flotsam and jetsam

horsdecombat @ 2007-05-08T09:32:00

2007-05-08T07:40:08Z

Last Saturday I made love for the first time in my life. Yeah.

Jane Austen's Persuasion is one of the most boring books I've ever read. I know it's not one of her most famous novels, but I was expecting something a little more... spirited? And the heroine is so pathetic. God.

horsdecombat @ 2007-04-22T08:49:00

2007-04-22T07:00:31Z

Concours begin tomorrow. First the concours for the ENS (one week), and then for the business schools, HEC and ESCP-EAP (two weeks). Same thing as last year. Except that this is my last chance. So, I've got to be good this time, whether I'm ready or not. God, I'm nervous.

Oh, and we're voting today, we're voting "for the most unpredictable presidential election in decades" as BBC News puts it. In case you care, I'll vote for Ségolène Royal, the socialist candidate. God, I'm nervous.

horsdecombat @ 2007-03-03T10:36:00

2007-03-03T09:45:43Z

1) FUCK! For the second time in six months, I forgot that I had a ticket for a play at the Théâtre de la Colline last night. Je suis tellement tête en l'air, c'est insupportable. Scatterbrained and unreliable. I hate myself.

2) Anyway, good news too. Björk's next album, Volta, is to be released in May! Yeah yeah yeah! I'm so impatient!

3) Not only is the singer Mika young and successful, but he's also awfully good-looking!

horsdecombat @ 2007-03-01T17:37:00

2007-03-01T16:44:10Z

An American point of view on the agrégation d'anglais, France's "highest competitive exam for recruiting teachers." Interesting.

horsdecombat @ 2007-02-28T23:06:00

2007-02-28T22:41:35Z

Ten opening sentences, ten different novels or plays or poems, etc. Which ones?

1) The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
Oscar WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray

2) The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. There were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly and beautifully office-buildings.

3) J'ai été homosexuelle pendant trois mois. Plus exactement, trois mois, j'ai cru que j'y étais condamnée.
Christine ANGOT, L'inceste

4) CLAIRE. - Et ces gants ! Ces éternels gants ! Je t'ai dit souvent de les laisser à la cuisine. C'est avec ça, sans doute, que tu espères séduire le laitier.
Jean GENET, Les Bonnes

5) Cette lettre, mon amie, sera très longue. Je n'aime pas beaucoup écrire. J'ai lu souvent que les paroles trahissent la pensée, mais il me semble que les paroles écrites la trahissent encore davantage.

6) Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex.
Valerie SOLANAS, SCUM Manifesto

7) If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
J.D. SALINGER, The Catcher in the Rye

8) Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
Jane AUSTEN, Emma

9) Je viens d'avoir trente-quatre ans, la moitié de la vie. Au physique, je suis de taille moyenne, plutôt petit. J'ai des cheveux châtains coupés court afin d'éviter qu'ils ondulent, par crainte aussi que ne se développe une calvitie menaçante.

10) C'étaient de très grands vents sur toutes faces de ce monde, / De très grands vents en liesse par le monde, qui n'avaient d'aire ni de gîte, / Qui n'avaient garde ni mesure, et nous laissaient, hommes de paille, / En l'an de paille sur leur erre... Ah ! oui, de très grands vents sur toutes faces de vivants !

horsdecombat @ 2007-02-23T00:06:00

2007-02-22T23:08:58Z

I turned twenty five minutes ago.

OMG, this is not happening.

horsdecombat @ 2007-01-14T14:05:00

2007-01-14T13:06:51Z

Why does this description of Tom Buchanan give me a hard-on?

“The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy aternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body─he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage─a cruel body.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

horsdecombat @ 2007-01-02T22:39:00

2007-01-03T07:00:24Z

My trip through South California is unfortunately coming to an end. I'm in Palm Springs right now, and tomorrow we'll drive back to San Diego. I've had such a great time. The sun, the shimmering sea, the city of San Diego, Mexico... I can do nothing but repeat how wonderful these vacations are. Anyway, I don't have much time, my father's waiting for the computer.

