Moppety Blog

New York porn in Paris

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:15:00 +0000

As much as Americans adore Paris, it must be said that the French
return the favor when it comes to New York. Of course, the number/
color combinations aren't all correct, but who's counting?

I know this is silly but...

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:45:00 +0000

... I really did do a double-take. Because why wouldn't we want to
leave the door open for the developmentally disabled?

Easter dinosaur

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 10:28:00 +0000

Happy Easter! JD brought me this Easter dinosaur. Dinosaurs are a
traditional motif in France around Eastertime. No, just kidding. But
isn't it cute? I thought it was a stegosaurus when it was in the box
but now I see that it is indeed a triceratops. Or whatever kids are
calling them these days. (I still haven't gotten over the whole
brontosaurus/apatosaurus thing. These scientists, can't they get
things right the first time?)

Happy April Fool's

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:27:00 +0000

Or as we used to sing at my house, "Your hair is the color of tomato soup." Yes, we were the only ones in the neighborhood who actually knew an April Fool's Day song. Something to do with mom having been a music teacher. Here in France of course they stick paper fish on people's backs. No accounting for taste!

Anyway, to brighten your April Fool's Day, here's a video of a French pole vaulter running naked through the streets of Paris (including the rue Vieille du Temple, one of my favorite places to hang out... why wasn't I there?), apparently to call attention to the fact that he hasn't got a sponsor. We're so used to people getting naked for art or charity,* it's nice once in a while to see someone going naked for good old-fashioned self-interest. That's why most of us do it, after all.

*Now I'm having flashbacks of college, where it seemed like every other week someone was naked in a play, a protest, or some wacky college tradition. Do the kids still do that stuff anymore or do they just send each other naked photos?

Spring is here

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:47:00 +0000

Yesterday was the first really lovely weekend day. I walked to Concorde, the first real exploring I'd done trying to connect the dots on métro line 9. Eventually I got in touch with a friend and we had a late lunch in the Jardins de Luxembourg.

Nothing special to write about, just a nice afternoon.

Valentine's Day party

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 01:00:00 +0000

We had a valentine-making party at Le Ranch* . We spent a lot of time explaining to non-Americans that yes, this is an American tradition, and no, usually it's not adults doing it. I for one found it amazing that not everyone learns how to fold a piece of paper and cut out a heart as soon as they can hold a pair of scissors... and then cut out 23 more for everyone else in the class!

Not everyone was able to come to the party and some were quite sorely missed. But we had a great time continuing the tradition that J and I started at Aberdeen (at least, we started the Aberdeen version of the tradition, though J may have started it before then elsewhere for all I know...). We made each other a lot of rather eclectic valentines, many of which are displayed below. Okay, they don't look that eclectic from far away, but we were cutting out random words from magazines in three languages, see?

I didn't get a photo of the cookies Ca helped me make... yes, my favorite cutout cookies. Lacking heart-shaped cookie cutters, we used pink glaze to draw hearts on the white glaze, with predictable results. Ju very kindly said they looked "ephemeral." That they were.

*This is what we are calling our place, outrageous French pronunciation crucial.

Chercheur(e)s en lutte

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:56:00 +0000

On not missing post-Christmas fun

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 10:52:00 +0000

It was good to get back and realize I hadn't entirely missed les soldes -- I returned to signs of "dernière démarque" ('last markdown') and 70% discounts. My second day back I was supposed to walk around for several hours in the sunshine, so I popped into some shops and did manage to come home with a cute black satin top for a million percent off.

The other thing I was glad not to miss was the galette des rois. JD brought one over last weekend. This of course is the cake for Epiphany that has a fève, formerly a bean but now a porcelain thingy, hidden in one slice; the person who gets it is the king or queen and gets to wear a paper crown. To ensure fairness, the youngest person sits under the table while someone cuts the cake and says which piece goes to which person. C did that for us, as the youngest by far:

Best of all, the galette was still warm from the bakery... yum.

More snow

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 12:40:00 +0000

I'm back in Paris and finally getting settled in. As you'll know if you've been reading my tweets, I have a terrible time with jet lag, so settling in after a trip is never trivial.

Today it's snowing big flakes. This isn't the first time this winter that it's snowed, which is odd for Paris. The last time, last week, the snow actually stuck (see photo above). The kids in the schoolyard outside our kitchen window went nuts.

Happy new year

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 08:09:00 +0000

I'm a bit late with this, but happy new year nonetheless!

I'm en mission right now but will be back in Paris toward the end of the month.

In the meantime you can enjoy my pattern for the Christmas ornaments I made this year.

Materials:

US 15 / 10 mm needles
Bulky green feltable yarn (I used Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Bulky)
Novelty ladder-style yarn (I used a discontinued yarn similar to Berroco Mosaic)
wool needle
lingerie bag
washing machine
old towel
laundry soap
pill bottle or 35 mm film canister
florist’s wire
glue gun
red ribbon

Cast on 15 st using your favorite cast-on method (I used a cabled cast-on) with both yarns.

Row 1: * K2, make 1 * repeat until end of row.

Cast off.

