it.
I just can't get my head around it. I'm not crying over this death, but it's the second one to shock me badly in two weeks. Sylvain only died two weeks ago, and here comes another death that hits hard. This hits me hard because I am really worried about what will happen to all the women in the US now.
There are now, from what I understand, only TWO late-term abortion providers. How is that even possible???How are they ging to manage? Which students are going to step up to the task while knowing they risk their lives to help women, to save their damn lives?
Oh, yeah, a woman's life is worthless, I forgot.

You know, I had a pretty bad scare this month. My period was extremely late, probably because of shock and illness and stress, and I was seriously worried. I didn't even think about it. I am in no way fit to raise a child at this time in my life. I don't want to raise a child. All my thoughts are centered on going to Taiwan and studying and the like. It's just not a question. So I looked up exactly what to do if I needed to-one of my fears has always been to not know I'm pregnant until the 14th week, which is the limit here save for medical deformities and the like-the same stuff Dr Tiller was dealing with- and not being able to get an abortion. So I read that I have to call a hospital that provides abortion as a service, make an appointment, i'll see a counselor, make another appointment, and it'll be done.
Just where my parents live, I can go to three different hospitals that aren't more than half an hour away.
And if I can't afford it (that's possible, i think it's paid for up to 70% by the State)or if I don't want my parents to know, I could go to the Planning Familial, and they'd sort it out for me.

And I want everyone to have this choice. I want every woman to able to choose what the hell she wants to do with her body. Whether that's by contraception, so abortion isn't needed; cheap, easy to get, safe abortion for whatever reason ; State help if she wants to raise her child alone.

Christ am I glad to live in a secular country. My thoughts go out to Dr Tiller's family, friends, staff, to the women he helped, to those who need his help, and basically to anyone who needs them tonight :( .

Fuck you, prolifers. Fuck you. I hope there is a hell, so that you burn in it for advocating murder. Not just his, but the murder of all the women he saved and would have saved.

I don't give a flying fuck about "tarring all prolifers with the same brush". Fuck that shit. I don't give a damn if you're moderate-you never hear about the moderates. By not speaking out, you've just been condoning all the "Tiller the Baby-Killer" rhetoric that led to his murder. You've been condoning the people who posted his address and phone number. Fuck you too.
Here's my take : there's no prolife about this. You're prochoice or antiabortion. And anyone who's advocating taking away a woman's right to choose, instead of, oh, I don't know, advocating birth control and sex education, can kiss my ass.

I just can't believe it's the 21st century.

here are the links to much, much better posts on the subject.

Heartbroken

2009-05-19T00:02:00.002+02:00

I can't deal with this.
Saturday night, one of my university friends and his girlfriend were run over by some drunk dude, and now they're dead. I'll be going to his funeral on wedsnesday.
I found out Saturday evening, and I've been a wreck ever since. I can't believe it. I can't accept this.

Sylvain and I weren't the best friends in the world, but I really liked him. We'd met a year and a half ago, the first time the uni was blocked while I was there, in the last months of 2007. We were both active, trying to get our uni back on track and be able to go back to class, and those were good times. He was truly a lovely guy. In all the time I knew him, even when the rest of us were pulling our hair out in rage, he always had a joke and a smile. I actually nearly went out with him, but at that same time i met my exboyfriend, and that was that. I find it hard to get my head around. What would have happened if I'd been his girlfriend?Would I be the one being buried tomorrow? Or would we not have been at that place at that time, would he still be alive now?

He was a history student, and wanted to be a teacher. An intelligent guy, and a handsome one to boot. i truly believe the world is missing out without him here, and now I'm angry. I'm so angry. Of all the people in the world, why did it have to be him? i'm sure everyone thinks that when someone they love dies, but I just...can't. Wednesday I'm going to have to face him dead. his parents, whose pain I cannot even begin to comprehend. All the friends I don't know. And worse of all I'm going to have to face the friends we had in common. I'm going to see Etienne, his best friend at uni. Gael, who invited me to his mega birthday bash just a day before Sylvain died and I know he was supposed to be there too, and Aymeric, and god knows who else. I nearly feel i shouldn't be going, because I wasn't as close to him as they were, but I'm grieving too. Oriane says this is the best homage anyone could have, that even people who weren't that close to you are grieving for you, and she's probably right.

When i first found out, I never realised it would be this hard. I've never had to deal with sudden death like this before. The only person close to me who's died was my grandmother a year and a half ago, right around the time I met Sylvain actually, and I had six months to prepare for her death, although I still miss her. Him...it's so sudden. It's so fucking unfair.

The nights are the hardest.

I wish I could make sense of this somehow, but all that goes through my head is that Sylvain's dead. I'm never going to see him again. I'm never going to see his curly brown hair, never going to see his smile, hear his laugh, hear him teasing me; we're never going to have a coffee break and smoke cigarettes at uni, i'm never going to see him strut around with his raybans and brown leather jacket; never going to run into him at the library doing his research and sitting with me to make fun of my chinese work, to make me talk to him because he's sick of working; never going to go drinking with him again, and take silly pictures; never going to be happy when I see him again, because I always was; he could akways be counted on to make me smile. Never going to hear one of his stupid jokes, never going to hear him make fun of all our anarcho-communists, never going to hear him try and make me come to one of the university parties, never going to hear him say I'm not wearing enough clothes on purpose because i want to flirt, never actually going to flirt with him, never going to argue about the world and hear about his latest history work.Never, ever, ever.

And it hurts so much I can't breathe.

Jesu, if I'd known...well, what. I can't have regrets now. It's too late to wish I'd spent more time with him, and it wouldn't have changed anything. Maybe it'd even hurt more.
This is one of those times where I nearly wish i believed in God, because it's sort of comforting; and then i think that if there is something out there, and that whatever it is planned for this to happen? Well it can fuck the hell off, with all due respect (so=none). i don't really believe in fate and all that; i wish I did, it would make this a lot easier, to believe that it was sylvain's fate to be run over by some drunk dude and die at the age of 21 with his girlfriend.
But I just fucking can't.
I just hope that bastard spends the rest of his life being sorry.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
W.H. Auden

He might not have been my lover, but this...says it all.

And this is it

2009-03-28T02:25:00.002+01:00

It's 2:26 am.
I've just finished one of the least urgent things I had to do to prepare for my next ten days of exams, but at least I did something; I seem to be afflicted with an inability to work, and yet work I must if I don't want to fail.
And I don't want to fail.
I'm leaving.
Three years here have done me in. I am sick of my studies, I am sick of French humanities universities and the strikes year in, year out, sick of the small permanent mass of communist throwbacks dreaming of 1968. I am tired of worrying about whether I'll get through a whole semester or not this time, tired of worrying whether we'll get thrown out of class each time they hold a meeting-this happened twice already and now the whole uni is shut down.
So, I'm off; I am graduating, and I am moving to Taiwan to get my chinese up to scratch.

I'm scared. But I'm anticipatng it like crazy.
Financially, things should be ok if I make enough this summer to pay for my university tuition over there. Socially, half my class is moving to Taiwan, which is quite entertaining :) I'm exaggerating, but my darling F will be there for five months, O is coming with me as an independent student, and Vic and C have scholarships with uni.

I finally talked it over with JJ today; he's happy for me, but he clearly told me we were through when I left. I felt so lonely.
I was expecting it; JJ's a chronic paranoid, he'd go crazy with me on the other side of the world; in his perspective we'll be better off split up, which makes me sad. I wasn't sure, but I would have been willing to give it a go, if he'd had some faith. But instead...well, I guess we'll see, the girls coming back don't have many flattering things to say about Taiwanese men^^
I tried telling JJ I wasn't going there for men, but he just can't deal with that kind of stuff. I find it amazing. But apparently he's still in shock we made it past the one-month mark, and that i actually fell in love with him.

I had a conversation with my mother that shook me to the core today, about this same subject. I told her JJ hadn't taken it too well, and she laughingly said "you're so cruel to your boyfriends".
We were talking about him telling me we were over the moment I left France, and she was all "well you can't love him that much if you're leaving".
I swear to God, I nearly had a heart attack.

My mother routinely tells me I don't care much about my boyfriends. She happens to be right pretty often. It's not that i don't care at all, it's just...I can't get sentimental, and over-the-top, all the movie stuff girls are supposed to do and like, all that crap, you know? Well I don't mind watching it, but any guy who expects me to act like that is basically screwed. I'm hopelessly pragmatic, very take it or leave it, I'll never go on loving someone who's left me, it's not part of my DNA somehow, I don't know. I could never be the heroine of some dramatic love story; I'm incapable of that kind of feeling. Which I find worrying, sometimes. I wonder if my incapacity to sustain a relationship winds from there. And then i tell myself that I'm twenty, so fuck that.

I told her I wasn't the one who wanted to stop when I left, but that there was no way I was going to put my life on hold for any man. No way, period. I don't think he'd want me to, either. He'd be happy if I stayed, but there's nothing for me here at the moment. I need a year out. So yeah, scratch the plans that make me excited as hell, that are part of my career plan, because my relationship will be over? I don't think so. I told her as much, saying that if I had to forsake my life's plan because of love, it was a very crappy love indeed, and i didn't agree. If someone can't love me like that, and support my choices, well then yeah, it'll be over. And yeah, I'll cry about it, because I love JJ. it's going to be bloody painful, come to think of it. Prince Charming says I should dump him before he can, but that's really shooting myself in the foot. Pain now, less later? Possibly, but I'd rather not.

I don't know, it felt so...strange, the implication that it was my fault, coming from my mother. I unfortunately immediately flared up, going "so what, i should stay because some guy will leave me?". She backed down, saying "no, it's just a bit extreme, other people could think differently"
Well, obviously. But this is what I think. I'm allowed to think it's better; I'm not forcing anyone to do the same, or giving long lectures about how it's the right way to go. There's no right way. I might personally think that giving up what you want to do for the person you love is a dumb thing to do, that doesn't mean I think that the people who do this are dumb. Different choices suit different people.

It just felt so goddamn weird. I'd never felt this kind of undercover attack on my ideas from my mother. I bet people will say I'm overreacting, but this is me, and this is my mother, and there's never been the slightest hint of anything like this before.
Which is probably why I'm so damn assertive on the subject. And will be single in approximatively four months and a half. Yay me.

Found this floating around on the internet

2009-03-05T18:10:00.002+01:00

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions: [I've altered these, the old ones made it messy]
1) Bold those you have read.
2) *Star the ones you loved.
3) Italicise those you plan on reading.

*1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (I've read this God knows how many times)
*2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (love this too)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (not fond of this one)
*4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I was eleven when I discovered this, and i loved it. it got less good as it went on, though).
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I know a few of the stories, through my grandmother's stories and stuff, read some in prose, but we don't have copies of the Bible lying around-I grew up in an atheist household)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (never been very interested in this one)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (a good book, it's just that I don't intend to read it for fun)
*9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (This is fucking brilliant)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (I started it, and forgot about it)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (one of the books that rythmed my childhood)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (started this, got bored, forgot about it)
*13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (this is nuts)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare* (you can't count all of them as one book, i have the complete works but haven't read all of them)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
*16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (lighter than the Lord of the Rings series, since it's meant for kids, and very, very good)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (I liked the movie, what can I say)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (I read quite a bit of Dickens when i was a kid, the adventures of Mr pickwick and the like, but I'm not that interested anymore)
*24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (This is a fantastic book, I tend to like stuff that has to do with history, and it's set during Napoleon's wars, which I had to see as part of my education, blabla. It's great)
*25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (one of my favourites)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (i've heard a lot about this)
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (I have this, but I've never felt like reading it)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
*29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (another childhood book of mine)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (read this when i was a kid, too)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (don't like)
*33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (love this too)
34 Emma - Jane Austen (another great Austen)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
*36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (this is part of the Chronicles of Narnia)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (I quite liked this, but the movie is too long)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (another childhood book)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
*46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (I think they might have gone through the drawers under my bed)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (read it for school when I was a kid...forgot just about all of it)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (and I have this, I suck)
*52 Dune - Frank Herbert (excellent SF)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
*54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (I love Jane Austen)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth (I think my mother has this, there're a good few Vikram Seths lying around the house)
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (read it for high school, interesting book)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (I read his second book, "A spot of Bother" and liked it very much)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (So much hate)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt (not intending to read this-I was traumatised by the Little friend (is that the translation in English? We borrowed it from a french library when i was a kid) )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (sad,sad, sad, but good)
*65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (I love Alexandre Dumas)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
*73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (I always have this book where I live, it's like a lucky charm)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
*77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome (Another kid's book, actually I have the whole series)
78 Germinal - Emile Zola (ugh, no way, I can't stand Zola since I had to read Le ventre de Paris for school)
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (I think I was fifteen when I read this. It's powerful.)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
*89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (read every single one of them, and i'm surprised there're no Agatha Christies on this list)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (funny, I don't know this, and I've read a LOT of Enid blyton)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
*92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (this is a book just about every kid in France reads at some point. It's lovely)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
*97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
*99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (I also grew up reading Roald Dahl, including his adult books, like the collection of short stories Kiss Kiss)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

That comes up to 36, i'm pretty pleased with myself :) Funny thing is I read most of these when i was a kid. I'll see if i ever get around to reading more of this list.

Pretentious and shameless

2009-03-04T23:41:00.003+01:00

JJ and I had a slightly heated discussion last night.
Namely, him pointing out that I was pretentious.

Now, that's not an accusation I'm often faced with; I get cold, indifferent, heartless,secretive, stubborn, and a good few others, but pretentious doesn't come up much.
He went on to claim that he didn't see it as a bad thing, which then led god knows how to his assertion that everyone should have a dream and follow it, or something, me pointing out that he was crazily privileged to be able to think like that, him pointing out that he's had a shitty life, which is true, and explains partly why he's slightly insane, but still, wev. Back to the point.

Apparently my pretention lies in my having firmly seated opinions about things. No, I didn't quite get this either. It's also in the fact that I have a very low tolerance for stupid people. Or people that I consider to be stupid, in any case. I know, it's not very kind of me, but I do my best to be nice, and when I can't, I go away. I think there's worse as non-tolerance goes, no? I don't know.
But yes, I have strong opinions about things; I'm an opinionated bitch. And obviously I have these opinions because I think there's a shred of truth in them. And I'll argue to the end if no-one conclusively shows me that I'm wrong, because I like being right. It's a terrible fault of mine.
But I know I'm often wrong. And I can accept it, because I'm only human, for fuck's sake.

But christ on a bike, pretentious? I'm pretty confident, I guess, I'm pretty satisfied with my brains, my looks, myself in general.
I'm also reserved and secretive and shy in situations I'm not comfortable with, I don't tell people what the fuck is up with me, I don't share my life and feelings and everything with people at the snap of a finger.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be pretentious if I was a guy. JJ is pretentious ; he freely admits it. He's also deeply insecure about certain things, he's a strange mix.

He's the first guy who's ever really argued back at me, even though last night I felt seriously frustrated by our argument, I just couldn't come out with everything that was running through my head, namely "fuck you, you wouldn't be saying this if I was a dude, that is total and utter bullshit, damn you just called me pretentious for saying things were bullshit, man this is frustrating, privileged bastard, how come you get to voice firm and clear opinions when I'm pretentious for doing it, now I'm incoherent and if I point this out you'll calmly demonstrate you never said such a thing, or something"
In my defense, I was very, very tired last night; tuesday was a hard day, including a presentation at 8 am that we finished late the night before because F had a computer bug and we had to redo all her part, complicated. And yesterday's classes started at 8, finished at 5, so it was pretty long.
I don't know if it was just because last night I was really tired and grumpy and depressed but I really felt like JJ was dismissing my opinions.
Like they didn't count.

I don't know. I probably imagined it, JJ loves me mainly because we talk a lot, and i've got to admit it's refreshing. I'd better go to sleep and stop mulling this over. I just don't have time.

I have to write a letter persuading a jury to take me on as a Frenc TA in Taiwan. Laughs and giggles this is. Ppffft.

Annoyed

2009-02-20T14:06:00.002+01:00

Roommate dearest and I went out this morning, went to look at the shops, happily toddling around, looking in a couple clothes shops, but not bothering to try anything on, until we got to Mango.
Now I've never bought anything there, because it's usually far out of my price range, and completely unnecessary, but today, we both saw nice jeans, which happens once in a blue moon. So we decided to try them on.
And that was the drama of the day, because those fuckers cut the damn trousers a size under the usual.
So let's disclose details ; I'm a size 38, i think that's a UK size ten. Yeah, on the small side. Roommate is a 40, or UK 12, but then she's only 10 centimeters taller than me, so it's kind of logical. I can't fucking believe the dudes at Mango decided it would be a good idea to make us feel-or rather, try to make us feel- fat. because that's what happens when you pull on a pair of trousers in your size, and find out they don't fit. You don't stop to think that it might be the cut, that you might be bloated because of your period or something, or that the sizes in this shop might be skewed. No. You go straight to the "OMG I'm fat!" belief that society instills in you as early as fucking possible.
Well guess what? Didn't fucking work. We just left the trousers there, and got the hell out, fuming that they dared try to make us feel like we should be thinner.
My whole point would be : get the fuck away from me and stop trying to shame me into being thinner and so take up less space.
Not going to work. There is no valid reason whatsoever for me to feel fat, for god's sake. I'm normal. I feel for all the people larger than me out there-life must be hellish. Constantly getting told you're not good enough gets worse the larger you are.

Fuck off, society.

The world has gone nuts around me

2009-02-12T19:41:00.002+01:00

I don't even know where to start.

Sarkozy is trying to teach Obama how to negotiate with Iran, which is kinda funny

My teachers are still on strike (week 2! out of my seven-week semester!I am screwed!)
But I actually support this strike because if this law goes through...they (and us along with them) are in deep shit.

France has been stormed, snowed in, stormed again, it's been a crazy month for weather here, and power cuts all over the place.

Fires in Victoria and crazy dudes blaming them abortion. From what the news told me a good number of the fires were criminal, but who cares about plausible? I'm still trying to get my head around that one.

Rihanna has allegedly been beaten up by Chris Brown, her boyfriend, and the world is blaming her, and it makes me want to throw up. A lot. And then cry. And then hope against hope that he gets sent to jail. And that all those motherfucking victim-blamers choke.