Oh, and by the way, I burned half my left hand on Christmas eve. A napkin caught fire in my sister's hands: I snatched it from her and ran to the bathroom. At first I didn't feel anything. Then my hand began to go numb. Two minutes later, I was experiencing the most awful pain in my whole life. One minute later, I passed out.

Happy new year!

horsdecombat @ 2006-12-24T16:01:00

2006-12-24T15:08:43Z

Hey, folks. I'm not dead. Well, barely alive (the last two weeks were devoted to mock exams), but not dead.

Anyway, I'm flying to San Diego (via Atlanta) tomorrow, so I won't complain. I desperately need to see new landscapes, for I'm literally withering here in Paris, doing nothing else but going to and coming from school every day.

Je vous souhaite donc de très bonne fêtes, ainsi qu'une très bonne année. Treat yourself, drink moderately, and enjoy your gifts!

Voice Post

2006-11-25T14:14:09Z

Sorry for the wrong stress on the word record... and for the other mistakes! And thank you to enamour for the new layout.

horsdecombat @ 2006-10-14T15:49:00

2006-10-14T16:02:33Z

TOO. MUCH. WORK.

My brain is going to explode. Marre de bosser, marre de réfléchir, marre d'écrire ! Assez des dissertations, assez des exposés, assez des devoirs ! Je n'ai qu'une envie, tout jeter par la fenêtre, cours, classeurs, cahiers, polycopiés, ordinateur. Non, pas l'ordinateur ; mais tout le reste, oui.

In other news, je songe de plus en plus sérieusement à passer l'année prochaine aux Etats-Unis. Les procédures sont en fin de compte assez simples, et il n'est pas très difficile de trouver un poste d'assistant/lecteur de français en université ; c'est rémunéré, et la majorité des universités offrent le logement et le couvert. Le seul problème, c'est que je veux absolument une université qui soit près de/dans une grande ville, ce qui est loin d'être toujours le cas. Et puis pas n'importe quelle grande ville non plus. New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago. Bon, peut-être suis-je suis un peu exigeant, j'accepterai aussi des villes de niveau inférieur. Mais pas en pleine cambrousse, j'ai pas non plus envie de passer ma vie sur un campus au milieu de nulle part. Sans compter que tout ça, c'est dans l'hypothèse où je rate une seconde fois mes concours... Bref, j'accomplirai les différentes procédures, mais au risque d'avoir à tout abandonner si j'ai l'ENS ; dans ce cas-là, je ne partirai que l'année suivante.

Et encore faut-il que je passe le TOEFL avec un score suffisant. Pfff, ça fait beaucoup de conditions.

horsdecombat @ 2006-10-01T10:37:00

2006-10-01T08:41:09Z

Je viens juste de rentrer du Festival America : littératures et cultures d'Amérique du Nord, qui se tient ce week-end à Vincennes. Non seulement les conférences, les lectures et les débats se sont avérés passionnants, mais en plus j'ai acheté tout plein de bouquins que je me suis fait dédicacer dans la foulée ! J'ai au moins doublé ma collection de signed copies, grâce à Margaret Atwood, Benjamin Kunkel, Edmund White et Richard McCann. BOOK FETISHISM!

horsdecombat @ 2006-09-03T11:07:00

2006-09-03T09:27:50Z

Tomorrow: back to school! This year will be my third and last year of classe préparatoire, which means a lot of work, poor grades, disappointments, etc. Doesn't it sound quite exciting? Ce qui signifie aussi, heureusement, plein de découvertes insoupçonnées, de connaissances accumulées, de progrès accomplis (ou du moins je l'espère). So, what's on the 2007 syllabus?

