The Soundtrack To My Documentary

Stolen from Sarah:

So, here's how it works: (I am sure you all know by now)
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...

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Not all of them are that cool, so I've blackened the ones I think are worth paying attention to.

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Opening credits:
Oceans by The Format

Waking up:
Mes Artères by Mademoiselle

First day of school:
Mack The Knife by The Brian Setzer Orchestra

Falling in love:
Givin' Up On You by Lara Fabian <-- What a great way to start a relationship.

Fight song:
Hey Jealousy by Gin Blossoms

Breaking up:
Mountain Dew by The Clandy Brothers and The Dubliners

Prom:
Good by Better Than Ezra

Life:
Brand New Girlfriend by Steve Holy <-- WHAT?!?

Mental breakdown:
You're Beautiful by James Blunt

Driving:
Hoopes I Did It Again by Relient K

Flashback:
Waiting On the World to Change by John Mayer

Getting back together:
Put Your Records On by Corinne Bailey Rae

Wedding:
Romanticide by Tal Bachman <-- I suppose I'm a cynic.

Birth of a child:
The El by Rhett Miller

Final battle:
Call My Name by Ronnie Day

Death scene:
Breathing by Lifehouse <-- When you die you don't breath.

Funeral song:
Something Beautiful by Newsboys

End credits:
Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Michael Bublé

My Totally Awesome Vacation

So. I just had two weeks off from school, which was really nice. I went to London with my sister to see her friend (Sally) and we had so much fun! We went to the Tate Modern Museum of Art, all the parks, Chinese New Year, markets, and of course every single Pret à Manger in the entire city.

Sarah and I then went on to Paris where we met up with my friend Rachel (who is now here in Perpignan - YAY!) and one of our mutual friends, Katy. It was so good to see everyone, travel a little, and enjoy being in Europe. It was a very nice vacation.

Now I am back at school, and it is as funny as ever. I did a lesson on fashion, and wouldn't you know it, the boys can name more labels than the girls, AND all professed that white, black and pink were the most popular colors in France.

Also one of the students who was previously on my shit list got off of it by being one of the only students in the class to have done his homework! Normally he throws things, doesn't do the class activities, and pays no attention whatsoever to the class discussions. Needless to say, I assumed that of all the students who might have been ready to do their presentation, he was the least likely to be in the group. BUT, he came in all ready to do his presentation. I was shocked, frankly, but pleasantly so.

Sometimes people surprise you.

"I'm European; I can't floss!"

Lately my much beloved floss has been running low and because of my (now semi-) permanent retainer it's very difficult for me to floss in the first place. Any normal person would just go out and buy a different kind of floss, but my floss is quite stiff, make it easy to thread through the retainer. ANYHOW... a few weeks back I went to the grocery store to check out the dental supplies available to me here in France.

They've got the basics - toothbrush, toothpaste, and if you're lucky, ONE KIND of floss.

Needless to say I've been hoarding my floss, using 3 inches at a time and hoping that though it looks low it's still packing some yardage on its spool. Until two days ago, that is.

I happened to see my brand of floss in LeClerc! Miracle of miracles! I bought two containers and arrived home a happy camper until I realized that in France they charge you more for half as much floss. ARGH!! So now I have what I consider to be two half-empty overpriced floss containers, and I need to get two more before LeClerc realizes that they didn't mean to stock three kinds of floss and they take it off the shelf in order to stock some more condoms (this is where the dental supplies are located, right next to the over-the-counter birth control).

Anyhow... I was parusing YouTube as I so often do and came across this:


Just so you know, there's at least two non-dentists who floss in Europe.

Hymns and the Grammies

I was very excited to see that OK Go won the grammy they were up for. I also found out that a few other artists had been nominated that I enjoy so I wanted to see how they fared. In doing this, I got distracted by some of the classical music nominees.

Having lost much of my faith in pop music after seeing the winners in the first 40 categories or so, by category 80+ I was ready to give some top notch classical music a go. I started looking up some of the groups on iTunes, which led to chamber music, which led to gospel music, which led to hymns I had learned from singing in church as a youngin'.