I've been hired as an English teacher by Acadomia, a company that provides private lessons all over France. I'm nervous about it.

Grades are coming out little by little, and I'm doing pretty well for the moment, especially in chinese, so I'm pretty hopeful.

I have a new presentation to get ready for march third "Social pressures faced by women ages 20-30 in modern China". F and I dreamed that one up and it should be pretty interesting, but we don't have much time.

Nearly everyone's back from their semester abroad, it's nice to see them all again!

And I might be pregnant...crossing fingers, touching wood on this one, I don't face a real risk since I always use BC, but I'm worried. So waiting a bit more, then testing. We'll see.

Even the gay friend thinks his opinions are better than mine

2009-02-04T01:00:00.002+01:00

I got thoroughly annoyed the other night.
I was talking to a friend of mine, a couple nights ago, and the discussion turned to China.
I study chinese. (I go on about this at length through my blog)
I find it insanely annoying when people spout out stereotypes, especially the ones I know are wrong.
And here I was, trying to point out that all the stuff he was saying was just repeating what the media says, only for him to claim that he was surprised that I didn't know better and that he kept himself informed about China and the like.
Dude is an Italian major. I helped him throughout high school.

I got sooooo pissed off. I was angry that he was brushing off the history I'd learnt, the things i'd come to know as a student of chinese, things I learned through my chinese or taiwanese friends, from my teachers, from my friends in China, with a "I know just as much about this as you do".

I managed to shut him up eventually, but i was trying to figure out why, why, WHY he thought his opinions were more valid than my facts.
I'm of the opinion that it's because he's a man, and hey, we all know a man's opinion is better than a woman's, right?

**depressed**

"You don't have to be pretty"

2009-02-02T22:21:00.001+01:00

Prettiness is not a rent you have to pay for occupying a space marked "female"

Me loves.

On Beauty

2009-01-31T19:49:00.002+01:00

I've been thinking, a bit, about the pressure to conform.

We all have to subscribe to some ideal beauty to be happy; I guess we all live in a culture of fear, to encourage consumption. And of course, it's always harder on women than on men.
After all, men aren't told they have a sell-by date. Men don't have to wear make-up to pass, they can walk around with acne scars, dark circles, with no-one commenting on their tiredness/"petite mine" as they say in French. Men can have grey hair, it's stylish; women have to dye it. Women are expendable, dontcha know? So we have to stay pretty. Have to wear heels, make-up, uncomfortable stuff, sexy stuff, have to look good for others and not for ourselves, because we don't know what we want and are just there to provide eye-candy for men.

I wasn't pretty as a pre-teen. I was fat, badly dressed, mainly because it didn't interest me that much, and spent my time reading. But I still started wearing make-up in my third year of middle-school (there are four years of middle-school and three years of high school in France), mainly because it provided an armour, something distinctive other than the fact I was a foreigner. I liked colouring my eyes a lot. And then I developed acne, so that started me off on skin stuff, foundation and the like.
And I continue to this day.
I love make-up. I love how it makes me look, I love how it makes me feel. I'd say I wear it for myself, but that probably wouldn't be true, because I know make-up makes me prettier, whatever my boyfriend might say about loving me without it. It's also somewhat of a societal pressure, since a woman with make-up is seen as making more of an effort.
I'm definitely not going to stop, although i've been going easier on the skin stuff, having stopped wearing foundation, and I hate that some can call me antifeminist or stupid for this. I understand some of what's behind my make-up wearing, but I'd just rather go on telling myself it's my choice and I do it for myself. Ultimately, I believe it is, but I know there are pressures out there that have made me who I am.

My roommate wears make-up once in a blue moon, because she has insanely sensitive skin, and no-one gives her stick about it, except her boyfriend, who is very much attached to appearances. I worry about that, and try to gently point it out when it comes up, but I can't really take his behaviour head-on. But that's a whole different post. And she's fine like that.

Sometimes I wonder if it hasn't been a lot easier for me growing up here than it would have been in the Uk or the US, because I don't feel as many pressures as others seem to. I feel that women are more casual here, or maybe I'm imagining it.

Or maybe I'm just extremely privileged.

I mean, I'm conventionally attractive, I'm white but not 'pasty', I have dark, thick, straight hair that hairdressers coo over (I recently went to the hairdresser's for the first time in five years-I just find them annoying) but that I ultimately leave alone- I was amazed to meet Brit girls my age when i was fifteen: every single one of them I met had hair straighteners and they all used them once or twice a day, even the girls who already had straight hair. Us Frenchies were baffled, since the most I do to my hair is blow it dry-hey, it's winter^^although I do possess a pair of straighteners, present from my aunt, uncle, cousins when I was sixteen (on my mother's side, the Brit side of the family).
And my American cousin kept telling me her hair was usually a lot nicer because she hadn't brought all her hair products with her-no idea what she intended to do to it, it looked fine to me. People confuse me.

As for clothes : well I hear that French women are classy and often boring, wear too much black, etc etc.
I think simplicity is valued here, but I'll direct you to Garance Doré's blog on more about the cliché.(here's the English version)(it's a great post, really well written and funny :) )

Our stereotypes are that British girls let it all hang out, with clothes that are too tight, too short, too vulgar. This, of course, isn't always true, but many of the girls/women I've seen on the street do fall into this. And I find it extremely ugly, but that's only my opinion, after all, to each their own. I just find it strange, because I'm taking that they dress this way because they feel good like that, at least, I hope so, for them. There's nothing more unpleasant than dressing in a way that doesn't fit or suit you, that you don't feel comfortable in.

I like feeling attractive; I like feeling sexy. I love dresses-in summer. The rest of the time I run around in jeans and a top. I can't stand feeling constricted, so I shun anything too-tight, too short, scratchy or fidgety. My version of sexy doesn't always fit in with mainstream expectations; right now I'm wearing a soft green jumper and a pair or grey trousers-probably what would be called slacks-that float around my legs, and I feel extremely sexy. Add on my beloved combat boots, and I'm happy.

But this is just another version of what's acceptable.
In France, casual clothes are more common; the short, over-the-top sexy stuff is for parties, and frowned upon in everyday life.Not t say that you can't wear a mini-skirt, but the "only one" rule is very well assimilated; basically, show cleavage, or your legs, but not both at once.

And I just don't know how you get away with clothes that aren't practical; This migth stem from the fact that people in France walk a lot more than in America, because of the way cities have been constructed historically, I guess. But I walk everywhere; uni, friend's places, food-shopping, clothes-shopping, everything. So shoes that are going to hurt, a skirt that's going to ride up, a dress that's going to trail along? nope.
it's like high heels. Just not practical, and made, IMO, for men's enjoyment. But I love a pretty pair of heels. I just love shoes in general. But I'll never wear anything that will hurt. I don't really get the point, and the women i know seem to agree :)

But still, only women...

Blog for choice

2009-01-23T17:14:00.002+01:00

So all over the blogosphere I've been seeing people talking about what Roe vs Wade means to them.
Maybe I read too many US-based blogs.
For me? Well, on a very personal level, nothing at all. Roe vs Wade doesn't sit in my psyche the way our abortion law does, or the way Britain's abortion act does.

The whole debate about abortion in the US utterly dumbfounds me. Frankly, I grew up in a country where a woman's right to abortion isn't even thought about, except by one of our very right-wing ministers once in a blue moon, so discovering the whole fight it was in the US when I was a pre-teen came as somewhat of a shock.
And the non-logic astounded me-it still does.
You're against abortion, but you're also against birth control?
That destroys any argument you might've had of this being about the babies. See, if the life of a fetus was your main problem, you'd advocate birth control. You'd be pushing for it to be free, readily accessible, all that.
But no. This is about women. This is about the belief that women cannot make their own choices, cannot act responsibly, must be controlled. This is about the fact that you would have your daughters obey you and then their husband. This is about the fact that you have no respect for beliefs different from your own.
And that you despise us.

I'll always defend any woman's right to have an abortion, whatever the circumstances, be it because of rape, an accident, or simply because now is not the right time. There is no "good" or "bad" reason to have an abortion. The choice is ours. This is about our bodies, our lives-and nothing will ever convince me anyone has a right to tell us what we should do.

Tired of it

2009-01-19T20:32:00.002+01:00

I'm so tired and depressed tonight.

I'm in the middle of exams, at the moment. I actually failed one pretty badly today. Spectacularly badly, really.
I'm so tired.
I get bouts of "I'm so tired and sick of it all and I want to give up" periodically, but this one has been going on a bit too long for my liking.
I know it'll pass. But I wish I was back to my usual self, who's in my head right now screaming "snap out of it already, you twit! There's no more reason than usual for you to fail and be a total loser!"
But it's not working very well.
being depressed kinda kills any will I might have had to work in the first place, and I berate myself for it, and nothing gets any better.
And I'm nowhere near having my period, so bleuuh.

I seem to expect a lot of myself, but I don't do much to fulfill those expectancies, because, well, I've never had to. I've always breezed through with minimum effort.
I've always wondered how different things would have been if I'd had a more serious approach to things. If I'd made different choices.
Gone to a high school further away that offered chinese as a language ; passed the entrance exam to Sciences Po; basically just worked harder.

I'd probably be having even worse problems with stress, spasmophilia and depression.

I'm just moaning over nothing, I know. I'm twenty in precisely five days, I'm already in my third year at uni, and even if I fail this semester I can pass resits in September.

I just need to get a life and move on^^

Thinking

2009-01-12T21:18:00.003+01:00

I'm exhausted.
Passed two exams today, wrote a load of shit.
One of those dumbass Charlie's Angels movies is on TV and I'm screaming at its sexism every five minutes (plus racism, stereotyping and general stupidness)

Last week's exams, that were cancelled because of the snow, have been change-to moments where I HAVE FUCKING EXAMS! so I'd better get down to uni tomorrow morning and rant.

Interesting discussion at Shakesville

All I know is that it would be easier if I were a man. But I don't want to be a man. I don't want to go through life as a male, in all likelihood unaware of my privilege, I don't want to be not interested in the things I'm interested in now.

What would change if I were a man?
I wouldn't be scared of going home at night, alone
I wouldn't have to fend off unwanted (attention as much)
I wouldn't be shot down as hysterical/angry/gossipy or whatever else is used to dismiss my opinion
I could pee standing up (always wanted to do that), never ever use birth control apart from condoms again (although that is all I use at the moment), never have a period which would be lovely.
I'd probably be another version of my brother, who's average-to-tall, blond, has the same eyes and a similar face structure to mine, and his hair is nearly as long. ANd seeing as the men in my family are skinny as hell, I'd be skinny as hell, in all likelihood. I'd just have dark hair, instead. I'd be a carbon copy of my dad. With straight hair.
My mother would be sad she no longer had a daughter for all the girly stuff we do together, even if it's just chatting.
My father would be sad too, because he's proud of me for who I am.

In my choice of studies, I would have been pushed towards the better schools more than I was, although I chose not to go. My sudden inability to comprehend math when I got to high school would have been questioned and possibly sorted out, although my parents tried to get me help(I went from an average of 15 out of 20 to an average of 5).
I'm in a predominantly female field of study, but I don't feel the males in my classes get more respect than I do. Perhaps because many of our teachers are highly-qualified females, or maybe I just didn't notice.

I'd be lauded for my interest in world affairs, instead of art students like the Ex's friends trying to teach me economics when I've been doing economics courses for the last six years and he never had.
I'd be confident and not aggressive, conversational instead of gossipy, proud instead of arrogant, cocky instead of insolent.

I'd miss my girlfriends, and the strong relationships i have with them.
I might be gay, but there are good chances I'd be bisexual, since at nineteen I'm far from having totally explored my sexuality, and I'm quite attracted to women, without knowing if I could go through with it.

I'd probably miss getting glammed-up, but I'd love dressing as a male-I do my best with my brother, but it's just not the same :P
I'd miss dancing the way I do, because it would look plain weird on a man.
I'd have been pushed towards guitar or saxophone or drums instead of flute when I started music.
I would probably have my driving license by now, instead of my parents letting me not bother.
I'd have to resist societal expectations to drink a lot more.I hardly drink, and it's unusual enough in a girl, to be completely amazing in a guy.

I'd probably be braver, and possibly have my dad's ease and immediate friendliness with people. I'm open and talkative, but as a woman I've been conditioned to be careful. Without this, I'd probably dare a lot more. I might have changed countries after high school, I might've been ready then, who knows.
I'd be mysterious instead of being intimidating and cold!

Sweet...

Panicking

2009-01-11T23:03:00.002+01:00

SO Christmas was good, so was New year's, spent the holidays with JJ, had a lot of fun, didn't do a scrap of work and came back to my flat thinking "shit, i'm in trouble".
My exams were supposed to start last week but five were cancelled because of the snow. (Snow!you can't understand how amazing this is to us)
ANd now i have marketing and economics tomorrow and I am so screwed.

Age of consent

2008-12-27T16:47:00.002+01:00

I've been reading debates about the age of consent recently. How young is too young?
The age here is fifteen. Which is the age at which I started.
The average in France is seventeen.

I hear fifteen is too young. Depends for who.
I don't regret it. Was it shameful? Not for me, although I acquired a slightly slutty reputation. Cause yeah, not being a great believer in love and all that when I was a teen, I slept with a friend, who was seventeen and a virgin, one night. Did I want to ?Absolutely. Did he pressure me? No. He'd have been in too much trouble, I had protective friends. If he had, I wouldn't have done it. I'm impossibly contrary.

I didn't subscribe to all the fairytale loving,waiting for true-love-and-prince-charming schools of thought.

Does that make me stupid?

I'd like to think not. Something I've always felt is that those stories are very much used to keep a tight grip on female sexuality, which seems to be something menacing, for some reason.
Oh, I've watched the Disneys and read the Hans christian Andersens, but I didn't want to be a princess. It seemed so goddamn boring.

The only thing I ever did believe in was having sex for your own reasons, for yourself, because you wanted to. Not because everyone else was doing it, not because your boyfriend threatened to leave you if you didn't, not because people called you a prude. Stick to your guns, and you'll feel all the better for it. And don't let anyone tell you how you feel is wrong. But don't tell anyone how they feel is wrong, either.
Really, it's no-one's business.

As to statutory rape laws, they punish anyone having sex with someone under fifteen, and anyone over eighteen having sex with someone under eighteen, even though the age of consent is fifteen.
Although--prosecution, for consensual sex, is just about inexistent, as far as I'm aware.

I think this has a very strong link to control.
I've had many friends going out with older boys/men, depending on the circumstances.
When I was in high school, when you heard about a girl of fifteen going out with a man of thirty, everyone went "eeuw!"
But there's more than just "eeux" behind these relationships. They're downright creepy. It is not normal for a man of thirty to date a fifteen-year-old. What has she got that a woman closer to him in age doesn't?
One of my close friends in high school dated a guy who was eight years older than her from the time she was fourteen to last year, when he wanted them to move in together and have children, and she opposed a very definite NO. So he left.
The Best Friend has been harassed recently by a thirty-year-old she dated for about ten days, when she told him she didn't want to see him anymore because she was tired of his mood swings and his insulting her when he was in a bad mood. He went crazy after that, she had to go see the cops.

It all comes down to control.
You want someone easier to manipulate, who you can convince that things are meant to be this way, that this si how it happens, that this is how sex should be, that in a relationship a woman should be subservient, that she should make all the effort and beg for the few scraps of love he deigns give her?
Take a younger girl.
This kind of shit makes me sick. This is how you get people who're totally confused, and I've known my share.
But oh, the arrogance of them!The self-satisfaction! Of course a fifteen year old is easier to manipulate than a twenty-five year old, however mature she is. She's less likely to have fallen prey to someone like you before.

I met my first and only manipulative boyfriend at sixteen. Never slept with him,and only dated him for two weeks,but he just got off on keeping me running. Thankfully, after a couple months of stupidity, I came back to my senses.
And this is a happy outcome. I know why this happened then, but still, I was silly.

But it all goes with the flow in a male-oriented culture.

You're so angry women your age won't look at you, you go and find a younger girl who can be subservient.
This is why the Best Friend got harassed. That crazy dude expected a twenty-year would just put up with his shit, would give in to him again someday-because she dumped him, but they stayed in touch, and he spent a while pressuring her to come back. Arrogant, entitled jerk.

And this justs goes on, and on, and on.
Control and entitlement.

I could apply this to the Ex. We both knew I was never under his control, thank goodness, but he was entitled to my time. He had to be more important than my studies, which was just not happening. So we broke up.
Funny thing is, he's the sweetest, gentlest person ever.
It's so pervasive..I'd better stop, this is making me sad.

Better but not perfect

2008-12-22T02:19:00.002+01:00

Thank God for JJ. He's definitely useful for when I'm having an irrational moment.

I've missed Lulu so much, and she's back, and I get depressed because I don't feel good enough?
Pshaw. How perfectly idiotic.

I've been totally off-radar for the past week, haven't been reading, haven't been writing.
I've discovered some great new posts, and some terrifying news from the last days of the Bush administration, covered by Feministe.

I don't really have much to add on this, except that I find it absolutely fucking amazing. Incredible.
How can you create a law that allows anyone to refuse, BIRTH CONTROL?

I get the morning-after pill if the condom splits from the first pharmacy I see. And when i was still on the pill, it happened that I left the box at my parent's, or forgot my prescription, and I'd just turn up at the pharmacy, tell them, and give them the name of my Pill, end of story.
I'm so happy I live here.

But I just don't understand. How is birth control wrong? It stops abortions, after all. People aren't going to stop having sex just like that. It's not going to bring back some so-called morality.
It seems so logical. No birth control = more unwanted pregnancies.
Please tell me how that is good for anyone.

But the ramifications go so much further. I'm just going on right now, the Feministe post is excellent, but I just can't get my head around it. It's not as if I lived in a society that has no need for feminism. We make less than men, we get raped, men are Don Juans and girls are sluts, men have the better jobs, all that.
But this? Is just unthinkable. Unfuckingthinkable.

Feminist is a dirty word in France as much as in many other countries.
But whatever happens no-one is dreaming of taking away abortion or birthcontrol or allowing doctors to not treat people because of moral reasons. Doctors can be crazy and a fucking pain in the ass, in which case you change. But this kind of shit is just illegal.

