.fr

there are a number of little mosaics around centre ville avignon, all depicting old 8-bit computer game characters. this one is a pacman ghost ("inky", i believe) affixed looking out into the main square of the pope's old palace. it's got a great view of all the touristy comings and goings. it's a nice little counterpoint to the ancient surroundings.

not-coincidentally i came across this blog entry about how space invaders enemies were based on wells' war of the worlds. small world.

smaller when a comment to the blog entry points to the website of an artist who likes to put up tile representations of old video game characters all over the world. like in avignon. (quicktime)

it's maybe just the mildly autistic part of me talking now, but i'm surprised and excited to find that euro-coins have the two faces facing in the proper direction, relative to each other.

hold a US coin by the edges between two fingers so that you can spin it to compare the design on each side. most likely, you have your forefinger at the top and your thumb at the bottom, like the guy in the photo. notice that if one side is rotated correctly, when you spin it around the other side is upside-down. that always bothered me. long ago, someone had to make the decision of how the obverse (front) and reverse (back) would relate to each other. it was a tiny decision, almost without consequence, but they flubbed it and did it wrong. i only know the word obverse because this fact irritated me enough as a kid to investigate it. here in the enlightened european union, someone spent the extra time to question whether, of two seemingly equal choices, there wasn't some angle they could slice the question to come up with a deciding factor.

there are never equal choices. if it looks like it, you don't understand the situation well enough yet. for a long time, i've loved being presented with a coin-flip decision, so that i could at least come up with some arbitrary reason why one choice is the better. but hey, that's no better, really!

in writing this, for the first time in a long time, i questioned what the reasoning would be for having the reverse upside-down. well, the questioning happened as a by-product of coming up with reasons to do it like i like it. i came up with about an equal number of reasons for doing it either way. drat.

but this is good. this is one step past self-centered, past NIH. except it brings the decision nearly back to being a coin toss.

...

when i took my last big trip, i was writing about how iced coffee means something totally different in australia. an australian friend called me out for writing about nothing, of missing the entire point of travelling: getting deep into the culture talking to people. but claire was way more social than me. i hear her voice now in my mind, nagging, but i'm still excited by this kind of stuff. rain man still enjoyed his trip to vegas, after all.

i keep forgetting you guys don't know where we live.

this is a shot of our building. we're above a store that sells 250€ men's shoes. i'm not sure why we're allowed to live here. you can walk three doors down to a fancy restaurant/club that has 12€ cocktails. i don't think we'll ever go there. but people do, and they come out smashed at 1:30 in the morning. people like to get stumbly and loud around here. and we like to watch them from the window above. we like to get stumbly and loud too, but we can't afford it. beers are 5€ at a bar. a bottle of wine at home is 3€. as a result, we have to do our recycling often.

this is miss in front of our big wooden door. you can't open it with the weight of your body. you put the key into a small slot on the right and turn and a big creaky electric door opener grinds for 30 seconds and grudgingly opens up for you. honestly i fell in like with the apartment before i ever saw the inside because of this door. there's a whole chapter in Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong about the french love of grandeur. the door is it and i love it.

this is a plane tree. they're all over the place and have really beautiful bark. apparently they're the same thing as sycamore trees. i'm not sure if they're special or not, but my pop was asking about them and i just found out what they are. they line the quaintest-of-the-quaint street, Rue de Teinturiers, that you'll see if you visit here, next to a small canal with water wheels. then you'll like them too.

it's hard to be so new here and have something intelligent to say about the riots all over france. the BBC had been running excellent articles about the background of the situation as well as daily updates. they also include moderated comments after each article giving different viewpoints from people around the world. we've been talking to our french teacher about it as well. and missy's new purchase Sixty Million Frenchman Can't Be Wrong, which i'm only a third of the way through so far, gives a lot of well-researched background on the french attitude, character, and history.

what started it all was three teens in a poor ethnic suburb of paris thought they were being chased by cops and jumped the fence into an electric power station to hide. two got electrocuted and died. to the residents, this is just another example of the police hassling them, but this time it ended in death. it seems well documented that there is systemic racism towards the north african muslim population in france. the police hassle, the local officials try to marginalize, and national officials ignore the problem.

