Children are cuter in France

It's the truth. Maybe it's the language, spoken clearly and simply. Maybe it's the kiddie fashion. Maybe it's the guessing games on the tram. In any case, the children are cuter here.

That's all I have to say, really. Maybe later I'll put up some more words. In the meantime, music.

This week's playlist is called

"Songs to Listen to When You've Been Left All Alone"

1 Traveling Salesman's Young Wife Home Alone On Christmas Day In Montpellier, VT - Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Vs. Children
2 I Lost You - The Walkmen - You & Me
3 Things Fall Apart - Built To Spill - There Is No Enemy
4 Genesis 30:3 - The Mountain Goats - The Life Of The World To Come
5 Colorado - Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
6 Plain Material - Memory Tapes - Seek Magic
7 The Darkest Side - The Middle East - Recordings Of The Middle East

link here

I've been slacklining a lot. For one, it's easy; there is a pair of perfect trees directly in front of my room and it takes me approximately fifteen seconds to get to them. It is also quite fun and I mentally connect it with climbing. But unlike climbing, I can do it alone. This is the principle virtue of slacklining: it allows me to feel active while simultaneously relieving me of the pressures of communicating.

So I have made a habit of it, in the same way that I have made a habit of hanging out in my room, reading about climbing on the internet and wishing I had somebody to go with. To my credit, I tried to meet some climbers at the local gym. I did meet some "climbers", but none of them actually climbed outside.

Last week, though, I did something about it. I joined a climbing club and went climbing outside on Saturday. After a cursory check to be sure that I was safe and knew how to tie myself in and belay, I took off on a fairly easy lead while the Frenchies watched from the ground to make sure I knew what I was doing.

When I got down a few minutes later, Sébastien told me, "tu as galopé cette voie!" (you galloped up that route). After one more check to be sure that I could lead belay everybody was pretty satisfied. I spend the rest of the day swapping leads with Sébastien on harder climbs.

The limestone in France is great, and there's an almost infinite amount of it. I can't wait to get out and sample some more French rock, hopefully in the form of some multi pitch routes (grandes voies). I forgot to take pictures, mostly because I was busy climbing. I'll see what I can do about that next time I go out.

In other news, more music! I'm trying something new this week, instead of simply uploading all the songs in a folder I've synthesized them all into a podcast of sorts. It's about about 30 minutes long and 15mb. It's in .m4a format, which should work fine with iTunes, and this way it's more like a radio show. I'm still hosting my files with Mediafire because I haven't found anything easier and I'm not sure I'm up to the technical challenge of setting up a feed podcast (the kind that you can subscribe to). Let me know if the format and host are working okay.

Track List:

"Every Time I See You I Get a Funny Feeling in my Stomach"

1 Falling In - Ha Ha Tonka - Daytrotter Session
2 Home - Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeroes - Daytrotter
3 In The Summertime - The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns
4 Have I Told You? - Dreamdate - Patience
5 She's Fantastic - Sondre Lerche - Phantom Punch
6 Stockholm Syndrome - Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
7 Since You Stole My Heart - Saturday Looks Good To Me - Every Night
8 God Made The Automobile - Iron & Wine - Around The Well
9 Undeclared - The Dodos - Visiter
10 After Hours - The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground

Download here.

Autumn and More Music!

After three years in Bozeman, I'd forgotten how to enjoy Autumn. Don't get me wrong, Bozeman is a magical place, but mostly in those other three seasons. Fall in South West Montana is generally wet, muddy, and gray.

Not so in the South of France.

It's gorgeous outside. The sky is clear, the temperatures hover in the high teens Celsius, and the healthy trees shudder in "Le Mistral".

The French, of course, are well bundled for the moderate conditions, mostly in black. I've been reveling in the temperatures. Autumn is nice, as it turns out.



In other news, I've made another playlist. This one is shorter and based on a theme. And fair warning, it's louder and more abrasive than last week. The Tracklist follows:

"I Love You but it's Easier to Insult You Than Tell You the Truth"

1 The Ideal Weight - GoGoGo Airheart - Love My Life...Hate My Friends
2 Friends In Quotations - That Ghost - Young Fridays
3 Gentle Violence - Black Lips - Let It Bloom
4 Barbed Wire Love - Stiff Little Fingers - Inflammable Material
5 Modern Girl - Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
6 Sometimes I Can't Stand You, But That Doesn't Mean I Don't Want You Around - Icarus Himself - Coffins
7 Emotion Is Cancer and I Got No Cash For Chemo - O Pioneers!!! - ...Like We Care About The Wolves
8 Expelled From Love - The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust
9 Everything Always Goes Wrong - A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head

Download here

Keep checking back - I'll try to put something up every week. At best, you'll get some news and maybe (gasp!) some photos. At the very least, a playlist.

Oh yeah. Music

So the last blog was a little cheesy. It also happened a month and a half ago. Anyways, I'm back.

First order of business: Music

I miss The Anarchy Breakfast. In place of creating a playlist and subsequently putting in on the air, I've created a playlist you can download instead.

For your listening pleasure: Nothing To Hide

It's an even mix of (slightly) older stuff and brand-new music.

Track - Artist - Album - Year
1 Blood On The Motorway - DJ Shadow - The Private Press - 2002
2 Man Next Door - Massive Attack - Mezzanine - 1998
3 Princess Bride - Cloud Cult - Aurora Borealis - 2003
4 Unspoken - Four Tet - Rounds - 2003
5 Angels - Wax Poetic - NuBlu Sessions - 2000
6 Two Dancers - Wild Beasts - Two Dancers - 2009
7 Crystalized - The XX - XX - 2009
8 Bear - The Antlers - Hospice - 2009
9 Thirteen - The Antlers - Hospice - 2009
10 You Have My Eyes Now - The Clues - Clues - 2009
11 Nightingale / December Song - Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer - 2009

I hope you enjoy it.