A Murky Affair

No, this post is not about the regrettable events in New York this past weekend, involving the director of the International Monetary Fund and French presidential hopeful, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. L'Affaire DSK has sparked such a media circus here in Paris that I am already heartily sick of it and, anyway, commenting on a matter about which there has already been far too much speculation* seems superfluous and wrong.

There is another recent affair about which I feel free to speculate, as it has, unfortunately, direct repercussions on my financial status. I am referring, of course, to the sad sequence of events that took place in my newly redecorated San Francisco apartment a week ago Monday morning. The facts as we know them:

• At approximately 9:45 am Brad uses the toilet in the master bathroom (upstairs).


• Brad goes downstairs, starts a load of laundry, and begins to read in the living room, while the laundry is underway.


• At approximately 10:15 am, hearing a noise upstairs, Brad goes up to investigate, to find the upstairs toilet leaking, and the bathroom already flooded.


• Water to the apartment is cut off and rescue operations begin. Fortunately, damage is very limited, though rescue operations are still ongoing, due to the threat of the dreaded BLACK MOLD.

What could have caused this unfortunate and mysterious near-catastrophe. Could it be



Boris?????

We may never know for sure. Personally, I favor the "shit happens" explanation, and am just relieved that the leak was detected before things really got out of hand.

Still, one wishes this kind of thing didn't happen. Poor Brad was beside himself - he had been so pleased about the way the repainting and recarpeting turned out - and now there is a whole lot of extra work to be done.

*: Though I promised not to comment, I do find it remarkable that fully 58% of French people surveyed yesterday subscribe to the notion that some kind of conspiracy was afoot, in which DSK was trapped by his political enemies. The most commonly held belief appears to be that his opponents deliberately introduced an attractive young woman into his room while he was naked in the shower, thereby triggering his irresistible animal lust. The truly bizarre aspect is that this "explanation" is presented as an argument for diminished culpability, assuming that he was indeed guilty of sexual misconduct/attempted rape, an astonishing perversion of logic that seems to me to be uniquely French. I will make no further comment on the matter except to remark that we have discussed nothing else in class for three days now, to the point that everyone is heartily sick of the subject. Even the Queen's visit to Ireland would be a welcome alternative at this stage.