With the loose ends of the green yarn, sew the ends together to form a circle. Try to make the join as even as possible, but don’t worry if it isn’t, as the ribbon can cover up any irregularity.

Felt in a washing machine as usual (in a lingerie bag, with hot water and a little soap, no spin cycle).

Squeeze excess water out with an old towel.

Place ornament on pill bottle or 35 mm film canister to dry, so that the inside stretches and dries in the shape of a circle.

When the ornament is dry, cut off any loose loops of the novelty yarn. Glue bow on whichever side is prettiest. Make a hook out of some florist’s wire and attach.

Oops

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 10:58:00 +0000

Hi from home. Two weeks ago I had a cold, last week the flu, and then I flew home. Now it's full-on Christmas prep. I do hope to get back to blogging after that! I have some tidbits from Paris as well as some language thoughts to share with y'all.

In the meantime, let's enjoy some holiday schadenfreude at the expense of the New York Times, who published a letter purportedly from Betrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, only to find that it was a fake. They had received it by email and never verified that it was from him. I think I will be bringing this up the next time someone tells me that political blogs are crap and the traditional media is the last bastion of skilled journalism.

The letter does seem to have been written by a francophone, if the use of pretend in "What title has Ms. Kennedy to pretend to Hillary Clinton’s seat?" is any indication. Pretend to with the meaning 'aspire to, claim to be fit for' is possible but archaic in English, while for French prétendre à that meaning is commonplace.

Home for the holidays

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:40:00 +0000

Christmas on the Champs

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:12:00 +0000

Hey ho, I'm sick with the cold that's going round... and yes, whenever I catch a cold I get a fever with it for free. So while I'm convalescing, here are a couple of photos I took last week on the Champs Elysées. They have a Christmas market that sells all sorts of warm knitted things, Paris souvenirs, jewelry, and yummies.

The raclette stand was popular. I imagine that for many Anglo-Saxon tourists it was their first raclette. They were in for a wonderfully stinky treat.

They tried to make me go to rehab, I said, "Meow, meow, meow"

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:02:00 +0000

Oh, the kitty has been behaving really badly, biting us and getting into all sorts of trouble. At first we thought it was because of the dog we were dogsitting, but then the behavior continued after the dog left.

We googled "cat behavior" and found these tip sheets from the US Humane Society. And it was eye-opening. I mean, I never intended to live with a cat, so I had never really thought about it. But it seems that Bowie has been bored, and so we're taking steps to give him more stimulation, as well as kitty rehab for things we don't want him to get into, in the form of "aversive" things he doesn't like touching or smelling; mostly sticky tape and Vicks. Any other hints from cat owners reading this blog would be greatly appreciated!

In other news, I've started a research diary, something like a blog for myself about my research, because I got tired of losing my notes on things. I'm doing it in the new tufte-handout class in LaTeX. Edward Tufte is a godsend.

Finally, international crime: near the Champs-Elysées yesterday, there was a $100 million jewel heist. (Heist? Why not theft? What other things can be, um, heisted? Hoist?)

Na!

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:27:00 +0000

A children's shoe store chain named after the French equivalent of "So there!":

Sarkobama

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:49:00 +0000

I haven't seen these Sarko versions of the iconic Shepard Fairey Obama posters in my customary rambles yet, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

New York Magazine (h/t JD) takes this as evidence that Europe is finally jealous of America. I wouldn't go that far. I think it's just that the Fairey posters are gorgeous and instantly recognizable, and that as far as slogans go, Obama's "Yes we can" beats Sarkozy's "Ensemble, tout devient possible" ('Together, everything becomes possible') hands down... and everyone wants to jump on the coattails of Obama's wildly successful message.

In the original posters Obama looks as though he's gazing off into the future. Somehow Sarkozy looks like he's looking up at the teleprompter, or at the score.

I do like how the colors echo the French flag pin. (French flag pin? Weird.)

Of course, as with many of Sarkozy's campaign posters, the ones within reach have been defaced.

UPDATE: It was Greenpeace who put the posters up (French link, h/t my friend Mike).

Photo by paris2e on flickr.

Rainy days

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:06:00 +0000

Every year I bitch about the dark dank rainy days of winter in the City of Lights. As you can see from the weather forecast this week, bitching is not entirely uncalled-for.

I come from a region of the states that's reputed to have terrible winters. But it's got a lot going for it. More light, for one thing, being much further south than Paris. There's a wan but happy kind of sunshine in winter, and when there's snow on the ground it's even brighter.

Here, though, it's dim all day... "evening all afternoon" as Wallace Stevens would say, but neither snowing nor going to snow. This is no winter worthy of the name, just bottom-of-the-barrel November until March or so, when we can start to see the days lengthening again.

Thank goodness for electric lights and Christmas shopping.

UPDATE: As if in reply, this morning it's beautiful and sunny! Must bitch about the weather more often!

Celebrity-watch watch

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:06:00 +0000

The graffiti on this ad says that the police is "Rachida [Dati, French minister of justice] but who is the father of her kid, we don't care!"

Rachida Dati announced her pregnancy in the fall. She is single and says it's none of anyone's business who the father is.

