So my mom has taken up running. Here are some pictures & stats from her first 5K run :-)

not realated but catchy

Don’t forget about Schillerist.

Thanx to Netflix, this last weekend I watched the black & white French film about the Algerian resistance called “The Battle of Algiers.”

Prior to viewing it, I was told that many of the American military’s top brass had watched the movie too. The film clearly shows the methods and processes terrorists (or in their case, “freedom fighters”) employ to drive out their colonial oppressors- daylight murders of police officers in crowded places, synchronized bomb explosions, and, my favorite, general strikes. It has direct relevance to what is happening in Iraq right now.

Why am I noting this in my blog? Earlier this evening, when I was watching Mhz (the best station on TV), I discovered that yesterday was the 51st anniversary of the war for Algerian independence from France. The war began on November 1st, 1954 and ended on July 5th, 1962…. So by chance, I rented that film to coincide with their celebration, not intentional, but quite fitting I must say. For Halloween I dressed up as in my Colonist outfit with a small sign that said, “18th Century Insurgent.” Maybe next year I’ll dress up as an Algerian and have a sign that says, “20th Century Insurgent.”

Interestingly enough, which wasn’t correlated on television tonight is the link between the recent Parisian riots in Clichy-sous-Bois and the fact that many of the people rioting are Algerian immigrants. What is also interesting is last week on MySpace I decided to use the quote (“Jusqu’ici tout va bien” – translated to “So far, so good”) from my favorite French film, “La Haine” (Hate (1995), which I cannot get on Netflix) as my name, and the day I took it off (changed to “The Mapmaker”) was when the violence began- the same violence/rioting that took place at the beginning of the film La Haine when youth were killed by the police.

My friend Justin, who lived in Paris for a bit, left this comment on my myspace profile the day before last:

C’est l’histoire d’une société qui tombe et qui, au fur et à mesure de sa chute se répète pour se rassurer : “Jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien.” Mais ce qui compte c’est pas la chute. C’est l’atterrissage.

It’s the direct quote from the film….loosely translated to:

It is the story of a society which is falling and as it falls, it repeats to be reassure himself: “So far so good, so far so good, so far so good, so far so good.” How far you fall doesn’t matter, it’s how you land

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