Nil by Mouth

Holy mother of… my old

Holy mother of… my old roommate, Sebastian, is quoted in this weeks cover story in The Village Voice about Brooklyn’s night life. I guess he promotes the coolest space in dumbo now, which is completely baffling to one who remembers him as physically unable to empty an ashtray or run some water over his crusted mugs before the tea-bag became permanently sealed to its edge. I still hold him responsible for forcing me out of probably the coolest space i’ll ever live in by sheer intolerable laziness. Well there was also the poisonous exhaust fumes that seeped in from the dump-trucks in the garage just underneath us but negativity is so much easier focussed on people. Yes roommate bitterness never really goes away.

Meanwhile i’m back in Paris as of yesterday. It was a slight shock to the system for 2 reasons. One being that it is colder than a rat’s ass. Secondly i am re-acclimating myself to the world of sketchy communication. After a full 12 days of small talk, big talk, complimenting strangers on their footwear, ordering food with complete authority, even asking for a pair of pants in a smaller size, it’s back to mistaking the question, “Are you ringing?” with “Do you smell?”. I did that last night and smell and ring are very similarly pronounced, ok!?

New York was great. It was hard to leave. You never realize what you have until you don’t. Sho ’nuff. Except there is this one majorly huge thing that Paris has that New York doesn’t : a job for me. My week in the big apple was no different from all my other recent weeks in that there were a few more people i knew laid off. No one seems to be visibly distressed but me. Well maybe there are a few distressed folks, but not enough of them and not distressed enough either. Bloomberg won the mayoral election. Honestly i haven’t followed the election at all, but i am only slightly less disconcerted than when Dubya “won”. It just seems so… so… wrong.

Since my apartment has just about enough heat to warm up a small closet, i’ve decided to do a major cleaning to get the blood circulating this weekend. I’ll have to do an all out search for cleaning supplies, but it is a necessity. That and trying to find myself a set of french lessons on CD. I no longer own a tape deck. Even the words sound quaint, tape deck, tape deck, tape deck. Let those words sooth you into a relaxed state… tape deck, tape deck, tape deck

• Nov 9