You Would Be Rude Too

In 1951, Paris celebrated its two thousand year anniversary. An immense and elaborate fete was thrown, with concerts and art expositions held all over the city.

This summer, New York celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of Henry Hudson stumbling upon what is now known as the Hudson River. "Celebrated" is the wrong word, though, because nobody really knew, and even if they had, they wouldn't have cared - and rightfully so. Compared to the rest of the world, four hundred years is just lame. And that's when it kind of hit me - if the Parisians are stuck up (they are), with a culture over two thousand years in the making, they have every right to be.

As I explained this epiphany to Sass, she immediately made a connection to the way seniors feel about incoming freshmen. Exactly one year ago, before Sass and I had descended into the fetid bowels of the real world, we were the smirking seniors, chuckling and looking down on the freshmen as they flirted and preened precociously. How cute, we said amongst each other. They think they're so old. It was at once amusing and irritating, though ultimately just irritating because they truly were newer, more freshfaced and thus infinitely more interesting to study and gossip about - despite their stupidity and immaturity.

So yeah, if New York were two thousand years old, we'd probably be assholes, too. Being half Greek, I can see where these Parisians are coming from. Are you kidding, I often think to myself. My ancestors invented democracy. They built the fucking Acropolis. (Side note: The Acropolis is almost 2500 years old - suck it, Paris.)

Two thousand years of history is also, I believe, one of the reasons Paris can feel so lonely. It is a city that is so very much defined by its history and visual beauty. The habits and traditions of Parisians are well-engrained - their routines radiate out of their homes and into the very soul of the city, and as a result, there is little room for change. And so Paris' heart beats at a constant rate. Even the strikes, demanding change, are predictable, normal, absorbed without fuss into the steady rate of things. Everyone knows when the next train will arrive.

Parisians live amongst their buildings, between them. New York is still constructing theirs - still deciding what the history of the city will be. There is a sense of possibility there that is so distinctly lacking here. New Yorkers never know when the next train will come, and although they might bitch about it, curse the MTA to high heavens, it's a tiny relief to know when you get on the platform, that the moment of the train's arrival is, like much of our lives, unknown.

Anyway, that was a tangent. Now for fun, I'm going to show you Sass' notes for this blog post:

France --> Why so stuck up? They've been around forever. How do seniors feel about freshmen? Like... Are you joking walking around up in here like you own this shit?

We've been doing this longer than you've been alive. US is so young and yet so owning. We saved their asses.. they were so bitter! They got served by babies... get your shit together, FRANCE!

And that, Class, is how a blog post is born. I didn't include the war stuff because we all know the French always surrender.

Tonight's Menu

Now that we're poor, we've had to cook more. Hopefully the menus will get more intricate, but for now we're pretty much at Level 1: Pasta and pre-made tomato sauce. Tonight we've stepped it up to Level 2: Omelettes. Voilà le menu:

First course:

Tomato and avocado salad with a drizzle of olive oil and a fuckload of salt

Second course:

Onion and whatever-else-we-find omelette (+ salt)

Third and final course:

Baguette with goat cheese for me, and nutella for Sass.

We're going to top that all off with some jasmine tea and maybe some fruit if we're feeling nutritious (we won't be.) Bon appetit, class!

Hiatus adjourned

So Sass and I have brought La Classe Americaine to La Belle France, literally, not figuratively. Headquarters are now in Paris, but we're not trying to be those cool American girls. Quite the opposite, because that would be too easy. A lot of effort here is spent simply trying to fit in and appear French. No one wants to be immediately pegged as an American (which we were the first night I arrived here. Upon walking into a bar: "What would you ladies care to drink?" How the fuck did he know?)

Now, one would think that mastery of the language is all you need. Nope. Sass and I speak pretty impeccable French, and it's simply not enough. Clothes here speak almost as loudly as a bad accent, so the wardrobe must be reworked, muted, at once dumbed down and refined. A scarf is key, but not enough, and whatever you do, don't wear rainboots. Apparently it's like a crime against nature here and just generally beyond grisly and indecent. Really wish I'd known that before purchasing a pair before I left. My mom and I had several serious discussions about whether or not they were worn here. We ultimately came to the conclusion that rainboots are really practical, the French are practical and yes, they are made entirely of rubber, but if they're Burberry, who cares? And now if the weather is inclement when my parents come to visit me in November - and according to Murphy's Law, it will be - then my mother will make me wear the boots, and I will die of shame.

But even with the clothes and the accent, we still weren't passing and couldn't understand why the hell not, until I had this epiphany. Background: Recently Sass and I met up with an American chick and her latest French lover. The unspoken rule in these situations is that the interaction will be conducted in whichever nationality has the majority of participants, and so we started chatting in English, only pausing once to ask this dude if he was following okay. He responded that no, he wasn't understanding the words very well, but that he got the gist because Americans are so expressive when they talk; their faces play a large role in telling the story.

And that's when it all became pretty clear: I can't assimilate into this culture because I can't control my face. This is true of most Americans, but is especially (often embarrassingly) true of me, and for the past two weeks I've been walking the streets of Paris smiling, sometimes laughing to myself, generally always wide-eyed at the spectacular views on every street corner, or glowering thinking about all the French bureaucracy I have to deal with on a daily basis.

