I have realized yet again that I need to actually speak French more often.  I understand it quite well indeed, but I have this pernicious habit of answering in English.  Since I don't really want to take a language class again during my postsecondary education, I need to acquit myself well on the proficiency test.  It's not that I mind having to learn another language, it's just that I'd rather spend grad school doing other things; plus, I already know another language and am proficient enough in it that I could improve it if dropped into a French-speaking place in a short amount of time indeed.  So...it is time to cease my slacking and up my foreign language quotient.  This should be fun, although I'm bastard enough to really enjoy it when I can make fun of other people around me without their knowledge, which presupposes someone else will have any idea what I'm talking about.  Since everyone here speaks Spanish, I despair.

Between that whole thing and this music I'm listening to-- Rabih Abou-Khalil's "Grateful Parting" from Yara-- I kind of keep thinking of vampires.  Damn you, Anne Rice the kitsch-mistress, damn you!  Well, damn Tilda Swinton too, for her disconcerting first gender switch in Orlando.  That's what the music is making me think of, as well as Paul Cobb and his excellent paper..  I think I was born in the wrong time, although that does make me wonder if I'd have loved it the way I do without the perspective several hundred intervening years has so graciously provided.  On that note, this is excellent music for reading and editing if one has a book-lined office and must do these things in the middle of the summer.  The director in my head has quite the little short film going; never a dull moment in this brain, rest assured.