Conventional wisdom has it that the French media and public are much more gracious than the American media and public about leaving their politicians' private lives out of the public sphere. And perhaps this is true. Exhibit number one is usually Mitterand's illegitimate daughter Mazarine Pingeot, whose relationship to Mitterand was not revealed by the press ~~until after Mitterand's death~~ for many years.

Nonetheless, look at the most popular searches that came up as I typed Dati's name into teh Google:

Enceinte is 'pregnant', pere is of course père, 'father', enceinte de qui 'pregnant by whom'.

Then we get ivre 'drunk', nue 'naked', then Bernard Laporte, who was rumored to be the father but denied it, and Paris Match, which is a celebrity magazine that Dati has appeared in, to much criticism.

In any case... evidently someone cares about Dati's extracurricular activities.

The garden path

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:45:00 +0000

Appropriately enough, when walking from the RER to my office I have the option now of taking a garden path. It's a little park full of all sorts of wild grasses.

Cats and dogs living together, a concert, and Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:17:00 +0000

My roommate Ca is dogsitting this week, so in addition to Bowie the pill of a cat, we now have a friendly, if a bit whiny, little dog. Bowie, in keeping with his essential pill-like nature, stalked him constantly at first. Now he only swats at the dog when he gets bored with his usual pastime of pushing things off shelves. Not exactly the peaceable kingdom, but we'll take it.

On Saturday we had our first party as roommates, hosting my friend Kat Goldman for a house concert. We packed thirty people into the living room, and fed everyone kirs royals (that's champagne with cassis syrup) and canapés. Ju made tortilla frittata (a yummy Spanish egg and potato dish) for the first time. We even skyped the concert to my brother in New York. Very satisfying party, and Kat was of course amazing.

Sunday afternoon it actually snowed for maybe half an hour of flurries. Children all over Paris surely rejoiced, even if none of it stuck and the weather turned to rain.

Today I took the afternoon off to listen to NPR and start the Thanksgiving cooking with stuffing and sweet potato balls. Ju and I made the pie dough after dinner, using the latest tip from Christopher Kimball, the real-life anal-retentive chef: replacing half of the water with vodka. The idea is that vodka, unlike water, does not react with protein in the flour to form gluten. Also, since the alcohol evaporates, the dough ends up with less liquid, which is to say, more flaky goodness. That's the theory anyway. I'll twitter the results.

I know Thanksgiving is not entirely happy for everyone. I do try to inform the kids in the family about the Wampanoag who met the Europeans at Plymouth Rock (amazingly, some survive despite the best efforts of said Europeans). But I don't much care if the mythological Thanksgiving is a nineteenth-century fantasy. I'm ok with Thanksgiving as a family holiday and as a holiday of gratitude.

I am grateful for my friends and family, and for Skype which allows me to see my US friends and family over the internets. I am also especially thankful to have moved in with Ju and Ca and (even) Bowie.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Now avec Magic Protect

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:10:00 +0000

Yes, Mister Clean really is Monsieur Propre in France. In case you
were wondering.

Tilt-shift

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:58:00 +0000

I've been enjoying looking at tilt-shift photography on the internets. It's how you make a real scene look like a miniature, by imposing a shallow depth of field and saturated colors.

Here's a tilt-shifted Eiffel Tower, courtesy of arnarbi on flickr. Teeny people, teeny cars...

And check this out for more tilt-shifty goodness.

A vowel (or two) by any other pronunciation...

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:06:00 +0000

Every now and then I'll come up with something I think is a successful pun or a play on words in French, only to be told that it doesn't really work for native French speakers. My French friends sometimes do the same in English. It just serves to underline how different the phonology can be between two languages, even when we're basically understanding each other and being understood.

Here's an example of this phenomenon on an ad in the Paris métro. It's for a play called "Public or not Public." (The word public in French, by the way, means 'audience'.) It took me a while to realize that this title is supposed to be a play on "To be or not to be." The reason is, well, there are two reasons. The first is that the vowel sounds in public are not the same as those in to be. (For you IPA aficionados, public has /ʌ/ (hmm, that's not displaying right, it should be like an upside-down "v") and /ɪ/, while to be has /u/ (if not reduced to a schwa) and /i/.) The second problem is that the stress in public falls on the first syllable, while the stress in to be falls on the second.

Because of these two reasons, public and to be are not sufficiently similar in English for one to be able to stand in for another in a play on words. However, French does not have these vowel contrasts (public would likely be pronounced with the same vowels as to be), nor does it have contrasts of stress. So the title of the play is an acceptable play on words in French-pronounced English. Turns out, as you can read in the comments below, that "X or not X" is perfectly possible in French no matter what X is. So the stuff about English phonology still holds (see the links in my comment below for more on "to X or not to X" in English) but in French, apparently phonology doesn't play a role here. Thanks again, francofriends!

Going there to get you there

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:54:00 +0000

These métro ads are for an auto place.

The ad above says "I buff mine every morning." Oh, and that image that just came into your mind? Much clearer in French than it is in English.

And this one says "My husband's never gets (lit. falls) out of order, it's nice."

Stay classy, 321auto.

OMG Ponies!!!1!!

noreply@blogger.com (moppety) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:34:00 +0000