I just wonder if I actually live on the same planet as these people.

Holidays

2008-12-22T01:05:00.002+01:00

...And man did I need them.
Exams, etcetera, left me in a pretty exhausted state by the end. Plus I went Christmas shopping with my mother Friday and Saturday, which tends to be a pain in the ass.

So I'm back home. Friday night went out with JJ and his mates, and yesterday went out with Best Friend, Foufoune, Flo and two of their Marseille mates, one of which is sooo sexy :D
I got absolutely hammered on white sangria and it was freezing.
We ended up at Foufoune's, where he and Flo had a moment of revelation "Froufrou, you've slept with more people than we have!" Duh, yeah, so?

Tonight my lovely Lulu got back from Cadiz, and she and Best Friend came over and we gossiped for about three hours.

I feel like such a loser right now.

Lulu was telling all her stories of parties and surfers and English mates and all the foreigners she's met, and how much fun, etcetera.

I feel...boring. Settled down, which is not an aim of mine yet. Yeah, boring.
And it doesn't feel that good.
Yeah, I'm moaning about nothing.

Rain, rain, rain

2008-12-14T23:38:00.002+01:00

It's been pouring here.
JJ's house is flooded.
My parent's house has a leak in the roof. It's a mess.

A rainy Sunday, in which I did nothing useful, instead of working, and am feeling kinda down.

I live in a fucking sick world

2008-12-12T12:06:00.003+01:00

Linking to the most disturbing ad of the year at feministe.
Better put a trigger warning, since the picture made me sick, and I don't have anything to be triggered by.

Seriously, what fucking world do I live in when this is fucking normal??
I'm so fucking angry it's not even funny.

So I sent a message to Duncan Quinn ( info@duncanquinn.com ) detailing how vile I thought they were, and that's all I can do.
I am so fucking thankful that ad won't be plastered all over the place here. I'd never even heard of Duncan Quinn before.

And to the fools who say all publicity is good publicity : WRONG
I know I shall be staying far far away from anything with a Duncan Quinn label for the REST OF MY LIFE.
I have a good memory.

I'm not a violence survivor and I found it painful.
My heart goes out to all those whose memories might be triggered by this.

Fucking hell, I'm incoherent with rage.
I could go on about how anger is only positive for males (I'm "scary") but I'll say my anger is perfectly rational and by god could I explain it for a long time.

I shall go throw up now.

On Ageing and why I love internet :D

2008-12-11T21:00:00.002+01:00

This post in yet another that makes me love internet.

I had to post a comment thanking her for it.(And blathering on a bit, but I can't help it, I'm textually incontinent, it's a terrible syndrome)

I'm young. That's a fact. I don't have to worry about aging just yet, although my cigarette consumption (BAD!BAD!) is supposedly going to kill off all my skin cells in five years, or something.
Problem : I knew girls when I was in high school who already used antiwrinkle cream. That's something that definitely had me stunned. Girl in question was twenty, because she wasn't that good at school and so was three years late, but even so. Twenty? Are you kidding me?

I mean seriously. Youth might be pretty, but it's kinda dumb. Not always, of course, but I'm not reading all these deconstructions of the world around me by people my age.
I'm immensely thankful for all the blogs out there that put words on what I'm feeling, because I can't say it.
I haven't the experience. I haven't been thinking about it all that long. And it's not the kind of thing I discuss casually with someone while having a cigarette in between classes. I talk about it with my roommate, with JJ, with my closer friends.
I already have a reputation for being kinda intense,for taking some things seriously, this just makes it worse :D
And I'll argue forever the fact that being intense was ever negative.

I guess I'm trying to get to the fact that our cultures have to be totally and completely fucked-up for people to put youth as such an ideal.
Youth doesn't know. We're taught things, but haven't always experienced them. Often haven't experienced them.
I'll seem to be putting my peers down, but I'm not. We're not dumb. Well, not always. But in some things, we haven't been fighting for them long enough, haven't actually started fighting yet because we've haven't realised they were necessary, haven't actually opened our eyes to the world around us.

After all, youth is the time for selfishness. Many of my peers have hardly left home yet. Many don't live adult lives. I don't yet. My parents pay my bills, although I've left home. I couldn't get an education here otherwise, and would be left learning in the second-grade university at home, with all the losers I grew up with.

On the ageing part-I don't want to be afraid of getting old. I guess I'll see when I come to it. Time goes far too fast in any case, I'm turning twenty in a couple months.
But I'm not scared yet. I have good role models around me.

My mother turned fifty this year, and despite her self-proclaimed fat (my mother has spent her life since I turned up dieting and putting on weight. I find it infinitely depressing. Luckily she's reasonable about it and doesn't go nuts, which has helped me have a semi reasonable stance with food-basically I just eat what I want and to hell with it), she's an attractive woman, who does so fucking much, it's just not funny. I'd like to see someone tell her life at fifty is over. The woman does more than I do, puts me to shame.
My godmother is the same age. Put them together and I'm the one who feels old :)
My best friend's mother is forty. She's an incredibly attractive woman, like every woman in that family,that includes the Best Friend, who's twenty, her mother's two sisters, and her grandmother, who's fifty-eight and amazing.

They're all active, fun women who happen to be attractive. And that shouldn't be the most important thing a woman should retain as time passes.
What's the point in beauty if you can think behind it? If it's just an empty shell?
I guess that's all too easy for me to say. After all, I get to be young, slim, and conventionally attractive.

I'm not special. I'm not different. I just want to able to grow up in peace, and that's not likely to happen.

Funnily enough, I don't feel that pressured by magazine girls. And me and Roommate dearest have a good laugh every month with Glamour and Cosmo who are the root of all evil from what I've understood, but I think the French versions are slightly different, and they're the best thing to empty your head, and why on earth am I justifying myself?Tsch.

I'd feel more pressured by the girls around me.
I live in a upper-class town. half is money, half is students. Expensive. Quality. Lots of southern bourgeoisie.
I'm in a Humanities university. That means the ratio of girls is about sixty/seventy percent.
My classes are full of girls. So competition is high, which is why two strangers call me "that kinda intellectual, stuck up bitch who thinks she's all that", I suppose.
And France is a VERY fattist country. Remember that book "French women don't get fat" ? French women aren't supposed to get fat. It's unfeminine.
Also, the food helps, but that's a whole different story.

Back to the story, since I rather look towards the girls and women around me, it's incredibly reassuring for when I get older. I don't feel that I'll be worthless at thirty.
My teachers are all over thirty. Ms L, one of my chinese teachers, was at least sixty, and she was amazing. Every one of her students loved her.
I watch TV. I follow mainstream media. I read blogs. I read magazines. I'm that common. And I'm cursed with an amazing memory for all things pointless, so I remember stupid details about celebrities.
But I don't feel pressured to fit in to their world. Also because it's perfectly impossible, but primarily because they're too far-off.
We have very beautiful celebrities of our own, who occasionnally turn up here because it's one of the main Southern towns, but they're a lot more real, and they're freaks of nature :)

Look at Catherine Deneuve. She's said to have been under the knife a lot. She still looks pretty natural, pretty good for a woman in her seventies.(I think she's 71, but I'm not certain)
Brigitte Bardot was insanely beautiful, and gave up on all that to fight for animal rights (and become a right-wing nut, but that 's a whole different story). She maybe didn't "age gracefully". Point of the story? She doesn't give a fuck, she's far too busy elsewhere.And she did so much during her acting career!
Line Renaud turned eighty this year and most of French TV celebrated her birthday.

Come to think of it most popular French actresses are forty or more.
Emmanuelle Béart,Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant, Nathalie Baye, Emmanuelle Seigner, Juliette Binoche, Catherine Frot, Jeanne Moreau.

Some of them are notoriously insane. Not all are amazingly beautiful. But they all seem comfortable in their own skin, even though I suspect Emmanuelle Béart of having had her lips plumped up^^

Shite, this is far too long.

Trouble ahoy

2008-12-11T13:22:00.002+01:00

...Smells like more demonstrations.
We heard the high-schoolers chanting outside uni yesterday morning. Protesting against the changes they're trying to make in highschool and their getting rid of approximatively 13000 teachers( numbers probably incorrect because they keep changing).
I don't know much about this reform. All I know is that less teachers is less help for students, which is bad. As for the changes made to high school, I've heard that instead of trimesters the year will function in semesters like at university, and the core knowledges will change, apparently history might not be compulsory or something.

France has one of the most demanding high-school systems in the world; I had between thirty and thirty-five hours of class per week throughout my three years.

It's divided in three main sections : S (science) ES (economics) and L (litterature). Next to that there are sections that deal more with management or electronics, but they're rather overlooked. You want to get anywhere in France? Get a Bac S.
Bac in Baccalauréat, the end of high school exam. Can't do anything without it, really.

So classes in your last year of high school :
In ES (this was my section, so I know it best): Economics, History, Geography, Language number 1, Language number 2, Maths, Philosophy, Sports, and an option (extra maths, extra english, or extra economics)
In S :Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History, Geography, Languages 1 and 2(2 not being compulsory if I remember right), Philosophy, Sports
In L: Litterature, Philosophy, History, Geography, Sports, Languages 1, 2, and often 3 (and Art could be an extra, if I remember right)

So in common we all had History, Geography, Sports, Philosophy, and Languages. Which is already pretty good.

Plus, in your first year of high school you all do the same except for one option which will determine which section you choose the next year : ISI (initiation aux sciences de l'ingénieur-for the math types, they fiddle around with machines from what I understand) Economics, or a third language.
So at the time we all had biology and physics and math and French.
In your second year you get to choose your section and things change ever so slightly; I got to give up Physics, to my greatest joy.
Everyone gets a French exam that year, those of us in the ES section also have a biology exam, and the Ls get French, biology, and math. Which is why they don't have those subjects anymore afterwards.

It's a complicated system, especially when you're not French, I remember how complicated my mother found it, but it seems to sort itself out pretty much for most of us.
Any meaningful changes to the system make us all very insecure.
The baccalauréat is a venerable institution, one we're used to and comfortable with. Every year it's the same shenanigans.
A month or two before, the news starts talking about it, about the latest revision methods, private courses, how much kids are working, how many parents are paying for private tuition. And after we get the age of the youngest bachelier(=person who obtains the Bac) of France (every year there's some kid of thirteen or fourteen who gets it when usually you get it the year you turn eighteen. I'm already an anomaly because I got it at seventeen. I always feel sorry for them), the person with the best grades, the percentage who got it, all that.

It's habit.

Every year we're told that the level has gone down. My history teacher used to tell us that we were asked harder things than he and his peers ever were, but thatour exams were graded accordingly : that is, they went easy on us.
An experiment was done a few months ago, when the same exam copies were given to something like fifteen different teachers, and the grades of each copy went from 5 to 15 out of 20.
It's kinda subjective^^
But real failures are few. In 2008 I think 83% of kids got it.

We're asked to know a lot, about a lot of things. There's a verb "bachoter" which has come to mean cramming for exams, which comes from the word Baccalauréat. Cramming for the Bac.
But that's the way things are.
Now I can appreciate being made to learn all that because it gave me a solid background knowledge. Even though I was crap at math then and I'm crap at math now.
It taught me to logic, and to argue my way through things, especially in philosophy; in essence you could write what the hell you wanted as long as it was logical.
Not saying that I was very good at it, but it does help :)

Slightly annoyed

2008-12-10T00:13:00.002+01:00

...by a couple of girls I can't place who told a mate of mine "oh yeah, she's that kinda intellectual, stuck up bitch who thinks she's all that"

Oooohhh, nice.

Tried to figure out who it was. I got a succinct description, and I still have no idea.
Puzzled. Why on earth would someone go out of their way to belittle me to a friend of mine?

Said friend is male and got into one of France's big schools, Sciences Po, this year. To impress him?
Still bizarre, and a bad move, since he kicked their butts.

I just don't get it.

How does it make you feel better? I mean, I hope it does, because otherwise it's even more pointless. It makes me so confused.
Telling someone who is certainly going to tell me? Are you aiming to hurt me?
Thank god I'm not that insecure.
But if this was the point, I'm sorry for you. Seriously. I'm happy I'm not in that place.

I guess I could find out who you are, and with little effort build your reputations as bitchy insecure fools, but that would be a waste of time and effort, however small.

Utterly and totally puzzled.

Dum dee dum

2008-12-08T20:06:00.002+01:00

new blog discovery: the F word.
It's the first time I encounter a british blog that deals with feminism, and it's a pleasant surprise.

I must admit to a somewhat stereotypical image of Britain in this respect, because I seem to get only negative echoes.
I don't see how going out and getting drunk, going out half undressed, aspiring to be a WAG or an X factor contestant is in any way feminist or empowering.
And of course there is the small matter of the ever-dwindling rape conviction rate, which makes me want to cry, but that's a whole different story.

I try not to give in to stereotyping, but I get so much of the French-bashing from Brits that it doesn't make me want to cut my homeland any slack.

But if you wish to know, the French think that the British women are sluts just as any French girl gets called a slut in Britain. And that's all I'll say for now, because i'm in a bad mood.

I'm a pain in the ass (and I have a one-track mind)

2008-12-07T21:04:00.003+01:00

JJ was commenting on how much sweeter I am as a girlfriend than as a friend.

Then he realised that actually, no : I just soften my acid/bad/burn jokes by being a cuddly Carebear.

I met his two of his stepbrothers this weekend and the older one (15/16) found our verbal exchanges extremely entertaining. Apaprently he's not used to seeing someone laugh the shit out of his big brother.

I'm terrible like that. It just spouts out because I find it funny. People have been offended, which is not my intention AT ALL, and it's not very feminine (bwahahahahha), but the rest of the world seems to find it funny.

Well, my friends do :D.
Guys tend to find me a bit of a shock at times, because I don't fit into the persona they attribute me, which is also something I find terribly funny. (i was going to say droll but that would come across as pretentious).
So yeah. I'm a pain in the ass.

I know I've scared dudes away like that, and man could I not give a damn :)
I mean, seriously. I don't want to be Cinderella, she's too boring for words. Very Lily White, as F would say.(Percival's loved one, always passive, waiting for him, BORING)(this is a translation from the French Blanche Fleur, I don't know her name in English).

On another note, MC turned up unexpectedly so we celebrated her birthday last night, and the conversation turned to that. She's in a city further up North, near the Alps, and she says that they don't deal in double-entendres half as much as we do. So she comes home, sees us, and it takes a couple hours for her to get back in the swing of things^^

I must admit, I can often be found giggling to myself until someone goes "oh for FUCK'S SAKE" and then laughs too.
I think that I'm not all that different from the rest of the world, only I just can't help laughing and then I have to explain why. I don't mind people knowing I have a warped mind^^
Of course, that too is not feminine and all that, but a lot of the girls I know are just as bad as me, so maybe the attribute never was unfeminine to start off with^^

Another myth!

blablabla

2008-12-04T22:46:00.002+01:00

Wish I could think of interesting titles.

I was thinking earlier how much I enjoyed food.
Roommate dearest finished at 8pm this evening, so I was pottering around cooking for when she got back.
I like cooking, I like the smells and the changes and most of all the result^^
I don't bother obsessing over food. It's there to be enjoyed, and man is it enjoyable^^
Roommate dearest and I eat together nearly every night, except when one or the other eats out, or when people come over of course, so pottering in the kitchen together making food is something we do very often, and have fun doing^^
It's just nice, enjoying the smells as they come along, and tasting little by little, and twirling around flipping stuff with a cigarette in my other hand.
(I'm very talented at smoking and doing things at the same time)

I guess I just like to enjoy things in general. I spent an hour in the bathroom this evening, washing my hair, and covering myself in cream, stuff I don't have time to do in the morning but that is sooo enjoyable.
And I don't give a damn if it's antifeminist of me :D

Seriously I've read that women who wanted to look nice were colluders and sluts that worshipped cock.
Some people seriously need to see a shrink about their sexuality hang-ups.

I like feeling good about myself, and that includes agreeing with who I see in the mirror.
I don't see why anyone else should care.

As to worshipping cock...I think that has to be one of the most vile things I've ever heard from a woman^^ No seriously, slut-shaming is, like, sooo new, no-one's ever done it before. Really original.
I like the company of men.
I like sex.
It doesn't make me any different. I'm just as vulgar (which has shocked some), just as forthright, just as annoying.
And strangely enough some men find that attractive. Quite a few, come to think of it.

Men can find the eternal stereotype of a girl annoying too. Me and my bad jokes don't quite fit in to it^^

Other pointless things to say

2008-12-03T23:33:00.002+01:00

The first years have obviously decided that all us chinese students were nutters because when we were waiting for Ms F to turn up for chinese lab, Lola had african/latino music blaring on her phone and was dancing around the corridor, it was sooo funny, and F was singing along to japanese songs on her mp3.
I think I nearly killed myself laughing at their faces.
Other highlights of the day: JJ came around after we had a resounding argument last night, in which he compared me to his guitar and I blew a fuse.
If anyone is interested, I might have to explain this a bit better because JJ is in no way a dick.

He's a musician (this year at least, he graduated from the same course as I'm doing but last year, and in English-Japanese) and yesterday he finally got the seven string guitar he ordered, so he was a happy wee bunny.
I sent a teasing message saying that he'd better not forget me for his guitar, he teasingly answered that there were things I could do better, I asked what, and that's when it all went awry.
Because to annoy me he pretended not to be able to think of one (I know, we're kids but it's fun) and I pretended to sulk, so he asked what he could do to redeem himself, and I suggested giving me more value than to his guitar (does this sentence make sense in English?I'm tired)

That was the point where I blew a fuse.
Because he said he couldn't, he could only give me a different value.
JJ is a bit strange at times. His elder brother OD'd a couple months ago, and he hasn't really faced it yet, and he knows it. So as soon as he got it, he gave his guitar his brother's name, and it immediately took on a different value to him.
He loved his brother.So much. He doesn't talk about him that much, or tries not to maybe, but there's something of the hero worship about their relationship, and a refusal to believe that his brother could have left him.
And the fact that the last time he talked to his brother, it was angry words, saying that he was sick of his nonsense and it was time for him to get clean.

As I'm writing this, I'm so happy I don't have any readers. I'm thinking that if JJ ever saw this he'd know it was him, and I'm wondering if I can really write this. If it isn't somehow...wrong?

