The thing is I’m not searching for racism proof, racism finds me. I’m on a funny Tumblr and there’s this Google search result about Asian people and I feel obligated to try it out too. Then I try with white black Indians… And I kind of freak out:

Let’s see if it’s better in 10 years?

“Why do black people exist”. It’s just weird because it doesn’t really sound offensive yet it’s the most hostile thing from all searches. Suddenly I feel the urge to make this little picture editing to show the world that well, people using computers are mostly white and not that bright if I look at these screenshots.

Later I click on a BBC documentaries link via Twitter. I go through the list, I see Abraham Lincoln: Saint or Sinner? I click on it and read:

150 years after the war his reputation is being re-assessed, as historians begin to uncover the dark side of his life and politics. They have revealed that the president who ended slavery secretly planned to deport the freed black people out of America.

Wikipedia. Google. Lerone Bennett Jr. A book, Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream 20 years of research, 688 pages. Bipolar reviews and comments, people praising the amount of work and that nothing is black or white and people complaining that this book is biased –you mean like mainstream “common” History?- and so on. It reminds me of stuff, like the Good Hair documentary I saw a few months ago:

The main focus in the film is the extreme lengths that black women are willing to go through in order to look a certain way. A common ideology in the African American culture is that the straighter the hair, the prettier the woman. On the contrary, a woman wearing her hair naturally (with no chemical processing) is viewed as unkempt or unprofessional. Black women are willing to spend thousands of dollars on their hair, even if they cannot afford to do so.

I think about Bill Russell, a basketball player –one of the best ever- I discovered through Flea’s Twitter account, who lived crazy times and hard segregation. I think about this documentary I haven’t seen yet because the start hurts so bad, Crips and Bloods: Made in America, something I wanted to see because it’s about L.A. (and directed by a famous skateboarder). It starts by explaining how black people were not allowed to be in the Boy Scouts so that they started their own clubs, who would have to deal with police all the time. Gang’s hood culture was born.

I think about Katrina and the second part of Spike Lee’s documentary is probably one of the most painful thing I have ever watched.

And everything makes sense. This crazy feeling of insecurity or that I have to prove something all the goddamn time. Why despite virtually being free, I feel something heavier and heavier that is making me think more than twice, too much. Damn if even I feel it, with my sweet 200% white back-story and family I can’t imagine what’s like for other black people and black men I see around. Unconsciously I make music because also, it’s where it’s fine to be a black dude in this society. Constantly asking myself “can I? May I? Should I?” because I know what people see, I know stereotypes are also true and that I try not to be that and yet I am sometimes. It makes sense. It comes from a long way. Social inertia is ridiculous. 

The older I get, the more I understand why smart black people who seem to be loved by any race end up building a bubble, living inside: Meshell, Dave Chappelle, Chris Tucker, Dieudonné, Prince whatever. It’s way too fucked up to be in the middle analyzing that shit, man.

 
Obama will always represent that first. Holy shit it felt good even if it sounds stupid.

Anyway, peace. And fuck carrots.

The Art of Steal

It’s a documentary about the Barnes foundation one of the most amazing painting collection in the world.

 

I’ll take this comment from The Awl: “What you have is a powerful group of city elites with real estate and tourism dreams (they’re also avaricious philistines, by mere coincidence) determined to seize the control of this spectacular asset, and there simply isn’t anybody with the power or position to stop them. Their success has been a complete tragedy.”

I wish I could go before the collection moves downtown Philly in June…

The Perfect Vagina

Kind of eye-opening to see how women can be able to ruin their genitals based on what people (that is, stupid jerks and bitches) think of it. I always thought that big lips were like a big cock. More surface, more pleasure. I didn’t know the porn industry had such power by displaying small vulvas, a big turn on for men apparently (not a fan of the kid-looking pussy, thanks). I was amazed that these women didn’t even know that vaginas are unique, like their male counterpart. What the fuck??? We all are different, genitals included. It shows how depreciated this organ and source of pleasure is, even today in a pretty liberal society like the UK. Girls do what you have to do: be proud of it.