Now, I will allow that French people might have feelings, but if they do, they're not going to show them to a goddamn stranger on the street. Their faces are exercises in stoicism. They are unreadable and untouchable. (This is especially true of French women.) The only expressions that they cannot seem to master are bafflement and disdain - that face you make when you can't believe someone could be so stupid as to ask such a goddamn stupid question. I am often on the receiving end of this one.

So with regard to weaving myself seamlessly into the French fabric, it would appear that I am now le fucked, because even if I could learn to control my face (impossible), I wouldn't want to. I came to France because I like what the French are all about, which in a word, is living. Love, food, sex, pleasure in all forms - I think these things are valued here in a way that is healthy and entirely different from America. So I will wear a scarf and shun my rainboots if it allows me to participate more fully in the French tradition. However, the little tics, habits, styles of a nation are what make up its culture, and while I find the American ethos frightening at times, I think there is something equally as unpleasant in a culture that encourages, or at least cultivates in its citizens this tradition of heavily veiled (repressed?) emotion.

That being said, I'm loving it here. We're having a great time. We missed you though, class. Now that we're all settled in, we'll tell you all about it.

I'm not one to say I told you so

(Fact: I am one to say I told you so.)

In April, I argued that the most important parts of Twitter were its mobility, its ability to connect people to opinions of people they didn't already know (not just their friends'), and its real-time search feature. My point was that mobility encourages sharing in the moment, not just later when it's "easier," and that Twitter therefore makes available to everyone in the world a totally new and awesome kind of information: real-time opinions.

Well, Twitter has re-designed its homepage to emphasize search and access to real-time info (and to distance itself, I bet, from its image of meaningless statuses shared only among friends). In the words of Twitter founder Biz Stone:

"[D]emonstrating the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now through our Search and Trends often awakens a sense of wonder which inevitably leads to a much more compelling question, “How do I get involved?”

Read more about the new homepage

(Nota bene: "discovery engine" is a way cooler catchphrase than "decision engine," IMO.)

T.S. Eliot Tuesdays?

This is how I'm feeling recently. Eliot says it better. Written originally (allegedly) about the disillusion and hopelessness after WWI, the poem is pretty long, so here's just the fifth section.  The last stanza has been stuck in my head for years. 
The Hollow Men

A penny for the Old Guy

 

V

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o'clock in the morning.

 

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

 

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the shadow

Life is very long

 

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

 

For Thine is

Life is

For thine is the

 

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Life Lessons Learned at Medieval Times

   Last year for Sass' birthday, we went to Buddhkan.  This year, we stepped up our game and went to Medieval Times. In South Carolina. Please don't ask, because we're still not entirely sure what we were doing there.  And by "there," I mean South Carolina. We know exactly why we went to Medieval Times, and we don't regret it for a second. 

    Before entering the jousting arena, we were first corralled into a giant hall full of shit they wanted us to buy. Let the record show that the only thing we bought were twenty dollar goblets of margaritas. (Let the record also show that Sass posed for a picture with the King and Queen, they would have us believe, of Medieval Spain. See photo.) Aside from all the paraphernalia to peruse, there was also a torture museum. (Spoiler alert: If that was a museum, then so is the hallway between mine and my brother's room, which, for those of you who don't know, is approximately seven feet long.) Anyway, it was still a treat, just like car accidents and five alarm fires are a treat. 

    The Hallway of Horror (as it should have been called) had such tried and true devices as the iron maiden and the stocks. There was also a chastity belt mounted somewhat incongruously in a gilded frame atop plush red velvet. As we pondered the serrated iron jaws surrounding the vagina area, we also noticed there was a smaller, rounder type situation going on around where a butt hole would be. In other words, we realized, chastity belts were designed to ensure against butt sex, too, and now that I'm getting fucked in the ass daily by my 9-5 job, I realize that butt sex and torture have gone hand in hand since the dawning of wage labor.  

    What I'm trying to say is, things haven't changed as much since the Middle Ages as we would like to believe. If we think of that period as being hard, what with its rampant and incurable disease, lack of electricity and poor treatment of women, I think I would rather be a wench with the Plague than a recent grad with a telephone bill, because while we now have highly trained physicians and high speed internet,  we also have to pay for these things, and they're all expensive.  Money still doesn't grow on trees, so we still have to work to earn our living, and slaving away behind a desk for the owner of a company is really no different from a serf toiling in the fields for the lord of his fiefdom.  And while these days, our parents don't make us wear iron skivvies, instead, they put us through college, which serves as the modern-day chastity belt that keeps us from getting fucked in the ass by the real world. The second our graduation ceremony commences, we're unceremoniously yanked out of the iron cocoon.  We're vulnerable, and it hurts. 

    In school we were taught that the Middle Ages were brutal and unforgiving, but the fact that we were never taught what the harsh realities of  our own lives would be post-graduation, or how to pay a bill or find a good health insurance policy, for example - well, that's simply medieval. 

Haikus I Wrote in Numerous High School Notebooks and Found Today

Love, you wake me up

When even alarm clocks won't

You scream me alive

Tyrosine-kinase

You're the sexiest protein

Will you marry me?

Oh, Danny Skimmer

People say that you're awkward

And I would agree

A wanton wind blows

Through silent eaves and slows

Of these things love knows

La Classe Loves R-Fed

If La Classe were a country, then its national sport would be tennis, and its official religion would be Roger Federer (minor deities include Tony Danza and cheese).  R-Fed is hot, talented and has a great sense of humor.  He also speaks four languages, which simply puts La Classe to shame (official languages: English/Ben's pidgin French).  

