Everybody's Weird, le weblog

Sign #4531 that I'm getting older.
I bought this ticket for the Elliott Smith show. It seemed to me, the day I purchased it, that it was a great idea to go and see the guy play. And today, I had to go to the gig. I'm just back.
But, to tell you the truth, when I've left the office at 6, I couldn't see a good reason why I bought this ticket instead of any other. I have to explain : I'm not a fan, I've not been following his career for years, I just know the last album (out of around four, I guess), and moreover I cannot clearly tell you most of the tracks' titles... So, my point is : I wasn't really feeling like going to this concert.
Can you realize this ? I didn't really want to go and see a rock gig... THIS is a sign I'm getting older.

Anyway, the good part is that I truly enjoyed it. What isn't noticeable on Figure 8 is that Elliott Smith does indie music. Half of the show was like fig.8 on overdrive, that was cool ! And the other half, stuff from the XO era I guess, was even better, even more... indie is the word that comes to me. Tomorrow, I'll get those tracks (I've been really moved by this song probably called 'The morning after'). I'm really happy 'cause I've re-discovered a great songwriter. If you're interested, he did John Lennon's 'Jealous Guy' as a third and last encore, a beautiful moment.

I probably won't be posting often next week, since I have a lot of work at the office, and a role-playing game to prepare at home.

When I told ya I'm a survivor !.. I was on a similar greek ferry just one goddam week ago, sailing towards the port of the island of Paros too. Ok, I wasn't in this same ferry nor doing the exact same trip, but it's pretty disturbing.
God's wrath missed me once more, but what about the next time ? Or maybe I'm just paranoid....

An interesting lecture on stars and universe. [thanks to evhead]

Hi ! In case you haven't noticed, I've made small changes (mainly tricks from my newly acquired CSS knowledge) on this page. W3C are very intelligent people.
By the way, thanks to the few folks who've been coming back to this weblog for the last week. You anonymous support matters more than you think.

Seen High Fidelity (the movie) during the week-end. It was a nice time-filler, that I would advise people who haven't read the book to see... But as a huge fan of Nick Hornby's novel, which I've read three or four times and offered to friends, I'm slightly disappointed. Not that the story has really mutated (a few things more and a few scenes less, but nothing really important), but the main characters are played as comical stereotypes : how can you feel empathy for a guy that is introduced as a retarded thirtysomething obsessed by sex-appealing girls ? In my opinion, Rob definitely is a nice guy, trying the best he can to grow up, but still in fight with the last part of his teenager's fantasies, and not an elitist and depressed moron that sleeps one night with Marie LaSalle only for the comical interest it gives to the script, and leaves her in the morning unaffected... In the book, Rob first is a guy you would like to be, because he's smart, for chrissake, and then he begins to act stupidely, and we can make fun of him in an affectionnate way, 'cause that's our drawbacks he stands for. The movie forgets all this to play only on comedy and brainless instinct-driven characters.
What I'm trying to express, is that the book has a pretty noble conclusion, that Laura teaches Rob when she left her father's funeral and put their couple back in the right path, but one step further. That conclusion is that you can't stay in the same state of mind during your whole life, that you need to go further once in a while, to always have doubts, that you must move on from the contemplation of death to what you're going to create while you're alive and healthy. Create love, create music, create texts, create software, create bonds between people, create joy, create life. You can't just stay an observer as in your teenage fantasies. I'm positive you can't.

I go on with my blogger-ing mood.
I'm feeling I'm a survivor those days. Really. People around me keep getting troubles, and always the not-funny kind of troubles. I feel like that guy on the Normandy Beaches, June 1944, that sees all his pals falling under nazis bullets, and keeps running, and shit in his pants 'I-will-be-the-next' way. Sentimental problems, family problems, dying persons, wounded persons... I mean, I've had my lot of shit during the years (which i've never managed to deal with correctly), but I've been so happy, so fulfilled, so normal the last couple of years that I somewhat lost the accurate feeling about how unfair is life. Anyone has a bullet-proof jacket to sell ?
Above all that, I'm a bastard. Nita has this kind of problems, and what do you think I spent my sunday on ? Making quite an inappropriate "you think i'm a moron"-scene (my first one), with the regular amount of bitterness and unkindness. Hopefully she's smarter than me, and it ended fine, but how do you call a guy that put his own lamentable feelings above those of somebody who would need support and comfort most of all ? Bastard, that's the word you're looking for.

I quit now, just a last few words. The best news of this week-end is Björk's Selmasongs, the 'dancer in the dark' soundtrack as you all know. I've been following the little fairy from the snow for a long time now, and she again offers the world one of the best pieces of music ever done. This is so beautiful you feel the need to turn the lights off. A great, great record. I'm obviously longing for the movie to come out, and for björk to release her next real album, tour and sing these songs just for me in a 5000-people venue, as she always does.

<french>
Cette année, pour la vingt-quatrième année consécutive, je n'ai acheté aucune action. Croyez-le ou pas, mais j'ai encore fait une nouvelle économie.
</french>

This was bound to happen : Vatican 'softening' over condoms.

This rh parody made me laugh out loud in the office... Great. The concert is taking place tonight. It will be my first Radiohead gig. I'm really impatient.

Hey !! Back from HO-LI-DAYS !! A bit jealous, hum ?
It was great time.