Have you ever tried to sell a diamond?

Outstanding article from 1982 –thank you the Atlantic, thank you- about the diamond bullshit, the exploitation of Africa, the insane wedding marketing in the US/Japan that would create demand “forever”, the 100 years monopoly, the absence of value of this so-called precious rock… Seven very well documented pages. There’s only one conclusion: don’t ever, ever buy any fucking diamond in your life. I’m glad I haven’t because I always thought that it wasn’t looking good. Some people use credits to buy this useless shit that is not even an investment. It’s pure loss.

Nothing that will make you smile, everything good to know though.

It seems like a decade. This service totally changed my life.

Debut

I don’t know how many French were signing up in early March 2007 but I was, after the famous SXSW that really showed up what Twitter was. I immediately tried it thinking that it was a great idea. Microblogging. Sweet.

It wasn’t to follow friends because even today Twitter isn’t popular in France –at all- so it wasn’t for that. It was for discovery. Hooking up with strangers that’s right. Maybe dating too of course. Whatever was going on.

Everything you do. Even that.

My first follower was Baratunde Thurston. Yes, it was incredibly powerful to see a BLACK MAN on the internet and nerdier than I was. Funny, witty,  in the transmedia-internet-geek world, I thought that was awesome. He had a few hundreds of followers and when he worked his ass off, live-tweeting Obama’s election and campaign it was magic. He’s now Director of Digital @TheOnion and has 74,887 followers… I can’t wait to meet him because it has to happen. So many times I wanted to write to him but was too afraid to lay down some stuff.

French people in Paris on a Saturday night.

I immediately wrote in English. For me it was not even a question –why would I tweet in French when no one understands it?- and I wanted to improve so much at it that I had the idea to bring some rhymes and for like a year and half I tweeted this way and geez, it made my brain stronger and my dictionary skills better despite weird, silly, corny tweets. Mind game.

Twittervision

Anyway I just loved the fact that I had some insight in very different lives across the world, here a geeky mom in St Louis, there a web developer in Czech Republic, UK, US, Sweden, Japan, Germany, Australia… In real time, not on an irc channel with nicknames but on the web, via sms with pictures and “real” names.

More and more it became a really neat source of information too. At first I didn’t want that too much being an avid user of rss but I couldn’t resist and see that I would see a tweet and then the same in the rss feed, later. Sean Bonner showed me how much Twitter is useful and relevant in the news realm.

I giggle every time.

I also tried to follow funny people because the 140 characters limit is great for that. What value can you add on a personal level if you’re not relaying news? Comedy. I stumbled upon Alison Agosti who had about 400 followers. I thought it was a bug when I saw more than 100K like a year later but she’s funny as hell and she has a vagina too so it’s totally normal :-)

But the big thing for me has been the #itstartedontwitter with my Verdell Wilson.

Only the beginning…

It’s also been an amazing tool to connect with indie game developers as the RT process just do that, making you discover someone else via someone you already follow: this is why the new RT ain’t worth shit, making the discovery process less transparent and more intrusive.

Because of the constant stream, the more I was following people –and usually Americans- the less I was caring about France and what’s going on here. I was realizing that like rss I could just jump to the information’s source. More fascinating global, less local circlejerk.

I also saw that Twitter was used a lot by black people in the US and that I was writing English better than 98% of them. That would sometimes make me angry but I would get over it, what else is there to do?

Now I think I’m hitting a wall with Twitter. Yes having friends partying in Austin while having a tsunami in Japan, wars and conflicts in the middle East is like watching a horror movie with a comedy and a documentary at the same time. It isn’t healthy even if as the TV, I’m hooked, reading and reading, trying not to miss a tweet which could ruin the story unfolding in front of my eyes… I mean I knew about upcoming riots in the Middle East weeks before they happened, thanks to Twitter. Twitter gives a sense that there’s no time zone at all but there is and I just can’t keep reading tweets in Paris after California is up because it’s like dozens of updates after each refresh. It’s exhausting.