But the biggest reason we love Roger Federer is the love he has for his wife, Mirka Vavrinec. 

Oh, La Classe.  What an evil axis of power you would be.  

"We live not according to reason, but according to fashion."

Or so said the Roman philosopher Seneca in the mid-first century.  If true, then it's worth checking out the Richard Avedon exhibition at the International Center of Photography, which runs until September 6th.  Avedon revolutionized fashion photography, transforming it into an art form.  Often, his compositions are so orchestrated and original that they seem entirely spontaneous, making you forget that these were shot for a magazine (usually Vogue or Harper's Bazaar) and not fortuitous moments caught by a photographer roaming the streets of Paris.  The clothes are beautiful, the women wearing them are beautiful, and Avedon captures and enhances both beautifully.  The old black and white stuff is the best, but Avedon worked right up until his final moments in 2004 (he photographed Obama soon before he died), so there's some modern color stuff too - featuring Gisele no less.  The ICP also has a great café, assuming the highly incompetent Russian woman isn't manning the counter, because homegirl - or should I say, дом женщина? - WILL  charge you three times for one café latte and forget to make it every time you coax her gently towards the machine.

But seriously, it's a great show and worth going above 14th street, (or below 59th as the case may be... Sass).  And though Seneca would have no idea what was going on, I needed an engaging intro. 

Tennesse Williams is my hero

Okay, so he's best known for writing plays (he got a Pulitzer for A Streetcar Named Desire), but Tennessee Williams (né Thomas Lanier Williams) was an incredible poet.  You should really read as many of his poems as possible, but for now, a taste:   

THE SIEGE

I build a tottering pillar of my blood

to walk it upright on the tilting street. 

The stuff is liquid, it would flow downhill

so very quickly if the hill were steep.

How perilously do these fountains leap

whose reckless voyager along am I!

In mother darkness, Lord, I pray Thee keep

these springs a single touch of sun could dry.

It is the instant froth that globes the world,

an image gushing in a crimson stream.

But let the crystal break and there would be

the timeless quality but not the dream.

Sometimes I feel the island of myself

a silver mercury that slips and runs,

revolving frantic mirrors in itself

beneath the pressure of a million thumbs.

Then I must that night go in search of one

unknown before but recognized on sight

whose touch, expedient or miracle,

stays panic in me and arrests my flight.

Before day breaks I follow back the street,

companioned, to a rocking space above.

Now do my veins in crimson cabins keep

the wild and witless passengers of love.

All is not lost, they say, all is not lost,

but with the startling knowledge of the blind

their fingers flinch to feel such flimsy walls

against the siege of all that is not I!

I'm back, and I took a hit of that kool-aid

Today was a good day. I met up with a friend of mine and Sass in Sheep's Meadow* in Central Park (*Sheep's  Meadow is not to be confused with The Great Lawn, which isn't actually that much bigger than the Sheep Meadow, which is maybe where the confusion stemmed from, which is to say that I did indeed confuse the two, which resulted in Sass getting a little touchy with me on the phone when she realized that I had led her astray "20 blocks!" by having told her that I was hanging with Eric on the Great Lawn when really Eric and I were luxuriating on the smaller, much more pedestrian and much less Great, Sheep's Meadow, which is, IMHO, equally as Great and perhaps much less pedestrian as it doesn't have softball fields on it, with children eating sand in the softball fields.) 

So after Eric and I graciously decided we would walk to the bigger lawn (more like 10 blocks, incidentally), we found Sass on the boogie blanket next to a softball field and sat down for what was to be an epic hour of shooting the shit. We talked about crazy aunts and Anthony Bordain, watched some babies eat cigarette butts, saw some judo nerds doing showy judo jumps, and had our hearts broken as we witnessed some kid get his little toy plane caught in a tree. Forever. Despite what his Dad was telling him. 

But more than anything, we basked - In the city, in our unemployment and in our utter lack of responsibility.  

Well, Eric actually has a job. He was also the only one of us to get a sunburn.  

On Twitter.

"It has been said that to write is to live forever."
- Tina Fey

"The man who wrote that is dead."
- Steve Martin

Those of you who follow obsessively the lives of this blog's three authors (so, basically, the authors themselves plus or minus Cynthia Princi xoxox) know that we've all recently begun to use the micro-blogging service Twitter. A bare-bones social network, Twitter assigns each of its members a webpage (for instance www.twitter.com/imsoftness) that displays the user's posts, each of which is famously (or infamously) limited in length to 140 typed characters. How many is that? This little paragraph has 510.

Unless the user locks his or her updates, anyone can view anyone else's updates. But like any good network, you don't need to visit every user's micro-site to see what's up: Twitter's homepage automatically collates and streams the updates from users you "follow."

Sound maybe like Facebook status, but with an arbitrary limit, and which you doubtless already have and ignore? You're not alone, but I disagree. I'm going to argue that Twitter's value greatly outdistances Facebook's, and that its presence signals the beginning of a turning point in human interaction. Twitter's value lies in the fact that it's designed for mobile use, it provides real-time access to information, and it creates a novel and meaningful kind of social relationship.

Designed for mobile

Lots of services these days boast a "mobile version." Yankees.com shows video footage of the game if you're at your desk; but if you're on the go and don't have a fast connection, you can view the mobile version of the site to grab the game score and the latest news.