But JJ's brother is such a part of him. It's something I always found incredibly touching about him, how connected he was to his brother, even in death.

Back to the story. I got mad, and had to explain how humiliating I found it to be compared to a guitar, however important the guitar might be.
After all, women as objects are shown daily. I definitely didn't need it shoved into my face anymore than it was.

Well, he apologised, and said it had come out badly, and that of course I was more important than a guitar, which wasn't exactly what I was looking for. So he apologised again.
I think he didn't quite get where the anger came from. He's not used to that side of me.
Well, now he knows, and since he didn't run away screaming feminist, I think things will be fine. I know he didn't mean it. But he doesn't quite get the privilege ey, although I've been pointing out to him pretty regularly^^
Poor guy, he doesn't know what he's let himself in for.

Class debate

2008-12-03T23:25:00.002+01:00

In chinese conversation today, we had the choice between two subjects to talk about : romantic gestures/places/whatevers, and homosexual marriage.

Our teacher is a lovely chinese woman who likes to find out what we all think and so tends to give us interesting subjects. She wants to find out about our culture, our opinions, while we get better. It's her first year teaching here, and she's excellent.

Class is mainly girls, and has a few foreigners with weird backgrounds dotted in; me, Victor who is chilean-french, landed in France four or five years ago and spent a year in China last year, and Paul who is german, and has lived here,in Germany, China, Romania, and England(i'm not sure about the england part)(he's older than most of us, thank god, I'm starting to feel inadequate :P) and of course my lovely F who is half-tunisian and always has a lot to say about women's rights and Islam.

Point number one : it was a lot easier talking about than I thought, especially once I'd learnt the words for homosexual and heterosexual.
Point number two : we ALL spoke about homosexual marriage, which puzzled the teacher since she thinks France is supposed to be a very romantic place; the rest of us told her romance as it's usually considered is too boring and commonplace. It doesn't feel special. But I digress.
Point number three : everyone argued in favour of it.

It's suuucccchhh a damn no-brainer sometimes :D
(most said thing : if we can, when we don't care about it, why can't they, when they obviously want to? Of course all this was developed a lot, but I can't be bothered to lay out my and their reasons for supporting gay marriage)

Aids a day late and contraception stories

2008-12-02T19:29:00.003+01:00

So yesterday was AIDS day.

I belong to a generation who grew up with AIDS. Safe sex has been rammed into my head since I was about ten. (Anti smoking stuff started earlier but I can't say I followed that :D)

Well, it worked. I've never had unsafe sex. No condom is a no-go, even during the periods I'm on the Pill (I stopped it four months ago because I was tired of it-yes I was still with the Ex at that time and no he did not get a say in it.), except when we've both gone and been tested.
I don't make compromises with my health, or with someone else's for that matter. After all, I'm a slut! (irony inserted).
Truth be told, sex without a condom has only been suggested once, i think. Maybe twice. So the guys aren't too bad about it :D

I hear a lot these days about the younger generation being the most careless about that, and it drives me crazy. I don't understand how we can be less careful. After all, it's not as if anyone had found a vaccine or a cure(I shall celebrate that day).
My mother once told me she'd been lucky to grow up without this fear, although she didn't really. She had a few years, but she was still pretty young when it was made "official".(I wasn't around in any case).

We're lucky here, I really do think.

We're taught about reproduction early. This tends to include how one can fall pregnant, and no, not by giving blowjobs.

You can get contraception and a visit to the gynaecologist for free at the Planning Familial (I guess that might be something like Planned Parenthood?) as well as help to secure an abortion or simply a visit with a counselor. Especially if you don't want your parents knowing about your sex life.
Otherwise you can simply go and get it reimbursed by social security. Most contraception methods are reimbursed, except for the patch if I remember rightly, and how much you're reimbursed depends on the pill you use. In high school I used one that was 10 euros a month (that's REALLY expensive, but I was in high school, what did I care) and last year I was taking one that cost 1,30 euros for three months.
My roommate has one of those blue implant thingies but her dad's a european civil servant so she's under european social protection, it's not quite the same.
You can get the morning after pill free if you have a doctor's presciption, and it costs 7/8 euros over the counter.

Condoms of course are a lot more expensive, and not paid for, unfortunately^^But there are condom machines all over the place, and they give them out a lot. They gave them out in my high school every AIDS day, during the concerts and shows that were organised, they give them ou at concerts, as samples...Best Friend used to have a collection of them^^We'd get really funky ones with the name of the band we'd just been to see on them, that's always funny.

We had sex ed in middle school (~~12,13 years old if I remember right), and some doctor came to talk to us about AIDS, and I still have the poster I stole(actually, they were all stolen becaus ethey were so damn funky that year) from high school for AIDS prevention. It's bright pink and has "oui, oui, oui, ouiiiiiii" a zillion times on it and the "o"s of the "oui"s (that's yes, but I assume you know that) are made with condoms still in their packages, you know when you can see the circle? It's hanging in my kitchen, I should go take a photo.

They've a lot of special ads on at the moment, but they're on pretty often really. Nearly part of the background.

Although apparently there are less people in France contaminated this year. Which is some good news.
And our First Lady's brother died of Aids, so she has an interest in the problem.

I really do ramble.

harassment thread

2008-11-30T23:07:00.002+01:00

I know, I spend my time reading old blog posts and threads but I need to educate myself :)
although this isn't really an education.
It's life, and it makes me so fucking angry.
I want to cry.
Talking to JJ on msn and he wondered why I'd gone so quiet, so I directed him to the thread. Now I'm waiting to see what he'll say, although I have faith-he's no idiot :)

I'm safe enough. I live in a safe town. Mine is a place where I can walk back home at two in the morning and nothing has ever happened to me **touches wood**.
I hate feeling like public property because I'm a girl.
Although I'm not sure it's quite the same in France as in the Uk or the US. I was fifteen when I went to the US, so I didn't really notice, and in the UK I've always been out in groups, so I don't know.

But I'm still worried about going home alone. I walk around with pepper sray ever since I ran into trouble at university last year. Before an ex got it for me because he was worried about the nasty turn things between the people blocking uni and those against it (ie, me for example) were taking, I carried one of my brother's knives around.
I always wear headphones so I can ignore the guys calling me out. If I do hear them I tend to have insults spout out before I can stop them. Last time in Marseille I told them to fuck off and die. When i was sixteen some arab dude in the street stopped in front of me, leered and said "hey, let's go to a hotel", as if it was something normal. Told him to go fuck himself.
I fucking hate having to be careful.
I give out very strong leave me alone vibes, which tend to scare people off. In first year, I never got chatted up in the bus, when my roommates did. Around the end of the year though, some random guy in my neighbourhood stopped me in the street and insisted on talking. He was nice enough, but he was creeping me out, he was too old, saying how he'd been seeing me around for a couple months, blabla, could I give him my number. Said no. Tried to make me take his. Said there was no point, that I wasn't going to call him, and shot off.
I hate feeling I owe these cray dudes something, when I don't. I hate being afraid of offending them, that they might take it out on me, and I won't police my behaviour for them. When I really can't do it, I give a fake number so that they leave me the hell alone.

**update**JJ is shocked.

I just get so tired sometimes, and I'm in a safe place. Why should I have to hide beind my sunglasses and headphones?
Why do men feel entitled to shouting their opinion at me, and what, think it's flattering?
Fuckeeerrss

I know men can't comprehend it at a female level because they're not going to experience it, but Christ, is it that hard to grasp?
AAARRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I just want to scream.
I'll feel better in the morning.

Privilege

2008-11-30T18:07:00.003+01:00

Privilege is a concept that occurred to me only recently. I mean, I knew I was lucky, but I'd never actually defined it this way.
But as time goes on, I see how privileged i actually am, and I find it crazy.

I'm white.
I'm young.
I'm slim.
I'm conventionally attractive.
I'm straight
I'm smart enough.
I'm middle-class.
I'm from what they call a traditional nuclear family.
I live in a country that pays for my education and health care.
I'm confident enough.

I'm comfortable enough in my own skin not to feel threatened by what is different from me. And I think that's the mother of all privileges, although many probably won't agree with me.
I was brought up to be tolerant and not dismiss what I don't understand.
I lived in a safe environment, where I wasn't belittled overmuch for being a girl, although it has happened, of course; where the gay people I knew weren't attacked, and where the probability of my being mugged was fairly small. Case is, I've been harassed but never attacked, and here's hoping it stays that way.

Racism though was rampant because in the south of France there are large muslim/arab communities-well this actually goes for the whole of France but we're near the sea and Morocco and Algeria are very near. It's hard to be Arab or Black in France.

It's funny how where I lived it was rarer to meet homophobic people than racist people, especially in my generation. After all, we don't listen to only-white music or watch only-white movies.
I could try and explain it. I could try and justify it, but it's just wrong.
I could tell you that whenever I've been harassed by unknown men in the street in my short life, they've all been Arab, strangely enough. I could tell you about how this experience is common to most of my friends. Not three months ago, two friends got beaten up by five arab dudes.
I could tell you how we've all come to associate violence with Arab youths-and older men, for that matter.

And it's just terrible.

These kids have been discriminated against for years, of course they're angry, and all this leads to violence and the 2005 riots.

But that's not what you think of when you've just walked past a group of them who whistled at you and called you a fucking French whore because you didn't respond.

I can try and understand the anger. They're screwed over. You're soooo less likely to get through school, to find a job, to be able to rent a flat if you're Arab or Black, it's insane.
If you're young, it's no point even thinking about it.
That's why people like Rachida dati are set up as an example. She was the daughter of illiterate immigrants, she managed, being a girl, she got out of an arranged marriage, she managed.

But these kids, they mainly have footballers, rappers and singers to look up to, and that isn't much.
So I'm angry at how screwed up they got, so that they got so angry, so that I have to take care to avoid looking at them so as not to get "who you looking at, you French ho, what you want?".
I'm angry at the system that taught them it was no point fighting back.
I'm angry that I don't know what I could do.

Roommate dearest has some voluntary work to do to get her degree. She's going to tutor a kid from one of the less favoured sides of town, which is great. Seriously the Law uni is so much better than ours, it's crazy^^

Sexuality musings

2008-11-30T17:33:00.002+01:00

This post made me think a lot, especially the part about male sexuality.
Male homophobia stemming from their insecurity. Which is, actually, obvious, but needs to be spelled out more often.

I'm actually surprised at how unfamiliar this can be. Maybe I just didn't mix with the very macho guys, although I frequented a lot of rugby players during my high school years-talk about homoeroticism :D.

But I have so many friends and guys I've dated who have kissed other dudes, sometimes while drunk, sometimes not, who questioned their sexuality to come to the conclusion that they were straight, without worrying more than that.
JJ for one wrote a song about his best mate's body that's inherently sexual. Which doesn't stop him from dating me :). My ex sometimes kisses his best mates when drunk. It doesn't mean anything to them, maybe just an over the top expression of their friendship :)

When I was in my senior year of high school, we had this class called civic education. It was a load of bollocks and our economics teacher cut it every three weeks so she could make us sit out a four hour exam.(french school can be very demanding^^).
But basically she made us all do small presentations of about half an hour, with another half hour of discussion. It usually made for lively arguments, including my accusing my class of being French chauvinist idiots when we discussed Europe ^^.
But I digress. The Best Friend had homosexual adoption as a subject.

See, in France it's a bit strange. You can adopt as a single parent, which is what most gay couples do, because you can't adopt as a couple in a civil union, if I remember right (PACS), although the European Human Rights Court has stated that refusing adoption on the basis of sexuality is illegal, it's all a bit complicated. Anyway, this was in 2005/2006, back to the story.

Best Friend hauled me in to go around and question the school pupils on what they thought of adoption by homosexuals.
A resounding number didn't give a damn. A few worried about the effect on the kids. And then of course there were the radically opposed, but i don't remember many, I only remember a group of five or six guys saying "well look at my buddy here. He can/could be gay, I don't care. I still don't think it's right if he adopts, I mean the poor kid would be singled out like, forever, it's not normal."
I don't remember actively arguing with anyone, just pointing out that homosexual couples already had children anyway, and that not being able to adopt just made things a lot more difficult for them, because surrogate mothers are banned in France, it's considered selling your body, which is banned, like for organs, blood, and sex of course!

But all those who were against it were guys. Funny, isn't it.

There were quite a few loud and proud gays in my school, boys or girls. The loudest of them, Flo did get quite a bit of flack from the rugby players, which led to a hell of a lot of arguments, mainly my screaming in the middle of class for them to STFU! He was-and is-my friend. He was everyone's friend really, he was a popular guy.
The other one who really struck me was Erica, but that's because she scared the shit out of me^^ She was very strong, did a lot of boxing, and was certifiably insane. And she got angry very fast.

Saturday scrolling

2008-11-29T18:26:00.002+01:00

I wish I wrote down ideas for posts when I get them, because then life gets in the way, and I forget.

This has not been a good week. Those bombings in Mumbai...still not clear, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Two Frenchies were killed, apparently the founder of Princesse Tam Tam, an underwear brand and her husband (I haven't checked this, read it in the paper).

The Socialist's warfare seems to have abated for a while, they elected Martine Aubry, and now I'm waiting for the next self-implosion. The state of the left in this country is pathetic. They just fight for power all the time, and none of them seem to realise the consequences. I mean, I'm nineteen and I could tell them that they're just making themselves ridiculous and completely discrediting whatever they could do.

One thing I've been thinking about is power in France. We're often told there aren't enough female politicians in powerful places, but A) I'm not sure that's true, I don't have the statistics, and we do have a lot of female names cropping up every day in the news, the most common at the moment being Segolène Royal and Martine Aubry, and B) I don't think that's the point. No-one in France could do an Obama, ever : what, eight years of politics, and becoming president?
No fucking way.
Sarkozy presented himself as a reformer when he turned up : what a lot of foreigners don't realise is that he's been in politics for thirty years.
A job in politics here is all about the game. We're so very stuck in Machiavel. Many politicians, most politicians tend to use their power for themselves a lot.
Which I think is why they don't want more rivals. Things could change a lot if more female politicians, powerful ones, spoke out for the cause of women in general, had female protégées, thought about sharing even a bit-but it doesn't work like that here.

Sarkozy has female protégées, more than male ones come to think of it, such as Rachida Dati and Rama Yade. Has he furthered their careers? Hell yeah. No-one had actually heard of them before he gave them their jobs.
Not that it protected them.
I have little respect for Rachida Dati. She has no idea of what compromise is, and seems to prefer showing off in tabloids than actually working. But as she whines a lot, she's the daughter of two illiterate Algerian immigrants who became a lawyer by herself. That commands my respect, whatever happens.
Rama Yade is the daughter of an African diplomat. She seems intelligent, but her job doesn't allow her to show it at all. She's a political prop more than anything else, unfortunately. I'd like to see what she's capable of, and I'd love to see her prove the naysayers wrong.

But she's put herself in the power of a very dominant man, and sarkozy is not going to let anyone steal his thunder, not that a state secretary could, but he will do anything to keep the useful people and get rid of the deadweights. Rama is still useful; she does what he says, she doesn't create scandals or controversies, and she looks good as a young black woman in his government.

She isn't a Segolene Royal, who for all her craziness these days has been a very strong woman through her life; she got away from the dominating influence of her military father in her late teens, and became the first female candidate to the presidency to get to the second round.
Here's the thing. I don't like Segolene Royal, she acts strangely and goes with the flow, uttering a few crazy things along the way for shock value.
But she earned what she got, and she fought all the way, all the way to the primaries for the Socialist candidate for the presidency in 2007, when some of the left candidates asked "but who will take care of the children?" disparagingly.

Hmmm

Keyboards for girls

2008-11-26T17:50:00.002+01:00

Why does this strike me as sexist, and am I overreacting?
A lovely pink keyboard, with musical notes instead of numbers, "XXL letters" for caps, and a whole lot of other "easy" functions, like special keys for "OMG".

I find this extremely annoying. And the first comment on the page is already moaning about how SOMEONE is going to complain about this.

I mean, duh, it's so hard to use a normal keyboard when you're just a silleeee girleeeee. After all, all a girl uses a computer for is to chat, isn't it?Msn and the like. Ooooh,and to look up things about popstars.
Musical notes instead of numbers? I mean, seriously?

This is the kind of thing that really annoys me. GIRLS ARE DUMB,YOOHOO!We need pink and things made easy!
Just fuck off already.

Just great

2008-11-26T16:13:00.003+01:00

Holy shit T.I. and Rihanna have sampled Ozone.

I think I just did mysef an injury laughing.

(Ozone are some eastern Europe band who had a hit years ago with a song that ges "Numa Numa yeah. Unintentionally hilarious.)

Refusal to comply

2008-11-26T15:11:00.003+01:00

I don't have to fit in anyone's mold of what a woman should be.

So yeah, I swear a lot, make a lot of bad jokes, have a one-track mind, am a year younger than all my classmates, describe myself as feminist, enjoy the company of men and women alike, am fairly shameless, can't help laughing when people use pop-psychology on me, am cynical, don't believe in a hypothetical Prince Charming, don't WANT a Prince Charming because he'd be the most boring person on earth, lose my temper a lot, dislike getting overly emotional, think too much, try to get to the bottom of things, am called indifferent, cold, intimidating, refuse to let myself be used as a doormat, tend to take things with a shrug, move on fast-does all this make me anything less of a woman?

I don't think so. I don't feel so. But I'm told a girl shouldn't act like that.
I should be heartbroken at the end of my relationship.
Well I'm not.
I should only have sex with someone I love.
Well I won't.
I should keep my mouth shut and listen to people airing their inane opinions in silence.
I will not.
I should wear dresses all the time and look pretty at all times.
I'll dress for me. I wear my make-up for myself, and too bad if you deem it outrageous, or over the top for daytime, or too subdued for a party. I choose.
I shouldn't go out at night, shouldn't drink, shouldn't party, shouldn't have fun because who knows what may happen to me!
I'll take the risk.

I am original sin and life-giver at the same time, I tempt and wrong and create evil.
Once more : NO.

Seriously, no. All this is just plain wrong.