Backend

On the dev part, I thought Twitter very clever to let people build clients and competing over innovation. Now they’re being like total dicks, blatantly stealing ideas (the Android client was quite unique but not really efficient, the last refresh is a copy/paste of Seesmic) and saying “don’t do anything else guys, we’re in charge thanks”. Not cool.

On the business part, I just don’t get why the Flickr/Pinboard business model (pay once forever or once a year) is so disregarded. What the fuck is wrong with getting real money and stop the ad bullshit? If power users are ready to pay a fee, you should let them: they will drive followers to do so. People made Twitter.

I never had a big thing for trending topics but these days there are like effing useless, full of scammers and fake accounts. I’m still amazed at this 4000+ RT of a fake Dave Chappelle account using the #prayforjapan, what the hell people. Or the all Charlie Sheen thing. Like a lot of things when there’s a crowd, we often all get so dumb.

So I wonder what the future of this service is going to be. Like the internet showed, clones are probably going to emerge, open sourced. Dave Winer is trying to do that with rss so that you can update everything including Twitter in real time with a feed.

 

Whatever happens now, it will never be the same. Thanks guys.

If we legalize all drugs, minorities –I mean, everybody but white people- would automatically get control of it (estimation for the US only for 2003: 321 billion $).

If it happens, the balance of power between the “West” and the rest of the world would change so dramatically that it can’t happen. For now.

Maybe even some region of the world would become much more attractive than Europe and the US. Mexico’s insane violence (2010, 15 273 people murdered) is pretty much all drug-related. Other than the annoyance of the high possibility of getting killed in the worst manner possible, I’m sure it’s a nice place to live.

I’m always amazed to see that cannabis for example was totally legal when the business was controlled by the English empire. It went illegal when India claimed its independence. It became illegal when Jamaica claimed its independence.

It became illegal in the US when Mexicans and black people were using it, changing dramatically the country in the early 1900s, working their ass off and inventing the cool that will spread out and be part of the US culture. White America  could stop the prohibition but just couldn’t take that “minorities” were and are happy with weed.

It’s illegal in France because hashish equals Arabs and that despite being a country open to so many things and ideas, France doesn’t want to accept its culture blend. Which also means sharing power (millions of euros market) with non-white people. And this nasty play about values and moral on how drugs are bad while alcohol is legal and globally, the leading cause of death for males aged 15-59… During that time the prison system is a profit-making industry (click on the number 1). I mean, it’s just sick man.

So in the end there’s no rational political behavior about drugs because it’s just a matter of losing huge power: could you imagine how strong would become South America if instead of smuggling cocaine to the US and Europe they were trading it to the richest, smartest white people in the world like they do since decades but this time without the BS? They could fucking rule the UN, Swiss banks and own the NASDAQ. Latinos ruling white institutions?

Yeah, it’s the worst nightmare ever for the current system. Hence the century old war on drugs. It needs to stop.

Amidoinitrite

Anyway, millions of things to do. Also, never loan/rent your apartment to a dirty dude with long hair. Holy fuck.

Seven days with a new Windows Phone 7.

It’s a very interesting time in terms of competition in the world of smartphones. First despite the amount of hype and how everybody in California owns one, the smartphone market globally still barely represent a quarter of phone sales (20% of global sales mid 2010). It’s still the beginning. But the growth is on.

// Before

I used an Android Phone for a year. I had fun with it except that my HTC Hero had some issues with AES Wi-Fi encryption, making it kind of useless when it cannot connect correctly to the free wireless… I don’t know if I’m the only one but from my light usage (email/twitter/fb/sms/reading/maps) I can say that:

• I’ve pretty much never used the “killer feature” called copy&paste. I retype, save the link or use the “send by email”.
• I don’t play games or music because it ruins battery life. It’s a communication device for me first.
• What multitasking? I use an app. I quit. I launch another one. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
• Also, if I use six or seven apps very regularly, it’s a maximum.
• The free app with banner ads in your face model is getting annoying really fast.
• The Gmail app is plain sad.

