Upper West Side

I'm house-sitting and cat-sitting at the same time. That's why I'm in the UPS. They have rats here too. Just as big as in Brooklyn. The other night, one of them ran between my feet as I was walking. Almost tripped on the little fucker.

It's quiet here otherwise. No hispanic or rap music at full blast.

I have been assigned also to read those galleys. Those in the "All Consuming" list below. Deadline is Oct. 10 and that's a lot of pages to read. That's my Current Job No.4.

It's not like I have time to get bored.

Midtown

I'm catsitting. This can be a dangerous activity, but so far, everything is fine. It's in the Upper West Side, so it's kind of a different neighborhood I'm living in right now. The other day, I had to walk crosstown from my job in the Upper East Side. I walked on 58, I think. One of the most expensive area in New York. It was a Friday night. At a cross street, a tall Asian girl with high heels, a soccer short and a see-thru top hails a cab, a white dude at her arm. The streets are dirty and there's an Asian club on the other side of the street. Drunk guys. Drunk girls. Talking outside of the club. Somebody emptied a trash on the sidewalk. Just before crossing the avenue, a trash truck almost ran over me. The black guy and I exchange a few obscenities. Then he steps on the gas, the head still out of the window, on his way to try and run over somewhere else. I'm tired. I'm pissed. There's no buses because around here everybody use the cabs I suppose. That's why I have to walk from 3rd avenue to Columbus Circle. My feet hurt. Tomorrow morning, I have to get up early to go to my other job.

Fucking assholes with fat belly and gold watches play tough. Talk loud. Take all of the sidewalk. In my neighborhood, they would stay close to the wall, look at their feet and avoid eye contact. But here it's ok, they are only blocks away from the Trump Tower. So they feel safe. Fuckers. I bump into a fat guy. He and his friends are having all of the sidewalk to themselves. I choose the biggest of them, try to squeeze in between him and a girl. He doesn't move at all so we bump and I give a little shoulder, just for the road.

I'm tired. I'm pissed. I want to smack someone's head against a wall. All those people disgust me. My bag is heavy on my shoulder. SICK OF IT ALL is blaring in the CD player. Around here, everybody has iPod. I want a fucking iPod too.

I get home. Take off my shoes. My feet hurt from walking all day. Take a shower. Sleep a few hours. Tomorrow is Saturday, I have to work.

fuck this shit

I can't think of a part in my body that is not aching. I can't remember when was the last time I had a day off. Cash should start flowing in soon. It's funny the way every time my situation is about to start looking better, there's some more shit coming in. Like one of my bosses -- probably the most honest and reliable I've ever met in NYC -- tells me he doesn't know how to keep me working for him due to my status. On the one hand, he can't find an American who'd do that job for $10/hour. On the other hand, he can't legally keep me. We both need each other but our relationship is impossible. It's like Romeo & fucking Juliet except that one of us has a moustache.

If anybody wants to get double citizenship (French/American), email me. I'm serious. I'm tired of this shit. I just want to work and be left alone, damn it. You must be a girl, over 21, with a clean record. Oh, and you can't already be married, duh.

Oh, and you so totally cannot work for the Law.

I wish it was that fucking easy...

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 8 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

$ $ $

I paid for the Internet. My roommate couldn't.

$105 to install a new connection. Now we are on cable. Everything is on cable at home now. Except maybe the microwave. I'm not even sure.

The Internet is not the problem.

The problem is that my old CRT monitor is dying. It started just two days after our connection came back. Everything that should be white is grayish. Anything that is not white goes from black to pitch black.

I can tweak the controls, of course. And then everything is drown in a dazzling white.

Which sucks because I had this project of posting tons of pictures. On my computer these days, all pictures are black.

For some reason, there's something going on with the scanner too. I'm not sure what yet. It could be anything from the USB cable to something inside the computer. Or inside the scanner.

Which clearly means that I need a new computer. I like to fix things, but there's a limit. Also, I'm pretty confident I'd love not to have the MP3 player pause every time I open or close a stupid browser. So I check for computers on the web at school. First, you think any computer will do. Which is true. Any computer will be better than the one I have now. The year is 2005 and I still haven't broken the wall of 1 GHz CPU speed. But then you start to customize it, add more memory and this and that. And the next thing you know, the desktop you wanna buy flirts with a $1,000. No good.

Really, that's not even close to reasonable.

Also I really need a laptop. I go working on a translation every day in Bryant Park, and working on paper is not fun anymore.

So I need a desktop at home. But also a laptop. Because I love to open computers and change stuffs inside, and you can't really do that with a laptop.

So I need money.

So I'm working 3 jobs. And I go to school too. The jobs, they don't pay well of course. That's why I need all three of them. Which is a huge lost of time. And a pain in the ass.

One of them, I won't even tell my family about it. Your family sent you to College, they were with you when you turned down good job offers in France because you wanted to go to NYC, then the next thing you know, you're a graduate doing shitty jobs for a shitty pay. And still, you don't want to go back home. That's the kind of things that make mothers all over the world say stuffs like: "I gave you life, I can take it back."

The next thing you know, you're almost 30.

Also, I want to move out. I'd love to stay in Brooklyn. I don't mind staying in Bed-Stuy. But I need to find a clean place with white walls and wooden floor. Or something like that. No carpet, no dog-roommate. More room. More furniture. Less roommates, also.

It's as close to settle down as I can get.

So I need money. Basically. You know?

New Orleans

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.

Anarchy in New Orleans

So, I guess I'll never see New Orleans. Not the New Orleans I wanted to see, that is.

All the pain and suffering and destruction -- maybe not all, but a lot of it -- the result of politicians' wrong bet. The same dumbasses you can find in Venice, Italy, for instance. Betting against the odds. Betting that they won't be the ones in charge the day the shit hit the fan. And really, that's all that matters to them, all that mattered and all that will ever matter. They are all the same everywhere. In France, in Italy, in Russia, in the U.S. All those career-oriented parasites who only believe in science when it means new interesting ways of killing and in common sense when it comes to their public image.

So yeah, of course, it's not their fault if there's a hurricane. But when things goes that bad, they cannot withdraw their responsibility, because that's precisely what there job is all about. Minimizing the casualties of a disaster, and maintaining order.