the setup is that there is a large north african population in france as a result of colonial fever back in the 1800's that all ended very badly in the Algerian War in the 1950's. marseille, on the coast to avignon's south, was the gateway from north africa, and so has a large immigrant population, in the way new york or san francisco do. it was the second area to start rioting. avignon itself has a sizable population, and things have heated up here as well.

as with any large distinct set of newcomers, integration problems occured. the french are very interested in preserving what they consider the french way of life, and this conflicts with elements of the traditional muslim way of life.

the people i've talked to about the problem don't come across as racist. the ban on head scarves exposes this. something like 90% of the population favors the ban. to give a more complete picture, crucifixes and any other overt religious symbol are banned as well. no one group is singled out. the goal is to keep the state and religion separate. in US high schools we regularly ban clothing that could represent gang affiliation under the reasoning that it distracts from the dual goals of learning and learning to live with one another. no different.

so i don't think it's an ideological problem. the french love and hoard political power, and as a result, revolution is a frequent method of changing up government. revolution is tough, so change does not come fast or easily. women only got the right to vote in 1944. the number of female politicians is half of what it is in the US. no gloating though, it's only 20% in the US, compared to 50% in some scandinavian countries. so if you want to be heard, the reasoning goes, you've got to take it to the streets.

the french love protests, as we've seen. in fact, i've read that as halloween begins to be introduced here, it takes the form of a street protest, with kids all marching together down the main street, entering shops and demanding treats. you place things in frameworks that are familiar to you.

a lot of this bothers me though. i'm all for burning cars, mind you, but for one thing, the people whose cars get destroyed are the neighbors. so now they're even poorer and also now they can't get to work. even torching a starbucks is idiotic since the owner is only renting the name and equipment. guaranteed he's not a bourgeois elite. not an effective way to assert political pressure. chopping heads off of politicians is far more intelligently directed. but of course logic is not the point. i destroyed my own bicycle once in a childish fit of frustration. it was mine and i loved it and i deeply miss it. stupid. humans are only ruled by logic when emotion allows it.

by all accounts this is a problem that has been brewing for thirty years at least. there is a national election coming in 2007, and already politicians are spinning this to aid their candidacy. hopefully some good can come from it. it is refusing to die off. every day politicians say it is getting under control, hoping it will go away, and it doesn't. the police have been unable to quell it. i think people have recognized that it is time to start the ball rolling. it's strange to watch and try to understand. when making whipped cream you stir and stir but there's one moment when it starts to stiffen and turn from liquid to whatever form whipped cream is. it's sort of a simultaneous group decision to change form that can't exactly be predicted. this feels a little like that.

corey is visiting now. he and i were talking about the french taste in food. we were eating some thin sliced dried cured ham (jambon cru) along with baguette and cheese for a pre-dinner snack. [before making a quiche -- haha, get it out of your system.]

a while ago i'd tried to categorize french food as a love for dairy fat, thinking of the sauces, cheeses, cream-based dishes, and ice cream. but the ham fit into the same taste category, and like prosciutto, is as close to butter as you can make with meat. a common sandwich is ham (really more like raw bacon) and butter. so it's really a love of subtle-flavored fat. that's not a dig: subtle as opposed to thai, which is full of coconut milk fat but heavily spiced.

but all that fat needs a compliment, which it gets in coffee and chocolate. small amounts of strong bitter acids to cut through.

starches take the third spot in the holy trinity. everything is grounded by starch. bread and potatoes are revered here. bread everyone knows about. french fries, mashed, and au gratin get more attention than i'd ever thought to give them. french au gratin potatoes are much different than betty crocker: very light and subtle. lightness shows up unexpectedly in a lot of places in food here. it's easy to make heavy fat, and just as tiring to eat. but make it fly, and you've really got something.

as a thought experiment, i was imagining what all these flavors would look like visually. rivers of tans, both warm and cold, dividing and linking fields of light creamy earthy tones, subtly varied. and the occasional dark brown or red incision. that's basically the palette of our bare apartment, and what i see in lots of old architecture around here. another nail in the coffin of coincidence? spooky.

