Wednesday, July 15: Reader Submission

Today's reader submission comes from Noelle, who will now probably think twice before reaching out to touch somebody:

"A long time ago, I went to the beach with my grandparents. We went to a reptile zoo and I left them to go use the restroom. When I came out, I noticed my grandfather leaning against the railing, so I decided to surprise him with a sudden hug. After I'd successfully wrapped my skinny little arms around him, he turned around with a look of shock on his face, and that's when I realized something. I'd hugged a complete stranger who didn't even remotely look like my grandfather."

Random old stranger:
sorry for the weird hug, man.
I bet you liked it.

Monday, July 13

Today's lifeku goes out to all of the ladies that I smell way too much on the morning metro:

Parisian Women
Lay off the Angel*
You all smell like barf

*please note that Angel is a perfume intended to smell like chocolate, but more closely resembles rotting stomach lining.

Monday, May 18

Unwelcome squatter
I smell you from the hallway
Please leave my building

Thursday, May 14

Red Cross corner guy
Do you have to bother me?
Your job really sucks

Wednesday, May 13: Reader Submission

Today's reader submission comes from Moomie, who has just recently put her house on the market because she found a better one. While this is all fine and dandy, in order to prepare her house for a non-stop influx of total strangers Moomie has transformed herself into the alter ego "Tina Sparkle" (who handles all of the cleaning and is rather OCD) and has thus begun cleaning, sweeping, wiping, bleaching, scrubbing, swiffering, buffing, vacuuming, shining, windexing, folding, pressing, steaming, waxing, and many other verbs in -ing form:

Where's my privacy?
An open house invasion
I'm just so tired

Tuesday, May 5

Little girl eating
Chocolate fingers away
My white pants nightmare

Friday, April 24

I have frequently expressed my personal feelings on the Human Cube that is the Paris Metro in the morning... the other day, while I was being compressed between a woman with way too much perfume and an adolescent listening to Rihanna & T.I's "Live your life" way too loud on his iPod (yes, his), when I noticed the man in front of me had begun huffing and puffing in a most disgruntled way. He shimmied his shoulders with a look of panic, not unlike a battered wife, and began looking around at all of the horrible people who were clearly abusing his personal metro space. At this point he began muttering to himself, making annoyed little comments about how people "are" these days.

May I point out that while all of this is going on there's a pregnant woman behind me who can barely breathe and a 10 year old late for school who has one leg balanced on the door frame in an attempt to create more space, not to mention the fact that the movement Disgruntled Man's shoulder shimmy was primarily ricocheting onto my face. After about 4 metro stops like this, he began to raise his "distress level," by which of course I mean "volume." The huffing and puffing turned into a whiny tantrum as he pushed his body in all directions trying to just get the Parisians off of him... except: this man clearly neglected to make the basic observation that THE PARIS METRO IS FULL DURING MORNING COMMUTE. He failed to acknowledge that he is in no way special, and in no way deserves more space than the 80 year-old woman who is holding her cane against the ceiling so that it doesn't get randomly thrown out of the train car.

People like this make me crazy. Or perhaps I should say amused, because it's not worth the effort to go crazy (or as we say in French pete les plombs). People who feel that they are superior enough to get their panties all in a bunch when they are treated just like everyone else, but at the same time don't have the money or initiative to take a taxi. Or walk. Or ride a bike. I mean seriously, Paris isn't that big. Which of course brings us to:

Whiny metro turd
I cannot create more space
Where there is none left

Monday, April 13

This is a Chateau. A French Chateau. A French Chateau where I just spent the night for the wedding of a friend, during which all sorts of shenanigans took place. Some of these shenanigans were fun, some were dangerous, and some were just plain inappropriate.

When you are staying in a chateau with 100 wedding guests, including the majority of your friends, you don't necessarily tell yourself that you need to sleep with the door locked... and you are making a terrible mistake. Because it's possible that you will be awoken at 6:30 in the morning by 30 people singing and chanting in your room, including some random guy you've never seen playing a guitar in the corner. These people might yell at you, taunt you, make several failed attempts to expose your naked body from under the covers... and you may choose not to speak to them for a little while....


Drunk thirty-somethings
Champagne to the sleeping face
Inappropriate

Thursday, March 19

Even though I written this lifeku a little while ago, I felt like it was appropriate to post after yesterdays Reader Submission about too much information online. Sometimes, people can be just way too open for their own good, to the point where it becomes weird and unhealthy and you really want them to just stop talking. I remember, when I first moved to France, I did a two-year make-up school in order to have a student visa. During this time, I learned how to make it look like someone took a blow-torch to your face, give perfect pin curls, and other random stuff that was pretty fun. I also had this client, a choreographer, who will remain totally namesless just in case she is still stalking me and reads this blog. She was American, from Los Angeles to be specific, and immediately took a liking to me because I was American. I met her on a DVD shoot where I was one of 3 interns for a chief make-up artist from MAC and soon after she began calling me, asking me to do her make-up privately. At some point, she began to feel a little too comfortable and started telling me all sorts of really personal details about her marriage, her reproductive organs, and the current state of her body while I would do her make-up. After a while, it escalated, and she started calling me just to talk about her problems, like I was her therapist or something. I would put the phone on speaker and set it on the table and she would just go on and on for a couple of hours. Eventually, when I started avoiding her because she weirded me out so much, she didn't take it too well. She even kept calling for a year. Now, I avoid her studio like the plague, even though it's only a couple of minutes from my apartment... which brings us to:

Hey oversharer
I didn’t need to know that
Keep it to yourself

Thursday, March 12

Have you ever had someone staying with you who made themselves just a little bit too much at home? As in, to the point where it becomes totally invasive? Couch crashers of the world: when we say, "make yourself at home" we don't mean it literally, so please pick up your wet underwear. And don't tell us why your underwear is wet, because we don't want to know.