Then the update mess. Holy shit it’s a mess. I started with  the 1.6, missing a lot of good stuff. Then last summer I finally got the 2.1 update which I already had tried with a custom ROM (I don’t want to do that kind of shit again, ever). Then nothing, change your phone. The 2.2 update brought speed improvements with JIT optimization and the Chrome V8 JavaScript engine, and added Wi-Fi hotspot tethering and Adobe Flash support. Flash that I had partially from the start with my phone but don’t care about (watching videos on a tiny screen? Really?). My HTC Hero could have used this update but no, I have to get a new Android phone so I can have the last updates and last apps. Or go through XDA.

So I said no thanks. Here’s the carrier update coming and I’m going to get this Samsung Omnia 7. BAM!

Nifty

// UI-UX

I was really interested into the new Metro UI. Now that I’m playing with it, I can tell that it’s fucking delicious, butter smooth and all. At first you think that it’s gadget, you think that it’s too edgy and unnecessary but everything makes sense after a while: all these words become data and you end up manipulating data instead of representation of data (icons and “app body”). With an accent on natural motion with less clicks and trees and sub-menus and dialog boxes, everything seems more… Relaxing and focused even if it sounds weird. And what I see works perfectly for business or personal use. Grids of icons don’t look mature or efficient anymore. Navigating on Windows Phone 7 feels like a background process more than any other UI I experienced before. You have to try it for a while to understand. It’s awesome.

Index to swipe. Thumb to get back. For everything.

It’s fast, integrated, minimalist, well done, data-driven: you don’t launch your sms app to type a text message, you swipe to your contact list where you can sms/email/facebook wall them in one click from the home screen if you pinned her/him. I could do that on my Android but it was so clunky and confusing. The button just for the camera –love it-, the left or right landscape mode with symbols within icons moving accordingly… They polished the shit out of their new platform. And Microsoft really has nailed and deeply thought something here with this fancy 2D layout. It’s so satisfying.

Now about the stuff lacking. Like being unable to update a status on FB/Twitter/SomeTrendySocialNetwork directly from the Me Tile. Everything is pretty perfect and they miss that for launch? Unbelievable. Or is it to favorite developers to sell apps? Or because –for example- the Twitter API is god-awful to deal with so that engineers pushed to wait before it’s sold to Facebook or Google? I guess it weighs in too. Microsoft took the liberty to create the little apps that count like the weather, translator or unit converter. They’re as polished as the OS. They didn’t want to allow the light smartphone user like me having to deal with shitty third-party apps for basics like that. It’s smart because it ruined my Android experience.

Bad: give me a tool-shortcut to take screenshots of this beautiful UI on my phone please. Let people spread the word MS.

// Marketplace

I think the trial mode –not really available on other mobile platforms- is a really good choice for both users and developers. It’s known that while Android is full of apps, nobody is making money. The growth in competition between developers is not going to ease this as we can see on the iPhone where a few make a lot and everybody else pretty much nothing.

For users on Android you have fugly apps with G banner ads everywhere. You don’t want to pay when it’s free and that well, it gets the job done. But you have to deal with all this web intrusion. On iPhone it’s hit or miss: you buy you’re happy, great. Otherwise you’re screwed and try to not tell anyone that you paid that corny Mahjong game five bucks.

Now on Windows Phone everybody’s happy in theory. I’m trying Wonder Reader these days and it works well. I’m willing to pay the developer for its work. I feel that it’s the most balanced relationship: trial without restrictions or ads, I like it I buy it, I don’t I uninstall.

There’s no “I’m trying to scam/spam you with a lite version and really try hard to sell the full version to your contact list” way of doing business. Since the trial model is proven and always has been strong in digital distribution businesses (ask Steam these days), I feel that it’s going to be the same for smartphones. Remember, apps are bought once and for all, if you don’t like it it’s like you just dropped money on the sidewalk. After a couple dozens or more of not expensive apps, people are going to really want to try before hitting the “buy” button.