Twitter doesn't have a mobile version. It is simply mobile. In fact, its seemingly silly 140-character limit is born out of Twitter's founders' wanting updating from your phone to be as easy as updating from the Web (SMS messages are limited to 160 characters, and displaying someone's username and a timestamp typically takes about 20 of those; 140 are left to the user).

It's the difference between "made for mobile" and "made to work on mobile" that makes Twitter location-agnostic. For instance, Gmail's great, and its iPhone platform is pretty nifty. But given the choice between answering an email now or answering it much more easily from home, I choose the latter. By equalizing the experience from the supercomputer to the Startac, Twitter creates an incentive to share exactly when sharing makes sense.

Access to new -- and new kinds of -- information: search.twitter.com

Real-time sharing enables real-time search. Real-time search avails us of a kind of information generally withheld from public consumption. Some at Google call it the "tacit," as opposed to "codified," information.

Codified information is, basically, facts. In conversations, not knowing a fact has become obsolete. The phrase "I don't know, period" has been summarily replaced by the phrase "I don't know, but I'll look it up right now." (Note: no one cool has ever said "period" out loud.)

Want to know the wording of the second amendment to the Constitution? The text is available online. Unsure at what time The Office is on? Same deal.

Google and the mobile Web can't answer every question, though. What if it's 9:04, The Office just started, and your question is "Is the show good tonight?" Right now, Google can't help you. To answer the earlier questions, there are official online repositories that make a living aggregating critical formative documents -- like the US Constitution. Or TV Guide.

Whether a four-minute old show is "good" is a question of opinions. It's tacit information, and it's only existed for 240 seconds. Enter Twitter, which can answer that question without a problem. Search on Twitter for "the office" and you'll see everyone everywhere who "tweeted" about it. Sure: not every 140-character bloviation is reliable, but you read more than one, and trends emerge. And because your sources, as it were, can update easily and from anywhere, getting lots of opinions quickly is rarely a challenge.

Your new "best friend"

Figuring out whether The Office is good is only the most trivial use of access to real-time info. As big a fan of Twitter as I am, I readily admit that good, usable information isn't always available on its search. Lots of tweets are about what your roommate ate and feels guilty about. Or the latest book your friend is claiming to have read to try to sound smart.

But you can be sure that more and better information is coming. Already we're discovering we have access to information we never thought we would. We can with some confidence answer questions like "Even though the Department of Traffic says they're ticketing anyone who parks on the grass at Coachella, is it really being enforced?" Or even "do you think it will be enforced?"

When we ask these kinds of questions, we allow to evolve our traditional understanding of a reliable source. The person I trust the most on Earth is Sara (followed very closely in a tie by Lia and Austin Sarat). But when I need to know whether the line at Chili's is out the door, the person I "trust the most" is the person who's there, tweeting. The person with the information I need -- previously completely unavailable to me -- is now briefly but critically part of my social network.

All of a sudden, the "social network" is more than our meaningless list of 500 Facebook "friends." In some sense, gathering information this way lets "social" mean social again. Humans are social creatures. Our survival and advancement throughout history have been tied to our ability to collaborate. Twitter gives us the ability to do better -- at literally anything -- by leveraging the information our fellow humans have stumbled upon. That's not a new thing! This concept of everyone making decisions with equal access to all the information in the world -- the tacit and the codified alike -- is often referred to as the age of information or the social Web. Some also call it democracy.

And so in closing (and at long last) I stress that "going social" doesn't mean amassing a longer list of iPhone Apps. It's not a joke or a fad or a bubble; it's simply what we've always done. Twitter may not itself be the next big thing, but if you don't find a way to share and to learn, you will be left behind.

Fireworks Hysteric

A rough couple of weeks, but this picture makes me smile.  From Ryan McGinley's recent work, I Know Where the Summer Goes, (taken from the title of a Belle & Sebastian b-side).  

Titular Masturbation: The Quest for a title and possibly an argument

Myself nearly three years removed, I had forgotten about the ways in which your thesis takes over your life. Takes over your livelihood, really. For it isn't just the physically true fact that every event and free moment is arranged for (or begrudgingly around) your thesis. That's merely hard work.

No: it's that this essay -- this thief of so many nights of beirut and no-strings-attached sex -- is on a topic that even you stopped caring about in March. It's that it'll have 75 more pages than readers. It's that the number of months a thesis requires tends to be one more than the number for which you're able to remain consecutively sane.

And so in that one final month, your brain a hollow shell of its former self, you begin to dip into the recessed parts of your intellect better reserved for Wii Tennis and Golden Barbeque Wingies -- and you lose your goddamn mind.

