I'm alive!

Hi everyone.

I am alive and doing fine. I went to Madrid a few weeks ago. I'm going to London tomorrow.

That's the brief update. The longer update includes the fact that I also have had no Internet access at home for the past several weeks, which explains my blog absence. Hopefully it will be fixed in the next week, but if that proves impossible then I will find another way to blog. Anything for you, my dear friends.

Here in France, we are in the midst of another grève de transportation (a.k.a. strike). I saw a bus driving around yesterday completely empty with a large sign that said "NO PASSENGERS", as if to taunt the masses of people on the sidewalk walking to work. Very funny, transportation-worker-who-was-bored-on-his-day-off. Thank goodness for the English, because they put their foot down at all this French nonsense and the traffic to and from London is unaffected. I've already had one trip delayed due to strikes, and I wasn't looking forward to the prospect of another long wait at the train station. There must some sort of civil disobedience powder in the water, though -- this is the second major transportation strike, the opera went on strike briefly a few weeks ago (causing me to have to change my ticket), and students are striking as well. Luckily they haven't decided to strike at my university yet, but who knows. There's also talk about power and gas strikes, but thank goodness they're limited to only a few hours at a time. Basically the whole world is striking, and I don't expect it to end anytime soon -- Sarkozy's reputation as president rests on his, pardon my expression, brass balls, and if he backs down now he'll look like a pansy. So we'll see how this standoff will end.

I'm going to peace out now to finish my French Revolution essay. If you have any information on politicized representations of the French Revolution in film, you know who to call.

MK