Intrusive house guest
Do not make yourself at home
I want you to leave

Tuesday, March 10

Non-sharing roommate
You took so long on the can
I went on your bed

Thursday, February 26

Some of you who are loyal readers from the beginning may think that this lifeku strongly resembles "Man With Bad B.O." (one of the original lifekus) and it probably does. But I can't help that because the number of funk-nasty people that are all up in my personal space requires that I write at least one body odor related haiku per month. Brunette on the line 2 next to me a few days ago, you know who you are:

Stranger next to me
You are smelling pretty ripe
Deodorant, much?

Monday, February 23

I was yet again stumbling my youth away the other day when I came across this incredibly bizarre, creepy, and downright disturbing story of a wife who found a way to hold on to her husband FOREVER. She commissioned the most frighteningly stalkerish statue ever for his tombstone so that she could desperately cling to him for the rest of eternity. Talk about attached. You can see the other photos and read about it here. If that isn't unhealthy, I don't think I know what it...



Co-dependency
If you ever try to leave
I will be your grave.

Tuesday, February 17

Sometimes in the morning rush of the metro, when my body merges with what I like to call "The Human Cube," I go to my special place, my happy place. I just close my eyes and pretend I don't have 4 other people pressed up against me and one of them didn't brush their teeth. I normally look up towards the ceiling, because as French people are short, that is where there is the most air. Some of these times in the morning, I am wrenched out of my safe and happy place by an unsettling noise followed by a violently rotten odor. In these situations, everybody puts on their Not Guilty Face and begins to glance around in failed attempts to find the culprit. Except for sometimes, it's so obviously one person that you can't stop giggling to yourself while at the same time covering your face with your pashmina as to avoid suffocating:


Not so stealthy guy
I totally just heard you
Let a fat one rip

Tuesday, February 3

This lifeku originally applied to my father, who can explain Stephan Hawking's "A Breif History of Time" to an 8 year old and calculate 246 x 5348 in his head, but who cannot walk in a straight line. With age and experience, I have concluded that this is not just my father, but in fact an entire sector of the population. Apparently, a whole freaking lot of you can't walk in a straight line. When I am walking down the street, in the metro, even at the airport I always like to play a little game where I follow the yellow line... do I think I am in the Wizard of Oz? Maybe, but that's not important right now. What is important is the number of people walking in S formation, who have the balls to bump into me and give me this look that says: "Can't you see I have no equilibrium? It's totally your responsibility to get out of my way." Um, no it's not.

Unbalanced woman
You push me because you walk
Diagonally

Saturday, January 17

I'm all for fashion... I love clothes and shoes and bags because I have a vagina. That's right. Sometimes, things that look really good are in fact totally impractical, like shoes that eat your feet, dresses you can't sit down in, those 70's pants that totally ride up your crotch... but somewhere, somehow, you can deal as long as you are causing your own discomfort. What is totally uncalled for, ladies, is my being accosted by your obnoxiously large and voluminous "ensemble."

Kimono sleeve dress
I don’t need to eat fabric
Control your wide arms

Thursday, January 15

This one goes out to all my girls who don't like children and wear lots of white, which would definitely include me. We put in so much time, effort, and bleach that there should be a child repellent to keep them away:

Smelly Little Kid
Keep your grubby little hands
Away from me please.

Saturday, December 27

You, Clumsy Oaf Man
Can you watch where you’re going?
Coordination

Tuesday, December 16

Sometimes I don't fell like doing a long introduction, especially when the lifeku is self-explanatory. This may or may not be one of those times.

Curious monkey
Those are my private places
Get your hands off now

Weekly Round-up: Personal Space

In honor of my love for personal space and the incredible security that goes along with it, I've put together a list of the top lifekus dedicated to those who invade your (and my) area:

Personal Space Invader 1: The Close Talker

Personal Space Invader 2: The Homeless Man in the Metro

Personal Space Invader 3: The Pushy Old Lady

Personal Space Invader 4: The Plain Old Rude Lady

Personal Space Invader 5: The Man Who Yells in Your Face

Personal Space Invader 6: The Facebook Stalker

Personal Space Invader 7: The Lady Who Presses Up Against You

Personal Space Invader 8: The American Backpacker

Personal Space Invader 9: The Pusher in Line at the Store

and last but certainly not least:

Personal Space Invader 10: The I Talk About My Life With Complete Strangers Lady