Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Unconscious mutterings 1

I got onto this fun blog activity from some new commenter, and I can't remember who! I'm sorry because I wish I could link back to you...

The idea, presented on Unconscious Mutterings, is a kind of free association activity...just for fun; no heavy psychoanalysis going on or anything! And I'm going to try to do it without too much self-monitoring or trying to be clever. Here we go with week 303 (!) of this prompt:

  1. Please stop :: referring to Obama as "le président noir" in France. The French are making way too big a deal out of his race.

  2. Move over :: rover

  3. Sweet as :: sugar, honey, sugar just couldn't be bought.

  4. Bet :: 'cha

  5. Mad about :: London

  6. It’s over :: THE ELECTION

  7. Intend to :: finish NaBloPoMo with more quirky activities like this one

  8. Blame :: game

  9. Jefferson :: Airplane

  10. Heartless :: Hopeless
Well, that was decidedly fun. I think I'll have to try it again...

6 comments:

tut-tut said...

I like your associations.

Anonymous said...

Wow, your "please stop" association is really interesting. The media over here has pretty much stopped referring to Barack Obama's race. It's almost at the point of "Meh. Who cares?" Almost.

Betty Carlson said...

Alison -- I could go on and on, and probably will in a future post when I have some time to think things out.

My husband and I couldn't even listen to France Inter anymore at some points -- hardly known for overt racism, ironically. And it's also all my colleagues could talk about; and I think the media here did a pretty good job portraying the election as "the black" versus "the war hero" -- since they've decided that the Democrats and Republicans are pretty much the same -- well, as I said at the beginning....

Randal Graves said...

Perhaps because France is shocked that America would elect a black president? I'm shocked, but then again I usually have zero faith in my countrymen to do anything right.

At least for the last one you didn't put 'Starship.' ;-)

Betty Carlson said...

Randal, uh...why would I? Or are you talking about number 9?

Betty Carlson said...

And on your first point, Randal, I've noticed the French seem -- or seemed, this may be the end of an era -- to relish talking about American racism.

The school history and/or English programs spend an inordinate amount of time on Rosa Parks and the March on Washington. Not that these aren't laudable subjects for any European student to have to memorize facts about, but sometimes I feel the national curriculum should look a little in the country's own jardin.

It's funny, now there's a kind of collective mea culpa going on -- "Mon dieu, it turns out maybe WE'RE the racists!"

As I told Alison, this is all future post material for the day when I decide to get brilliant and actually do some linkage to document my thoughts...