Today I killed six people in a lift, one bullet each at point-blank range.
Some said it was a cold-blooded act, others thought it was my first public service of "la rentrée".
Never mind why. If I have to do it again, I'll explain about the five yoghurt pots.
zzz
Since I honestly did avoid all news for a whole week until yesterday, I'm glad to say that now I've caught up, this is not the place to come even for "insider views" gleaned at AFP on events ranging from the sad to the horrific.
If you want a brief, incisive overview of the hostage-taking in Iraq of two French journalists over this country's "headscarf ban" on Muslim girls in state schools, you'll get one from Eleanor, who occasionally works for the Factory and sometimes for NPR, where she made one of several reports on it to mark last week's first school day of la rentrée here (Real audio clip).
I have Eleanor to thank for adding NPR to my shortlist of good media bookmarks.
The Kid's own school year at the lycée of her choice in Versailles got off to an excellent start. That's great news, but it usually comes bitter-sweet: she'll now be seeing much less of her fine young lad and I'll not be seeing her on Saturday mornings any more.
The time nears when I'll have to stop calling her the Kid.
zzz
You have Tony to thank for cuts I've made in Saturday's account of my summer; he's the friend who added a firm "It's a bit too long" to kind remarks about my first bid at a dialogue of the absurd. Regrettably, I can't yet afford to hire him as "official blog sub".
For instance, I planned to say nothing of la rentrée, but the barbarians seem to have repossessed their city with such brutality this year that I wonder how I survived so many previous Septembers without music firmly plugged into my ears in self-defence.
In the wake of a small Chinese incursion, throughout August I watched the Japanese move into Losserand Street, where the best butcher is now a sushi joint. So is the café just downstairs on the corner diagonally opposite from the one where I watched gang warfare become murder in spring (May 5 entry).
There is yet more sushi a little further up the road.
This is among the surprises for the returnees who have wiped politeness off the streets, pleasure off many faces and agreeable travel out of the Métro in a weekend.
What's a little more alarming is that the handful of local gangsters among an immigrant north African population have already risked a direct territorial confrontation with the Chinese. Some of us witnessed the first spat in a long-doomed restaurant just opposite the Canteen a few weeks back. That place has already changed ownership half a dozen times since I've been there.
Sam tells me there have been several fights since.
Of course, they end with the "Arabs" (who aren't) being physically thrown out. I've already seen enough of how "Chinatown" communities in Paris are run to know that nobody mixes with them and gets away with it. As in many other towns, the police also know that such communities are "self-regulating" and usually leave well alone.
I hope the north Africans will realise this before it's too late.
zzz
Also today, I sought out the view of a bright Russian friend on the latest tragedy in which schoolchildren became the victims (BBC) of the mess left by the disintegration of the Soviet Union. This was in the light of one theory doing the rounds that the hostage-takers could not have got into the Beslan school so heavily armed unless there was complicity as well as disarray in the security forces.
He remarked -- with exaggerated dark humour, it's true -- that the Factory sometimes seems like one of the many huge French companies where lords of misrule and corrupt practices have left a legacy of their own.
Yup. The humour sometimes comes the same colour as good coffee. We may conclude that la rentrée has happened. It's a normal, sunny early September day, warming to the heart.
9:49:20 PM link 
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