Sa, on the title of her thesis:
11:55:28 AM 4/7/09: light and shadow's nightly tango:
11:55:31 AM 4/7/09: the michael scott story
11:55:36 AM 4/7/09: i need a second half
11:56:22 AM 4/7/09: the second half needs paris, budelaire, and surrealism
11:56:59 AM 4/7/09: and photographs
...

on (things that aren't) her argument:
12:21:37 PM 4/7/09 Ben: what's the one sentence point of your thesis
12:21:42 PM 4/7/09 Ben: what is your, if i dare, thesis statement
12:23:54 PM 4/7/09 Sara: like
12:23:55 PM 4/7/09 Sara: if i knew
12:24:00 PM 4/7/09 Sara: i would feel really good
12:34:27 PM 4/7/09 Sara: i have no idea what my feces is
12:37:56 PM 4/7/09 Sara: i don't do anythuing you might expect from this feces
...
12:40:47 PM 4/7/09 Ben: so there was some movement
12:40:51 PM 4/7/09 Ben: call it surrealism
12:40:55 PM 4/7/09 Ben: happening across art
12:40:59 PM 4/7/09 Ben: and baudeliere practiced it?
12:41:23 PM 4/7/09 Sara: no
12:42:27 PM 4/7/09 Ben: so chapter 1 is just mapping the work of baudelaire to the surrealist work of the 20s and drawing the parallels
12:42:31 PM 4/7/09 Ben: ?
12:42:34 PM 4/7/09 Sara: no
12:42:42 PM 4/7/09 Sara: chapter 1 is just brassai and baudelaire
12:43:05 PM 4/7/09 Ben: just a biography of each?
12:43:10 PM 4/7/09 Sara: no no
12:44:00 PM 4/7/09 Ben: and then chapter 2 is how brassai was therefore a surrealist but deined it?
12:44:07 PM 4/7/09 Sara: no
12:44:40 PM 4/7/09 Ben: ok. i mean the unsuspecting reader of the thesis might expect the chapters to be, you know, related
12:44:51 PM 4/7/09 Sara: AH GOD
12:44:54 PM 4/7/09 Ben: so WHY after saying what you say in C1 do you bring all this up in C2
12:45:03 PM 4/7/09 Sara: um
12:45:26 PM 4/7/09 Sara: i do'nt know
12:46:32 PM 4/7/09 Ben: ok so baud makes these statements (either directly or with his work, no matter) about what modern art should be
12:46:39 PM 4/7/09 Ben: and that in effect precursors the surrealists
12:47:01 PM 4/7/09 Ben: of whom brassai -- perhaps begrudgingly -- is one?
12:47:12 PM 4/7/09 Sara: sure but
12:47:14 PM 4/7/09 Sara: that's not really the point

on Brassai:
12:50:19 PM 4/7/09 Ben: how does he write/take pix?
12:50:37 PM 4/7/09 Sara: dignifying gross things
12:50:40 PM 4/7/09 Sara: making them beautiful
12:51:13 PM 4/7/09 Sara: using imagination to enhance the real
12:51:17 PM 4/7/09 Sara: make it poetic
12:51:39 PM 4/7/09 Ben: that's ... surrealism / romanticism
12:51:46 PM 4/7/09 Ben: like i took art 100 years ago for 3 minutes and i know that
12:52:16 PM 4/7/09 Ben: in'it? it's like mostly real fings, but wif a bit of a surreal nature as to make dem more interesting
12:52:30 PM 4/7/09 Sara: hahaha
12:52:35 PM 4/7/09 Sara: i have a sentence for idiots like you
...

on editing:
12:58:10 PM 4/7/09 Sara: ok you know what? c an you read my thesis in the next hour?

No.

Smell like jizz for $125.00

This is not a joke. French perfume company Etat Libre d'Orange makes a scent called "Sécrétions Magnifique" (Magnificent Secretions) that smells like blood, sweat, sperm and saliva.  My roommate first caught wind of this (pun intended) while we were living abroad in Paris, and we decided it was worth the walk to the Marais headquarters of the parfumier.   I was skeptical, purely because how could they sell something that literally smells like sex with a chick on the rag?  But sell it they do, because I took a whiff of that concoction and my mouth started to water in the "I'm about to vomit" way, as opposed to the "This is making me so hungry for sex" way. This shit really smelled like sin.  And the saleswoman tried to tell us that people actually buy it.  Please. If I really wanted to smell like a murder in a gas station bathroom, I would enlist my boyfriend and make it at home rather than shell out $125.00 that could better be spent on lottery tickets.  

This is not to say that Etat Libre d'Orange is a hoax, however, because they make some really great stuff too.  In fact, it's the brand responsible for converting me into a pro-cologne-ist.  Historically, I have always been anti, simply because the image of a man spritzing himself with what is, for all intents and purposes, perfume, is the definition of "sissy" for me and is ultimately an out-and-out deal breaker.  But Etat Libre has a cologne called Anti-Hero that smells like lavender and cedar chips, and it's like a wet dream come true, and for that I must thank them.  As for Eau de Spunk, they should just keep it in their pants. 

For the record

Sara Softness thought that the megalodon, a.k.a. "the largest shark that ever lived" (the operative word, of course, being lived, past tense) was actually still swimming the seven seas. Just so you know, class, this shark is prehistoric.  It's been extinct for about 1.5 million years now.  So don't go around asking aquarium employees where you can find their megalodon... 

John Updike

John Updike - American novelist, poet, author, short story writer, art and literary critic - died two months ago on January 27th, at the age of 76.  He was an incredibly gifted writer and beloved by many. I first encountered his work in The New Yorker, for which he wrote for almost half a century.  I was most struck, and touched, by his ability to recognize and describe the beauty and weight in the simplest of moments.  He explains, in few but perfect words, emotions we have all experienced, but whose import we couldn't even begin to vocalize.  

Here is an excerpt from one of Updike's fictional short stories, written for the January 3, 1959 edition of The New Yorker, that I believe exemplifies the beauty that Updike breathes into the quiet moments we are all so familiar with.  

