Nil by Mouth

well, lo and behold i’m

well, lo and behold i’m back in the big smelly apple. Two interesting dichotomies i’ve come up with concerning my old home (nyc) and my new (paris):

1. in new york it smells outside: the trash, the decomposing rats, the guy that deposited his slightly digested lunch in that corner there. in paris it smells inside: eau de perspiration, i think it’s called.

2. in paris personal freedom is supreme. in the states corporate freedom is.

the first is, well, self explanatory. the second just takes a minute of thought but is self-evident also. sitting in a park having a beer? in paris of course. then on the flipside is the inability of parisians to even conceptualize forming a proper line, ever. being able to buy a mop whenever you want? in ny, duh. but then when it comes to whether or not you have decent health insurance you are completely at the mercy of whatever iron deficient creep is sitting in a cube adding up numbers in your office. anyway, nothing earthshaking either i suppose.

so, nothing like a day in wall street to kill a girl’s appetite for the city. our ny office reminds me of one of those excruciatingly dull indie films. the desks of the people that got laid-off 2 months ago are in the exact state they were left in. the desk i was sitting at still had the phone list of 5 months ago (which has had more changes than stayed-the-same’s) still tacked up behind the chair. i trashed that and scrubbed my desk down, just cause. if i were staying there for more than 2 days, my girlie instinct would’ve probably led me to clean the whole damn place. it’s like peeking into the room of a serious nutcase, where you can just tell just how bad things are from the manic disarray and the almost purposeful lack of care. and that’s just the aesthetics. the dir. of marketing basically lost it at a meeting before noon. and when i came back from lunch the sys admin manager had finally come in and was typing his letter of resignation. and this is just the obvious stuff. are all companies like this? or just the ones i work for? i have also noticed a disturbing pattern developing: all my bosses get fired. wtf?

things have a veneer of stability in paris, but this i fear is a very thin facade. meanwhile, i’ve got one project that i’ve supposed to have been working on for the past 2 weeks but i’ve been procrastinating like flaky college kid. i’ve got till monday to come up with something halfway decent to show my boss when he comes back from vacation. it’s starting to feel hopeless though. i got my camera today too, which is like handing said flaky college kid a sunny day and tickets to an outdoor festival. i’m screwed. i have miraculously avoided being really jet lagged which is a small victory; however i’m an exhausted mess even though i happen to be awake at the proper time. like i told eric today when he asked why i’ve come for only 4 days, i’ve basically come to drink some beer, pick up my winter clothes and totally fuck up my biorhythm. bombs away folks…

• Aug 17