Addendum (from Blogger) : Let's put a bit of theory in the stuff. Rebecca's essay gives an interesting point of view on Weblogs. Check it out if you're interested ; here's an extract :

In September of 2000 there are thousands of weblogs: topic-oriented weblogs, alternative viewpoints, astute examinations of the human condition as reflected by mainstream media, short-form journals, links to the weird, and free-form notebooks of ideas. Traditional weblogs perform a valuable filtering service and provide tools for more critical evaluation of the information available on the web. Free-style blogs are nothing less than an outbreak of self-expression. Each is evidence of a staggering shift from an age of carefully controlled information provided by sanctioned authorities (and artists), to an unprecedented opportunity for individual expression on a worldwide scale. Each kind of weblog empowers individuals on many levels.

This is not what you think.

I have shown my last post to a colleague at work. Here's our debriefing :
Manu : So ?..
Colleague : "I'm gonna give it to you. It might seem exaggerated, but it's not." Isn't that sexual ?
Manu : ah ah ah... But about the rest ?
Colleague : It's amazing how fluent you are in English !!
Manu : Er... Ok, thank you.
Nerds....

I'm leaving for holidays during a week. It's great. See you when i'm back, from september the 20th (for Radiohead's gig).

I promised it. I'm gonna give it to you. It might seem exaggerated, but it's not. At all.

How my capitalist job turned out being soviet hell

I've been working in the computer's departement of this insurance company for 20 months now. This insurance company is a subset of a large French bank, which is owned by a subset of the Banque de France (sort of). This insurance company makes warranty on money loans ; banks all over France pay this insurance company to be sure the money they lend to small emerging companies will be back in the safe eventually. To put it bluntly, the insurance company makes (a lot of) money over money made over people willing to earn money by people whose main interest is money.
It should be a very capitalist job, even for a computer engineer. But the last half-dozen months have been quite disturbing. In a totalitarian way.
The head of the IT department has been fired, sort of. It has been replaced by random consultants (from a big French computing company) whose methods are rather unexpected.
- All of what has been made before was crap. All of what is going to be made now is going to be made differently, even if it implies loss of efficiency and productivity. (also known as "the 1917 revolution")
- You are not allowed to know what the head thinks and wants. You just do your job. You aren't smart enough to understand the System. By the way, you shouldn't be able to do various tasks anymore. You're a specialized worker from now. (aka "the proletarian revolution")
- If a mere (productive) worker leaves, he/she won't be replaced. His/her job will be atributed to another worker. Moreover, if the Board says you must achieve three tasks in the same time, all of them share the same level of priority. (aka "the quinquennal plan")
- You are not asked to work better ; that would probably imply changes in the dogma. You are asked to work more. (aka "stackanovism")
- It's the Board's job to make things work better, to make people happier. You ought to feel better thanks to the presence of the Board. Why wouldn't you ? (aka "the russian army in Prague, 1968").
- The Board is always right. The System is always right. If you prove things are different from what the dogma says, you're insane and will be eliminated. Anyway, even if you agree with the dogma, you will be eliminated sooner or later. (aka "Moscow's trials")
- Delivering the software to end users is a bourgeois ideal. Only the Board knows what is good for everybody. (aka "stalinism")

Everybody understands why I leave ? (all of Milan Kundera's works and Hannah Arendt's The Totalitarian System were my main sources of inspiration).

Speaking of soviet union, here's the Tetris Taxonomy.
Bye.

I'm so tired, my day at job was stupid and boring, i feel dizzy, i just want to go to sleep. i hope i'm not on the verge of getting a cold. Plus the fridge is empty and i'm hungry. Hopefully, tonight the instant noodles save my life. 400 ml of boiling water, and I will eventually feel 15 minutes of relief, feeding my stomach.

You lucky bastards. Lastminute.com sells Radiohead tickets at Saint-Denis for october the 20th at 210 FF (i got mine at 250 FF).

<french>Vous voulez gagner des millions ? des chèques de 5 FF ? Moi je pratique le bananalotto qui ne coute rien. Pour rajouter du piment (?) à ce jeu con comme la lune, je lancerai une compet' à la fin du mois : à celui qui aura accumulé le + de chèques... Pour l'instant, entraînez-vous.</french>

Now : a) noodles b) bed. Everyone's favourite bachelor evening.
And sorry for the lame corporate links.

Last friday, Nita brought me to this huge asian restaurant in chinatown, Paris. It was a wonderful evening. Try to play a Madison track to a crowd of old chinese people, you'll see them rush on the dancefloor and move their body like it's the last dance of their life. As Titi (Nita's sister) definitely put it, Madison is the ultimate cult dance for asiatics. I love to discover when people are weird. That's so cute. (if anybody knows a web about the madison dance, please tell me 'cause i didn't find one worthwhile, and, who knows ?, if anybody has an explanation, that would be very nice to you to share it with me...).

NP : Guided by Voices -- Do the Collapse. Did I ever mentioned that this record is amazing ? Bob Pollard is a genius, if anybody still had doubts.

Travis, from the Dismemberment Plan, talks about his band's amazing last album Emergency & I to LostAtSea.online. Excerpt :

And I think it was a major educational process for me because I hated it at first. So did the rest of the band. We didn't enjoy the process of it at first because [producer] J Robbins put our noses to the grindstone. Don't just wing it and go in and see what happens when the tapes are rolling. Know your part and know it while you're playing it. It kind of made us feel like less of musicians. Then I got away from the album for a little while and it started to make the rounds to our friends and I realized that we had made a record of songs, as opposed to a record of us playing our instruments. It was an enormously maturing process and, like all maturing processes, it was very humiliating.

I enormously agree to this last sentence. (Main entrance to Lost At Sea here.)

Oh, and hotellounge.com has the Instant Street ring tone for nokias. My mobile just loves that. Tada tada tadada ....