This led me to become quite nostalgic and soon I found myself singing at the top of my lungs to "Onward Christian Soldiers" and the like. Before I knew what had come over me, I found that I had downloaded a double set of famous hymns (which amounts to 55 hymns) and John Hiatt's "Have A Little Faith In Me". Luckily this did not hurt my pocket book too terribly ($11, what a steal).

So, if you feel like hopping on Skype and singing a rousing rendition of "Holy Holy Holy" or "How Great Thou Art", well, I'm really in the mood.

This Valentine's Day, Say It With Mold

A great tip for impressing your date on Valentine's Day:


In other news, I have spent nearly the entire weekend washing mold off of my wall. Yup, you read that properly. I pulled my bed out from the wall to find the entire wall covered in mold. GROSS! Unfortunately, the wall is really bumpy, not like a smooth wall you'd normally find. As if it wasn't bad enough that I had to wash the wall, I had to wash it with a toothbrush. 6 feet of wall and one tiny small-headed toothbrush.

Long story short, I moved my bed to a different wall, put my dresser by the moldy one, called my landlord and suggested that it might be the sprinklers that are causing the mold there (since it is an outside wall and the height of the lawn is slightly taller than the floor of my room), and she told me to keep my window open. (Right. 40 degrees outside and I'm supposed to keep the window open.)

That's all the news I have for this weekend since, pretty much, I just cleaned mold and mold and mold. What is it with your first apartment? It would seem it's never hassle free.

The Winds

I just looked up how to spell what I would have thought were the "Très Montagnes" and "la mareine". I was wrong. So wrong. They are "tramontane" and "le marin". So now I know!

And I need to get the song by Stevie Wonder called "Uptight".

Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

In other news, my permanent retainer has turned out to be not so permanent. Does France even have orthodontists? Also I am pretty sure I am getting sick. Again.

The Best News of the Year

I can now (well, soon will be able to) do my grocery shopping on a Sunday!

That's right. Casino grocery store is opening a Petit-Casino in a highly convenient location in town, and it will be open on Sundays. Hooray! My favorite bakery is also open on Sundays, so now I will no longer run out of baked goods or milk on a Sunday. This is the best news since the arrival of sliced bread!

Poor Twiggy

I can't imagine the squirrel likes this... and that's why I felt a little bad enjoying this so much.



I especially love how poor turtured Twiggy looks around as his boat goes round and round, as if to say, "Oh my gosh! How did I get here! What's going on? I don't know how to swim!" Which brings me to my next point... is he wearing a lifejacket? Poor guy.

Apple on Music

I found this article posted recently on the Apple website that discusses their music protection system (DRM) and the reasoning behind the system (mainly the record companies forced Apple to implement the system).

"The music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free; what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies."

This is a convincing argument, and one that I hope is seriously considered as technology progresses in the future. Besides, it's not like the DRM protection really works. You don't need to be a super-hacker to figure out how to share your "protected" music.

Movies: Cashback and Booby Bobby

I went to go see two fantastic movies this weekend.

The first was called Cashback. Originally it was created as a short film (which can be viewed here if you're interested - contains nudity), and I suppose it was popular (the short was Academy Award nominated) so they turned it into a full length feature. It is amazing! It is such a beautiful, sweet film. If you get the opportunity to see it, I highly recommend that you do.

Second we went to see Bobby. I had to see it so that I could discuss it with a class. Originally I was not very excited, but as it turns out the movie is amazing, a tear jerker, very nicely done. Not to mention it puts any other supposed "all-star cast" movie you've ever seen to shame. Just when you think they couldn't possibly introduce another famous actor, they do. The list is as follows: Harry Belafonte, Nick Cannon, Emilio Estevez, Laurence Fishburne, Heather Graham, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Joshua Jackson, Ashton Kutcher, Shia LaBeouf, Lindsay Lohan, William H. Macy, Demi Moore, Martin Sheen, Christian Slater, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood, Freddy Rodríguez... you get the picture.

