Listening to: "Nobody Needs to Know" from the musical The Last Five Years
Today was an incredibly lazy day. The problem is, lazy days can really screw everything up.
Because I still have to do my laundry, and that means going down to the laundromat to dry my clothes (if I want my jeans to not be wet). But the laundromat isn't 24 hours--something I had to learn the hard way two weeks ago...
But in my panic, I did manage to finish A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, decide I was going to report on Rodin's The Gates of Hell for my Art History report, buy two dinners since I am starving, read scholarly Shakespeare articles, and now I'm watching a wonderful rendition of The Merchant of Venice scenes. And since it's the Playing Shakespeare series, I had the privilege of watching Patrick Stewart don a yarmulke and shout about losing thousands of ducats.
But given that none of this has to do with being in Paris, I'll just share some more observations.
Metro Madness
This could be a blog all on its own. The Metro is a weird place. I mean, this goes for most places, but here are some of the things I've also noticed while riding:
1. A woman putting on makeup--holding up a compact case in one hand and the blush brush in the other. That was impressive.
2. Another woman knitting. Given that there have been armed police patrolling everywhere, I'm wondering how she got on with those sharp needles.
3. There are subway musicians everywhere, yes, but Paris takes it a step further: they get on the train car with you. So I've seen the puppeteer--as I mentioned before--as well as a tuba player and an accordion player. (Not at the same time, though). I like the variety of musicians on the Paris Metro. I hear a lot of violin and cello, especially when I get off near on the Louvre stops.
Chinois
I have been straight-up accused of being paranoid, and I fully acknowledge that this is usually the case, but this is a little weird.
My spoken/hearing French is not great, but I am able to pick up certain words. One of the words I hear most in overheard conversations is "chinois"--French for "Chinese." Now, the first few times, I assumed these people were discussing what they should eat for dinner. (There are certainly enough Chinese restaurants for it to be plausible no matter where I've been in Paris.) But I hear it a lot--especially at non-eating times (surprisingly, there are times for that in France). It makes me a bit suspicious, and being unable to not be Chinese, I can't prove that they are in fact talking about me. I don't think it's far out of the realm of possibility, though, given the number of ni hao's I've gotten.
Of course, Chinese New Year is approaching, but I don't think Parisians get that excited about it. Hm. Maybe I should do more research. If anything, though, I should be comforted to realize that Americans are not the only ones unaware of their "racism." (I say this in quotations because we all do it to some degree; some people are just more obnoxious about it than others because they've never understood otherwise.)
KFC
Given that many French people don't know what Connecticut is--and I don't entirely blame them--I wonder if KFC is ever defined as "Kentucky Fried Chicken" here. Do the French know what Kentucky is? I mean, if I didn't have to know the states, I might just think that Kentucky is a small country along the likes of Luxembourg.
District of Columbia
I got a taste of trying to explain the District of Columbia a few years ago when I was talking with my dear friend Alyssa. As I described life in DC, she asked me a question I myself had been too embarrassed to ask for years: What is Washington, DC, anyway?
Well, I love how CGP Grey describes my beloved DC in this video: "a stateless limbo land." Honestly, that's the short answer. But I'm going to give you the long answer because my bespectacled alter ego in suspenders has taken over at this point:
Washington, DC was not an obvious candidate for the capital of the fledgling United States of America. Most people assumed that the capital would be in New York City or Philadelphia--and that makes a great deal of sense. But as we Americans realize today, the obvious and easiest answer is never the answer Congress will go with. :)
So Washington, DC is the result of a compromise: the South wanted to make sure that the North did not have too much power, and the location of the capital would have tipped the scale in the North's favor enormously. Remember, even in the late 1700's, the tensions that would lead to the Civil War were in full force. So the South got its own major city--except DC technically isn't in the South. Now, I'm not an idiot: Washington, DC is in the lower half of the country, but what I mean by "South" is the coalition of states that we generally associate with that phrase. Because Washington, DC is not in any state.
The name will tell you undoubtedly: the District of Columbia is just that--a district. The Founding Fathers feared that giving a state the privilege of the nation's capital would be too much power compared to any other states. So even though DC was placed lower on the map, it wasn't part of any state. And this seems like a sensible idea, given how tied people can be to their states.
The problem is that as a non-state, DC can't have any state representatives. I mean, we do have a representative, but she can't vote. Which is kind of like being the Queen of England nowadays: neutered. In fact, as a non-state, DC didn't have any part in the Electoral College, which means no one who called DC home could actually vote for the president. So you could live blocks away from the White House yet not decide who would be its next occupant.
Of course, DC was not expected to be a metropolis. But now, it is bigger in population than Vermont or Wyoming, which makes its neutered condition a bit awkward.
Knowing this, do those license plates inscribed "TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION" make more sense?
Getting back to the French perspective. Given that most Americans are not aware of DC's complex history, French people certainly aren't, and why should they be? Anyway, explaining this whole thing is very hard--akin to having to explain that a "library" is actually a "bibliothèque" and not, in fact, the seemingly obvious "librairie" (which actually means "bookstore"). It's honestly not worth it; nobody is really gaining anything from the knowledge of DC. I just subjected you guys to it because I find extremely boring information fascinating. :)
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