From "The Happiest I've Been"

        Red dawn light touched the clouds above the black slate roofs as, with a few other cars, we drove through Alton.  The moon-sized clock of a beer billboard said ten after six.  Olinger was deathly still.  The air brightened as we moved along the highway; the glowing wall of my home hung above the woods as we rounded the long curve b the Mennonite dairy.  With a .22 I could have had a pane of my parents' bedroom window, and they were dreaming I was in Indiana.  My grandfather would be up, stamping around in the kitchen for my grandmother to make him breakfast, or outside walking to see if any ice had formed on the brook.  For an instant I genuinely feared he might hail me from the peak of the barn roof.  Then trees interceded and we were safe in a landscape where no one cared.

        At the entrance to the Turnpike Neil did a strange thing; he stopped the car and had me take the wheel.  He had never trusted me to drive his father's car before; he had believed my not knowing where the crankshift or fuel pump was handicapped my competence to steer.  But now he was quite complacent.  He hunched under an old mackinaw and leaned his head against the metal of the window frame and was soon asleep.  We crossed the Susquehanna on a long smooth bridge below Harrisburg, then began climbing toward the Alleghenies.  In the mountains there was snow, a dry dusting like sand that waved back and forth on the road surface.  Farther along, there had been a fresh fall that night, about two inches, and the plows had not yet cleared all the lanes.  I was passing a Sunoco truck on a high curve when without warning the scraped section gave out and I realized I might skid into the fence, if not over the edge.  The radio was singing, "Carpets of clover, I'll lay right at your feet," and the speedometer said 81.  Nothing happened; the car stayed firm in the snow, and Neil slept through the danger, his face turned skyward and his breath struggling in his nose.  It was the first time I heard a contemporary of mine snore. 

        When we came into tunnel country, the flicker and hollow amplification stirred Neil awake.  He sat up, the mackinaw dropping to his lap, and lit a cigarette.  A second after the scratch of his match the moment occurred of which each following moment was a slight diminution, as we made the long irregular descent toward Pittsburgh.  There were many reasons for my feeling so happy.  We were on our way.  I had seen a dawn.  This far, Neil could appreciate, I had brought us safely.  Ahead, a girl waited who, if I asked, would marry me, but first there was a long trip; many hours and towns interceded between me and that encounter.  There was the quality of the 10 A.M. sunlight as it existed in the air ahead of the windshield, filtered by the thin overcast, blessing irresponsibility - you felt you could slice forever through such a cool pure element - and springing, by implying how high these hills had become, a widespreading pride: Pennsylvania, your state - as if you had made your life.  And there was knowing that twice since midnight, a person had trusted me enough to fall asleep beside me. 

Lia Goes to Lisbon

Hi, class! I'm about to leave for the airport.  I'll be back in one week with many stories and photos.  In the mean time, I will trust the Softnai to keep it real.  

Tchau!  

Dangling modifier patrol

I didn't even know you could grab a cup of joe at Yahoo! Finance.

Who's with me?
Ben

A Word to the Wise

Cars run on gas.  They also have batteries.  Sass thought they ran on fairy dust and pizza.  That is, until she left her lights on for the entirety of Monday night.  Sucker!  But, no, I'm the sucker, because I was the first to discover what should have been her brutal realization, thereby making it my problem.  Luckily, our angel J Fries descended from Heaven with her jumper cables and helped me out. And when I say helped me out, I mean that she connected all the cables and whatnot while I stood to the side, because I was not trying to touch those fucking things.  She hooked them up incorrectly on the first attempt though, so nothing happened when I started the car.  Thankfully, some hippie on a bicycle rode by and I waved him down, because hippies know cars.  He was quite friendly and helpful.  He also kept repeating, "Good thing you didn't try to start the car when they were hooked up all backwards.  It could have completely shot your entire car's electrical system."  Yeah, good thing.  But we figured it out, and no electrical systems were harmed in the process.  

And then I drove that little bitch around aimlessly for half an hour to recharge her battery.  

Anyway, this is a picture of me and J Fries breathing life back into the car, which will from here on out be referred to as "The Lifestyle." 

So please, in the words of Nelly Furtado, "Turn off the light, [Sass]."

You know what really grinds my gears?

I'm putting my thesis on pause for a second because I need to vent about the low ponytail.  I'm not talking about the semi-low pony that exists somewhere between nape and crown, but the fully nape-of-the-neck pony that borders on rat tail.  I just think it's fucking weird unless you're above the age of... never.  I won't even put a number on when that is acceptable, because it simply never is.  

I don't care if LC does it.  LC is an idiot who shouldn't be famous in the first place.  She also thinks headbands are the ultimate accessory. Plus, her low ponytails are conceived by experts, not by Sandy So-and-So in the  halogen glow of the poorly lit communal bathroom. 

Seriously, try harder to make yourself look dowdy and matronly.  But just as seriously, please don't.  

"Art"

I'm a little too overwhelmed with thesis things at the moment to be posting things with any remote kind of depth, as I think I've already made clear with my previous posts today.  But I thought I'd share some of the watercolors I've been doing lately.  

This is a portrait of Cole Porter. I took all of these pictures with Photobooth, so they're all poor quality. And backwards.  

The two coolest men to have ever lived: Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando. 

A portrait of family and friends.  And my cat Basil.  

More to come when time [read: thesis] allows. 