what is not a coincidence is that the three work not just in inextricable harmony on your tongue, but also in your digestive system. you'll notice fruits and veggies aren't mentioned. since i don't drink coffee, it throws off the recipe. nature doesn't work with nearly the same regularity, if you catch my drift. i've resorted to drinking a cup now and again and riding out the buzz. oof. really no excuse since we have a great farmer's market in town. on the todo list...

well, i'm sick somehow. all achey and stuff. miss is doing a great job of tending to my whininess though.

so many things have changed in a short time it's hard to pin down what caused it. things first started getting sniffly when we bought a new (used) rug. we were excited because it was pretty cheap and in decent shape. maybe a little too good of a bargain. even before we unrolled it i started getting an allergic reaction to it. it must have come from a cat factory or something. so i leaned it out the bedroom window and beat it like a stepchild. which was a lousy idea because the wind was going the wrong way and i and the bedroom got covered in dust. an entire cup of dust, as i later swept up. now it lives in the "dining room", and i have to open a window at night to get fresh air across my nose to keep from stuffing up.

missy bought some antibacterial rug-scrubbing product and really did a number on it this afternoon. also much vaccuuming of rug and everywhere. if that doesn't solve it it's going back to the store.

but really, it's the kind of sick that feels like a flu and not crazy allergies. it occured to me that missy's going to be the vector for three schools and twelve classrooms worth of 10-year-old viruses in the coming months. in fact, one of her teaching manuals devotes an entire chapter to the topic. echinacia blast time!

but who knows. the french are more liberal with foodstuffs. nonpasteurized cheese, weird sausages, like that. i'd be really bummed if some delicious cheese did it.

but anyway, this will pass. it's a good excuse to lay in bed and read french graphic novels. and we managed to download James Burke's Connections 3 series before another spat of internet hassles, so we've been doing one a night of those. more on him later, as he says.

i've been holding off on saying this, but the butter here is really good! we got it one of the first days food shopping, thinking no more of it than as a staple. i may have chuckled a little when i read an imprinted seal on the label that announced the brand had won a blue ribbon in some butter competition.

it's only made from one ingredient. all you do is churn it. there are no variables. how can it be so much better than normal butter? they must graze the cattle in poppy fields. i guess when you care so much about bread, it only follows.

so you in portland don't feel so bad, missy's brother jake was visiting us in portand a while back. we went to Thai Kitchen (is that the right name?) on belmont at about 19th. not the one across from belmont computers. he couldn't get over how good the water tasted. i think he secretly wants to move to portland because it has delicious water. it's true though, that restaurant has some of the best water i've tasted. a little lime juice, i think.

condiments here are over the top, but that's a long post for another day. i just want everyone to know that even though you think your butter is good, it isn't. your butter is garbage. i have tasted the one true butter. angels use this butter as soap. homer uses it in his moon waffles. kublai khan in his stately pleasure dome could not decree better butter. and it's reasonably priced.

update!

i did some research, as per jon's suggestion. it should be no surprise that french butter tastes better because it has more fat! ha ha. you can skimp when making it by adding water and other dairy byproducts, which is one explanation of the quality difference. US butter's got to be 80% dairy by law. i doubt there's an upper limit here. i'm sure the feed given to the cows matters a lot (ask breastfeeding babies). this butter boasts of hazelnut, warm milk, and herb aromas. mmm.

no mention of added cultures. the one i have is also pasteurized.

also got reminded of french butter dishes, which keep the butter sealed airtight under water, and so safe from spoiling. my mom's got one, and it solves the problem of hard butter entirely. gotta get one.

this was originally going to be a reply to a steev email, but it grew a little larger and i'm interested in broadcasting it, as you'll see.

there's been a lot of quipping back and forth about how having things is a drag. you're either getting them or getting rid of them. stuff gets lost, stolen, broken, corrodes, turns green and rots. why can't we all just eat nuts and berries and live harmoniously with nature like our aboriginal ancestor of choice?