~Pfalz

Going to Marseilles for August.

So long; goodnight.

Fête Nationale is better known in America as Bastille Day; France's version of the fourth of July, where we gang banged a prison holding political prisoners and writings that pissed off the monarchy, stole all the weapons available, and basically told Louis XVI and the monarchy in general to go fuck themselves. Nowadays Paris holds a parade for the military, the Eiffel Tower goes up in flames with fireworks, and we talk about how we're the greatest country in the world.

Also, I took Izzy to a restaurant recentely called the Tour d’Argent. I actually saw the restaurant while I was in Tokyo a while back, but I figured to save the French cuisine for when I was actually in France. The place is well known for two things: its duck and its wine. If you ever see “Chateau Margaux” listed on the wine list, you’re probably in a high class restaurant, or that particular restaurant is illegally mislabeling their wine. I ordered the duck, because apparently they’ve got their own duck farm, and it tastes great, and they gave me a postcard with my duck’s serial number on it. I guess some people think it’s a nice touch, and the Tour d’Argent likes it because it’s the cheapest advertisting you can use, but I thought it was weird for a couple of reasons. (1) It’s a post card of a view of the countryside (presumably the farm) and it says “Frédéric préarant son célèbre Canard” which means something like “Fred prepares his famous duck” which, in my mind, translates to “this is where Fred killed your duck.” So I’m thinking, oh, that’s nice. At least the duck had a life of luxury. (2) The card’s been stamped with a serial number, my duck’s serial number. And that’s just strange because to me, that’s like being told your duck’s name. I don’t want to know I’m eating Quackers, or Waddles, or Steve, or inmate #1023985. We don’t need to bring identity into my dinner. Maybe I should address my postcard to the farm/mansion pictured on the postcard, I’ll address it to Quackers and write, “I’m coming back for your children.”

Anyway... I wish that Tour d’Argent was also well known for it’s tourist population, because then I might have gravitated away from it. I mean, the duck was good, and I’m willing to pay €80 for it, but I’m not willing to do that in what was essentially a high class Chuck E Cheese. Yeah, that’s right, I called one of the grandest restaurants on the face of the earth a high class Chuck E Cheese, wanna fight about it? Here’s why. Chuck E Cheese is a place where you dump your children for, fuck, I don’t know, a day, they eat pizza, play around with their friends in that giant hamster tube maze. Similarly, Tour d’Argent is a place where tourists (and seemingly, only tourists) come, eat duck, get smashed, and talk about their multimillion dollar business deals. They’ve replaced the animatronic jamboree with an unarguably great view of the Notre Dame, but it just doesn’t have the same coziness and exclusivity as other restaurants.

Then again, the place has been around for about 400 years, making it older than the USA. So I guess it’s been mainstream and bastardized to be like a sister to the Eiffle Tower as far as foreign travelers are concerned. I’ve heard that it’s so old, it’s been the first restaurant in the world to use forks (might want to check that before you go citing me as a source for your term paper on the history of dining).

And also, I stole some silverware.

Also, about my job as the night watch for the morgue. As glamorous as my previous journal “désolé” may have made it seem, the job is uneventful, and a major handicap on my night-life with Izzy. So I’ve been looking for a new job to get a hold of before quitting. I fucking hate job searching. After about a month of hunting I got another job as a grave digger. It’s not quite what I was hoping for. I guess it’s nice being outside and getting some exercise digging, but I’d like to have a vocation a little less morbid. So now I’ve got two jobs: night watch at morgue and grave digger at cemetery. My work life pretty much revolves around dead people. I’ll quit my night watch duties as soon as I can get a good job. The hunt goes on.

I'm psyched about The Dark Knight, but it comes out in France on August 13th; I'll probably get one of my friends to steal a film reel from America for me. Don't expect me to say anything else about the movie though, since the internet is already wading deep in the film's hype, viral marketing, and reviews; I refuse to add to it. However, Batman: Gotham Knight, the animated thing, sucks.

Izzy is psyched that August is coming up, a country-wide month long vacation. I was thinking about taking her to the mountains or something; I've never seen France's countryside before.

So long; goodnight.

Spring is probably my least favorite season. I usually like winter the most, because of the snow; without it winter just isn’t very… wintery. Then autumn, because I like it when the trees show a little variety in their pallet, but the smell is by far its best and most distinctive feature. Plus, “autumn” is just such a kick ass word. Look at all those slick vowels just merging together: autumn. I’m not a big fan of summer; too hot, I guess. Plus I’ve never been a big fan of mosquitoes and wasps and the explosion of hatching spider eggs. It’s the season of tourists donning their Hawaiian shirts and sandals, regardless of their destination, whether it be a tropical getaway or Wisconsin. I understand you’re psyched about traveling and cutting loose, but that isn’t an excuse to make yourself look like an idiot. And spring is just… fuck spring. I mean, the only good thing about spring are cheery blossoms and magnolia trees. It’s always fucking late, even if the Groundhog doesn’t see his shadow, you can expect spring to come running into nature in late May looking at his watch with an untucked shirt saying “geez, sorry I’m late guys; it’ll never happen again.” Here the transition to spring is kind of subtle because of the mild winter, but back in Chicago, you always have to check the temperature, because Spring means “it could be 75 degrees out; it could be 30—ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!” That’s spring laughing at me, watching me freeze my ass off any time it’s not midday. Spring in Chicago was such an asshole. The only good thing about Spring is that Izzy and myself started to play tennis again-- hurray miniskirts!

