brainfreeze

This message and any attachments contain information, which may be confidential or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please refrain from any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of this information. Please be aware that such actions are prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, kindly notify us by e-mail to helpdesk@bbdo.fr. We appreciate your cooperation.

Ce message et tout fichier attaché contiennent de l’information qui pourrait être confidentielle ou réservée. Si vous n’êtes pas le destinataire concerné, merci de ne pas divulguer, copier, distribuer ou utiliser cette information. Nous vous informons que ces agissements sont interdits et peuvent être illégaux. Si vous avez reçu ce message par erreur, merci de nous en informer par courriel à helpdesk@bbdo.fr. Nous vous remercions pour votre coopération.

Finally I get away from the office and onto the Eurostar again.
Homeward bound.

It's almost like breathing out, getting back to my parents place in our little village.

The clear air and simple life. Meeting my mate James for a beer. Seeing my little nephews and neice.

My Mum's cat is currently hiding in my bag. You can just see her tail poking out.

Tonight we are going to play a few rounds of Smart Ass and I'm going to drink a truckload of sherry and tell smutty jokes with my Dad.

The perfect break!

I love the French dark comedy film genre.
It's a bit like eating something that is really sour but for some masochistic reason, loving the nerve-battering it gives you.

It usually features a character who sticks to the 'hero with 1000 faces' mechanic which involves them being thrust into a new and wonderful world.

Only in French dark comedy, it's not so wonderful and it's basically the same world but with something really shit happening like an incurable disease, a misogynistic boyfriend who looks like Donald Trump but french, dependence on something like booze drugs or terrible pop music and heavily sauced with socially impossible situations.

Usually someone (probably the hero who is an anti-hero) ends up crying and yet at the same time you are laughing yourself silly at the desperation they are experiencing. Then feeling bad about your own humanity. Then laughing again.

The French do "I'm really sad" well. Get on the metro for proof.

I just need to pass level 'shit' in my French and I can actually have a decently tragic story of my own.

Ooh I stumbled across this and left blinded by sweet beats and a sexy video that is just delicious.

Check it out or miss out, I say.

PS. It's some consolation to the incredibly loud snoring coming from my father-in-law in the lounge - nice to have them stay with us but holy monkey nuts that guy can snore like a foghorn.

Joker: "The Vision (Let Me Breathe)" ft. Jessie Ware & Freddie Gibbs

On another note, the wife and I went to a party at a mate's place in Paris yesterday and it was fun trying to speak french to people there. They got a kind of amused expression I think during the moments I was sounding like a 5 yr old kid stumbling over my verb tenses but all in all i walked out proud I had given it a go and had some fun. Mostly due to the couple's crazy 70s light that tried to knock out successive guests who approached the table for snacks.

If you are in need of pictures of cats who are obviously disturbed, this is an excellent resource.

It's right up there with Cat Scan which was an old favourite of mine and was basically a blog of the result of people scanning their cats.

They looked a bit like flying cats, only flat on the bottom.

I think it was taken down after numerous complaints from enraged lonely women.

EDIT: actually it's still up!

I will run through the night, with the tendrils of cold nipping at my heels.

I will deny all that fate has planned. I will slam the door in its face.
I will not be robbed of my life.

The bitter tide of pollution laps at our streets. It’s carrion carried forward in a sea of shopping bags and plastic debris.

But I will not let that catch me.

I will run through the fog and pay no mind to their ways. They seek to keep us in a state of confusion, misinformation and fear. They seek to manipulate our feelings, actions and make us a host of sheep - unquestioning and obedient to the dogs that lie quietly and watchfully in the eaves.

My passage will be smooth, uncluttered and timeless.

I will fly, oh how I will fly. Above the estates and the factories. Over coastline and above rolling grey waves. I will feel the salt spray on my face. I will dive into the depths. And ride the currents silently. Keep company with whales and sharks.

Then I will leap out to fly again. Will visit all the places I longed for and have nothing bind me anymore. No files and folders. No silent killers. Nothing to pressure me, to turn me into a stranger.  Just joy and freedom.

