hell hath no nothing.

I just made a huge, huge, un-overstatably huge realization about posting on this bull-hog: I really have no reason to worry about timeliness; in fact I have, more or less, six times less reason to worry about it than anyone else. (except Dan. Fuck you, Dan.) Seriously: I could think something in one moment, and then not do anything for the next six hours' worth of moments, and it would all be the same to our dear readers (us) in North america. (God damn it Dan, Fuck off.)That's the thing - there is no fury in a blog scorned; only in the ego of the blogger.

You see, I live in France. GMT+1 while all you folks (again, Fuck you Dan) are plodding along in GMT-5. Ew.

My purported raison d'etre on this old family farm was "an american in Paris". But the thing is: I don't really even live in Paris. I live just outside Paris in a charming slice of the banlieue known as Noisy-le-Sec. The translation has something to do with nut trees and dryness - I'll get back to you. So I feel a bit guilty/dishonest about leaning too heavily on that role. But lacking any other discernible expertise, or at least any that outshines the estimable skills of my/our/your co-bloggers, I'll take whatever pigeonhole I can get for the moment.

So without straying too far afield, my opening anecdote is this (seriously, Fuck-you-Dan):

If it weren't for my incorrigible instincts towards thrift and self-importance, I would have no "international reaction" to share with the world. (I was asleep at 5:00am when my mom called me to tell me Ohio had flipped - the closest I got to your whooping and street dancing was an unexpectedly smooth cnn.com feed of the speech from Grant Park.) Luckily, in the weeks preceding the election, I happened to be badgering the press relations manager of a certain French music magazine for press passes to their ridiculo-stacked festival this coming week, and on November fifth, her eventual (positive!) reply went something like this:

"Bonjour John,

First off, congratulations! It is a true joy and comfort in the world today! We escaped Sarah Palin! The only problem is that in France, we've still got Sarkozy..."

Lacking an Obama shirt or button or even a flag pin, I was hoping people would just kindof recognize I was American and rush up to shake my hand and thank me the next morning...but no dice. I absentee-voted for Obama, and all I got was these crummy press passes.