French literature:

Ronsard, Les Amours de Cassandre
Rousseau, Lettre à d'Alembert sur les spectacles
Mérimée, Théâtre de Clara Gazul
Proust, Albertine disparue

English literature and civilization:

Seamus Heaney, Beowulf

Shakespeare, King Lear

Philip Roth, The Human Stain

Minorities in the United Kingdom and in the USA

History: Economy, society and culture in the USA, 1917-1988

Geography: Cities and poverty in the world

Philosophy: The notion of culture

I've got one long year to know these subjects inside out. Let's go!

horsdecombat @ 2006-08-24T18:36:00

2006-08-24T17:14:33Z

I'm back from the USA/Canada; it feels so weird. I slept all afternoon because of the jet lag, and now I don't really know where or who I am. So much happened in the last twenty-four hours. Anyway, the second part of my trip was as great as I had expected, and I enjoyed every second of it. New Brunswick was fabulous (Campobello left me such a strong impression). Old Québec hasn't lost any of its charm. Blah. I'm feeling all empty.

Choose a band/artist that/who you really enjoy and answer the following questions with their song titles (Björk):

1. How was your day today?
Where Is the Line?

2. Describe yourself.
Immature

3. How do some people feel about you?
Hidden Place

4. How do you feel about yourself?
Storm

5. Describe your ex boyfriend / girlfriend.
Who Is It?

6. Describe where you want to be.
In the Musicals

7. Describe how you live.
Sonnets/Unrealities XI

8. Describe how you love.
Submarine

horsdecombat @ 2006-08-10T22:11:00

2006-08-11T03:05:51Z

Hey folks! It's high time I gave you some news. Actually I've had plenty of opportunities until now, for the numerous hotels we (father, sister and I) stayed in all had some business center of sorts, with Internet and all, but I simply couldn't find the time to do it. Plus QWERTY-keyboards are so not fashionable; so I guess I'll make it short. Right now it's 10:24 pm, and I'm in Plymouth, Ma. We arrived in Montreal one week ago, and each day visited a new place: gray, deserted Hartford . . . Mystic . . . Providence, a lovely, peaceful city I'd be happy to live in . . . smart, expensive Newport and its extravagant mansions . . . Cape Cod, Provincetown, whose countless rainbow flags proudly flapped in the wind. Tomorrow we'll visit Plymouth and leave for Boston, where we're supposed to stay a little longer. As usual in the USA, I'm enjoying myself tremendously; the roads, the sky, the buildings, the mere sight of all those landscapes regenerates me; and some parts of New England have an undeniable, particular beauty. There is no describing how ecstatic I am. And, icing on the cake, my mother just told me over the phone that she had bought four tickets for San Diego, for the end of December. I feel like I was another person, or in another world. God god god. Now it's 11:03 pm, time to go to bed. I LOVE YOU. PS: Nathanael's West The Day of the Locust was disappointing, tasteless; Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a masterpiece.

horsdecombat @ 2006-08-01T13:37:00

2006-08-01T11:41:55Z

Aux Etats-Unis (et au Canada) du 3 au 24 août. Have a good holiday!

(Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958.)

horsdecombat @ 2006-07-23T15:54:00

2006-07-23T14:14:33Z

After paying a little visit to all the English bookshops in Paris (except WHSmith, Brentano's and Galignani, which keep their prices incredibly high), I found the English secondhand bookshop. It's not the only one, but the San Francisco Book Company is exactly what I need: they sell cheap, secondhand books, in a cosy little shop, rue Monsieur-le-Prince, that is five stops away on métro from my house. Yesterday I bought Kerouac's On the Road, Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and Dos Passos's The Big Money. I spend too much money buying books, but I really can't help it: I need to own the books I read. This new bookshop is a blessing.

Mon dieu, un pigeon a failli rentrer dans ma chambre.

horsdecombat @ 2006-07-19T20:22:00

2006-07-19T18:43:55Z

Et vous appelez ça des vacances. My summer job is fucking exhausting. Je travaille à l'université Paris 7, Jussieu pour les intimes, où je m'occupe des inscriptions et de l'orientation des étudiants ; ça n'a l'air de rien comme ça, mais tous les soirs c'est pareil, je rentre sur les rotules et je fais la sieste. Conséquence : je me couche tard, je ne dors pas assez, et la journée du lendemain est plus fatiguante encore. La scolarité est une fournaise, bien évidemment, ce qui ne facilite pas le boulot.