We're all stereotyped. I was given dolls, my brother was given cars. We were jointly given electric trains and a car track. We played farms together, played with my barbies and his Action Men, played Lego and built treehouses, played Pokemon when it first came out, I used to play ball or tag at recess, I refused to wear a skirt after the age of 5, refused point blank to wear anything I hadn't chosen for that matter, which drove my poor mother crazy, and spent my life the nose in a book from the moment I learned how to read at four, stealing the books my mother banned me from reading because I was too young for them (she might've been right about that-reading a biography of Henri 4 of France at 9 isn't quite normal, apparently).

But where's the fun in staying in the place you're given?I wanted those dolls. My family wouldn't have cared if I wanted cars, I always wanted books more than anything anyway. I still do. I love books.
So I was hard to define. Still am, I suppose. I don't dress in any particular way than what i find pretty. So what? Bookworm?yes. Feminine?yes. Strong-willed?yes. Nerdy?yes. A royal pain in the ass?Most definitely.
I just hate being put in a box. I'm this, so I should do that, or think that-no.

God, I'm totally out on medication so I'd better shut up now :D

Links ahoy

2008-11-26T14:43:00.002+01:00

Well I'm sick today, so pottering around on the internet, as usual.

Linking to some wonderful posts that make me insanely angry and leave me wondering what the hell I could do.
I had F discover this post yesterday and I might have turned her into a Shakesville devotee :) as I became recently.
Because I've found people who can actually express my feelings, call me out on my privilege without even knowing I exist, and generally just give me some kind of hope. Teaspoon by teaspoon ;).
(Posts all about rape. Yeah, that's life.)

I've never been raped. Lucky?yes. Should I have to feel lucky? HELL NO.
It's always a risk for a woman, and everyone considers that NORMAL.
It makes me so fucking angry, this culture of entitlement that exists. I've lost count of the number of times a guy has tried to kiss me if not worse when I was in a not-so-sober state. It hasn't happened in a while though. After all, I'm intimidating :D
Although I also got this kind of rep when at a friend's eighteenth, when I was sixteen, a "friend" tried to grope me and I punched him in the eye. he never spoke to me again :).

I can't stop men considering my body to be public property, although I do my best to discourage it.
What i don't get is how a woman can still be considered as "other", as not quite human. Simone de Beauvoir had a lot to say on this sixty years ago; has nothing changed since?Nothing?

I feel like I live in a culture that encourages girls to consider themselves as meat. And there's something I'll never do. I have more brains than a lot of men I know, and there's no way I'm hiding that to pander to their pathetic little egos.

I'm sort of seeing JJ at the moment, and there's definitely no limit to his brains. Counterintuitively sexy, as read on Jezebel some time back. What's inside is sexier than what's outside. Now he's not the most confident of men, but he definitely doesn't make me feel like I should change to help his ego, quite the opposite.
When we first met, over a year ago, he didn't take to me much because he found me overconfident and pretentious (I say, I was being drunkface when I turned up that day, so it's not my fault :D)and because I'd been invited along by a friend of mine, Viet, who is famously aggressive, abrasive, and can be perfectly revolting speechwise, which I find hilarious but a lot of people do not- which didn't do much for my reputation in his eyes.
But he found out I actually had a brain, and that's what he finds interesting, strangely enough.
It's so nice to have intelligent conversation, instead of getting bored listening to my ex's friends air their one-dimensional opinions on the world.

Songs of Freedom

2008-11-25T23:24:00.002+01:00

I had a new wonderful friend from uni, F, over today, after class, and we smoked and pretended to work and chattered away and shared our music tastes and talked and talked and talked.
F is of Tunisian origin, and we share a lot of discussions about origins and family and feminism, and people have the same complaints about us : confidence, indifference, not needing a man to choose our way :)

So we found out that we had the same musical obsessions with old music and C-Pop (chinese music) and weird J-pop and all the stuff the people such as my ex's circle of friends look down upon because it's too "easy" too "mainstream", and the like.
Now music is a very personal subject, and as numerous teenagers the world over I sort of hid in it. Music is what lifts you up. And I've always had very eclectic tastes :)
So where's all this going? Well I think music has an influence on you.
I grew up listening to rockers and not feeling excluded. Listening to women saying that being a girl was fun and you could be strong and there was nothing to be ashamed of.
That there was something inherently inferior in being a girl.
They were girls who'd kick your ass if you suggested such a thing.

So did that help? Hell yeah. Well, I think so. When I was around eight, at the yearly school fetes, they always played Shania Twain's "Man, I feel like a woman". I was used to hearing her sing about how FUN it could be.
"I wanna be free, yeah, to feel the way I feel"
Possibly not the most feminist track on earth, for sure. I haven't actually analysed it, and I'm not going to, just in case I ruin my memories!
But I was told in the song that I could do whatever the hell I liked, girl or no girl.

I haven't listened to that in a while. But I've always had a fondness for girls singing about things I could actually muster an interest for.
Not so much the stereotyped pop/rnb girls usually singing about how their boyfriend left them or how much they love him.
I like the girls saying that it might hurt but it's not the end of the world. Because that's how I see things too.
I liked them telling me that it didn't matter. That I could do whatever I wanted. That however hard, I could get over things.
It's always a relief to find a kindred spirit.

Beaujolais nouveau :)

2008-11-20T23:18:00.002+01:00

So i took off, to come back home for a break after spectacularly failing my chinese exams.

Today I spent the day with JJ providing moral support for his trying to persuade local concert halls to let them play, and we ended up in Avignon with a bunch of his mates getting drunk on wine cause the Beaujolais nouveau juste came out ; you bought a glass for three euros and walked round the fifty-odd stands choosing wine. i think I tried about seven and that was it for me :)so we went to the restaurant.
All in all, a very enjoyable day!

Holy shit

2008-11-17T22:46:00.002+01:00

Prince Charming's girlfriend is a nutter.
I just found out he had to get her dad's approval before dating her.

I can't even get started on how WRONG this is.

Standard reply : MY dad wouldn't even dream of this because he respects my intelligence enough to know i can choose for MYSELF.
Next : even if he WANTED to I respect MYSELF enough to know i DON'T NEED his approval.

Prince Charming found it weird at the time. What love can do to you. No wonder his girlfriend is a nut.

Bitch 101 courtesy of Hoyden about Town

2008-11-17T22:24:00.001+01:00

I love this post!

and I think I must be a bitch then :D **gives oneself a cookie**

Nature and Nurture

2008-11-17T16:16:00.002+01:00

Fuckpolitness's lovely comment there (yay!) set me one wondering : how does one become who we are?
How did I apparently turn out different from a lot of the girls I know?
How come I don't want to run to anyone for help?

I'd think it's all in the luck of the draw (that would be the nature issue) but it's probably much more likely to be the environment you've had to live in.

I've had an extremely privileged life.

I come from a multicultural family, to start off with. I do believe that helps with openness, because there are always a lot of issues to resolve within yourself, so you can't just take things for granted.
My French classmates know where they're from, who they are, where they'll go (well, usually). I never have. I'm not French, not British, not American, definitely not Swedish, so I've always wondered where I stood.

My family isn't particularly conventional or unconventional.
My father is American by choice, swedish american by inheritance, born and raised in France.
He left for America for university at eighteen, at which point my swedish grandmother and alcoholic artist american grandfather divorced. That would be in the early seventies, when it definitely wasn't fashionable in France.
My grandmother moved down South and never remarried. One of her exes is a good family friend. She set up her business, made her own life. A good example. Now she's a tough old lady whom I suspect of waiting for my marriage eagerly because my parents pulled a fast one and got married in the Caribbean, with me as an attendee, when I was one.
My grandfather moved down here to live with us last year. I never got on with him much, now he's losing it,probably because of the alcohol abuse, so I do my best to be nice. But he's a stubborn old dude,(like the rest of the family) and when he still had it I suspected him of looking down on me because I was a girl. Most people preferred my younger brother when i was a kid, because he was outgoing and charming, when I was shy and always had my nose stuck in a book-but I suspected ulterior motives^^
In the meantime, my dad lived all over the place-Kentucky, LA for a few years when he had to give up uni because they cut his job as a French teaching assistant(he tells us great stories about that time), he was a truckdriver in France and Europe, then one day finally got an office job in England, met my mother, and bam! A couple of years later I turned up :)
My mother once said she was surprised my father had turned out so normal.
My mother was very English. A horsey girl, one of the eighties working girls. When we all moved here she took a part-time job as an accountant, and on the side she organises european exchanges, is boss of an association that half-runs the local music school, finds time to play music in the meantime and work the horse. My mother is a nut. She never quite grew up, which is why all my friends love her.
So no-one ever told me women couldn't do it.
I had a very conflictual relationship with my dad for a long time. We're very similar. But he had hepatitis for most of my life-he's been cured for a few years now-and the treatment was very heavy, and changed him a lot. He was constantly on a short fuse. But I was teenaged and merciless, and far too preoccupied with myself to care about such futile things^^.
To be fair, he likes to have his own way, like the rest of us, and has as quick a temper as mine. The shouting matches in our house were epic^^I feel sorry for my mother now, because she had to bear the brunt of both our tempers. She doesn't get angry-much. In a household where tempers are famously quick, I'd say she's at a disadvantage. Except that when she's really mad, we all run for cover.
There's another point; my father and I are just as bad, so why couldn't we be just as good?
I'd love to have his ease of speech, his immediate friendliness. I still remember when we celebrated his fiftieth, the year before I started high school. There were sooo many people.
My mother knows absolutely everyone. I'd often meet people of all ages, and they'd know my mother. I still do. I ran into a friend at a concert a couple weeks ago, he invited me to the concert his band is particpating in in a few weeks, turns out my mother's organising it.

One of her best friends makes me laugh a lot. She's a fifty-odd lesbian with a fantastic sense of humour. I know this doesn't seem to have much to do with my family, but I know I grew up hearing my mother talking about the friends back in England, the gay friends who had just bought a house together, my dad's best friend was married to a black woman and their daughter is his goddaughter-I see a lot about white people talking about their black friend, or their gay friend, on the internet, and it's seen as posing. But I grew up like this, and none of it seemed strange. When I think of it, yeah I have black friends and gay friends and asian friends and whatnot. But I have to stop and think about it because their "difference" isn't what is going to come to my mind first. Take one of my black mates-the first thing I'd tell anyone about him is that's he really cute, he's fun, he's in his third year of history. Oh yeah, he's black. So what?

Damn, I'm late, and supposed to be meeting someone for coffee. More later.

Some silly Quizz

2008-11-17T00:15:00.002+01:00

1. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up?

Hmmm, a difficult choice.
Probably the scary evangelical dude I saw on Tv the other day who argued that his was the only right religion because it was tolerant of all other religions and so was the basis of religious freedoms in america. DUH.

2. You can flip a switch that will wipe any band or musical artist out of existence. Who will it be?

Johnny Halliday

3. Who would you really like to just punch in the face?

The guy who's stalking and harassing the Best Friend.

4. What is your favorite cheese?

Goat's cheese. I looooveee goat's cheese, which is why we don't buy it often cause I eat it all.
And I live in the country of cheese. is bliss. I feel so sorry for those dieting people-they don't know what they're missing!

5. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your immediate disposal. What kind of sandwich will you eat?

something very British, with cheese and pickle and cress and stuff. Loooove that.

6. You have the opportunity to sleep with the movie celebrity of your choice. We are talking no-strings-attached sex and it can only happen once. Who is the lucky celebrity of your choice?

errrrmmmmmmm...Do I get to pick Heath Ledger? Otherwise...Marc André Grondin, a french canadian actor.

7. You have the opportunity to sleep with the music celebrity of your choice, who will it be?

Kanye West, so I can check why he has such a big ego :) or the Hocus Pocus singer (French)

8. Now that you've slept with two people in a row, you seem to be having an excellent day because you just came across a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk. What do you buy?

oooohh...something totally futile. Maybe more books, or clothes or something. Nothing useful.

9. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?

Spain. I have people to see there :) and then Australia, cause i have people to see there too.

10. An angel appears out of heaven and offers you a lifetime supply of the beverage of your choice. It is?

Tea (teh Brit is back!)

11. Rufus appears out of nowhere with a time-traveling phone booth. You can go anywhere in the PAST. Where do you go?

Oh man, the past isn't that attractive^^ maybe the late sixties, just to know what all the fuss was about.

12. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place?

I make all the rules. None of that silly democracy here!

13. You have been given the opportunity to create the half-hour TV show of your own design. What is it?

Something interesting^^ I'll get back to you later.

14. What is your favorite curse word?

In English? definitely fuck
In french it could be putain, merde, putain de bordel de merde, sombre pute and so many others and no I won't translate

15. One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren't really doing anything, what do you do?

run screaming

16. Your house is on fire! What do you do?

do my best to sort us out

17. The Angel of Death has descended upon you. Fortunately, the Angel of Death is pretty cool and in a good mood, and it offers you a half-hour to do whatever you want before you bite it. Whatcha gonna do in that half-hour?

Call to joke around before I leave? Or have mind blowing sex. Either is good.

18. You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and whats even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What super-power is it?

The ability to stop time and then restart it whenever I wanted.

19. You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?

I really don't know.

20. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

Anytime that involves feeling ill and helpless

21. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But check this out you can move anywhere. Where are you going?

Italy? Spain?Canada?nah, too cold. Australia? New Zealand?

22. This question still counts, even for those of you who are under age, if you were banned from every bar in the world except one, which one would it be?

Shite, this one sucks. I frequent too many bars for this to be possible.

23. Hopefully you didn't mention this in the super-powers question... If you did, then we'll just expound on that. Check it out… Suddenly, you have gained the ability to fly! Whose house are you going to fly to first, and be like "Check it out I can FLY!?"

Best Friend's.

24. The constant absorption of magical moon beams mixed with the radioactive vegetables you consumed earlier has given you the ability to resurrect the dead famous person of your choice. So which celebrity will you bring back to life?

Heath Ledger? Paul Newman? Kurt Cobain? Stop asking difficult questions.

Other people say it better

2008-11-16T14:51:00.002+01:00

This is what I'd like to write.

I can't.
I relate to what's said, and totally agree.
Somehow it doesn't seem to affect me on an emotional level. Intellectually, I see the logic, I agree with it, I am revolted by it.
I'm the kind of girl who screams blue murder if something pisses her off. I try and catch people out on their sexism, at very least. But I've never felt that being who I am stops me from going anywhere. Privilege, I guess.
I've had the feeling that reacting differently in some ways could change some things-like, being less aggressive at times would make more people like me-but then I stop and think, hey, if I was a man, would they be bothered?
It's good for a man to be aggressive, confident, secure. Women shouldn't be. Of course we need a man to save us, to run back to in times of need.
Men are afraid of a woman with brains, and will try to browbeat us into submission.
Because we should be meek.
I've been meek. That didn't work out so well for me. I was shy, and miserable, and scared.
I grew out of it.
I'm still scared. Of taking risks, of relationships, of a lot of stuff, but I try.
I'm not conventionally scary.At all.
But get to know me, and you know I don't let myself be taken advantage of. I want independence.I don't want to have to rely on someone else to support me.
I won't beg.
I won't beg.
In my experience, men love it. They love the stereotype of the poor hapless and helpless female. Which is why my looks are popular. I look like that. I look like I need protecting. I look dollish, cute, delicate.
Well I'm not.

I broke up with my boyfriend recently. I feel a lot freer.
The boyfriend was-and is- a good man. But he's insecure, and accuses me of neglect instead of facing the fact that this is who I am. I never pretended otherwise.
That i don't NEED a man to be complete. I haven't been polluted by all the Bridget Joneses. Marriage is not my aim. My education is my goal.Creating opportunities and experiences, none of which have to include a relationship, although they probably will, since I enjoy the company of men.
And you'll always come after.

I'm angry at all the friends who have been lecturing me on how I should change to accomodate his neediness. On how it's a shame we broke up, why let ten happy months together go to waste, you were so sweet together, bla fucking bla.
Why a shame? a relationship is not a vital need.
Ten months is nothing although it was my longest relationship. And it wasn't always happy.
And I don't want to be "sweet" with someone. That sounds so childish. I'd rather date an equal. Someone not afraid to stand up to me, without crushing me either.
What are the odds of my finding that at Nineteen?
I'm nineteen. I have the rest of my life for this kind of shit.
I have time.
So much time, however fast it flies.

Perhaps it's true. It was my fault. But I don't care, which no-one seems to grasp. I won't take responsibility for his going crazy now.
I don't care whether I was right or wrong.
I just refuse to compromise when everyone is trying to make me.

It might be plain stubbornness, but it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS WHAT I DO WITH MY LIFE.
Friends or not.

Night owls

2008-11-15T02:27:00.002+01:00

It's 2:28 am.

I love nighttime conversations.
They bring out the flirt in me (not that it's very hidden,but, well).
I love the conversations, in appearance totally innocent, but often with an undertone you can just detect.
The double-entendres-my speciality, apparently i have a warped mind, but it's just so easy.
the undertone of sex that comes along (with certain people, of course).
Knowing that certain words will plant ideas in the other's head. The repartee.
Doing it in French-i'm sorry, but Anglos are just too shy, most of this time, for this to work.
It never fails to bring a smile, especially when it's with someone especially talented with his words.
And just-leaving enough ambiguity for possible denial.
After all, these things shouldn't be dealt with over the internet, or even by phone.
That's just so...flat. And platonic.
Not that conversations can't be extremely erotic, no way.
But you just can't seal the deal (what a horrible expression) like that.
It just takes all the fun out of it if anything's certain.

Thoughts on a Friday

2008-11-14T22:18:00.003+01:00

The rest of the blogging world's writing abilities terrifies me.
I just do not feel up to it.
Proof of my inability to communicate clearly and interestingly could be found in my lack of readers. Which I complain about a lot.
On the other hand, why does one write? It's definitely not to get my point of view out there; it's just not interesting enough.
Then it only leaves what we call "branlette intellectuelle" in a very disparaging way. Translation? Brain masturbation, alhough masturbation is too correct.Brain wanking?Whatever; I do love French slang.
Maybe I'm being a bit harsh and it's only to go on, and on, and on, because i find it very therapeutic.

Shut up, Froufrou, and try to remember what it was you were actually going to talk about.