Notes from a grown up

4:26:41 PM 3/7/09 Sara Softness: we were thinking of letting you be an author
4:27:00 PM 3/7/09 Sara Softness: if you keep the boring philosophy posts to a minimum

I'm doing my taxes today. Is this boring philosophy? Ich don't sink so! Here are free fings all u kids out there should knowz about doing your own taxes!!!1111 (Disclaimer: this isn't financial advice, nor am I a professionally qualified professional qualified to give you advice. If doing anything I say below gets you in trouble, you chose to do this on your own.)

0) It is not that hard. It really isn't. With a little prep, and some understanding (provided below), you can do it on your own. I mean, until you make enough to be able to afford to pay someone else to do it. Glossary at the bottom

1) Use turbo tax. It costs like $30, but it's the best $30 you'll ever spend. I could explain why, but I'd rather you take my word. Email me if you must. ben dot softness at gmail dot com.

2) Here's what you need:

- A computah.
You can do everytihng from a computer now. Do not try to do it otherwise. Even grandma cookie e-files. Note of clarification: an etch-a-sketch works fine as well.

- W2s.
These are the forms you get from anyone you worked for in the previous year. If you're like me (read: grown-up), you have just one, it's from Google, and it has a pretty sweet number in the "total" column. If you're like my Classe American compadres, you probably have 3 or 4, some are from Amherst, some are from summer jobs, and none made you any real money (sorry). Just the same, you need them.

- The tax forms your bank gives you.
All money you "make" is taxable, and "make" is pretty generally defined. Do you have a shitty savings account that paid you 14 cents of interest a month all year? Count it. You can get most of this info online from your bank.

- An accounting of money you made in the market.
If you have stock that you sold for a gain, that's what people call "capital gains." You'll call it taxable income, and you need to know the exact amount. (If you sold shit for a loss, you can deduct that amount from your income.)

- An accounting of any other income.
Really any other income.

3) They're going to take about 2 hours, all told. They're due on April 15, or as its classically known, Boxing Day (jk, that's 12/26 -- trivia, kids).

Glossary.

- "doing your taxes"
Starting real basic here. The government -- actually governments, both state and federal -- needs money to operate and they get the bulk of it by taxing income. They tax all money that companies make, and they tax all money that you make. Doing your taxes is just adding up all the money you made, looking up on a chart how much that means you owe to the state and the feds, and seeing if you already paid it or not, and then settling up. (Note: turbo tax does all of this; you just tell it what you made.)

- deductions
You basically have to "claim" any money you make, but there are some exceptions. For instance, to encourage people to give to charity, the government lets you treat money you gave to charity as money you didn't make. In other words, if you made 50 grand, but gave 1 grand of that away to charity, you can say you made only 49 grand - and as such pay taxes on just 49 grand. Those one thousand dollars are "deducted" from your income; the donation was "deductible." This is also known as "writing it off."

- Refunds, etc.
Your paycheck is always for less than you really make -- income minus income tax -- so what the hell are we even talking about. Well, the government does indeed try to head this off at the pass by taxing you all year, but they tend to get it wrong. They tax every paycheck you get as if that's the amount you make every week, all year. Get that? In other words, if you work over the summer and make $500 a week, they tax you as if you make $500 a week all year -- that is, about $24,000 a year. But you only worked three months and made only $6,000, so you really didn't deserve to be taxed like someone making 24 grand. You'll be requiring a refund.

Oh god they're so going to eject me from the blog,
Ben

Just because I was starting to sound like a big lesbian...

I also find James Franco quite attractive.  Not just because he's simply hot as hell, but also because he's extremely talented.  And because he made out with Sean Penn.  And because he definitely smokes a lot of grass. And because he makes this bear head look good.  

Sass is going to be at once amused and appalled that most of these things would ever serve as criteria for my liking a dude.  Someday, she will learn to accept me as I am. 

The Candyland bitch is hot

Queen Frostine is the only conceivable reason that anyone would play this game. 

Listen.

Animal Collective's latest album, Merriweather Post Pavillion, is simply unreal.  It's about as perfect of an album as you can get.  Of Montreal got pretty close last year with Skeletal Lamping, but there is something about the Collective that is just untouchable.  It's psychedelic, drone, ambient noise, folk, alt... but with an intoxicating and otherworldly melody.  Listen to "Summertime Clothes" and "My Girls" and get excited for summer - sandy naps and wicked sunburns.  Our generation's Beach Boys.

Read.

www.bookcityjackets.com

So Sass and I have different opinions about this, but here's the deal.  Book City Jackets makes paper in the shape of a book. So innovative and new.. But really just another book jacket to replace your real book jacket.  But you can write all over it and whatnot, so it's pretty dope.  I like the idea because I'm often embarrassed about what I'm reading on the subway (Dewey: The Small-town Library Cat Who Touched the World, for instance), and this is a cool way of masking those kinds of things.  Sass only reads books that would impress people, so she wouldn't dress her book up in a cute little outfit.  She also "doesn't read on the train," and "doesn't live in Brooklyn," and therefore "doesn't have to ride the train for hours."  Oh, and "books are one of the most beautiful things we have in this world, and why would you want to cover that up?"  

I think I just made a mockery of an opinion simply because it wasn't my own.  But good friends can do that to good friends.  Or can they?

I would do Kate Moss

Not as she was when she actually had a career, but as she is now.  She's developed some cushion for the pushin' recently and I'm liking it.  Or as Kate phrases it, "I'm a woman now."  That's model-speak for "I'm fat now."  Just kidding. But seriously. 

