I try to use the latter sparingly. But I left the black umbrella by the door a few weeks ago, where it was sucked up into the vacuum known as “my roommates are always moving stuff around that I am trying to use.” Bless them.

“Where is my umbrella?” I grumbled aloud, as I got ready to leave for work . And then, because nobody else was home, I said it louder and in a silly French accent. Like so:

That’s me giggling in the background of the video, which was captured during a particularly surreal night in France. The last night in Les Sables, Bobby and I hung out at the summer home of some French university students that we met on the ramblais. We discussed our cultural variances over Screwdrivers…

…including the first phrases you learn in a foreign language. For us: “Je m’apple Kellen. Où est la bibliothèque?”

For them? Where is Brian? In the kitchen. It is raining today. Where is my umbrella?

All French students of English, they told us, will recognize these phrases immediately. They are the Gallic “See spot run.”

Didn’t find the black umbrella, but the memory made me a little more inclined to carry my silly umbrella to work. Or, as is fitting to call such a gaudy accessory, my “parapluie.”

Here’s Yann Tiersen’s covering Georges Brassens:

“It was raining hard on the main road
She was walking along without an umbrella
I had one, doubtless stolen
That very morning from a friend
Running then to her rescue
I offer her a bit of shelter.
Drying the water from her little face
In a very sweet way, she tells me « Yes »

A little corner of an umbrella
For a bit of heaven”

-Le Paraluie by Yann Tiersen

“Il pleuvait fort sur la grand-route
Ell’ cheminait sans parapluie
J’en avais un, volé, sans doute
Le matin même à un ami
Courant alors à sa rescousse
Je lui propose un peu d’abri
En séchant l’eau de sa frimousse
D’un air très doux, ell’ m’a dit ” oui “

Un p’tit coin d’parapluie
Contre un coin d’paradis.”

“I hold hands with the fire in the ocean
whose bones are cold, never frozen
the day is ending, I’m feeling edgy
the dark is running, soon will be coming”

-”Fire in the Ocean” by The Organ

Also, if the whole thing doesn’t make you think of the first episode of Captain Planet, well, you obviously didn’t grow up watching television before church on Sunday mornings in the 1990s…

“Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines…”

-Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

If you were a devotee of old Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes as a kid, surely you’ll recognize the post title as the formula for Hush-a-Boom…darling.

Can’t find a video clip of it anywhere, but I know the Banana Formula episode survives on a VHS tape somewhere at my parents’ house.

With the renewal of the START treaty and my burgeoning crush on President Dmitry Medvedev, (he has Clark Kent hair!) I’m even more prone than usual to breaking out my spot-on Boris and Natasha accent. And that’s normally a pretty strong compulsion.

But on to practical advice. After wading through tons of search results for the U2 album, I finally found some practical tips on how to dismantle the bomb, should it come down to that. Before you print these off and stick ‘em in your glove compartment,  be warned the difficulty level is “challenging.”

Got a bit snarled up in traffic from the nuclear summit this morning as so I cranked up the Moz. Obvious, to be sure, but still marvelous (especially in person.) I’ll probably pop in Dr. Strangelove tonight if I can stay awake long enough. It’s so nice to give Tuesday a theme!

“Ask me, ask me, ask me.
Because if it’s not love, then it’s the bomb
That will bring us together”

-Ask by The Smiths

Swatch of my favorite sundress...

Just half a thought before I jump in the car to spend an afternoon and an evening with three of my most favorite people in the big blue world.

I’ve been so caught up in shuffling from one office to another and keeping my head down that I almost forgot to notice it was spring. Technically, I’ve only missed about 10 hours of it (March 20, after all, starts us off.) But it’s covertly been spring all week, I think.

Which means it’s time for sundresses, my favorite 85 percent of my wardrobe. We were chatting about that very delight at happy hour a few weeks ago, humming that Ben Kweller song, when a rando-guy who was sharing our picnic table and hovering at the edge of our conversation sighed deeply and announced:

“If I ever meet my soulmate, it will at the sundress party.”

I don’t really know what it means, but I love it.

The weather doesn’t really determine my wardrobe, since I spend all day in pleasantly climatized office spaces. But it’s the principle of the thing. And my favorite ones are yellow. And I always think of this song.

“It’s too easy humming songs
To a girl in yellow dress
It’s been a long time since the party
And the room is in a mess.”
-The Monkees

My mom found this during a spring cleaning/archiving blitz and e-mailed it to me over the weekend. It’s not as precocious a writing sample as my  “Declaration of Inde-bedness” and it didn’t help me get into Northwestern like the “Why I Want to be an Astronaut” essay.

But it does tell us two very important things. 1.) My poor spelling is in no way a recent affliction. 2.) I know what I’m worth and I won’t take a penny less.

I don’t recall writing this, but I’m pretty sure the tooth fairy did leave me a ‘dolor’ per ‘molor’ instead of the usual 50 cent piece.

My down-time has instead been filled with chores like… cutting my own hair, fixing a desk chair with duct tape, finding my lost car keys, finding my lost car, sitting on conference calls with Romanians and preparing for the arrival of our new roommate, The Tree Surgeon.

I’ve got several posts in my trusty “drafts” folder, one of which requires me to edit some audio, so for now you’ll have to make due with a poorly-lit photo-tour of my newly sorted grotto basement hobbit hole.

Pictured: Our Lord and Savior David Bowie and Saint Napoléon Bonaparte.

Not pictured: Archangels Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.

]]> http://www.hankincents.com/2010/03/03/born-to-blog-badly/feed/ 4 http://www.hankincents.com/2010/03/01/the-complications-you-could-do-without/ http://www.hankincents.com/2010/03/01/the-complications-you-could-do-without/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:10:07 +0000 Hank http://www.hankincents.com/?p=2051 It’s important to recognize holidays named for obscure Polish war heroes, celebrated only in the places you wish you were on those holidays.

Today I’m thinking fondly of Casimir Pulaski Day and the state of Illinois as I do my Monday in a city that’s lately been a little left of hospitable.

I was in Chicago on the first of last March, trudging through the bitter cold to Evanston and telling everyone with a mixture of awe and distress that my fish, Chocolate Milk, had perished during the night…

“Just like the Sufjan Stevens song, except a fish instead of a girlfriend with cancer!”

Not really an apt comparison.  Chocolate Milk wasn’t even particularly impressive, but he was my “crisis fish,” an impromptu purchase during the horrible fall of 2008. Lehman Brothers was collapsing on the news and I was unraveling at at work, so I took a half a day for my mental health.

A few hours later, I was back home trying to explain to my roommate why I thought a blue beta in a small plastic Tupperware was the solution to my problems.

So here’s to the dear things we’ve lost or had taken, be they cars or girlfriends with cancer or simply our peace of mind. May we each be lucky enough to find good friends–or fish– along the way to cover our losses a bit.

(The song’s for Mary for remembering Chocolate Milk and James because he needs it to do battle with the Pink Robots…)

“In the morning in the winter shade
On the first of March on the holiday
I thought I saw you breathing…

Oh the glory when he took our place
But he took my shoulders and he shook my face
And he takes and he takes and he takes.”

(Friday!)