In the Stars

It's been decades since I read my horoscope. What I won't do for Sunday Scribblings!

Today happens to be my birthday, and the first horoscope I googled gave me this sound advice:

Don’t be too surprised if you start to feel you need some space. The Cancer/Capricorn opposition could put you in quite an aloof or detached mood today. Schedule yourself some time, and if possible postpone any decisions or discussions relating to romantic matters!

"You need some space...schedule yourself some time..."

I think this is a good motto for my coming year.

Check up in one year on how well I followed the suggestions: same time, same blog.

This post was inspired by the Sunday Scribblings writing prompt for this weekend: "What's your sign?

Just What I Needed - 100 More Blogs!

If you're reading a blog as unfocused and diverse as And So Forth, I'm sure all you need is a hundred more blogs to feed into your aggregator.

But here they are anyway.

What do you think of this list?

My conclusions:

1.) Having read few or any of these "Top 100" blogs, I am totally out of this loop.

2.) Any list that would rank Slashfood as a top food blog needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

3.) One cool entry: The Barenaked Ladies' contribution to the blogosphere, BnLBlog.com.

(Cartoon courtesy of Dave Walker)

I have a secret...

I have a secret....

The kind only very important politicians are in on.

What was it again?

Merde, j'ai oublié!

C'était dans mon BlackBerry.

Click here for other not-so-secret Sunday Scribblings.

Shelter from the Storm

Following my flurry of communication with ex-students on my last post, I did something I swore I never would do: I created a MySpace page. It is too lame to link to for the moment, but at least I'm friends with my daughters and one of my nieces now.

Seriously, I thought this move might help me keep in touch with the younger generation, which is important for a teacher. And it has already allowed me to waste my time on a funny musical activity that my niece had posted on MySpace. Try it out, it's a great way to be unproductive at your computer for an hour or two.

Directions:

1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle.

2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.

3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.

Now my niece admitted that she didn't totally follow rule 3, which means her answers are all clever and she ends up sounding like the arbiter of musical taste that she probably is at the ripe age of 20. (Well, weren't you?)

I, on the other hand, followed the rules and even accessed my WHOLE music library, including some of my daughters' songs that they have probably disowned by now. The only change I made was to skip artists who had come up more than twice -- my "shuffle" function doesn't seem that random sometimes.

So here are my musical answers to twenty questions:

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
“I Can Love You Like That” -- Boyz II Men

2. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?
“Just Go Ahead Now” -- Spin Doctors

3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
"Hey Man" -- Jim Murple Memorial

4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
"I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (with Flowers in My Hair)" -- Sandi Thom (Pourquoi pas?)

5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
"Gold Dust Woman” -- Fleetwood Mac

6. WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
"Sweet Hitchhiker” -- Creedence Clearwater Revival

7. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
"Johnny B. Goode"-- Chuck Barry

8. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
"La Fin du Monde"- Cali (That may have been the case a few times -- I hope it's not now!)

9. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
"Thunder Road"—Bruce Springsteen

10. WHAT IS 2 + 2?
"So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)"- R.E.M.

11. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
"South Side"-- Moby (Interesting, she has lived in two houses on the South side of our town.)

12. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
"Bad Day” – R.E.M.

13. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
"Everloving"—Moby

14. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WHEN YOU GROW UP?
"Candle in the Wind"- Elton John

15. WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
"My Only Love"- Roxy Music (I'm not planning another one, but this is a pretty good choice.)

16. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
"A Simple Twist of Fate” – Bob Dylan (Ha! That's even better.)

17. WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
"Hand in Hand” – Elvis Costello

18. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
"Kid"- The Pretenders (Pretty funny for a teacher)

19. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
"Sing It Again"- Beck

20. WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
"Shelter from the Storm” – Bob Dylan

If you do this activity, post the link in comments to this post. I always like getting a glimpse inside people's music libraries.

Eccentricity Serendipity

As a French teacher in the USA, I was fortunate to have a number of bright and creative students. One of the most memorable was a young man who was crazy about all things French, and who traveled to France with me on a small group trip I led.

I suppose for a high school student in the late eighties, he was considered a bit eccentric. I considered him brilliant, and always wondered what his future would hold.