The one in the middle is the official Android app. Looks designed by/for a 7 year old. 

About apps quality I think it’s already way better than Android. I already have all the apps I had on my Android: Flickr, Amazon, Foursquare, Wikipedia, Chuck Norris facts… Kidding. Though they’re available too. Some  apps are a bit slow but they’re all enjoyable to use, much more than their counterparts on Android and iPhone thanks to the sweet UI. I have experienced one app crash so far, a shady Flickr uploader (a Flickr API problem I suspect). Also, apps are all available in France too. For the life of me I couldn’t get the Android Amazon app even with my European unlocked phone, in Paris or L.A. And it happens a lot, even for free apps like Google Reader. So weird for Google the global company.

Bad: get the Zune Music out of the search please.

// Development

Maybe nobody has noticed but the pace at which people port iPhone games to Windows Phone is quite insane. Like ten times faster than to port on Android. Thanks to minimum specs and great dev tools and being a bit late to the party which is an advantage in this fast-moving hardware mobile market.

This tool is creepily efficient. It’s called Expression Blend 4.

Anyway I’m saying great dev tools but I should say really great. I did iPhone development saw Interface Builder Xcode, I tried Android and the AppInventor, Eclipse and all the endless annoying Android SDK installation…

Here you download a small exe file that gets everything you need at once and five minutes after finishing the download, you can fire the emulator and have an app page running. How about that.

It’s been a week that I use Expression Blend 4 and I already have two apps navigation flows running smoothly in the emulator. I just need transition effects, binding real data and I’m almost done with solid alpha beta versions.

That’s an amazing achievement and because MS is full of engineer once again, they communicate on the technology making this possible –Silverlight– when they should introduce people from a product point of view first. Microsoft can’t get PR right, we all know that.

I don’t want to use Silverlight for anything but for Windows Phone for now. But using it through Blend 4 is quite awesome I can’t deny. The product MS, the product attracts designers. Technology, not so much. Remember, the code is behind. (not saying that it’s less important, but it’s not the best bridge to consumers right?)

Bad: None really, absolutely no crash at all with the dev tools… I’d like to be going even faster to build a complete app with Blend 4. Enough about visual stuff like FXG import and Photoshop shit. Let designers build the entire app with real data (at least for the reading part) with a few wizards, give more pre-made transition effects templates etc Ease and fasten the real creation process, it helps so much to not only see the design but the data in it. But it’s just been 7 days with the tools so maybe everything is here and I have yet to find it. Also, make it easier to download tools updates please!

 

Overall:

Best mobile experience ever. Minor issues (OMG I don’t have copy&paste bullshit included) about to be fixed. I thought my camera button wasn’t working well but it’s actually because I’m lefty and leave my hand on the proximity detector. So it’s all good and works perfectly now.

Best dev tools ever. Really hard to not fall in love with them. Productivity and classiness to the max.

From my simple and honest experience, I don’t see how Nokia made a mistake. You should really try a Windows Phone if you’re about to get a smartphone. I’m totally serious.

I knew his death would trigger something or put me into another perspective.

Now I look at my legal family, dad mom and sister and I need to face it.

I just feel totally off them. Not like stranger off, more like alien off. I have this memory of an evening where for the first time I cranked up the volume of my radio to blast What’s Going On. Of course I didn’t know what it meant, I just loved the voice, the feeling and the music. My parents went apeshit telling me that we were not in the ghetto so I had to turn that down. Damn I was like eleven or twelve and never thought that I would remember this forever.

It was telling a lot about how I’m different from them  -they don’t care about music like I do and don’t know shit about black music at all, they’re talking about people of my color like they’re bad and just a little bit of excess is not allowed- but of course, I was just confused. Now I know why I’m still confused. Because I see how by having a typical stuck-up white intellectual family on one side, a really divided and discriminatory society on the other side, I feel so screwed. Neither of them are satisfying. And yet by my position, I have it all but. Fuck.