25 things about your newest contributor

It was a thrill, if an English teacher's nightmare, to receive the email that began "The Blogger user Lia has invited you to contribute to the blog: La Classe American." Now what?

Do you remember that silly fad on Facebook recently in which people kept posting these lists of 25 facts about themselves? Really uncool, right? Which is why I totally didn't make one.

Except: I made one. I just didn't post it. I saved it in TextEdit. So, by way of introducing myself, here's the list that I decided shouldn't be posted online -- totally unedited (absolutely edited).


1) I think I hate these lists. They're either too sincere (author is a loser), or try too hard to be funny (author is a tool). I'll try to walk the tightrope. I'll fail.
2) I try to kick it with the ironic kids, but secretly I dig sincerity.
3) Like Sass and Lia, I could do without words' being intentionally misspelled online. But I make an exception for 'orly' and 'o rlmente.'
4) I love to self-deprecate.
5) Man, I'm so lame at something.
6) I save all my chats.
7) My dad says he likes to read my thesis when he can't fall asleep.
8) I'm incapable of holding a grudge. I've tried. I always end up being glad about this.
9) I love to drive.
10) I'm surprisingly poorly read.
11) I (and the rest of my crew) once finished first in a rowing tournament.
12) I go out of my way to avoid split infinitives.
13) I was almost the child lead in Cop and a Half.
14) I'm a very good mimic.
15) "I'm a very good mimic."
16) I once finished dead last in a New York City bike race.
17) I can whistle very well.
18) I'm such a classic Leo. Just kidding: astrology is nonsense.
19) I'd like to be a stand-up comedian.
20) Two words: Cougars.
21) Also, younger women.
22) I have a crush on every one of my sister's friends. Unless it's not mutual in which case I'm kidding.
23) I've had Twitter-related anxiety dreams.
24) I'd prefer to be the pot calling the kettle black than the kettle being called names by really any appliance.
25) I kind of enjoyed this. Unless you didn't in which case I'm kidding.

- The Blogger user Ben

It's Science

Today is Saturday.  On Tuesday Lia and I have a full first draft of our theses due.  Naturally, this was a PERFECT time for Lia to throw a bottle of water onto my laptop and kill her (the laptop).  At that moment, things turned from real to...unbearably real.  Luckily, I had been backing up my chapters and notes etc onto a mini external hard drive.  Had it been Lia (genius that she is) she would've lost litrally everything.  That showed her!

Anyway, after briefly bugging, we decided to heed some advice from Lia's dad and coax the water out of the laptop in a RICE bath.  You heard me right.  Apparently it's science?  Rice loves eating water...even out of electronics.  It's a chemical affinity...it's love.  So we went to McDonald's.  (hey, we weren't gonna let a soggy computer keep us from lunch.)  Then we went to Stop & Shop for the bag of rice.  Stop & Shop sells 8,000 brands and sizes of rice.  I was envisioning submerging my whole computer in a suitcase full of rice.  Turns out, I really only need to submerge my battery.  (Btw, when I told my dad I was doing this, he appropriately asked : Brown? Jasmine? or a nice Arborio?  classic Dad move...) We settled on a 3-pound bag of long-grain, and as I type we are conducting science in an empty garbage bin.  FINGERS CROSSED IT WORKS.

P.S. This also works for cell phone batteries that have experienced wetness. (Toilets.)

Thanks, Lia.  For your science, and for rueeeeeeeeening my life.  

Love, 

Sass

We Never Thought This Would Happen to Us.. Again.

Welcome to hell.  Check in time is now. Check out time is never.  

No, but seriously.  We (Lia and Sass) are starting a blog about literally everything and absolutely nothing.  We hope that it will be kind of organic, but with its roots still in The Man.  Like the organic section in Stop and Shop.  

We do a lot of stupid shit.  And a lot of really cool shit.  And we have a lot of opinions that we feel morally compelled to share.  We were going to have a radio show this semester  in order to do just that, but then we found out that getting one requires taking a test about radio equipment.  Let's just say we don't have a radio show.  Luckily, you don't need to take a test to operate the internets or the blog and vlogospheres.  Plus you can only pick up the WAMH signal within a 35 foot radius of the DJ booth.  Also, the thought of a small Asian man in Japan reading this tickles us in a way that can't be described.  

Things we love:

Pizza, science, crossword puzzles, being in constant contact with each other, the procrastination nation, linguistics, bad jokes, bad puns, loving them, lottery tickets, television (Bravo), the interwebs, gmail, Justin Kimball, babies, animals (Lia), paper and emoticons (Sass), flowers, punking... ourselves, community service, naps, joyrides windows down music blasting, everything France, everything men, everything French men.

Things we hate:

Other blogs, incompetence (our own included), ppl who tlk lk ths onlne or in txt mssgs, tardiness (Lia), forgetfulness (Sass), responsibilities, binge drinkers, inclement weather, unwavering optimism, the UGG corporation, pedestrianism, chatty drug dealers (Lia), abusing drugs (Sass), philistines, "books for show."

Things to expect:

All of that + weekly features: manswers, that really grinds my gears, things we covet, lottery ticket tallies, artwork of the week, things we talked about today.  And general movies, music, fashion, museums, television, travel, food reviews/opinions/situations/paradoxes/enigmas/trivias.  Lots of anecdotes.  

Enjoy it. That's an order.

Love,

Lia and Sass