Years went by, and unfortunately I never stayed in touch with him, nor did I ever really find out where life had led him.

Then this very morning, I received a rather mysterious comment on And So Forth:

Salut. C'est un petit monde, mon professeur.-Pierre-Marie

Pierre-Marie? I can barely remember many of my former students' real names, let alone the French first names that they chose for class. And why did any of my students have silly names like "Pierre-Marie"? (I guess that's beside the point.)

Frantic searching through pseudonym-laden blogs and websites ensued.

Finally I found out who Pierre-Marie was. He's living in the Czech Republic and appears to be an excellent modern artist. Why am I not surprised?

Salut, Siouxfire.

Your message came just in time to inspire me for today's Sunday Scribblings.

Click here for more Sunday Scribblings inspired by the prompt "eccentricity."

My Campaign Space

Hello fellow lovers of Internet interaction!

I thought some of you might enjoy this article by Joel Stein about MySpace and the US presidential race.

Recent Spicefest

Rodez, the mid-sized French town where I do my food shopping, used to have two épiceries fines, or gourmet food shops. Unfortunately both have shut down, and I miss being able to find any spice, oil, salt or vinegar that I want. Internet shopping is a solution, of course, but it's somehow not the same as seeing and smelling spices.

So I was in heaven when I went on a weekend trip to Tours and was able to stock up on spices and seasoned salts in this colorful shop located in Les Halles, the city's covered market.

Immediately after coming home, my everyday cooking started to take a more international twist. Asian-style stirfry on Saturday; an Italian recipe for baked fish from The Silver Spoon cookbook on Sunday. A new stock of spices definitely inspired me to get away from French classics, which are generally not spicy, and perk things up in the kitchen.

(This post was based on the Sunday Scribblings writing prompt for the week -- "spicy" -- and adapted from a previous post on my cooking blog, Cuisine Quotidienne.

My time and inspiration was lacking a bit this weekend, so take a look at some spicier posts.)

Intriguing: Les Chansons d'Amour

My daughters and I went to the movies Sunday evening, thinking we were going to see an upbeat take on love songs. My eldest daughter had -- apparently -- read the reviews, and Les Chansons d'Amour (Love Songs) sounded like a fun flick.

Not exactly fun, it turns out, but fascinating. The French don't make many musicals, and this one is a far cry from Les parapluies de Cherbourg. It is the first musical I know of to deal with death, mourning, and an authentic ménage à trois, all the while putting a smile on your face and a song in your heart.

I had to laugh at IMDB's "plot keywords" for the film: Lesbian / Homosexual/ Cigarette Smoking / Paris France/ Gay... and more! Only in the more do we find what I felt the film was about: death, love, and songs.

I'd say it's French cinema at its best: smoky, it's true -- yet strange and sensual.

City Rat or Country Rat?

When I first looked at this week's Sunday Scribblings prompt, I was mainly intrigued to see the terms "the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse."

I thought it was all about less attractive rodents. Personally, I am familiar with the French concept of city rats and country rats, probably stemming from Jean de la Fontaine's fable "Le Rat de ville et le Rat des champs." (If you don't read French, you can check out the English translation at the bottom of the link.)

As you can see in the fable, the City Rat invites the Country Rat to a wonderful banquet which is unfortnately interrupted by some strange knocking that puts the City Rat in a tizzy.

The Country Rat concludes that the feast was nice enough, but he prefers to eat at home where his dining pleasure is not "so mix'd with fear and trembling."

My family and I are now country rats, yet in our lovely, quiet corner of La France Profonde we have been victims of one car theft, a mysterious night stalker, and threats of physical violence from a village-dweller.

Despite these events, our lives are hardly full of "fear and trembling." Yet somehow I always feel safer in cities. I suppose when it comes to country living, I tend to agree with Woody Allen in Annie Hall:

"You've got crickets. lt's quiet. There's no place to walk after dinner.
There's the screens with the dead moths behind them.
You got the Manson family, possibly. You got Dick and Perry."

But don't get me wrong. We do have some very nice neighbors.

Click here to read more Sunday Scribblings posts from city rodents and country rodents all over the world.