Crotte de Nez

We had Brandi and Renee over for dinner this past Saturday and we had a really good time talking about classes, work, and life in general. I learned lots of great vocabulary, most of it centered around the word "crotte", which is used most often by French people to refer to the dog poop (why be eloquent) on the streets. Here are two other ways the word is used:

Moto-crotte: Refers to loud motorcycles which frequent the roads. In France there are several types of bokes, scooters, motorcycles, dirt bikes, you name it, they use it. The moto-crottes are the super loud ones that you just want to flick off every time they drive by.

Crotte de nez: The French equivalent of the word "booger". Literally translated, it means "nose turd". Gotta love it.

Chinese Food French Flair

On Friday after my classes three of my students came up to me and asked me if I would like to go to dinner with them at a Chinese food restaurant. I was a little shocked but also really pleased that they invited me! I agreed to go (along with my roommate) and they came and picked us up at 8:30 that night.

The Chinese food was interesting and definitely Frenchified... however, just like everything the French do with food... it was still fantastic!

I also thought it would be strange to go out for a meal with some of my students, but it was not at all. They are really charismatic individuals and Hannah and I had a ton of fun. They told us a whole bunch of dumb blonde jokes, typical French jokes about unforunate animals with interesting names ("There was a penguin named 'Zip', and he slipped on the ice and went zip zip zip to the bottom of the iceburg!"). The best joke they told us was as follows:

"Tell me the name of three currencies (of money)."
--> You say three.
"Tell me three different kinds of contraceptives."
--> You say three.
"Name for me three rivers in Mongolia."
--> You say that you can't.
"Oh my gosh, all you ever think about is money and sex."

They also told us all about the war that took place in Perpignan and how 300 policemen from Paris were sent here to keep things under control (this was just 2 years ago). They told us about how this one girl's family had owned this bookshop in town and how she lived about it for a really long time. They had us taste these cigarettes that tasted like chocolate.

Anyhow, it was a really good time. I am so glad we went! Hannah and I were so psyched to have had a worthwhile Friday evening for once.

Who Can Say "Ridiculous"?

From associatedcontent.com:

On Wednesday, January 31, 2007, police arrested two people in Boston after an ad campaign went wrong. The two had put up blinking signs, of Spongebob-looking square characters with his middle finger up, for an advertising gimmick for the Cartoon Network show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force. In Boston, the signs were investigated as terrorist explosive devices which sent the city into a panic.

The signs were put up in nine cities across the country but, other than in Boston, it barely caused a stir.

The two men (Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28), who were paid to place the devices, pleaded not guilty Thursday to placing a hoax device and disorderly conduct. They were released on $2,500 cash bond, face up to five years in prison.

Some people got to the devices before police and at least seven were for sale Thursday afternoon on eBay, ranging in price from $500 to $2,100.

Seattle authorities thought the devices were "obviously not suspicious."

People don't need to be concerned about this. These are cartoon characters giving the finger.

The devices had been up for two weeks around the country and the network had not received any calls about them.

For the full article, click HERE.

Teacher Talk

Yesterday I had lunch "à la cantine" with one of the teachers I work with. We sat with some other teachers I had never met before. About half way through lunch another young teacher came to sit with us, and the teacher I was with told me his tragic story:

He had been assigned the post and accepted it. However, I suppose the government messed up and had double-booked the post, so this young teacher now had to share his post with the other teacher they gave it to. On top of it all, the other teacher is apparently a very bad teacher and had decided he was going to take a two week vacation... right before the school vacation... so the poor guy we were eating lunch with had lost half of his post to this crap teacher who is completely irresponsible.

It really sucks for him, I suppose. My teacher, when she told me about it, acted as though I should be really shocked that it happened, but quite frankly I can't say that I am all that surprised. If it were to happen anywhere in the world, I would guess for it to happen in France.