This series of pictures taken in Thailand and Cambodia in the spring of 2003 is dedicated to my friend James of Genius of Insanity. I know he will like the buddha and the monks, and that he’d like to visit those countries one day.
Click on the picture or here to go see the others.
Because pictures of him are always a hit, because the NWGs have asked for him by name, because he loves the attention, and because I can, I’ve found another excuse to post a picture of Greg.
He’s bought that camera we were talking about. Not a reflex, but a cute little Sony wonderkam with a whopping 7.2 megapixels, Zeiss optics that still fits in his pocket.
I TOLD him he didn’t need that many pixels 
This morning when I logged on before getting out of bed, I found my Lil’Bro on MSN, now the proud owner of a 7.2 Megapixel Sony camera and rapidly running out of space on his MemorySticks. After the usual banter, we got down to brass tacks and he indicated that he did, after all, want that Belkin memory card reader for his iPod, like, now.
Problem is, where the heck is it? Which of the five moves which all somehow converged here was it a part of? Which box?
First I ran upstairs to the two (count ‘em, two) unused floors of the main house, having discounted the other house as it only holds what we moved yesterday. Waded thru box after box of stuff and couldn’t find it.
After some thought and discussion with the parents, decided that no, the adaptor must have been in the main move, which now fills most of the cellar.
Basically moved all the shit in that six room cellar two feet over to check all the cardboard boxes. No adaptor. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that the two months in the gym have paid off and after two days of heavy lifting in all the wrong positions, still no back pain.
Sunday morning, Chaton and David showed up as promised around ten-ish and in two hours we cleared out the flat and filled up the rental. I’d cleared out the place except for furniture and a few appliances, and a good thing too, you couldn’t have fit another throw cushion or lava lamp in the van without risking a bent bong or a broken eight-track. Scoobidoo was much relieved.
David’s mad tetris skillz came in handy as we rotated the table to slide it into the sofa, and then added a smaller table the other way round for a four line cancel and max points! As a connoisseur, I was most impressed by his attention to detail in the apparently thankless and tiresome task of fitting in the chairs . A thing of beauty, and a pleasure to unstow at the other end, too.
Dad, on account of age and volunteering for the job, got to take pictures. He did a great job and was not, in any way, annoying and most emphatically did NOT get mooned.
By the time we were done, it was time for lunch, and off we all went to the local Alsacian restaurant for some saurkraut and beer. We had a wonderful conversation about homeless people, butchers, patois & languages, sheep, and complexily recursive family trees with a fractal dimension of at least 2.7. Guess you had to be there
Afterwards, did wonder about the beer, but by then was too late as was already on road to the sunny south… Dad kept me entertained with stuff from the papers about our latest goverment scandal whilst I drove under vanilla skies and occasional snow flurries. A peaceful trip…
…which ended with big, fluffy snow falling in the night, lit only by our highbeams on the last stretch of country road to Albi and Mom’s Apple Pie.
So there! 
In fact, we gave a ‘César d’Honneur’ to Will Smith this year, altho what an Oscar of Honor from a member of the Axis of Weasels stands for, I don’t know. Oh, sorry, forgot Condi was here last week to listen to Chamber Music and tell us America doesn’t hate us. We were so relieved. 
Oh, and appreciative of her Neo-save-the-World outfit in Wiesbaden. Luuuv da boots, Ms Rice, really. The Manolo, he must have approved the boots of the State.
Also won’t touch the usual gripes about how phony the whole thing sounds, etc, because one day, my darling, genius daughter Chloe will go up on that stage to receive one of those heavy gold bricks for best first film, or best director, or perhaps even best film, and I wouldn’t want people to quote from the old archives of the man who dethroned the Instapundit (not even gonna link him) as the biggest blogger in the universe, who would just happen to be her aging father, and embarrass her. I mean, the whole moment should be about her, not me, you know?
Oh, yes, I want to thank my wonderful dad, so funny, so kind, so inspiring and trusting and supportive and… oh, no, errr… wrong paper, this one’s for Chloe. No, shopping list for GISBE… ah! there it is.
I wanted to point out how PROUD I am, me personally as a frenchman almost born in Algeria, and with a profound admiration for the islamic culture and faith thru the ages, a bottomless sorrow that this proud, deep, generous, open faith and its people have fallen on such hard times, AND a lasting sense of shame for my country’s treatment of her sons and daughters of arabic descent, THAT a young frenchman of North African origins, Abdellatif Kechiche, has won Césars for best script, best director and best film with his film “l’esquive” set in one of our “troubled neighborhoods”. Oh, and they threw in best new female actress in there somewhere.
Congrats, Abdel, and shukran for being so modest and noble up there at the stand. I love your Saladin quote :
“Pleasure or pain until death. When pleasure is here, enjoy.”