Usually my routine after my night watch shift at the morgue has been taking the Metro back home, jumping into the shower, and then hitting bed as the sun rises and when Izzy gets up to go to school (why she enjoys class in the morning is beyond me). Lately though, I’ve been walking with her to school, now that the weather’s nice. Back in August, during the morning, Paris is deserted; it was really neat, almost like we had the city to ourselves. It’s more busy now because of rush hour. I don’t know if Izzy wants to spend August here in the city. Maybe I can take her somewhere nice for vacation. I’m thinking of quitting my job. It’s just uneventful and doesn’t pay that well. I’ll try to get a job elsewhere before letting go.

Anyway, now I'm not going to talk about myself or France for a while so I can talk movies. I recently saw a film called "The Fall." You can see the trailer here: [link] It looks like it's been getting mixed reviews, but I have no idea why, I loved it. Izzy loved it, too. Usually when a music video director tries to make a movie you end up sacrificing story in favor of visuals; but the story in the film is just as good as the cinematography. It gets so fucking sad at the end it's hard not to like it. It recently came out in America, and I demand you see it if it's playing anywhere near you. If you're wondering, the song in the trailer is Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.

Moving on: Dreamworks bought the rights to “Ghost in the Shell” a while ago. Feel free to quote me when I say that 98% of anime is irredeemable shit. Naruto, Inuyasha, Bleach, One Piece, Dragonball Z, Yu-gi-oh, they all have loyal fan bases of retarded kids who wouldn’t know a good story and character development if it hit them upside their faces. Which is why I think it’s sad that those are the shows people think about when the word animu comes to mind. I’m not here to argue about how the most popular shows among teenyboppers are also the dumbest, I’m just trying to separate myself from them.

However, “Ghost in the Shell” is not one of those shows. I might go so far as to say that Stand Alone Complex is one of the best and most realistic science fiction stories ever written, better than fucking Blade Runner. Suck on that, Ridley Scott. It’s the only science fiction world I’ve seen that isn’t self-indulgent by using over-the-top whacky futuristic technology like flying cars and jetpacks. Plus it focuses on government-run data manipulation and post-nuclear international politics without being bogged down with boring console meetings, a la Matrix sequels and Star Wars prequels. Need I go on? The characters are cerebral and intelligent, and Yoko Kanno’s musical score beautifully displays the composers’ artistic range. Not only that, but the Wachowski Brothers pretty much ripped off Ghost in the Shell when they made the first Matrix film.

Now that I’m done licking Motoko’s snatch with words of praise, let me get back to Dreamworks. Apparently Spielberg is the guy who gave the studio the idea to go through with buying the rights to the story. I don’t know if he’s going to direct, but I don’t think it really matters; there’s no way a two hour “and then they lived happily ever after” American movie would be able to stand up to the twelve hour win-fest of 2nd Gig, regardless of who’s attached to direct. And hell, Spielberg couldn’t even make War of the Worlds a good film; I’d go on to criticize his other highly acclaimed yet artistically uninspired films, but I think his work speaks for itself. Plus I can’t imagine Yoko Kanno being replaced by Spielberg’s lap dog John Williams. If they’re going to adapt this into a movie, they might as well make it an all-out failure and attach some nobody to direct, like they did with The Golden Compass shitfest. Who knows? Maybe best case scenario: the film stays in developmental hell for a few years and ends up abandoned.

Update
I'm going to skim over some European politics because (1) no American gives a shit about it, and (2) I think what happened was really awesome and is worth a mention.

[link]

Basically, a bunch of political people are trying to turn Europe into a single country called the European Union, with one president representing various countries at once. I think it's retarded. European countries are too diverse to settle for a single representative without making everybody upset. They tried to push this European Union thing before and it failed, so now they had the entire fate of Europe rest on one country's shoulders: Ireland. Luckily, everyone's favorite island of drunken redheads voted nay on the EU. Which isn't that surprising, given how Ireland has been treated like shit in the past by everyone else. HURRAY IRELAND!


So long, goodnight.

That April Fools joke? That was a hit below the belt, completely uncalled for. As much as I'd like to say that my lack of journals up until now has been pure will power for April first, it's not the case. Honestly, I'm writing journals less because I have more to do now than back in America, back when I basically did nothing between visiting friends in far away places. I have been writing, drawing, photoing, and whatnot. I just have to get back into the habit of posting stuff. No snowfall in Paris; maybe we had a dusting or two, but nothing like I got back in Chicago. That sucks. Next winter I'm going to have to take Izzy north, or into the mountains, or someplace. Anyplace with snow.

