(Via Google chat)

Colin: and oftentimes just to throw google off
i’ll do searches for random things
like jasper
or walkie talkies
or glue sticks

My new favorite thing about Paris: an underground group of cultural guerillas called the Untergunther (!!) who sneak around and restore monuments.

Klausmann and his crew are connaisseurs of the Parisian underworld. Since the 1990s they have restored crypts, staged readings and plays in monuments at night, and organised rock concerts in quarries. The network was unknown to the authorities until 2004, when the police discovered an underground cinema, complete with bar and restaurant, under the Seine. They have tried to track them down ever since.

From this article.

A conversation on a bathroom wall in a local coffeeshop:

The Morningstar was here
But now he’s next door

Will he return?

Find out next week
Same bat-time
Same bat-channel

Same bat-room

Now that I’m not spending my days memorizing the five ways to motivate underlings or depreciating bicycles, I’ve got a bit of extra time to learn Spanish, which I’m really enjoying.  Sometimes I read Spanish periodicals online in the hope that I will learn new and exciting vocabulary.

Words I have learned from reading ¡Hola!, a Spanish gossip mag:

1. embarazada, adj.  pregnant.
2. sexys, pl. adj. sexy.
3. drogas, pl. n. drugs.

So I joined the Do-Follow Movement, because I agree with the principle that blog commentators deserve some payoff beyond a niggling sense of purposelessness. As a result, lots of people have been commenting here in order to create links back to their own sites. I can’t say I’m not enjoying this newfound illusion of relevance, but I reserve the right to delete excruciatingly asinine comments. Unless they’re awesome.

“the best way to show him you love him is to cook him a meal.”
- One of many oblivious commentators on this entry

I have put some thought into it, and I have decided that my favorite awful graphic from this set is this one. I also really like this one from the Inspirational category. All of these appear to have been made by someone whose Bryce skills far outpace his artistic taste. I am passing this on because the website promises that if I “Tell [my] friends & associates, they’ll love [me] for it!” I want to be loved.

So I have gotten a job at a law firm. We are working on a case against the Army Corps of Engineers for the levees breaking during Katrina. Myself, I am sticking it to the Man by processing thousands of claims forms for twelve hours a day. It is exhausting, though I have developed various coping mechanisms. For example, I have been extracting maximum joy from names like Virgil Bienemy and Reginald Sprout. I also encountered a Hitler (first name), who was unfortunately born in 1937, when Adolf Hitler was merely that fellow with the funny mustache ignoring the Treaty of Versailles.

Boyfriend’s coming home today!  I told my dad how excited I am about it, and he informed me “not to show him you missed him.”  My father is the master of romantic strategery.

I’m back in the U.S., and experiencing a rush of patriotism! This is unexpected.

Going through Customs used to be fun, back when I traveled with my family. I’d get to fill out the Important Form, while my dad would criticize my handwriting and generally give the impression that he’d talk or bribe us over the border no matter what. Now, however, I’m traveling alone, and it sure is lonely without habeas corpus.

On this particular flight back from Moscow I was entrusted with an imaging prototype from my family’s company. The device is simultaneously dangerous- and obscene-looking. I was really looking forward to trying to explain it to the authorities. My mom helpfully gave me a letter to help with the process. The letter refers to me as Anush (not my legal name) and is in English, so maybe I could have made a pretty boat out of it for Russian security, because it had virtually no other use.

So getting through Customs, security, and Baggage Control without any awkward conversations pretty much made my day, and then! The guy at passport control smiled and made small talk with me about what I was doing in Russia! It might have been a part of his job, a kind of Small Talk Terrorist Screening Protocol, but it completely made my day. Non-surly service personnel are why I love America.

Tomorrow (June 12) is Russia Day. I know this because my (Russian) cellphone company sent me a text message on the subject, which I hope they are not sneakily charging me for. Russia Day is not, for example, the day the first Russian Tsar was crowned, or the day Russia’s current territory was acquired. Russia Day is a celebration of Russia’s independence — from the Soviet Union. This is like every state except Rhode Island declaring their collective independence from the United States.

Russia completely wins in terms of holidays. Holidays that the U.S. should appropriate for my personal gain and/or comedic value:

• International Women’s Day
• Maslenitsa, or Pancake Week
• Defender of the Fatherland Day

It rained a few days ago:

I’m addicted to riddles, and Russian riddles are vastly preferable to the ones I’ve heard in the States. My godfather gave me this one:

One hundred wise men are on a bus. A random number (not zero) of randomly selected wise men have had their faces marked with paint. The wise men can all see each other, but they cannot communicate in any way. They are told that the bus will make one hundred rest stops before they reach their destination. A painted wise man has the right to get off the bus to wash his face, but if a clean wise man gets off the bus, they are all killed. Without communicating, how do all the painted wise men wash their faces?

I’ll post the answer in the comments tomorrow. This isn’t a trick question — there isn’t a mirror in the bus, they can’t touch their faces, etc.