BlackGoldOfTheSun

I have to recognize that overall it always felt artificial with my parents, from the beginning. Like an industry contract: you help me out in life, I’m a good son to you. Nothing too personal, just business. I mean, it started with them coming to visit me, offering me presents at my foster family house and when you’re a kid you go where you can have more of these. I call that business. Then I just learned and soaked up knowledge they were giving me like a sponge. Looking back on it , that’s all I did, sharing emotions, love was more than rare despite trying and create awkardness. It’s hard to admit it and I’m sure they would be sad but hey, letting me do what I wanted to do without support, like an obligation they have to fulfill, does that too. That’s ok.

I have a connection with my foster family that looks like the “default family connection”, like most of you have. Because I grew up there I guess. It feels natural. Despite the same physical differences I feel connected in a way that I have never been able to reproduce with my parents. I tried, I hoped, it was bullshit. You don’t really create that, it exists or it doesn’t.

They warn people that old –that is, any baby after 12 months- adopted child integration into a family is complicated. Since the beginning I feel being a character, playing a role. For a long time I thought it was going on pretty well and felt real but it honestly never felt true. There was a big “…and scene” moment when I was at last, alone. 25 years like that.

What is left when you don’t connect at all emotionally with your family? What’s like to talk about black hair with your black dad? Damn I wish I knew. It’s terrible when people including the closest are both pointing at me as black while saying I am not black because I don’t act like a black dude kind of sending the message that I’m neither black or white and so I don’t belong anywhere. Guys, I am black, dark skinned or chocolate if you want. Visually I can’t hide it, hence the classic “where you’re from? I mean, ethnically” I get all the time in France la Rude. Otherwise I’m just Harold. I don’t fit any of your boxes. Even when I want it.

The terrible under representation of black people in circles I’ve been involved in didn’t help feeling comfortable. Don’t laugh at it, a lot of white people get totally depressed living in Japan and I remember this black Katrina refugee sent to Utah, 1.4% of black people there (compared to 12.9% nationwide). She went crazy. Well I’m doing that since day one so in some way it’s easier but it’s also much heavier. I grew up being the 1% black stat and when I saw a lot more black people I was twenty something and they were friggin’ undereducated 99% of the time. France, US it’s all bad. WTF am I supposed to do with that. It feels like it pushes me into craziness: being all the time the exception and wanting to be more in the pack –but which one?- while still wanting to be different because it’s a positive value. Often. But not too much? How much then? I’m confused.

Recently in the past few years, it feels too much. Probably because of the depressing state of work and business in France in which I sank myself in for poor benefits but anyway. I can’t take looks people are giving at my family and me when we hang out in public. I can’t look at my parents, sister, in the eyes anymore. I kind of don’t want to see the extended family despite the fact that I miss them a bit but man in the south they don’t like guys like me and I still have painful memories of escaping looks when I was taking pictures with my beautiful deep blue eyed white cousin. I can’t take that shit anymore, having to explain how the fuck I am related to him her or them.

It’s easier to connect with friends because the relationship“doesn’t have to be”. No question asked. It’s easier with women because they deeply know even if they say that they don’t, what discrimination and living in a world that looks ok but is totally fucked up are. It’s easier with people who happened to have a not so conventional personal life. But even in these cases, I’m  dealing with my quite unique paradigm which draws me away from everyone.

I guess that’s why I appreciate so much to be alone, to be myself by myself. I worked on that, how to be happy alone since forever. I’m good at it now, thanks to OCPD tendencies, music and games. Oh and the internet.

And that’s also why I love so much improvisation: a set of rules and total freedom around it. No judgment, no why, it’s on the fly. Can’t stop won’t stop. It’s also one of the rare, universally appreciated skill.

That’s what I always did. And that’s probably what I’ll always do.

Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one’s immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or new ways to act.