Those of you who diligently read my journals know that I have a job as the night watch at a morgue. Those of you who didn’t know that, now do. When I thought night watch, I thought like a security officer like the ones at my old high school: fat, middle age, nobodies with walkie talkies. Turns out I actually get a uniform and a badge. No walkie talkie. I figured my job was basically to protect the corpses from thieves and the chemicals from druggies, which is right, but I figured that if someone was going to steal a body or something, they might be armed, so I would get a weapon, right? Well, I didn’t get a gun, Paris is pretty strict on gun control, and rightly so, so I was thinking something among the lines of stun gun, taser, bean bag launcher? No. They gave me a wooden bat, which, in retrospect, is much cooler than I initially thought, being given authority to beat people with bats. I like to practice my swinging, knock some nerf balls around. I actually had Izzy and some of her friends come over one Friday to play some indoor baseball. And I also get this whole security office to myself, which is basically just this little office where current employment records, fire alarm control panel and some other stuff is. It’s really neat because it’s old fashioned, if it just had some blinds over the glass, it would be just like a film noir private eye’s office. It’s awesome.

Anyway, the job is slightly more complicated than sitting on my ass all night long. They gave me this thing, it looks sort of like a canteen, has a shoulder strap so I can carry it around, I’m not really sure how it works since I can’t open it up. Anyway, there’s a keyhole in the thing, and there are a bunch of keys set around the morgue in different rooms. Every hour I’m supposed to go to every key, put it in the canister thing, turn it until I hear the click, and then supposedly there’s a piece of punch tape inside that verifies I was doing my job. I guess they’re too lazy or cheap around here to update to some digital system or something.

Here’s where things get a little creepy. There are no lights in this building—I mean, there are lights, but they don’t leave them on for me. So aside from the lamp light in my little security office, the place is completely black. So when I go on these hourly rounds every time my egg timer goes off, I have to walk around with a flashlight. Oh, it gets better.

So there are keys throughout the building, in different rooms, they’re all these large brass old-fashioned like keys chained to the wall. There’s one by the fromeldahyde storage, there’s one in this room where all the organ doners insides stick around for hospital pick up, an autopsy room, and then there’s a key in the storage room. If you’re thinking that this storage room is like a wall of drawers, and if you open up one of the locker doors there’s a metal bed with a body inside— you’re wrong. Not this morgue. There’s just this one really long hallway, and at the end there’s a heavy refrigerator door, and inside is just this really big room, and the bodies just lay out on these tables with only a white sheet covering them, their feet sticking out and everything.

So every night, I have go into the basement, alone, with only a flashlight, do down the hallway, open the bulky refrigerator door into a room that’s always thirty-something degrees, walk all the way down these isles of dead bodies, in the dark, need I remind you, to use the key for my punch tape thing.

But, oh wait, I’m not even finished yet. So the first time I got here, the old night watchman gave me the low down on the whole punchtape system, where all the keys were, and all that jazz. It was really the only time I had seen the place with the lights on and everything. And while I was in the refrigerator room I noticed that all the little beds had these ropes hanging from the ceiling, so I’m like, “what’s that for?”

He says, in case someone wakes up, they pull on the string, alarm goes off in the security office, doctor comes. Not that anyone’s ever woken up, that is. But you do get an idea for how old this place is—it practically dates back to when people feared of being accidentally buried alive. So one night, I’m sitting in the security office, getting my Victor Hugo on, and this red light on the wall starts flashing. And I’m thinking “that’s odd, it’s not the fire alarm” and then I notice that it’s the fucking “I’m not dead” alarm coming from the refrigerator room. So I call this number for emergencies and say “hey, the alarm went off, is a doctor coming?” And they tell me to go downstairs and check it out, if someone did “wake up,” call back. Then I thought, oh fuck, what if someone’s trying to steal a body and accidentally pulled on the cord? So I grab my bat and head downstairs.

I walk down the hallway, see the door is still shut like I left it, open it up, and then I shine the light around thinking somebody’s playing a trick on me or something. And then I see that one of the strings are swaying, and sure enough, there’s a body laying under it. So first I look to make sure there isn’t someone hiding around, then I walk over to the corpse. I push the bat down on the guy’s chest to hold him, I pull the sheet away from his face—and the guy’s as dead as a doornail. Hell, half his throat was missing. I check his pulse anyway because I’m thorough like that, and then I end up checking the other bodies.

Faulty wiring? A rat in the ceiling maybe pulling on the rope? I don’t know. Everyone in the room was dead. The alarm hasn’t gone off since. How’s that for an anticlimactic ending? I fucking hate this job. And I'll tell you why I hate this job... some other time. This journal has gone on long enough.

So long; goodnight.

I should probably write a journal, since I've been neglecting my duties as a man of the 21st Century by not writing a blog. So here I am, writing a new journal.


...April Fools.