Oh yes.
Language.
I'm always interested in anything about it because it's something i've spent my life wondering about.
Like, why is my voice higher in English than in French?
Or why on earth did I have today a total rejection of French? I just didn't want it. So I kept conversation to a minimum-which is complicated- and sauntered over to Prince Charming, my only English mate here, and we chatted away happily to the confusion of the guys next to him.
If the whole year doesn't know we're the only two Brits around by now, I'll be damned.
But I hide it pretty well :)
Seriously, I only appreciate being totally bilingual when i'm studying another language.
I love being able to tell all the nuances of both languages, unlike in Chinese, or in italian, although it's a LOT easier. I know i have an easier access to foreign languages than most people i know; being French or Anglosaxon seems to be a distinct disadvantage! But already knowing two makes it easier to add others on.
Except for Chinese, although it's slightly better since Ms F actually forces us all to talk in her own sweet way,and we're not stuck with the terrifying LLCE geniuses.
Although there are a lot of people who speak chinese extremely well in my class. Which is why I feel like a loser most days, but there all very nice, which is a bonus.

I often hear about English speakers using French words in English after spending some time here.
That's something I should, logically, be doing, but I only tend to translate expressions without noticing, and I try to keep a firm grip on that, because it becomes absolute nonsense pretty fast.
But obviously French words in English? That's just weird. Prince Charming does it from time to time, and I have to point it out (I'm slightly fussy about grammar and spelling and all that).
But I don't. Although I've been here for fifteen years now. Jesus.

So next

2008-11-14T21:36:00.002+01:00

The boyfriend and I broke up on tuesday (armistice du 11 novembre, yeah happy day!), him ranting about being neglected and metelling him I just didn't have the time. My non-working lazy ass stance has goneout the window. I have to work now, can't just rely on a good memory and certain logic in answers. Feels strange. Now he wants to come back, overcoming his "issues", but I'm not sos ure. If we're to have the same argument ina few weeks, I seriously can't be bothered.
And because of all this, i've had to deal with the flack from MY friends, who have all sided with him and toldme it was my fault, because I MUST have neglected him, because I'm an intimidating distant bitch.
Now I didn't take that too kindly, because for Chrissakes, i'll never understand how anyone can find me intimidating. I mean, seriously. I'm 1.65 cm( 5 foot 4, the internet concerter tells me), my features are dollish (small and pouty-I look "nice", for some reason), i giggle and laugh and paint my nails and flirt. How intimidating does that sound?
True, i'm not half as easy-going as I look, i argue my way out of corners, am contrary as hell, and like holding on to my opinions if I can back them up, read far too many feminist blogs and I like getting my own way.
Is it because I'm a girl? I doubt it. I get on well with guys in general, and no-one's ever dared tell me women were inferior.
Except one in high school, but he always was an idiot who got his hair braided with blue and white beads when he was in the west Indies, so no-one took him very seriously, to his grief and resentment.
I don't believe in changing yourself to accomodate people around you.
I'm a privileged person. A very privileged person. So I'm not going to talk about being oppressed or whatnot, because what would i know about it? the only issue I could really come close to is sexism, and I don't encounter that that often, strangely enough.

I know France is a patriarchal country. It's not a hidden fact. But I don't believe in promoting people because they're female.
Dear Leader did just that; half of his ministers are female, and three of those are from ethnic minorities.
Problem is, they're pretty bad.

Our economy minister, Christine Lagarde is alright for the moment. She's been rather shadowed by Sarkozy, like most ministers, so I don't know. As far as i'm aware, her mind is pretty brilliant.

Christine Boutin is our minister for housing. She's an idiot. Far right anti abortion conservative, and a fool. Don't know why he picked her, of all people. Luckily abortion is just not an issue here. Guess that's what happens when you can get free contraception/abortions if needed. because those young people sure aren't promoting abstinence.^^

Rama Yade is there for decoration. She's supposed to be some sort of Foreign Affairs undersecretary (no translation in my head for her job title, sorry), but she's not actually allowed to do anything. So pointless.

Nadine Morano(secrétaire d'Etat à la famille) and Roselyne Bachelot are both famous for putting their feet in their mouth. And yet bachelot is minister of Youth, Health, and Sports. Another one of sarkozy's dumb ideas, restricting the number of ministers, which lets this woman have one major and two minor. Scary.

Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet is state secretary for environment. Not much to say although she had to apologize after she called her boss (Borloo) and the parliament boss (Copé) and others an "army of cowards". I think she was complaining about the patriarchy at some point but I can't quite remember, this was a while ago.

As for Rachida Dati, the woman is authoritarian, foolish and full of herself, which is no good fora minister of Justice. For the first time in years, she has managed to rile up EVERY single justice professionnal, the judges, the lawyers,the clerks of court, etcetera.(She's the one who's unmarried and pregnant, not that most people actually care, as far as I know. Aren't we tolerant!lol)

I guess we're not so badly off.

back at last

2008-11-14T21:21:00.002+01:00

Well it's been a busy two weeks to say the least.
I'd better cut it in pieces because otherwise I shall never manage.
I'll start rfom the beginning, that is the first week of november.

This week included getting ridiculously excited about the US election, which included checking dad's voting ballot before he sent it(this was ages ago but I've only just remembered), which meant voting yes on Obama! and no on that ridiculous Prop8 thing meant to stop gay couples from getting married. my dad being a liberal person who spent way too much time in LA in the what, seventies if I remember right, he'd already scribbled in the right (to us) box.
Tuesday was nuts. To start off, I fell ill, had to go to the doc's, and subsequently had to cancel my tripto Spain. Rather pissed off and spent the rest of the day feeling sorry for myself and watching election coverage on TV. Kept myself updated until about two am, at which point Obama had won Indiana, and McCain Kentucky (no surprise, no shock my granddad never went back there) and I fell asleep. The boyfriend called me at five am to yell "Obama won!"

You have to admire the man. He kept half of Europe awake all night, even those notorious anti-americans, the French.

let's say I woke up the next day feeling pretty hopeful, although still ill.
We all know it's crazy to expect too much, but it's a symbol for us too, whatever we might say.
No cowboy? No Bush? no dude going on about how the French let America down in 2003? fuck the lot of you, that's all I can say. We're hoping for a new day,too.

Not that Europe isn't going to try to oust America from it's top-dog position. Don't ever count on us being happy to be considered the underdog by America and apparently a lot of its inhabitants.
Dear Leader (Sarkozy, if anyone ever reads me) said only yesterday that the dollar shouldn't be the only main currency (or something like it,I am not providing an accurate translation of the nuances of French). Our Economics teacher harangued us about it only today, and said a lot of weird things I shall talk about later; The man is insane but interesting.

Next part of the week : the boyfriend and I argue and ignore each other until this tuesday.

And went dancing this weekend with Roommate dearest, Roommate dearest's boyfriend, and Eve, which was tremendous fun.

This week

2008-10-31T19:22:00.002+01:00

Monday : as usual, counting down the days till the Us election, and wondering if there's anywhere in France that sells Obama T shirts. Worried. Canal Plus shows Democrat farmers answering the question "why won't you vote for him?" by "because he's a fucking nigger". Roommate dearest runs off to Belgium, leaving me alone with the cat and those insane workers overhauling our street.
walking back, minding my own business, one of them stops in front of me and says "well, smile". Like duh, I am so going to smile at a forty year old fat construction worker. Oh yeah..

Tuesday: was late, ran to uni without umbrella and in ballet pumps. It started raining. Got there, saw everyone outside, and firemen and firetrucks all over the place. They left us outside for thirty five minutes in the pouring rain, and some dude said it was an evacuation exercise. Three years in that uni and there's never once been one. The place probably caught fire and they're hushing it up, it's in that bad a state. So it never did stop raining, I failed an exam, and got home drenched, with my jeans having turned my bag and feet blue. Needless to say, I was not impressed.

Wednesday : still pouring, went to chinese lab and found a puddle in the corridor-there was a leak in the fucking ceiling, and this was on the second floor. There are six floors. I feel sorry for the philosophy majors who're all the way up there. And went to watch the young communist's information meeting with a couple friends, one of whom strikes fear in the hearts of teachers ( and a lot of other people) cause she always find sthe weak spot; so we turned up to keep ourselves informed this time (unlike last year, n'est-ce pas) and had a great time watching them go for each other throats. I love their internal strife. It's great fun to watch.

Thursday : last day! they gave us friday off for some reason. No-one knows why, and no-one 's complaining. Went to sleep in british civilisation again. Most boring class ever.
Bussed back to the parent's, and went out with a bunch of mates in the evening in the dead, dead town we used to live in. One pub open and man were they glad to see us. Great fun.

And friday today. No Hallowe'en, it's not that followed here, and honestly I can't be bothered. Spent the day wrestling with internet to get my bus tickets to Cadiz. I am skiving off to Spain next week. Fun and Games!

WAGs?

2008-10-18T01:17:00.002+02:00

Can someone tell me if this article is really what life is like for girls in Britain now?
The WAG lifestyle is really becoming the main priority?
If this is true...Jesus Christ am I glad I live in France and have no intention of going back to Britain anytime soon. My latest plan is to move to Maastricht but that's a whole different story.
I mean, seriously. It's prostitution in nicer terms, for god's sake. It's demeaning, it's humiliating, and infantilising.
How can they be surprised when their footballer husbands cheat on them? After all, they owe everything to them, their money, their social position- I bet the guys feel entitled to whatever they damn please. Eurgh. The thought makes me feel sick.
I just don't understand why you'd want to be dependent on someone in this way. Maybe it's the easy way out. Maybe I'm uptight-and yet no-one describes me like that :) But I just can't get my head around it. I want a good job, my own money, the choice to do whatever I damn well please without having to wait for a man or ask his advice. No way.

I'd rather Edit myself

2008-10-03T23:46:00.003+02:00

Well, the last three weeks have been rather eventful, to say the least.

The Best Friend started sleeping (she calls it having a relationship with a defined end) with Rico, which sent me around the bend shortly, and then when I sorted it out the next day, they spent the rest of the week going paranoid on my ass. Mainly because my classes started and I couldn't make the trip down to Marseille.
So I spent a week wondering about things, about why I was this confused, relationships, also sorting out stuff with the boyfriend, helping him move in last weekend, going to Marsatac (brilliant festival over three days in Marseille).
And of course starting classes, going back to uni, seeing all the people there, being unpleasant with a teacher i had last year who has a veneration for english speakers but doesn't rememver either my name or my face, anyway let's say the forty people in that class know my name now.
Anyway, I found out that Agathe was rather pissed at me, while I'd been really mad at her.
Fun and games.
I'm slowly sorting myself out, after telling the Best Friend she hadn't actually listened to me for three months.
On the other hand, I get the feeling that once more, she hasn't listened. Only taking in account the fact that I didn't sit her down and tell her whatever was on my mind. But she's known me for thirteen years. She knows I'm not like that. That I need time to spit things out.
I knew she'd judge me. And she did.

As I said, I'd rather edit myself. Edit the bad stuff, the embarrassing stuff, all that. Edit certain conversations-too many conversations. Edit certain admissions. Oh yes.

Nostalgia

2008-09-16T10:22:00.003+02:00

Back in the student life, or sort of. Moved all I needed back in the flat, moved the flat around a lot, and now am in Marseille.
Rico got here yesterday and I'm so fucking confused.
Rico is a scottish friend I met three years ago on an exchange program me, the best friend, foufounette and other friends participated in. Last time I saw him was a year ago, when I went to Scotland.
I've always had a soft spot the size of an iceberg for him. It used to be the same with him. And it's damn painful to know that it's over.
I seriously miss the way things used to be. I don't know if it's because of him I didn't manage to have a half-assed serious relationship for years; it's a possibility. the same went for him. he hasn't had a proper girlfriend in forever. And i get so jealous when I know he does have someone, which is weird because I'm never jealous. Ever.
It might be the inaccessibility, which says a lot about my mental state (shitty).
But I always have a thing for guys that aren't french.
I don't know if it's the roots striving to come out, saying "you're not fucking French, stop getting it on with French dudes!"
Seriously, I cheated with a Hungarian dancer, and the best lays of my life were Scottish and Canadian. Does it mean anything? I don't know.
But I always feel i connect with english-speaking guys on another level. A part of me the French just cannot get.
It's just...the English parts of me have been so ridden over during the years, years of only speaking French except at home, being the only Brit of my age in a town of 20 000 people, not even having anglophone mates at uni, except for Prince Charming, that I guess that when it all come out...it goes badly.
I went to Scotland four times in five years. It's a place I really love, and it's the place that reconciled me with being a Brit, because growing up I found it kinda difficult.
Some of my best memories are there. And now a whole part of that has just disappeared. No wonder I'm lost, I guess.
I don't know if it's the same for other people. I don't know anyone who's been through the same thing. My flatmate has been through some of the same stuff, cause she's Belgian, and lived in italy from her birth to her fifteenth, but it's not quite the same because she's hardly ever been to Belgium, and came here a lot later than I did. I was five. When I first got here I just wanted to go home. now I'm very grateful that my parents came here, but it's made me somewhat messed-up. Totally messed-up, some would say.
I'm such an in-between person. Not really British, except for what it says on my passport, I lack most of Britain's cultural references, at least on the TV side, since I practically only read in English, I don't understand a good part of what the country is doingto itself, I don't understand all the knife stories and the shyness of the guys and the weird ways of the girls. I don't understand the way they dress, I don't share an insular mentality cause I'm from the continent, I'm just lost in these things.
Not really French, because it's always been made very clear to me that I was a foreigner. Maybe it was harder for me because I'm not visibly foreign, unlike my mother who speaks with "such a cute" english accent and has blue eyes and really fair skin. Unlike my brother who inherited the blond, tall northern genes. And different from my father too, although he comes from two foreign cultures but was born and bred in Paris.
Not really French because I'm just not. I can't imagine saying "I'm French" as I could have, and still could if I applied for French nationality. But that would mean giving up my other nationalities, and I can't; physically can't.
I wish someone could share experiences on this stuff, but as I said, I don't know anyone who could; my flatmate is already a great help. Nationality is one of our recurrent conversation subjects, and one we never find a solution to, except "I'm not French". Although she's a lot closer, being Belgian, but still.
I'm not French. And it affects me in strange ways.

7 years

2008-09-11T20:06:00.002+02:00

7 years later. I was in school when we first heard about it, and then went to a history class that the teacher used to tell us what had happened, and about terrorism in general, algeria, the '95 Paris bombings,the ETA, all that stuff, all the terrorism that has happened in Europe.
So where are we now?
No Osama Bin Laden
The world is no safer.
Confusing, isn't it.

Oh, wow

2008-09-10T11:37:00.003+02:00

Superfrenchie actually linked to me on his blog. I'm shocked.
Never thought my rambling would actually interest someone :P
Problem is now anyone turning up here is going to think I'm another expat blogger, but I don't see things the same way, as, for example, Petite Anglaise, who can comment on the differences and the weirdness of the French. I'm more likely to comment on the weirdness of the Brits, although I am a Brit. I've been here far too long :D

Back on track

2008-09-08T13:47:00.002+02:00

Or not.
Back at the parent's for a couple days to pick up some stuff, after spending a whole week in Marseille when I was only going for a couple days.
Stayed at Best Friend's, since the Boyfriend is a)moving out, and b) working on a beach from 6 am to 12:30. Which didn't stop him from being around most afternoons.
Went to the cinema, met guys in a bar, one of them becoming Best Friend's new love interest, and generally occupying too much space for a couple days, had a going-away party for Pedro, generally got high a lot and tried to get over myself. Met some of Foufounette's business-school friends, Lulu turned up for a day before moving to Spain, heard Peter was back in Marseille yesterday to pick up his driving licence, saw lots of people,watched lots of movies and got over some of my boredom, although now am exhausted and have hundreds of things to do.
Viet is leaving for Japan today and I never got to see her because everytime I made a suggestion she turned it down. Romain, Laurent, Meryl, Fred, Corentin, Cecilia, Manou, Anais,Helio, Lionel, Juliette, so many people are off for a semester or a year.
It's going to be pretty empty.

Richard will be here soon. I can't wait.

Am I a slut?

2008-08-31T00:34:00.002+02:00

On-going question ever since I started being sexually active (yeah, I can say that without cringing-clue number one, although I don't know of what)
What is a slut, anyway?
Slut,n.:

1.a. A woman considered sexually promiscuous.

b. A woman prostitute.

2. A slovenly woman; a slattern.

So how does one define sexually promiscuous? Do you count an overall number, or the number of one-night stands? How many VD's one has had? (none, thank god)Whether one takes the pill or not?
People have, in the past, expressed disapproval of how I've behaved. They're likely to go on now, which is why i mostly STFU, and do my own thing.
As long as I want to do it, how does it concern anyone else?
I've never had unprotected sex, I've had one-night stands and fucking friends and now a semiserious relationship, and other relationships, some I considered serious but the other did not, and some I gave up after a couple months.
I've never felt pressured and wouldn't for my life give in to pressure-I'm too fucking stubborn.
The thing is, I actually like sex. So why should I deprive myself for fear of being called a whore? And this has happened, mainly thourh high school, cause of a dumb rumour some guy made up-that I'd had a threesome at a party which was SO UNTRUE! I was sixteen. I was mad. And I didn't even know him.
So why did one guy I didn't know decide he could take the fact that I'd drunkenly kissed a girl at a party and then crawled up peacefully in my sleeping bag, and make it into a threesome and label me a slut?
Insecurity, perhaps. I mean, I don't threaten anyone with my sexuality-in fact, I enjoy it and the guys I've been with certainly haven't complained. I mean, for all my faults, it must be nice to end up with a girl like me instead of the girls I knew at high school, who had a broom stuck up their arses and found the slightest mention of sex distasteful. Which is why I surrounded myself with like-minded friends. More fun, dudes.
So what is the problem nowadays?
I don't often encounter it with guys I meet or, ahem, have been intimate with-none of them have complained.
Others have seen me as fair game, and have been put back pretty firmly in their place- I might like sex, but I don't like it with just anyone-there has to be some connection-like when i went to stay with a friend a year ago, and her boyfriend was all over me like a rash, all this because I'd actually told him what I thought. As if I'd ever touch a mate's boyfriend. No fucking way.
So does all this make me a whore?A slut?A bitch?or whatever?

