-Rappelez-vous les années '80?-

If my recent study of the French language through the Capretz total immersion system is any indication, the seeds of most recent and spectacular failure of Gallic-American diplomacy were planted in the early 1980s, when we infected their language instruction videos with clothing and hairstyles that many contemporaries of the period deny ever existed. You may have seen these people, guarding all photos and videos from the period as shameful relics that could at any moment bring the authorities down on their heads.

Of course, the series is still young. I have many more lessons to get through before I can roll this language up like a baguette and stow it on the back of my moped with my beret.

-SIGINT-

Sometimes we hear more than we should. I've just read two books on signals intelligence, and seen the movie "The Conversation" with Gene Hackman, so I'm well aware that a body can misinterpret the meaning behind the simplest phrases. Watching lessons one and two of 'French in Action,' a film series featuring the Capretz method (total immersion, no translation) accurately conveys two major concepts; first, 80s styles are every bit as repellent in France as they were here, and second, each language reaches for its own ideas, not universal ones.

But linguistic trees shouldn't end with English, French, Cree, Togo, Phoenician. There is, for example, the peculiar tongue within English spoken only by corporate suck ups. Many thanks to Don Watson, author of 'Death Sentences' for bravely exploring the writings of those strange people. I have come to know them well; a small tribe has taken up residence in this area, even though the resources they usually require to thrive (i.e. actual authority and money) is sorely lacking. Truly, a resilient species.

And sometimes, we understand all too well.

I was in a good mood Friday. WE were in a good mood. Librarians, tutors, students. You could feel the Friday energy.

Then the library director's companion came in with a dishwater gray aura. "I talked with the Doctor..." He began.

I shouldn't be hearing this. I thought. I'll be going.

Too late; I heard two letters:

M

S

-I may have lost my wireless signal, but I haven't lost my pride-

I have resisted the urge to piggyback on the neighbors' signals.
I have not used Burger King.
I have not blogged from work.

I did, however, discover an internet cafe in the middle of nowhere. You have to turn off an access road and sneak behind a nursery to get there, but it is an oasis in a desert of apathy.

-Looming job interview? Expect a tech fizzle-

The last time I had a job interview, my phone crapped out the morning of the interview. It was a phone interview.

Tomorrow I have another interview. The cable modem crapped out. It isn't an online interview, but there are more than a few things I need to research, and e-mail messages to send.

This put me out on the street looking for an internet cafe. There aren't many here.

Try a Burger King, someone suggested.

I heard they were wiring Burger King restaurants, but for some reason my foot hit the accelerator when I saw the fast food joint. So this installment comes to you from the lesser evil of Barnes and Noble.

$3.95 for two hours.

I shudder to think what could happen if I'm interviewing down the street and don't require any technology whatsoever. Would I get hit by a cyclist on the sidewalk?

-Lost Writer-

We just lost another one.

The writing group once boasted:


a creative writing professor (and moderator)
a environmental cleanup expert
a retired environmental cleanup expert
a poetry-spewing brace of merlot-drinking sisters
a very loquacious high school teacher
a landscaping English major
and me

Now it has:

a creative writing professor (and moderator)
a environmental cleanup expert
a retired environmental cleanup expert
a landscaping English major
and me

We will try to recruit more soon.

-Just can’t tell if this is going to work-

She started as a blind date. We’ve been together twice since then, and I can’t tell if we’re going anywhere. Of course, it took a long time to get this far, thanks to extenuating circumstances; car accidents, illnesses, work obligations, and more.

Sometimes I think she’s completely bored, and then she’ll snap to life and I feel the barriers are coming down a bit. By the time we part, it is back to neutral, but we agree to see each other again.

I guess that’s fine, but when I describe this relationship to friends and family, I have so little to tell. They get this so-how-is-your-girlfriend-who-lives-in-Canada-that-we’ve-never-seen look in their eyes, and one of us (usually me) changes the subject.




Slow is good, right?

-Director Down-

battlecreeksan
Originally uploaded by benedict monk.

It was the calcium that did it. Too much calcium can knock a body down, especially if that body belongs to a post-menopausal woman with a laundry list of other health issues.

She called today to tell us she’d be coming back tomorrow, which is good news. The sharks from headquarters were already circling; they’d learned that something bad had happened to her.

That they didn’t find out what happened was a coup in our favor. We snuck her out of the office right under a visiting headquarters librarian’s upturned nose. In the maelstrom of stress and worry over the director’s health, I took some small joy in that.