I will laugh and dance. Sing and play. I will live across deserts and fields. Will see familiar trees and buildings and sit and meditate on my past.

And peace. Will be mine. At last.

No, it's not a pub in England, it's what I came across today in Paris.
 
If anyone has lived in Paris then they have probably been somewhere touristy like the Eiffel or Musée D'Orsay.

And if they have visited tourist spots, odds on they have come across the troublesome gypsy swindlers who are looking to make a buck out of any happless fuckwit who stops to sign their clipboard or take their gold ring.

I won't go in to the former, but the latter is an almost mythological trick used by Romany gypsies in Paris whereby they seem to find a ring in front of the tourist and then give it to them saying they should take it. Hey presto 1 minute later they come back and ask for some money for their half of the ring.

I saw an old women doing exactly that to a fat American tourist today and I couldn't help myself saying loudly IT'S A CON - DON'T TAKE THE RING.

In the end I got the tourist to back away. I felt like a cross between MacGyver and Tom Sellick. The gypsie women gave me death eyes and a clear indication that this was not an acceptable turn of events.

I expect to wake up tonight with chicken bones draped around my head and the gypsy looking at me from the end of the bed whilst brandishing a large knife.

My weeks are increasingly nutty storms of crazypants action where my feet never touch the floor.

Finding myself out the other side is like waking up after a large and very insane monkey has just given you a good molesting.

But hey, I cooked an omelet for myself and my daughter and we just shrugged off the week.

Why?

Because today we have to hit up the Palais de Découvert, press buttons for mechanical stuff and get all knowledged up.

On y va!!!! 

PS. Right is my photochop mockup of the weekly feeling. I mean don't get me wrong, life is all about getting into it and working hard but my goodness i praise the moustache of Tom Sellick that the weekend is here.

EDIT: I spent the day with Chloe and we indeed went to the Palais de Découvert which had loads of old once-were-futuristic science things that reminded me of when I went to the Beijing science museum - everything was more interesting to me because you felt like you walked back in time to the 1970s with bakerlight and led lights for space exhibitions. That is until Chloe dropped her tic tacs all over the floor causing chaos ... me grabbing her and shuffling away... whilst trying to ignore everyone staring at us. Bless her little uncoordinated limbs :) 

Like today. I got into the 3pm zone which is like trying to swim through golden syrup only it's less tasty, I've no hope of my usual Damascus creative moment and my brain is dribbling out of my nose. It's a feeling often accompanied by my mind whingeing and my heart yearning for bed or a soft padded cell in which to monkey around and pretend the brief i am meant to be gladiating with hasn't just bent me over and indecently assaulted me.

It's still laughing at me now, the bastard. Never fear though. It's a new day tomorrow and I've popped a herbal sleeping pill so my daughter's coughing won't wake me up early again or so help me god I am going to put egg boxes all around her face to deflect sound.

Ha, flash mobs. The owner of my old agency once said to me and some other creatives just before we presented "it better not have a flash mob, don't give me anymore fucking flash mobs" and we trembled even though there thankfully wasn't a flashmob in sight.
So here are some refreshingly ridiculous not-ideas-or-flash-mobs for my site.

1. I'll send up an airship pilotted exclusively by dwarfs painted orange. I'll brand 'it's a small world afterall; brainfreeze.posterous.com' on it
2. I'll mount a bees nest on a crane and wave it through busy commuter streets with message 'buzz buzz buzzzzz brainfreeze.posterous.com'
3. I'll buy a piece of the moon (a square inch) then sell it to Saudi Arabia in return for my blog url on one of their artificial islands
4. I'll write the url on a plucked turkey then pretend it's Madonna's neck and get it into a celebrity magazine under the headline 'Madge has freak blog tattoo'
   

ps. i'll get 100 people to turn up to a public place, sing a song then take part in a mass suicide with flash bang grenades and their blood will form my URL.