I don't understand where people get off judging everyone else for everything they do. Like the fact that I act like this actually hurt them. I'm not forcing anyone else! This is me, this is my body, and I shall do whatever the fuck I like with it, be that holding off sex for a year or sleeping with ten guys within a fortnight (no, this has never happened).
I personally don't give a fuck about what other people are doing, as long as they like it, it makes them happy, it's consensual and doesn't involve animals (that REALLY makes me want to puke. And it's illegal.)
But no. And girls are the worst, aren't they? Not too fond of girls at times. Or boys. I just don't like people :D
But back to the topic. I really wonder at what girls do to each other. Criticizing all the others do, all the time. Does it make you feel better? Cause in that case you should be having a look at your self-esteem.
My enjoying sex takes nothing away from you, does it?

Go and get laid now.

Fuming

2008-08-30T14:57:00.003+02:00

I was busy fighting with blogger, and now I've forgotten what i wanted to talk about.
Oh, yeah.
Yet another interesting post from SuperFrenchie on Alain Bernard's supposedly boastful words before the relay race, but one can't actually find trace of them, comments on the fact that if whe was talking in english, it's bullshit, cause he doesn't speak english, and if it was in french it's probably been badly translated cause he talks slang.
More bashing, surrender jokes, arrogance claims. Now I am so tired of these, mainly cause whatever I do I'll be the French girl in another country and the Brit girl here.
So.
1) What IS it about the body odour claims, jesus christ? Every american blog i've been on that talks about france at some point has had this. I've lived here for FIFTEEN years in less than six months.
Would I have noticed? Especially since all the tourist claims make me paranoid? No, of course not.
And I add a disclaimer for a métro (subwayyy) at the Heure de Pointe (the time betwen five and seven when everyone is coming out of work and the place is so jampacked you can't breathe) cause that is just caused but such close conditions, you dumb fucks.

2)arrogance. Don't know. Maybe I'm just as arrogant as the rest. But I resent being told off because the country I love in "only acts in its own interests!".
No fucking kidding, Boy (or girl) genius. Point me to a country that doesn't. Please. I'd be delighted.
And America is the last fucking place to be able to teach anyone ANYTHING these days. Go and clean up your criminality, your war, your infant mortality rates (higher than Nairobi's in some cities) your obesity epidemic (although I'd rather not talk about that after reading TheRotund's blog) your high school dropout rate, your energy consumption, your bigotry, your invasion of privacy,and then come back to tell us off, okay?

3) Surrendering. Now this is VERY touchy subject, and bringing this up is terribly painful to the people who had to experience it. I'd first like to point out that the GOVERNMENT became Vichy, and the people had no choice in the matter. Unlike going into Iraq, n'est-ce pas. And th US government recognized Vichy. There's something to be proud of.
Then here down south people would probably bitchslap any american who turned up airing the opinion that the french liked being invaded. Especially here, where a lot of the resistants were. The mountains were great places to hide. It was the unoccupied "free zone" although under Vichy control.
After all, there was rationing so the German army ate well, French men sent off to germany to work-my, doesn't that sound like an enviable situation!
And without us, you could have stayed under English control for another couple of centuries, like the Australians. D'you want us to take the Statue of Liberty back? After all, we made it. Although I'm sure you'd rather forget that.
This surrendering stance is a terribly painful one to address, because unlike you, it is a period of history we have to study in school. We see what happened to Jean Moulin for his bravery. We have to learn about Oradour-sur-Glane and the others, not so famous.
We study poetry written by men who were shot a day later, because they wanted their country back. I can't remember the title of the poem that struck me most, this was years ago,in my first year of high school, but I'll never forget how haunting the words were, and how sudden the realization that he knew he would be shot for his deeds. He knew that these would be his last written words. And I believe this kind of bravery makes up for any collaborators.
You are in no way able to judge this. It didn't happen in your country. You were the strong ones.
You were lucky.

This is all very haphazard, but I get very incoherent when I get pissed-off.

Now of course France has its faults, I moan about them enough the rest of the time. i complain about the strikes, about my university being in tatters, about the anarcho-communists who spend their time bitching and trying to disrupt everything so nothing changes and everything gets worse, I complain about the State selling off EDF, about smoking regulations, about education, about everything under the sun when I'm in the mood.

But I'm tired of hearing the same old tired insults all the damn time, from people who have never lived here, don't speak a word of french or any other language, and think everything is owed to them because they're american.

And by the way, you are killing sooooo much goodwill from French kids who want to love America but only see you insulting us all the time.
Way to go.

Thoughts

2008-08-30T01:30:00.003+02:00

Lots to say.
I've been reading this blog by a self-proclaimed fat girl (or woman, should i say), The rotund which is terribly interesting. I just found out about the existence of the "fatosphere" and the Fat acceptance movement and all that.
Now, it's not my place to comment on these things cause I have no idea of what it's like to be truly fat. I was pretty fat from about elevn to fourteen, but that came off as i aged, thank god.
Now I come in at 58 kilos, and that's three kilos over my normal weight since I've been back at my parents and not walking six kilometres every day as I do when I live with my roommate in our flat.
So.
I get on with myself pretty well. I've never been on a real diet, and I don't actually know how to calorie count, and food is good so I want to enjoy it. But I'm lucky as I like healthy food, although I'm sure most of the stuff I eat would have the carb control brigade out in arms. Nutters.
But it is so true that women's body is like public property.
I hate being catcalled, and I've been getting ever more aggressive when it happens, which isn't the best of options, so I'm going to have to take it easy.
But i feel so sorry for all public women, be they actresses or politicians or whatever whose weight and appearance is always scrutinised. I mean, in a campaign, you rarely hear about a male candidate's dress choice, do you? But when it's a woman, she has to be careful to look serious without being too matronly, blablabla. Fucking double standards.
And I live in a country of appearances. Fat in France is a no-go. Like, in my chinese class, there's about forty-five girls, and there're only TWO that can be considered fat. And one of those is only remotely chubby.
When I go to the UK, I feel positively skinny.

On a slightly different topic, what is it about being a girl that menaces men, seriously? I read UK papers on line most days-the independent, the guardian, the daily mail- and i've been stumped by the number of articles declaring that we should go back to the fifties, and women should stay at home.
My first reaction was, you have got to be shitting me. Seriously. How can anyone be insane enough to want to stay at hom, cook, clean, bring up the kids and have no life whatsoever?
I'd die of boredom after a week.
There is no way I'm even going to consider being a stay at home wife.
A) I don't actually want to get married.
B)I don't want kids (well, not at the moment, let's be fair)
C) I hate domestic chores
D)I have a very low boredom threshold
E)There is no way in hell I am going to be "maintained" by some guy, however much I might love him. I mean seriously, how demeaning is that? i want my own money, my own life and maybe I'll let a guy in but it'll be on equal terms. No cleaning for me, nuh-uh.

I've always been told I could do anything I want by my parents. And living in the country has left me with enough DIY skills to sort myself out, largely as much as most of the guys I know( except but the boyfriend, but then he spends his time tinkering with machines and sculpting wood and creating stuff for dance shows and all that). SO why on earth would I want to lean on someone else to sort myself out?
It's bloody humiliating, there's my opinion.

What IS it that still allows people to think that women need taking care of all the time? As if we were retards.
I know what makes people want to take care of me. It's my looks. I have, I am told, a very dollish face-which got me out of no end of trouble when I was a teen, mainly because teachers couldn't believe I was any mischief-I'm not very tall, and I'm younger than all my friends cause I skipped a year in school. SO that explains why people tend to get a rud awakening when they get to know me. Tis very funny.

I'd better shut up. AM very busy trying to convince Belle Etoile that no dude is out of her league. Jeez.

People

2008-08-27T20:53:00.002+02:00

...make me sick.
It could be my rampant cynicism, but seriously, people are idiots.
Just visited the blog of a girl I knew in high school, and i came close to throwing up in my mouth. It was nauseating, full of mistakes and twee abbreviations and grandiloquent phrases exalting the beauty of love and how much she loves the people around her and how life is beautiful even though it's SO hard (well when you have her IQ, it has to be hard).
Man, grow out of it already.
And there are so many blogs just like it. Kids who just haven't got over high school and still express themselves as if they were still sixteen.
And I can't stand mistakes, be they grammar or spelling. And I mean the common mistakes, ones you can easily avoid, because French is so fucking complicated it's normal to make mistakes from time to time.
I mean seriously, there seems to be a whole generation of small-minded idiots out there. It's terribly depressing, and brings back (violently) the fact that intelligent conversation is scarce. Luckily Peter was there this weekend, and Hairyboy wasn't, cause goddammit is that guy a fool-he's extremely well read and very insightful, as long as it concerns art. Take him over to Politics, economics, or that kind of stuff and he has the intellect of an amoeba, with a certain tendency to contradict himself, plus BHL's ego and sense of righteousness.
Fucking unbearable.

Relations Bullshit-More Massilia

2008-08-27T00:11:00.003+02:00

In any case I had a great time with everyone, got stoned, talked and talked and talked, got up late, just generally took advantage of the holiday spirits, and crossed a line I've been thinking about crossing for a wee while now.

I love the Boyfriend, and he loves me. It's the easiest relationship I've ever had. There's the knub and crux of the matter. He's a year older than I am, but I tend to feel like I'm the older one. I guess a relationship is about sharing your troubles, and he does take care of me too, but yeah, he does make me feel a bit like an older sister from time to time, which is not good.
I think this all started when I spent three weeks with absolutely no contact with him, and was all by myself once more.
I don't know.
Who cares what I do anyway; I seriously don't give a damn about wrong or right just now.
Oh, so what happened?
I slept with Peter early this morning. And man, was it worth it, if only for the excitement.
I get bored fast.
And no-one will ever know-except for whoever comes by here, which is no-one.
There is some safety in being evermore anonymous, although whoever comes by can find out a lot about me.
Thank God none of my French friends would ever read a blog in English- and the Anglophones couldn't tell :)
Was it wrong of me? If the Boyfriend ever came to find out, I'd consider it wrong, because then he'd be hurt. But I'm good at keeping secrets. And at necessary lying. Saying I was reading on the balcony-which was actually true until Peter turned up and pulled me into his room.
In all likelihood I won't see Peter again, anyway. He's leaving the day after tomorrow, and I'm not going back to Marseille for a while.
So here, this is also who I am. This is the kind of thing I will never tell anyone around me. I don't want to lose the Boyfriend, but I need something else.
Am I trying to have my cake and eat it?Probably. Does it make me a lesser person? Not insomuch as it bothers me. And if it bothers anyone else, too bad, tant pis!

I am who i am. And however much I love and need my current relationship, there is something wrong with it, which can't be remedied.
The Boyfriend can't change overnight and bring the excitement other men have. But no-one else has ever given themselves over to me as he has. Which I like but also resent.
As the Best Friend says, he's hung on to me, although we make a show of independence to the world and he pretends his independence to me. All i know is that I can disappear for three weeks with no means to contact him and not worry. That I can watch him go off to his Dads for three weeks, where his ex also lives, and not worry, even if I have no news for a few days.
How safe is that, Jesus.
As I said, I get bored fast.
I'm horrible.

Six days later

2008-08-26T23:03:00.002+02:00

Well, I'm just back from four days in Massilia, which is where the boyfriend lives, and it was a hell of a mess. And great fun. And I wasn't very good.
So. It's a mess because the boyfriend lives (but not for much longer) in a great big flat with Pedro, Nana, and Nath, and that place is always fun cause there's always zillions of people around.
Thing is, Nath's been gone for about three months, Pedro's off to Lyons, and the boyfriend and Nana are looking for a new flat/house to share with three other Beaux-Arts friends (i shall call them the Sex maniac-don't be put off by the moniker, he's great fun- Hairyboy, and Luna the loon-no, i don't like her) so the flat is insane, full of boxes and that kind of stuff.
Especially as Pedro's elder sister, Marion, is taking over the flat and is looking for two new roommates at the moment, plus the fact that a Hungarian dancer, Peter, Marion's exboyfriend, was also staying there before he leaves for Madrid on Thursday.
Yes, this is complicated.

Well anyway, when i first turned up, thank god Pedro was there because the Boyfriend wasn't. So I sat down with Pedro and Peter, smoked a joint, the usual, until the Boyfriend and more people turned up.
Cast characters included Lulu, Pedro's girlfriend, Andreas and Conrad, two German dudes, and Anton, a Belarussian dancer.(yeah, lots of dancers in this story-looovelyyy :D)
A real Auberge Espagnole.
Which happens to be an atmosphere I love. It was great speaking English again for once, with Peter, cause his English is even better than his French (I really like and am really jealous of Peter-he's 29,looks 24, speaks English, French, Spanish, Hungarian, German, and Dutch, has lived in each of this countries and in god knows how many others, including Denmark and the US, and has worked all over the world for various dance companies.) and for once I could talk about all my foreigner obsessions, which is a thing I can never do because no-one shares them.

sickening feelings

2008-08-20T23:36:00.003+02:00

I've been on Superfrenchie's blog.
Again.
It's bad for me. I find it so terribly depressing.
I try to ignore most of the french bashing, when I encounter it.
The thing is, in the real world, noone actually believes I'm British until I start speaking. I can pass off as pure French, if I so choose. After all, I speak french with a provençal accent; i have the colouring of Southern France-ie, dark hair, dark eyes, a tan. My education is French; my tastes are probably French; but at the end of the day, I'm not. I don't have French nationality; and that's what it's all about.
But looking French, going on holiday with my french mates, speaking french like a native-this has exposed me to, let's say, different takes on the French.
I've had to deal with hecklers three times out of the four I've been to Scotland. Usually kids our age insulting us, when it wasn't actually threats.
We also got the "oh, the French are so cute", and countless "voulezvous coucher avec moi".
So I guess it's not all negative.
But I'm anglo-american. And three quarters of my life have been spent in France. Which, as i have complained many times before, leaves me in an eternal mix.
I have all but given up american nationality. It's not something I care much about, and my passport expired two years ago. And America makes me ashamed. I guess I'm slightly idealistic.

And French bashing makes me miserable. Part of it is because the ones doing the bashing tend to come from the same places I do-the Uk and the US. Why do we never hear about the Italians kicking our butt?Or the Germans? Or the Swedes? Or the Irish? Or the Japanese?
The other part is because, well, this is where I live. I love it. I'll admit it has many faults, but also so many qualities. And I hate feeling picked on. I've always hated bullies, and this is always what it feels like.
I can't hope for people to like France, or the French. But maybe they could try giving up on a few of the old stereotypes, or maybe cleaning their own backyard up before criticizing ours.

Georgia, Georgia, Georgia

2008-08-11T19:57:00.004+02:00

If we don't take care, half the country is going to be swallowed by the Russian giant. Do we want to go back to the Iron Curtain? Russia never having to account for anything?
I don't give a damn about people telling me that Russia was provoked by the "attack" on South Ossetia by the Georgian army to bring that rebellious province to heel, and that Russia only went in to "save" their Ossetian brothers.
That's a load of bullshit.
Russia only wants control, to my untutored eye. The bigger the better.
And it has a lot of losses to make up for, n'est-ce pas.
Anyway. The assault on South Ossetia may have been a mistake; I shan't comment on that.
But whatever happened, Russia has no right to storm in and bomb the place. There are thousands of dead on the Georgian side. This is unacceptable. How can anyone be justifying it?
South Ossetia and Abkhazia are rebellious provinces and however much they might want to be part of Russia, they're not. They're Georgian. Part of Georgia. There's nothing Russia can do about this and the country has no excuse whatsoever for this attack on another country's sovereignty.
I'm ashamed anyone could consider Russia has a point.

["Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed"M.Z.D.]

2008-08-11T16:06:00.005+02:00

This is scandalous. I haven't actually gotten around yet to believeing that Russia has been carrying out military operations in Georgia, deliberately violating another country's sovereignty.
And I don't give a fuck that those two regions wanted the Russians there. This would be a whole different ball game if Russia decided the Inner Mongolians (inner mongolia being a chinese province) needed help to break away from China and into their fold, wouldn't it. Or if a neighbouring country decided that Chechnya was actually part of them and not of Russia. It's terrible.

On another note, France and Britain are doing very badly in the Olympics. The US are doing well. And China is leading the game, there's a surprise.

["War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace."T.M.]

Screw this

2008-08-07T22:50:00.004+02:00

It's too hot to go on visits.
I'm none too fond of having to do the tourist stuff whenever family and in some occasions guests come along.
Some of it is nice, like spending the afternoon in-and next to,of course- some river up mountain, the Toulourenc. That was really nice. As was going to a place in the mountain where we used to holiday when we were little.
On the other hand, every thing lower than a thousand meters over sea level was a pain. I hate all the little villages in summer.
Let's not get confused. I love them the rest of the year, but in summer they're just teeming with tourists. Like one we went to; its population swells by three hundred percent in summer.
It's just unbearable.

["The secret of being a bore is to tell everything."V.]

2008-08-03T16:38:00.004+02:00

we are cooking.
42° Celsius yesterday.
Hot.
Been around with the family, Cousin S, the boyfriend, eating out, strolling around Avignon in the evening, going on the Ferris Wheel, usual summer visitor stuff, etcetera.
Quite pleasant.

Anyway, I'm somewhat disconnected from the world around me. It's quite restful.
My life isn't very interesting.

["Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything."F.D.]

2008-08-01T21:23:00.004+02:00

well, Cousin S got here yesterday. (I'll try and remember to call her Cousin S and not get confused).
At first, she seemed like the in colour, female version of the mime Marceau (=mute). I'll put that down to jetlag.
Anyhoo, she opened up a bit today, thank god. And she seems really nice now.
So it's all good.

["In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain." P.T.E.]

ruby tuesday

2008-07-30T00:04:00.003+02:00

I'm supposed to be
brainy
(an accusation I totally deny)
but i have just spent half an hour discussing hair with Belle Etoile
I love being a girl

I need a change of air

["Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." O.W.]

2008-07-29T20:14:00.003+02:00

Israeli soldiers have just shot a ten-year-old boy in the head.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
I'm ashamed I have origins in a country that says amen to everything Israel does.

[I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. A.E.]

