thu, 11 March 2004 Metropole Paris 9.1O/11 – Monday, 1–8 Mar <h3>Number 9.1O/11:– Monday, 1–8 March</a> <!-- the below lines check to see if 'print' has been called. Then it inserts the correct link into the right of the navbar. Notice the second line of 'echo $_SERVER' code - and notice the '?media=print' after it. When you are in 'screen' version, this is the link that will be displayed - and this is where the 'print' call is sent to this page. If it is already 'print', no '?media=print' is inserted into the URL, telling the php to compile a 'normal page' -->
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<h2 class="c3">''Oh No, It's Raining''</h2><img src="club911a.jpg" alt="photo: group, maureen, jay, heather, tomoko, james" align="middle" height="220" width="330" />
<p class="c4">Today's 'Group of the Week' – Maureen,
Jay, Heather,<br />
Tomoko and James.</p>
<h3 class="c5">Slammed by 'Local Rules'</h3>
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<p class="noindent"><b>Paris:– Thursday, 11. March 2004:–</b>
Since the weather hasn't been much good since Monday
there's no point in rehashing the forecast. The past is
past and good riddance to it.</p> <div style="width:300px;height:250px;float:right;clear:right;margin:1em 0 1em 1em;">
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<p>As for today, the sooner it's past the better. If anyone
got up early enough they would have seen the sun shining.
It has been doing this on all mornings when nobody has
bothered to get up. Once you're up, the sun is over for the
day, and mean breezes blow four–degree air around any
place you wish you weren't.</p>
<p>Places that you really aren't, are in a
wind–shadow. This is the same place that we find the
forecast for the next few days, except the shadow is one of
credibility.</p>
<p>Thus, the following public service announcement is
totally useless. Tomorrow, Friday, is expected to be mostly
cloudy<img src="club911d.jpg" alt="photo: water, wine"
align="left" height="260" width="170" vspace="2" hspace="5" /> in the morning and all cloudy in the afternoon.
There's a three–hour window where noon can slide from
side to side, timewise. This friction may cause the
temperature to rise from three to nine. But it didn't
today, so I don't know why it should tomorrow.</p>
<p>The distant future of Saturday appears to be uncertain,
which I'm assuming means 'partly cloudy.' The temperature
– ha, ha – is supposed to be 11 degrees. There
may be some winds blowing France's pollution towards
Britain.</p><i>Today's first 'artfull' drinks photo.</i>
<p>On Sunday, while it's being more or less partly cloudy
in the Paris region, 60 kph winds from the southwest will
be pushing serious clouds towards us. They may get here
sooner than the forecasters predict, so hope that their
guess of a high of 13 degrees turns out to be right. Nobody
here will complain if they are wrong and it gets to be 14
degrees.</p>
<p>Heather Stimmler–Hall has been seeing some other
weather forecasts, and she told me at today's meeting
– see below – that our odd weather is being
caused by a upper–air cyclone twirling out of
Siberia.</p>
<p>If so, it is a secret being kept from us by Le Parisien
and the France–2 TV–weather news. She said she
got her information from TF1–TV – but as far as
I am concerned this is not reliable source for weather
futures because the government sold this public station to
private operators about 20 years ago and still hasn't
refunded any of the taxpayers' TV–tax
money.</p>
<b>The One and Only 'Club Report of the Week'</b>
<p class="noindent">When I leave for today's club meeting it is not actually
snowing. In principle, it is too warm. In practice, there
have been these odd little flurries, which don't amount to
anything other than looking like soot from a
poorly–regulated sawdust burner.</p>
<p>I leave for the club early because Heather phoned me
from a Métro tunnel to call an exceptional meet
before today's club meeting, to discuss this contest
– see below – she dreamed up. We need to hatch
the details.</p>
<p>So, alors, lo and behold, member Jay Barrios from Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, is at the café La Corona in the
club's meeting area before I arrive, and Heather isn't.</p>
<p>Jay was instrumental in getting the club's 'rules'
tossed into the dustbin of history. Back in May of 2000 Jay
wrote:</p>
<p>"This is a serious matter. Your seminar on Club Member
Titles made my hair stand on end – well it would have
if I had any hair. Didn't the French Revolution eliminate
titles and the heads of those who had one? I hope we can
keep our club members with only<img src="club911g.jpg" alt="photo: pedro and lena" align="right" height="125" width="250" vspace="2" hspace="5" /> one title – 'Member.'