It’s maybe because my not-so-private life is shacking or because there are too much networks to follow at the same time but I feel that all these services offered for free in exchange of scanning our lives are going to witness a slow down in registration. So much privacy issues. But yes, I just signed up for Quora. <sigh>

A lot of services get me with stats. From views to plays to followers, of course it’s addicting. But sometimes it just feels so useless. The real value of networks is what I get from people and what I share. It will never change.

It’s amazing how a blog, on a server you rent, feels so much more cozy and at home than Facebook despite the fact that both are equally public. Except that Facebook technically does own what I share where on my blog, search engines give access to it and that’s it.

So even if this is kind of true, I guess I will do it over and over. Blogging freely.

PS: the import closed all the comments, sorry. Also, you might need to update your rss with the same address as before, it has to be done, sorry for the inconvenience. The feed address: http://har0ld.com/playground/feed

The kind of day you never forget.

Of course we were late for the ceremony. Searching for parking when people were entering the church. Being at the door away from the family and the coffin felt so painful. I am part of this family too, I should be there. I close my eyes and try to get the anxiety away, listening to the church dude. “He’s been living here for 41 years” 10 years later I was a baby in his life. “He was involved in different local organizations”. I can see him play petanque, getting ready to go hunting or fishing, his perfectly organized workshop. “He was in pain, which reminds us of Jesus on the cross”.

What the fuck is that. I forgot about that disgustingly lame behavior. Fucking church  you ruined it I fucking hate you.

Then I am not listening anymore, so angry (and then you ask money huh? I hate you church). Before the incense thing someone from the family sees me and gets me a place with everybody in front. Bursting in tears seeing her and others, I feel so embarrassed. After all I am the only black man in this all white crowded church. But one of the closest person of the dead. It’s kind of overwhelming.

We all follow the coffin outside. I say hello to everyone, some I had never seen again since being in my “current” family 25 years ago. My dad is chatting a little bit with her but he’s keeping it simple. After all he barely knows more than my foster parents which is a number reduced to one now.

We’re the first at the house. She arrives, I think she looks amazingly kind and pure. Exhausted too. Quickly everybody is here in the living room, starting to put on the buffet on the table. Smiles, tears, everybody is here and it’s beautiful and warm. But it’s also unbearably awkward with my dad, the stranger to whom no one talks to almost. He’s in the corner, sitting down with a plate I made for him and as pretty much all day, I can’t look in his eyes at all. I can sense that everybody is like “keep the bad language down, there’s Harold’s dad listening what would he think then huh?”. I feel bad for him. I feel bad too.

I just try to get to chat a bit with everybody, following cigarette breaks outside, getting back for more coffee to fight the jet lag and the cold thick fog of the afternoon. As much fog outside and inside my head.

It’s 2pm, the family leaves for the crematory later and while I would love to join, we have some road to hit before the Parisian traffic. It’s like I’m staying 5 minutes saying we’re leaving and doing nothing, just enjoying to have them all around me. I feel so lucky and proud. They say they put a picture of me in the coffin too. Humanity at its roots. For what it’s worth…

I think the hardest part is to stretch out my mind in order to include everyone I love. So many different worlds, so many differences, so many unique connections when in some ways, I’d like to be in a “normal“ situation with “normal” connections.

What “normal” is, what family, love, friends are. Sometimes I don’t fucking know. I just freeze.

What a crazy year.

It feels even more crazy by standing here, between Christmas and New Year’s Eve in underwear in sunny Los Angeles when I always been calling names the lack of sky in Paris and the fucking cold weather.

I’ve been busy transferring at last this blog to a WordPress engine on a new server. Nothing should change for you but I’ll let you know if it does.

–insert paragraph about how it’s pretty complicated to move 1,000 posts from Windows Server to Apache and how I did it all by myself with the help of the interweb-

Also these Steam sales are insanely satisfying. I hope Valve will release the numbers because they must be the best ever.

But back to these crazy twelve months. I think I got enough emotions and ideas to create and build stuff for the next decade.

Peace out, reader. And have an outstanding next year.