Tiens, l’avalanche de spams coïnciderait bien avec le fait que quelqu’un a donné mon adresse à cdiscount.com pour me signaler une offre.

Pas de liens aujourd’hui. Cf. le photolog.

Un ennemi s’est amusé à mettre mon adresse e-mail sur toutes les listes de spam de la planète ? Je suis submergé par le spam, d’un seul coup !?

C’est vrai qu’on mange moins sans télé.

A l’époque où je lisais Car & Driver pour me familiariser avec l’anglais, le mot miscellaneous me fascinait.

Want some news?

Thanks to M. for iSketch #, and a big thanks to John / Izo for There #.

In other news, still TV-less, and I’ll soon be out of videotapes for recording my shows.

Musically, I like Raphaël’s new song. It would just be nice to find the lyrics somewhere so that I could, uh, know what it’s about.

The advantage of being French is that spam is easily recognizable by the English titles. It must be so much harder for the English-speaking, having to open each message in case that person jumping at them saying Hi! How are you? would be a forgotten acquaintance.

After I happened on a photography critics site while I was putting my bookmarks in order, I went browsing my galleries in search of something I’d be proud enough to submit there, and… I have to admit it: I make pretty damn nice portraits!

I must really get back to it. I haven’t made pictures since May. But walking around Paris looking for a place to photograph does get boring; and recruiting models, then meeting them, and photographing them, is… exhausting. Entire days spent on the web, being shot down because I can’t afford to pay models. (Are they dreaming or what?) I should try recruiting straight men and women for a change: it would certainly be simpler. But I don’t know how to do that, and even less where to find them.

I once thought of printing some kind of a business card, a little folded leaflet presenting a couple of my pictures, printed in color, which I could give out when I encountered an interesting face in the subway (there was that one young woman, with a resemblance to Pascale Bussières, who was sitting in front of me that time, and I was dying to ask her if she’d like her picture taken), but… can you imagine me going up to someone to offer a photo session? Heh. I can’t.

Since the last few weeks, every time I sneeze, LeChat meows. I wonder whether she’s expressing her resent because I woke her up (I tend to be a noisy sneezer — well, I’m not sure there are some noisier than others, but if there are then I’m definitely among them), or answering me. As communicative as she is, I tend to believe more in the former. It’s too bad, I liked the idea she’d be answering Gesundheit in her own way.

There it is. It had to happen. Well, no, it didn’t have to, I didn’t want it to, I just knew it was about to happen. My big TV set is dead. Since last week, I couldn’t turn it on from the remote anymore, so I knew there was something wrong going on, I knew it was going to die on me, and I’d end up stuck without TV, in the middle of an Alias season, and right when the first Lord of the Rings movie is about to be on Canal+. Do I really have to explain how serious all of that is for me?

Well, it’s simple. It’s an emergency, it’s vital, I need a TV capture card (no need for a tuner, I use the VCR’s) and a little video card that could be recognized as a second card in Windows. If I remember correctly, the 14 inches screen that’s laying around somewhere in a corner of my room should still work fine, so it would make a fine replacement TV. Ok, two little video cards, or one that has video in and out, that shouldn’t be too expensive. Does anyone here know of a store where I could get that for ten euros?

I don’t know if removing comments is contributing to my posting more or if it’s just a coincidence. I think it does play a part, because I’m less worried about how each article will be perceived, how each reader and potential commenter will react, and I can almost force myself to validate a post that I would otherwise have stored in a cold room until I found time to reformulate it (which I never do). Regardless, it feels weird writing so much in one day.

Well, not that it’s going to move my life forward, though.

Lack of animal contact. Human contact would even be better, but I could be content with a big labrador sleeping with its head on my knees. Too bad that the human body is wired in such a way that putting your hand on your own stomach doesn’t feel the same as on another living being. Just like tickling, it doesn’t work on yourself, except that I prefer touch over tickle. Just that: putting my hand on something warm and alive. The cat’s heat cycle is over, so I can’t abuse it anymore and spend ten minutes stroking its belly anymore, that’s over, and it only lasts for a few days every six months. And as for contact with human beings… sure, I’ve had lots of contact this summer, but none of it was quiet, relaxed, sitting or laying in a corner with each one’s hands lying on the other’s skin.

Still the same problem. Chicken and egg. Love and work earning a living.

Tonight is Nuit Blanche in Paris: special events throughout the night all across town. I don’t know why, but I was convinced that suburbs trains were operating all night long tonight. Don’t know what I’m confused with; it’s not like there’s a more appropriate opportunity to run trains all night.

Anyway, I didn’t want to go there at all. Yes, it’s true, the pictures they showed on the TV news looked nice. But I miss lots of nice things in my life, and I got used to that a long time ago. And particularly crowded events. I did the Fête de la Musique once, and swore to myself I would never go again; ditto for the July 14 fireworks; and even though Paris-Plage lasted a month or two, and I was often a hundred meters away, I didn’t go and see. Of course, there’s the Gay Pride, but it’s different: it’s political. Or maybe it’s because I secretly and absurdly fantasize meeting my soulmate there (did I mention that someone hit on me there, this year?). Regardless, there are reasons to go. The Nuit Blanche ? There’ll be reruns on TV.

Besides, suburbs trains won’t even be running all night.

Yes, comments are gone again, for better or for worse. I realized that I’ve been censoring myself too much for a while. I’m already not quite motivated to write in the first place, so when I throw away three articles in a row after I have written them, it’s getting quite annoying. Now, what do comments have to do with anything? I’m not sure, at all, but it’s possible that the prospect of having to face some comments (and I’m not even talking about my trolls, as they don’t really affect me) would contribute my self-censorship. So it’s experimental, and if it doesn’t help at all then maybe comments will come back. But I wouldn’t consider that quite likely.

Starting again from scratch now for a brand new year of garooism (oh, right, birthday must be soon now). Trying to.

P.S. Oh, and I’m also going to try translating more posts into English. I still won’t do those about French TV, because it’s still unlikely to be of any relevance to you, but I’ll try and translate my posts about movies and TV series. After all, they won’t be that less interesting for you than for French readers.