First thing you know someone will want a Louisiana
membership and/or a Texas membership, etc. I vote to table
the motion."</p><i>Club members Pedro and Lena, or Lena and
Pedro.</i>
<p>At the time club members who hadn't joined yet were
sending in suggestions for club 'titles' such as 'Virtual
Commodore' and nominating themselves.</p>
<p>As club secretary, I secretly agreed with Jay and wrote,
"Simplification, I feel, should be the club's goal. The
word 'members' to describe members is perfectly okay. It is
simple, it is short and it applies to everybody except
people who are not." Then I asked for comment from both
'virtual' members and 'real' members.</p>
<p>In the club 'report' a week later I felt compelled to
write, "Judging from the emails I have received concerning
last week's proposal by Jay Barrios to simply call all club
members simply 'Members,' I second the motion because the
general comment would have been 'no comment' if anybody had
bothered to write.</p>
<p>"By this, I guess many members were getting very high
and wild with dreams of ever more elaborate forms of
memberships and outlandish titles, and simply being
'Members' has gotten you all in a snit."</p>
<p>Jay finally crossed the Atlantic to join the club as a
'Member' at a meeting in October of 2001. It was at this
meeting that Jay passed over the club's hand–carved
mascot to the club's secretary.</p>
<p>It is a lovely howling hound dog, with dotted eyeballs
fixed on distant outer space, or the moon, if there is one
– as there sometimes is, in the dog's new position
overlooking the Montparnasse cemetery.</p>
<p>Before Heather can arrive early, before the meeting
starts, James MacNeil arrives from this week's 'City of the
Week,' which is Heidelberg in Germany. James left Granada
Hills, California – another potential 'City of the
Week!' – to take up residence in Germany a really
long time ago.</p>
<p>Then Heather does arrive, along with members Pedro and
Lena – a pair of sub–minuscule Dobermans.
Heather did not come straight to the club from doing
research for the slogan contest – see below –
prizes at Châtelet–Les Halles, but came back
from chasing all the way over to the RATP's headquarters
near the Gare de Lyon, where they wouldn't even sell her
one potential prize.</p>
<p>One of a group of unaffiliated American ladies sitting
in the club's area comes over and asks Heather if she can
pat<img src="club911c.jpg" alt="photo: 3 euro cents" align="left" height="170" width="220" vspace="2" hspace="5" />
Pedro or Lena. Heather says, "Sure, go ahead," but neither
Pedro nor Lena like the idea too much after being dragged
all over Paris on the Métro in doggy
bags.</p><i>Inexpensive hifi accessory are euro pennies. I
need five more.</i>
<p>Heather says, "They had seven neat little sponge
key–chain things in the window and they wouldn't even
sell me one for 70 cents." For Jay's benefit she explains
that 70 cents in euros was once about four francs, which
seemed like it was real money – while now 70 cents
isn't enough for a glass of tap water.</p>
<p>Jay, perhaps remembering the howling hound dog on
account of Pedro and Lena who are perfectly silent, says he
intended to bring a duck he carved. "But it was too cold,"
he says.</p>
<p>Apparently it doesn't get cold in Baton Rouge often, but
when it does residents there think they are being attacked
by Canada and hibernate until it's over.</p>
<p>Heather says it isn't weather from Canada but weather
from Moscow. She says she saw it explained on
TF1–TV.</p>
<p>Tomoko Yokomitsu arrives and overhearing Heather says,
"I cleaned out my freezer and there was... something... in
there." When asked she says that it wasn't a frozen poison
blow–fish. She remembers giving it to the club's
secretary.</p>
<p>We have, as even new members note, a completely new
'Waiter of the Week.' He is wonderfully rapid in taking
orders, delivering orders, and tossing cash machine tickets
on the table. He also gives everybody exactly what they
want.</p>
<p>It occurs to the club's secretary to ask the members if
they have any spare one cent euro coins. Stacked up in
little piles, they can improve the sound of good but old
stereo hifi speakers. While everybody is rummaging through
their coin collections, there is a mysterious 'beep.'</p><br /><i>Continued on <a href="/2004/910/911clb19.html?page=2" target="_self">page 2...</a></i></td>
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