overheard in Toronto

College-age girl in coffee shop: Have you heard of 'Robinson Crusoe'?
College-age guy sitting with her, studying: No.
Girl: Oh, it's this really famous book. The author's name is exactly like the main character, Robinson Crusoe, like, it's 'Daniel Crusoe.' It was written in like the 17th century, and it's about this guy, Robinson Crusoe, who's like a world traveler. And he goes to all these places, and he goes to a place where everyone's really little, and another place where everyone's really big. And he gets this little slave.
Me: [WTF]
Guy: Huh.
Girl: And it's all about, like, Victorian ideas of colonialism and of how people of that time thought about exploration, and control over the native population.

The amazing thing to me about this conversation is how in the end, the girl managed to put out a semi-coherent point, although her getting nearly every fact wrong about the book somewhat detracts from said point. But you can make these points without actually knowing any real facts. I would like to blame post-modernism for this, as for everything else, but I'm going to go with dumbness instead.

cultural heritage

On a flyer I got:
TEX MEX
Tout nos Tex Mex sont servis avec potatoes ou frites+sauce barbecue
8 pièces nuggets
10 pièces nuggets
8 chicken wings
20 chicken wings

People in California tend to slag on Tex-Mex, but even they don't think it consists of nuggets or wings and french fries. I don't really get how the "Mex" got in there at all.

divorcées

All four women I've done a language exchange with who have been married are now divorced or in the process of being divorced. I'm pretty sure this shows the immorality of the French.

pronounciation

I find it surprisingly hard to pronounce my name correctly when I'm speaking French. This is true even when I'm just trying to record the greeting on my answering machine.

Resemblance

On St. Patrick's Day, I struck up a conversation with some girls at a bar who had remarked upon my resemblance to Marshall in "How I Met Your Mother," who it appears is played by Jason Segel. It's not a very flattering comparison, in my view, but that's possibly because in the first 5 minutes that I saw of Jason Segel, he got pretty naked.

memory

At some point, Jon Stewart has got to remember to remind each of his guests not to get up until the commercial break has started. The other possibility is that the impulse, upon shaking hands, to get up and walk away is so strong that, despite the reminder, luminaries like Sandra Day O'Connor and Bill Gates just couldn't stop themselves. O'Connor didn't even do the initial walk on, presumably because she's not in such good shape (punishment for Bush v. Gore, one hopes), so to see her scurry away from Jon Stewart with the cameras rolling was even stranger.

virtue

I was watching a guest on the Colbert Report talk about conscious eating, and feeling all smug because my diet is more plant-based than the average American's, and thus less carbon-emitting. But then I realized that bringing my 20 pound sack of rice and 30 jars of peanut butter by plane from New York to France probably nullifies any carbon benefits I accrue not eating steak.