Hype du jour : AOL Wireless
As i am always on the cutting edge of wireless technology these days, i’ve of course been researching mobile phone instant messaging. It seems all the service providers are scrambling to find a messaging partner. I’ve already dedicated myself to AOL, so that’s the link i posted. All this is great news for us AIM addicts, or as dori aptly calls it, digicrack. You know who you are, missing meetings from an engrossing chat, having 5 messaging sessions at a time, getting all glowy after a sweet aim with that certain dude…
I can say officially that the year has started off great! Let me tell you why. Today at lunch, i went to the bank. Now i haven’t chronicled my adventures with the bank (Fortis Banque for the curious cats among us). It has been an experiment in torture. Until today. It’s been so excruciating, in fact, that i can’t write about. I can’t even think about it without getting knots in my stomach and my knuckles clenching and the tendonitis in my right hand flaring up like a thread of fire. No kidding. It’s been that bad.
But on monday i managed to get my bank card, a mere 5 months since i first requested it. Anyway, now that i could get to my money i went to deposit some checks in another branch at lunch today. Miraculously all the words came to me, the tellers pleasantly fulfilled my requests, even helping me fill out the deposit slip which i had never done before. And then the really great part: Next to me i notice a man struggling with another teller. I stood quietly for a moment, listening. The guy was American. He wanted to withdraw money. He hadn’t a bank card yet and this was not the branch where he opened his account. I knew instantly he was SOL. He did not. He couldn’t understand the teller, and the teller could only vaguely understand him. But i understood. Oh lawd, did i understand. I turned to him and explained the situation. His face lit up at my perfect command of english and my wealth of knowledge about french personal banking. In fact i really don’t know much, but i do know about this bank card thing. Do i ever. I explained to him how he’d have to go back the branch where he opened the account, ask for a bank card, sign a bunch of papers and pray for it to arrive before another change in currency. At the original branch he may even be able to withdraw money if the planets are aligned just so. He thanked me profusely and went off on his aggravated way. And then, get this, the bank teller smiled at me and thanked me. She smiled and thanked me. She actually smiled and then thanked me! Wow. I was practically skipping back to work. And i am *so* not kidding.
The New York Times – The Year in Pictures
Especially nice is Margaret O’Connor’s narration which i instinctively stopped when the page loaded. But then later i turned the sound back on and quite liked it.
A new post for the new year. I’m a such a sucker for this new year reflection crap. And it’s easy to think of all the stupid things and bad luck that top the last year. And it’s also easy to think of all the good luck and beauty. But when you want to sum it all neatly it’s hard to think of it all just sort of put together. All of it is messy. And boring too. And then it marches on like that indefinitely.
When i was here in Paris with my grandfather at about 11 or 12 years old, he took me up to Sacre Coeur in Montmartre. There are all these sketch artists who do these drawings for tourists. Some of them are caricatures, some of them are landscapes, fruit, and a lot of parisian cityscapes. At least that is what i remember from it, as i haven’t been back since i’ve been here this time. I remember the whole place depressing me a lot. I liked to draw a lot then, and i thought all these poor artists trying to sell their wares to dull tourists were the saddest lot of humanity ever. Obviously enough i hadn’t yet had a day job. When i think of it now, i don’t think them sad at all anymore. You take what you can get, and a lot of the time it’s pretty damn decent.
Hey kids, it seems i’m now the official French correspondent for eurotrash, “chronicling the historic leap and the ensuing chaos” of the rapidly approaching euro. Check out my first peevish post. Note: I find it very strange to have my name followed by “, France”
I used to hate having my birthday so close to Christmas because i’d get shafted on the presents (“dual present” my ass), but now that i’m older the presents aren’t as key. Although the electric toothbrush my mom gave me this year has changed my life. It is soooo amazing. Anyhoo, now, the double whammy of my birthday and the new year intensifies the whole “life-examination” thing to unbearable levels. This duo did me in last year. It had it’s upside, like i moved out of the decrepit loft and quit smoking. But the downside led to months of hibernation/depression. Bah.
This year leaves me with way too much to think about. Twenty-five feels sort of like a milestone, and one that i don’t have enough to show for. I had this 25 crisis a month after i turned 24. I was like “Shit i’m gonna be 25 in a year, wtf?”. I’m precocious that way. I had three separate full on neurotic mid-twenties crisis attacks last year. The last one driving me here to the land of cheese. I can say with confidence that the immediate panic is out of my system. Instead there’s just the lingering confusion. Maybe i’ll get into specifics later. But shit, i hope not.
My dad is visiting now, which is good. We’re doing touristy things, monuments and such. I will spend the birthday evening in Bastille probably, and we’ll hang with the throngs on the Champs Elysees on New Years Eve. I’m kind of looking forward to opening a bottle of champagne from my backpack in the middle of the Grand Avenue with my pop.
Note to self: Don’t go to the very top of the Eiffel Tower on a frigid holiday weekend in December. And if you somehow do go anyway, make sure that you’ve charged the batteries in your camera.
LA Weekly: Cover: 10 Reasons to Make Lists
And then all the following lists are pretty funny, especially Tiresome Things: 2001 and Beyond and Pussy Galore : Year of the Vagina which prompted me to remember a gem my bud and always gracious host, erickson, once dropped casually, “The two best things in life are pussy and bacon, not necessarily in that order. ”
So it’s new years, make lists lists lists. A hint which didn’t make it into the Weekly is that when yer making a particularly tedious list of the variety “To Do”, always include one or two things you’ve already done. After you are done making the list, cross them off (in a different color so it doesn’t look like you cheated). Now doesn’t that help?
I love lists. This is just more proof i’m slowly turning into my mother.
Eben Moglen whom i read, wide-eyed and with hope, that intellectualism *can* be relevent (err… maybe).
This lecture, The dotCommunist Manifesto: How Culture Became Property and What We’re Going to Do About It is dense, and intellectual, and gooooood. Think capitalism, entertainment, art, the odd thing that is “a superstar”, participatory culture, and free software; And think about the morality of these things.
If you have a half hour and some actual attention to spare, it’s really worth it. Actually, even if you have no time, no attention span, and no bandwith, listen to it anyway. Really.
– and on a similar note, i’ve been mesmerized by Elliot Smith since the day before yesterday. Take “Everything Reminds Me of Her” in Downloads…
Chronicling the leap into the Euro : EUROTRASH
“We don’t care about macroeconomic theory. We just want to know if the Coke machines are still going to work.”
Just a few days away my friends…
New Angeles Monthly, June 2008
Weekend America, March 30, 2008
Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2008
Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2008
Nil by Mouth is written by Neille Ilel. Neille is a writer, reporter and user interface specialist in Los Angeles. If you think that's a lot, she's also got a host of meandering sidelines including improv comedy, tennis, cooking, drawing and thinking about learning to play the guitar.
Nil is her given name. It's a long story.
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