Uninvaded

2008-07-29T20:04:00.004+02:00

The three Swedes left today.
Now, I very much enjoyed having them here, and Marcus is very cute and very nice, so that's even more enjoyable, but really, BOYS!
Stick a group of them in a strange house with one girl their age and a teenage boy....girl ends up having to babysit EVERYONE.
So as much as I liked having them around, I'm glad my housekeeping duties are over. Especially as my parents came back today, turning up at the same time as my best friend, which made for a bit of a mess in the yard.
And on Thursday, the American cousin is arriving. I think I might run away. I mean, I've been a tour guide before, but that has always been by choice, and not because I felt like I had to. And it's always been in groups with plenty of guys-the last time that happened, I helped out some friends of my mother's who had a Scottish rugby team coming over and no-one to take care of them. So I did. And it was great fun. But I tend to get on well with big groups of guys. Mainly because when the ribbing gets really too much, I'll have a good rant, and forget about it ten minutes later.
Ah, the Scots. Great ones for drinking, they were. I hadn't seen anyone drink that much since Id been to the Czech Republic.

["Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired." J.R.]

Pointless pictures

2008-07-28T18:47:00.004+02:00

Found these by digging around in my computer. No stealing!^^

["They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum."T.B.]

Although...

2008-07-28T18:08:00.002+02:00

On the other hand, they've been through Germany, Italy, Hungary and the Czech Republic before getting here, so they must have SOME sense of direction.

["The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time." C.]

Oops

2008-07-28T18:06:00.004+02:00

in a moment of distractedness (ie, myself being unsocial because I was tired of boy-noise and them all playing video games-boys never grow out of that, do they?) the three swedes ran away.
They went off to town, which is five kilometers away (7 according to my brother, but he always exaggerates)on foot.
Now I'm just praying they don't get lost.

["Dig where the gold is…unless you just need some exercise."J.M.C.]

unexpectedness

2008-07-26T13:02:00.004+02:00

busy watching Wile E. Coyote trying to catch Bugs Bunny, which is against the natural order of things. Although I do wish he'd catch Bip Bip the roadrunner one day. That bird is very annoying.
Anyway, I digress.
I was woken up this morning by a phone call fro my Dad, off holidaying in the Pyrenees, while I babysit a house, a brother, and more I don't care to talk about. He had just had a call from my Aunt Lena (one of the swedes) saying my cousin Oscar and two friends of his were arriving in Avignon today and coming to stay with us. So I've been running all over the place clearing up, getting beds ready, the usual, but it's good news, should be entertaining.

Last time I saw Oscar it was Christmas 2006 in Stockholm and I have vivid memories of watching him tie massive fireworks to a stop sign-the fireworks went off with a BANG! and were very pretty, and a neighbour threatened to call the police.

["Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway."E.H.}

2008-07-22T13:46:00.001+02:00

my brother just admitted he knew how to pirate an email account, so I forced him to tell me how so I could destroy his in case he went near mine.
Really, what world are we living in.

["If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance."G.B.S.]

2008-07-21T19:14:00.004+02:00

I've always found summers boring, especially as I got older.
At the moment, everyone I know is working or has gone off on holiday.
There is, quite literally, nothing to do.
I am stuck at my parent's house because they've gone off for ten days, leaving me to keep an eye on my little brother and on the house, so I'm stuck here.
Being a complete and utter loser, I don't have a driving license. Which is a pain. I don't usually need one, but my parents live in the middle of fucking nowhere, so now I am not happy at my uselessness.
On the other hand, all year round, I don't care-driving is totally unneccessary in the town I live in, all the interesting places are at walking distance from my flat (this including university, bars, cinemas,shops, my mates' flats-I live in the town center and it's GREAT.)

So it's just when I come here that I find it aggravating.
On the other hand, it wouldn't solve the "everyone is away or working" problem, so I guess I can't complain that much.
Thing is, I couldn't get a job in June or July, cause I was passing exams/in China, and I can't get a job in August cause I'm supposed to take my cousin around when she gets here.
At least a job would keep me busy, man. And make money, of course. I'm hopelessly broke. As usual^^
I guess I'm in a moaning mood tonight-not attractive at all!

But having nothing to do tends to make me like this. Of course, when I have things to do, I procrastinate like crazy, and do it in a rush the night before it's due. It's always worked for me :D

["Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen."A.B.]

woooo

2008-07-20T14:27:00.000+02:00

It's raining.
Although it's sunny at the same time.
Bizarre.

Note to self

2008-07-19T23:40:00.002+02:00

...it's only when I start moaning that i get what I want :D
yes, my university results came today, two weeks after most students' (not sure of the punctuation there) and all is good, just another year to survive.

On another note, I have been finding out a few things about one of my US cousin who is coming to spend a month here in August. These things worry me.
To put things into context, my Dad is swedish-american, and his parents lived in Paris all his life, well until he was eighteen and went off to university in the States, on which occasion my grandmother(who is the swedish half) applied for divorce and moved down to the sunny south of France, where I am currently located.
Anyway. I can't quite remember when my dad moved back to France, but it was quite a few years later, and then he went to England sometime during the eighties, met my mother, end of story. Until they moved to France in the nineties with my brother and I in tow.
I've only ever been to the US once, when I was fifteen, and met part of the family there (my Dad had eight uncles and aunts.large family).
Well, I was fifteen.
I hated it.
I'm not that comfortable with big family gatherings, because it's not something that's been part of my life, living overseas from just about all the relatives.
Even so, I was bored. The cousins nearest to me in age, between 18 and 25, well they just didn't have much conversation, to be honest. I went with one of them to see a documentary and she came out of the cinema wondering what the hell it was about.
I've always been fairly easily bored, but the two weeks I spent there were mind-numbing. I was sick of the food, of the TV, of the gigantism of everything.
I might be American by blood, but I'm sure not part of that culture.
Although I'd give it another shot. But somewhere alive. I'd love to see San Francisco one day.
But anyway. I digress.
So. My cousin is six months older than I am. Fair enough. Saw a picture of her earlier-she looks between 5 and 10 years older than I do. Dad said "oh, it's the make-up". Um.
And she's getting married. Apparently her fiancé proposed a few days ago.
Looking forward to the conversation.
I'm taking bets with myself on her being religious, which is going to be extremely uncomfortable in a house of atheists. I'm not even baptized, neither is my brother. I don't even have any religious friends. The closest I have to that is my flatmate's boyfriend, and we've never talked about it.
hm. Starting to have doubts about this plan.

2008-07-18T21:34:00.002+02:00

The French "service public" is a pain.
Right now I'm moaning because my university still hasn't sent my results, although everyone SHOULD have them.
ALthough now I don't know anyone who hasn't. Except JC, because he went back to England. And Shuang, cause she's in China.
sulk sulk sulk sulk sulk!

I hate

2008-07-14T13:24:00.003+02:00

all these female french singers who pass as "alternative" and "rebellious" and "non-conformist" when all they do is moan in a microphone about how life is hard.

Johnny Hallyday.

American journalists who take him as a prime example of French culture when anyone under fifty hates him. And a lot of people over fifty, come to that.

French maintream music. It's some of the worst in the known universe, because all that is shown on the french MTV is rnb and rap copied from the US-but in French, which is pretty bad. Or old singers on the prowl, such as Patrick Bruel, Patrick Fiori, Jean-Jacques Goldman and sooooo many others, Celine Dion in the lot, could someone silence her please.

Being told that all French music sucks by people who only watch M6.

Reality TV (although I admit it, I watched Nouvelle Star last year for Julien Doré, and this year for Benjamin. And when at Agathe's we can have MTV afternoons just to empty our heads-nothing better for it than those freaky shows such as Parental Control-I STILL haven't understood how anyone could actually participate in those, I'm sure they pay them)

Jean-Pierre Pernaut

French sitcoms.

On the other hand, I indiscriminately love a whole set of French entertainment: The Guignols de l'info, Omar et Fred, le Groland, les Inconnus, les Nuls, le Grand Journal, la Minute Blonde (shame that stopped)
Matmatah, Rita Mitsouko,Hocus Pocus,BB Brunes, Billy Ze Kick, Birdy Nam Nam, daft Punk, Sebastien Tellier,Justice, Java, Massilia Sound System,La Rue Ketanou, M and Lousie Attaque and Noir Désir are just some of the French musicians I really like

I've often been that French movies are always the same: X loves Y who loves Z who loves X and everyone ends up in bed and people think far too much. I have to admit, that is often true. But there are so many great French movies, it's a shame anglophones tend to write them off like this.

L'auberge Espagnole-Les Poupées Russes-Le Péril Jeune-Gadjo Dilo-Delicatessen-Un long dimanche de fiançailles-Persepolis-Les Triplettes de Belleville-La Môme-Jean de Florette-Manon des Sources-Le Placard-Le Bossu-Darling-Molière-Une Vieille Maitresse-Le Scaphandre et le Papillon-Les Chansons d'Amour-C.R.A.Z.Y.(french canadian but brilliant)-Prête-moi ta main-Ne le Dis à Personne-Le Couperet-Les Choristes-Amélie Poulain-36 QUai des Orfèvres-Les invasions Barbares-La Reine Margot-Le Mépris-Et Dieu créa la femme-Se souvenir des belles choses-L'homme de sa vie-Monsieur Batgnole-Etre et Avoir-Astérix et Obélix Mission Cléopatre-Le Chocolat(not actually a french movie, but made in France with Juliette Binoche)-Un crime au paradis-Les Jolies Choses-Meilleur espoir Féminin.....

I think that's enough.
I won't bother talking about books, because I read mainly in English (there's an English bookshop approximately thirty seconds from my flat) but I did a lot of French classics in school and read in French when I like the author, like Virginie Despentes or Bernard Werber or when I borrow a book ^^
But the covers are never inspiring. It's terrible.

2008-07-13T23:32:00.002+02:00

I just go on posting today.
But then, I'm bored.

On another note, I'm watching Omar&Fred.
They're particularly insane tonight. I have no idea if their humour is understandable by any non-french citizen, but god, they're hilarious.
If you're in France, check out the end of the Grand Journal on Canal Plus in the evenings. The SAV des émissions is my favourite part of the show.
Got to admit, Canal+ is the best Tv channel here. It's the only slightly insane one, what with Les Guignols de l'Info (wonder what they're going to do now that PPDA got fired?), the Groland, the Grand Journal and all that.
Hmmm.

I do believe

2008-07-13T23:23:00.002+02:00

I've just fallen in love. With yet another expat blog. An american expat blog. An american expat in Paris blog (sorry, it's kind of hard to get more cliché from the point of view of someone who lives down south). And oh, it's called Maitresse -how am I not supposed to love that? Although I've only ever had one Maitresse, and that was a long time ago (only primary school teachers are Maitresses, and now you're supposed to call them Professeurs des Ecoles) (although I've been a Maitresse myself but that's a whole different story)
And oh, someone who talks about books!
Now, it's time to share a guilty secret.
I.Love.Books.
Not cool at all. I've been like this since I learned how to read at four. It gradually becomes cooler as you get older, but I'm still a bit of a freak. Ah well, I'm used to it by now.

2008-07-13T23:05:00.002+02:00

why is it so hard to say goodbye to a mate on internet? I never draw out goodbyes like this on the phone, but MSN, or that new facebook chat-thingy, makes me go on useless chat overdrive-and i'm not the only one.
I think it must've taken ten minutes from the time El said she had to go til the time she actually left, full of good nights and sleep wells and oh shit i'm getting up at 6:30 and commiserations and are you with your boyfriends.
Am I the only one this happens to?

Chitchat

2008-07-13T22:52:00.002+02:00

One of my favourite uni mates, El, is off to London this summer again, to be an au-pair, again.
El's english is brilliant-she's one of the only french people i can actually talk english to without feeling constrained by language barriers. Which is also why i think there must've been a problem with her uni results-she studies english, appropriately enough.
So El is back in London, where she manages to meet only French boys to crush on, especially ones that are perfect and only there for the week-end. Talk about bad luck.
You'd think there were enough British dudes in London, especially for a short-haired hot Keira Knightley look-alike, but sexier?
I mean, seriously.

shit

2008-07-13T22:42:00.002+02:00

i totally forgot to link the post last night, and i'll never find that post again. ALthough I remember its name (Cultural Schizophrenia, fyi)

My wee brother was going on about accents earlier on, and rather miffed on being told his accent was unplaceable. Like someone who has been brought up abroad.
While mine is an unplaceable mixture that doesn't scream out "I've spent most of my life in France, motherfuckers!"
No-one could guess that from my speech, thank god. French accents in English are atrocious.
But a Frenchman could probably tell from my French that I live down South. Slight accent, slightly more singsong. Nicer than that awful northern Ch'ti "hein" or the german-sounding alsacians. But not caricatural-my mother would strangle me. I can still remember flying off to the States to see the family,years ago, when she warned me not to come back with a US accent. Would've been funny though.
Guess it's thanks to her I still sound English.

2008-07-12T22:13:00.002+02:00

this is a terribly interesting article by Petite Anglaise on having different personalities in different languages.
It's not something I actually experience; I tend to be just the same in either language-which is probably why I come over as insane to most British guys (and girls, but in a lesser measure)

I've built myself on my British origins, because whatever happened, I was never from here, and never will be.
People often ask me why, at eighteen, I didn't apply for french nationality (which they couldn't have refused me, having come here at the age of five, done all my schooling in French public schools, obtained my baccalaureat, etcetera). The only I answer I have for that is that I'm not French. I just cannot imagine saying "I am French".
Although it is impossible to know that I'm not unless I say so-which is why as a preteen I kept it well under wraps and wouldn't speak english with my parents in public. I just wanted to be like everyone else. Strangely enough, this period, I believe, is what makes me now hang on to my nationality. I spent so much time being made to feel I was a foreigner, as soon as my foreign status was discovered, that I guess it made me decide that I was one and they could all go to hell.

In the meantime, I cannot separate my French self from my English self; in both I am stubborn, terribly polite when needs be, and swear a lot. Neither language has ascendency over the other-I wouldn't know if I speak French or English better.
The mix was made, and out came I.
Being a foreigner has always been a preoccupation of mine. I think that living in a foreign country, although perfectly integrated and my foreign-ness unnoticeable, you cannot help but thinking about it.
Especially when three times out of four, you're introduced by "this is Froufrou-she's English".
Never understood that.
Is being English my main characteristic? one wonders.

2008-07-12T21:15:00.002+02:00

Well, after two and a half days back home, I feel a lot better, although I'm still ill-which is why I had to come back from China early. Ten days early.
I nearly gave my boyfriend a heart attack when I called, i think.

so. China. Not my cup of tea.
Thing is, the trip might just have been spoiled by the fact that nothing could be done without Shuang's mother, except when in Guangzhou-which is probably why Guangzhou was the bit I liked best.
It was unbearable.
My normal friend morphed into a little girl who couldn't-and practically wasn't allowed to-do anything without her mother. It drove me very insane.
And oh, being treated as an alien, all the time, is horrible. I'd never imagined it would be this bad.
I felt like a monster from some freak show.
Also discovered my chinese was even worse than I thought, so felt quite isolated.

It was a fascinating trip,but a sobering one.

2008-07-11T17:37:00.001+02:00

oh yeah, I'm back from China, and I don't really feel like writing about it
SUffice to say it was an eye-opener

2008-07-11T17:35:00.001+02:00

oh man
just saw a Michaek Jackson feat Akon video on MTV, for Thriller's 25th anniversary
Bloody depressing
The man was the King of Pop-I don't think there's ever been anyone like him
and now, what has he become?

2008-07-05T12:08:00.001+02:00

holy shit i cannot access my emails or facebook; am cutoff from the world except here, and since the people im trying to communicate with are french, they dont read this. and i didnt give my parents the address either. and theres no msn here. damn damn damn, i really needed to talk to ;y mother. shit. i hate the internet here.

a Chinese Tall story

2008-06-24T05:50:00.002+02:00

yay, finally got internet!
well, been here for a few days now> spent the first three in guangzhou, and now am in Hengyang.Having a good time, except that I fel terribly lonely at times, what with not understandng what people are saying, and being stared at all the time. I am not an alien, for gods sake.
enjoying the food, although it takes time to get used to, and blessing the guy who invented aircon. it is sooooooo hot here.
and managing a chinese keyboard is complicated.
unfortunately i cant upload my photos here, because im in an internet cafe, but thats life, itll have to wait.
i think a more detailed account of the trip might have to wait until I get home, which isnt for another four weeks or so,we re the 24th and im home on july 19th
i dare say itll be a relief to be home, because not understanding anything around you is extremely tiring. at least it s a motivation to study more :)
QUite pleqsed, becquse I found an electronic dictionary in guangzhou, and shuangs boyfriend bargained so i got it 140 yuan cheaper :)
hopefully hell be coming bqck from his job in guangzhou for the holidays pretty soon, because here weve only been seeing shuangsdd mother and her aunt, and were going out with her mother and her friends for lunch. i think shuangs mother, athough shes very kind, has written me off as a lost cause. i need to find someone around my age (or around shuangs, shes 6 years older than i am) who doesnt speak french or english and wholl b patient enough to listen to me stuttering and to explain what theyve just said!
ah well, we ll see

Waiting until it's time to go

2008-06-18T10:09:00.001+02:00

has to be the most boring thing ever.

2008-06-17T15:34:00.002+02:00

Well, vaccination sorted, I don't think the doctor was impressed when I told him I was leaving tomorrow and so needed it done today.

I haven't actually done any of the things I need to do yet. My bags aren't packed, I haven't called the friend we're staying with, come to think of it I haven't called Shuang either.

In the meantime, reading too many expat blogs makes me worry about my weight. I'm not exactly small here,a lot fo my friends are shorter (and slimmer) than I am; I shall be a giant in China.
Oh well.

I should really start doing useful stuff.

2008-06-16T23:19:00.002+02:00

I was happily watching Grey's Anatomy; but then...adverts, so I changed channels and became absorbed in a program about Japan.
All I shall say is that they are completely nuts.
But I'd love to go there one day.

Pictures!

2008-06-16T20:10:00.006+02:00

I've been fiddling around with Google images (that's what it's called in French) looking for pictures of the first few places we're going and I'm all excited again :)

Hunan

Huizhou

Guangzhou

Hengyang

Hunan

I must say, Guangzhou Baiyun airport looks very...glassy

Guangzhou

Guangzhou(This picture is amazing).

Guangzhou

Hunan.

Hopefully I'll soon be posting the pictures I'll have taken.