What else? Achetés d'occasion aujourd'hui : Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, Katherine Mansfield's The Garden Party, Anthony Neilson's plays. Currently reading Proust, Philip Roth too (The Human Stain, which is on my syllabus for next year). Recently watched: Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives, Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly's It's Always Fair Weather (the latter starring the resplendent, wonderful Cyd Charisse).

Et maintenant je vais aller mettre la musique à fond et danser dans ma chambre. I BET THAT I LOOK GOOD ON THE DANCEFLOOR.

horsdecombat @ 2006-07-13T00:19:00

2006-07-12T22:28:23Z

The words of a boy who appears to be a stranger destroyed me; once again. I don't feel in the mood to be explicit tonight; que tu es mièvre, quand même, he said. How weak I am, I say.

Why do I listen to the Spice Girls when I'm dejected? I want a man, not a boy who thinks he can... How hopelessly de rigueur.

horsdecombat @ 2006-07-09T16:59:00

2006-07-09T15:13:14Z

Hallelujah! Now it's certain, I'm going to the US in August. With my dad and sister, which is not particularly exciting, but well, I guess that's the price to pay. Nous arrivons à Montréal, mais nous traversons immédiatement la frontière pour nous rendre plus au Sud : Ouest du Vermont et du Massachussetts, jusqu'au Sud du Connecticut. Puis nous remontons en longeant la côte, Providence, Cape Cod, ainsi de suite jusqu'à Boston ; et puis retour à Montréal, à temps pour le festival des films du monde, parce que mon père doit bien faire son travail de temps en temps et gagner un peu d'argent. I'm sooo happy.

Oh, and you really should watch Mankiewicz's Dragonwyck, c'est très bien.

horsdecombat @ 2006-07-02T20:46:00

2006-07-02T18:51:25Z

Wait, what is that? An uncompleted (spangly!) Rubik's Cube?

Yeah, I think it is. Sweet.

horsdecombat @ 2006-06-30T19:33:00

2006-06-30T17:34:01Z

My current life in a nutshell:

Get laid or die trying.

horsdecombat @ 2006-06-25T16:28:00

2006-06-25T14:38:22Z

Ahhhh. Tomorrow: oral exams. German, but above all, English and American culture (mmh, in French we say civilisation anglaise et américaine, but I'm not sure the word civilization would fit, so I said culture, but perhaps culture doesn't fit either). This year's theme was: Religion and churches in the United States and in the United Kingdom. So, basically, I have to know everything about religion in both the countries. How many Sikhs in England, the name of the gay bishop that was elected three years ago in New Hampshire, the name of the woman who's been elected last week as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the date of the Act of Supremacy, the problem with mixed-faith schools in Ireland, etc. etc. Blahh, I'm fucking terrified. And on Wednesday, English literature: I'm supposed to do a twenty-minute analysis of a poem, of an excerpt of a novel or play. Which frightens me too. And of course, all of that is in English.

WISH ME LUCK, I'LL NEED IT.

EDIT: first exam over. Muslim schools in Britain. Fuck. Why am I not exceptional? I hate mediocrity.

EDIT: second exam over. A passage of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. I completely missed the irony of the text. Holy shit, I suck.

horsdecombat @ 2006-06-21T09:36:00

2006-06-21T07:48:40Z

Oh, my dear, dear English speakers, I have a question. I always hesitate when I have to say a date in English. For instance, how do I read the following sentence? "He was enthroned on 18 November 2005."

1) He was enthroned on November, the eighteenth, 2005.
2) He was enthroned on the eighteenth November of 2005.
3) He was enthroned on November eighteen 2005.
4) He was enthroned... AHHHH. Help.

horsdecombat @ 2006-06-19T19:01:00

2006-06-19T17:10:15Z

FOLKS, I AM FUCKING ECSTATIC. I am sous-admissible at ENS Lyon and admissible at ENS Cachan. That doesn't mean anything to a lot of you guys, but anyway, those exam results mean a lot to me, and mean that I'm not a complete moron (as I am prone to think), intellectually speaking at least (I love that word, moron; it reminds me of Six Feet Under... you fucking moron).

Wow, all of this is so weird. Now I wanna make love to somebody. Ooops, nobody to make love to. I love to be made love to. Je délire. I'm so happy.