Brosing Remarks? (Brope)

It was a dark and stormy night. ("...The milkman's car drove off the road." Anybody besides my sister remember that 90s Got Milk commercial?)

(No? Really? What were you guys doing in the 90s?)

But seriously folks, it is a blustery black night here in Bordeaux. What's more, God forgot to turn off the faucet, so it is constantly raining. Also, out of nowhere, it is bitterly cold, forcing me to double up on sweaters (increasing the likelihood of friction fires) and socks (I wear two now). On Monday I decided to get a haircut, which is the opposite of buying a hat, something I have been meaning to do since October. On the plus side, though, my host mom saw me afterwards and said, "thank you for finally doing something about that," and she made me a celebratory tarte aux pommes. Also in recognition of my good deed, she finally agreed to throw my "dry" clothes back into the dryer for a second cycle, so that I wouldn't have to keep laying them on all the radiators in the house. This sounds stupid, pedantic, obnoxious, do your own laundry you 20-year-old baby, or rude, but it is often impossible to tell if the machine is indeed a dryer, and not a fish tank.

How is everyone coping with finals? Are you drowning in work? Did you go to the cookie thing that my future roommate hosted? Can you see the Facebook event from that link? Are there too many end-of-semester a cappella concerts for you to handle? Do you secretly wish all those people voted for you instead of Anwar in the WSA elections? Is it easier for you to study a lot throughout the year so that finals aren't difficult or stressful, or wait until the last minute, realize that at this point no matter how much you study you can't conceivably do extremely well or learn an entire syllabus, so you might as well just convince yourself that you'll be fine and throw caution to the wind? Is anyone else having trouble with episodes of the Wire online?

The laptop has seen a lot of action this semester, from that time I dropped it on the stairs outside my linguistics class to that time I watched 12 Angry Men, Network, The Manchurian Candidate, and The Usual Suspects in the span of ...well, you do the math. Yo, it's not like I abstain from real interaction and choose to stay indoors and read Volcano Hands Tone's blog all the time. I may be a lot of things, but I am NOT an accro d'Internet ("nethead"), so ease up on the judgments. Here's something I bet you didn't know: I get a real life New York Times sent to my house everyday, just so I can keep up with the world the way we were meant to, in a language that I understand. And the world is so complicated right now! Not to mention awful. Crazy people are everywhere: throwing grenades in Liege, shooting Senegalese merchants in Florence, imprisoning everyone in Moscow, being named Newt, etc. Just stop all the commotion, for Pierre's sake.

Then again, there's not too much to protest in Bordeaux, other than the usual weekly protest that the entire country goes on. Some of the employees at the campus cafeteria went on strike in September, but that was awkward because nobody goes to that place anyway, so if a tree falls in a (black) forest (ham), etc. etc. I also think there was a situation with a mine not too far away from here, but it blew up ten years ago, but people are still trying to figure out, like, where the gold is. I think. Oh, and I guess students generally complain about paying off loans or some shit like that, and whenever one of those disheveled smelly grad students/corset-wearing Wiccans hands me a flyer railing against tuition hikes, I do the old Mitch Hedberg: here, I throw this away. Because let's be honest: ya'll don't even know. Like really.

You think you know, but you have no idea. You probably don't even think you know. I don't know what you think, but you know what? You thought wrong.

As the above paragraph might suggest, I'm losing most if not all of my marbles over the course of this week. You didn't ask me about finals, but I'll tell you anyway. Actually, I won't tell you. Last fall, I fell off a bike en route to my radio show, and I broke my arm, got contusions that still haven't healed, and may or may not have suffered a concussion (thanks to a text-msg consultation with human WebMD Andy Gradison, this is unlikely...we think). But did I whine about the pain and broadcast my anguish over the air to 1,000,000 listeners across the Connecticut Valley region? No. So I'm not going to play the plaintive game. However, I am going to attach a picture of my Google Calendar for this week. It should give you a picture--literally, it should--if it doesn't, then why would it say it did--(that's Eminem) (not really)--of my recent routine without me having to type out my grievances.

Well, who knows if you can read that? The point is, this guy's got a lot on the agenda. Every few hours I'll get a notification on Facebook that reads "DONE!!!" and hey, that's great! Boy, how fun is that? Taking care of everything you have to do, succeeding in the face of formidable challenges, and not missing a beat to tell the Internet about it while the rest of us toil away! Yo, and who are these people "liking" those statuses? What is going on there? If you're so happy that your friend is done with finals, why don't you guys go hang out instead of playing virtual tag? Morons.

One of the weirdest things about attending a school in a foreign language is that, for many reasons, you end up not talking so much on a day-to-day basis. What I mean is, ...I mean, you understand what I mean. I am about 10% as likely to participate here than I am at uni at home. I have almost gone whole days without talking, unless you count murmuring "pardon" as you pass by the homeless man with the two cats. That sounds mean, but my host mom assures me that every panhandler on the street works secretly for some sort of gypsy mafia ring in Bordeaux; kind of like the Freemasons, but like...really free.

Well, I don't think I should really end my side of La Vie en Bros on this relatively brour note. It's been very cathartic, and I appreciate the readers for allowing Sawse and me to plumb the depths of our souls and pour out our hearts. Enough with the toilet imagery, something I swore never to evoke all the way back in the beginning of this semester. (All I'll say is, if you want a culture shock, go to a bathroom stall in anywhere that isn't a hotel or restaurant in France. The amount of seats will astound you, and I ain't saying they got extras.) Until next time, you can catch me at the Field concert on the iBoat, beating everyone on Words with Friends, or, most likely, trying to get in just one fight with a French person before I leave.

P.S. Everyone should direct their confusion or anger over this "Recipe Exchange" virus/annoyance (not a virus, don't worry) at Zach "Snack Mattress" Attas. He invented it, he wants all of your recipes. Kill him with kindness.