ギュギュっと

… of this blog.

I’m starting a new one. idk I felt like having a brand new fresh start for this brand new fresh year (?).

… of this blog.

I’m starting a new one. idk I felt like having a brand new fresh start for this brand new fresh year (?).

Arrivée en 2011 à « Charlie Hebdo », la journaliste Zineb El Rhazoui raconte la vie de la rédaction, avant, pendant et après l’attentat.

Here’s an article about Charlie Hebdo, written by one of its “middle-aged white racist man” journalists, named Zineb El Rhazoui. I’m translating it for you non-french speakers :

“At Charlie, we sometimes told our love for each other. Just like that, to sign a professional e-mail, after the readying of the paper, we told our collegues ‘I Love you’. Not very serious, but true. Cruelly true today.

Few exchanges were serious at Charlie, not even those of the works council, supposedly made to defend the interests of the employees against the employers, personified by Charb, namely the urgent replacement of the damned, always out of order coffee maker. First to arrive, last to leave, and always the most prompt to cut his salary so Charlie could live, he didn’t want to hear about it because he prefered tea.

Mustapha is dead. He had just acquired French citizenship a few weeks before. With his Kabyle accent and rolling his r’s, he was always the one correcting our french. On mondays, days of wrapping up, he only left his desk to lean over the shoulder of a journalist and ask in a hushed voice : ‘What did you mean exactly ?’. Some difficulty with language ? Mustapha always knew the grammar rule or the slight difference of a synonym. That wednesday, Mustapha came to fix the last special issue. It cost him his life.

Simon survived. It was a gift of destiny in this never-ending wednesday, because it was a close call for our “little” webmaster. In a deep coma, with a pierced lung -just as he had managed to stop smoking-, the spinal cord affected, he will slowly come back to life, but he will. We are hoping. Distinguished expert on aluminium and Corsican police, Simon had all it takes to incorporate the team : a rock solid sense of humor, and all the tact, patience and love to face the almost daily shit storms on social networking. The polite and funny answers to death threats, the Facebook status with million likes, it was him.

That’s how it was at Charlie, some come from aluminium, others are railway workers, emergency workers, legal experts, therapists, economists… But all came on wednesday ‘to see what to do in the next issue’. This information, unfortunately, the terrorists had it.

And there’s all the others, friends of the editorial board, who came by from time to time. A homeless man with an inexpressible look, a former convict who corresponded with Charb during his detention, dropouts and all kinds of entertainers. They were part of Charlie too. The mess that was our headquarters was a prerequisite for anybody who landed in France without a dime, bloggers or activists escaping a war or a death sentence. They all came to tell their story, Tignous put it in drawings, then, behind the scenes, we thought of ways to help them. “I’ll see if we can find them political asylum and a job”, Charb told me one day about a couple of Tunisians activists. The two fugitives, without papers, were freezed to notice the gun of Franck, the officer protecting Charb, a regular of our premises. When they understood the context of permanent threat in which we were working, they felt in friendly territory. Franck died wednesday too, “the gun in hand, trying to defend the team”, as his superior officer told me.

Tragically funny

I entered in Charlie by my engagement, not because of my journalist resumé or a well-written cover letter. In 2011, during the Arab Spring, Sylvie, a former board member, asked me to tell her my Moroccan battles. Two days later, I was having lunch with Charb and Riss, who proposed me to join the wednesday meetings. In order to hire me, Luz offered to lower his salary, so ‘it would hold in the budget’. Since then, Riss was in the habit of asking me : ‘what angers you the most this week ?’ to see what I have to write. That’s what Charlie is, an irritated newspaper that never took itself seriously. Riss surived. Harmed, but « he can still move his finger », confirmed a colleague. Luz is alive too, but he didn’t feel like he could draw, until he sent us the cover of the next issue, tragically funny. It’s the first time Charlie has its cover as soon as a thursday evening. Charlie never was a paper like any other, and ineluctably it will never be so.

Our team was slaughtered with kalashnikovs, because we dared making a mockery of Islam. Before our meeting room, a place used to jokes and laughter with walls decorated with drawings, was turned into a bloodbath, we had been threatened to be killed a thousand of times. Everybody knew, but we were still hated, shouted down. It took twelve bodies for Charlie to be finally understood. With Wolinski, Honoré and Cabu, three symbols of French culture are gone. As for Bernard Maris and Elsa Cayat, therapist and columnist, they never drew anyone and never took care of Muhammad or the Pope.

As for Charb, he made of Charlie his priesthood and his cross, he lived only so the paper could live. Charb desperately knocked on all doors, up to François Hollande, to draw attention at the inexorable disappearance of Charlie by financial suffocation. ‘I feel like I’m working the streets’, he told me a month ago as we were having lunch. Charb lived in dread of seeing the journal die and didn’t care about his own death. He was under police protection since 2012.

Jonghyun Shares Story Behind Running into Hollywood Actor Jack Black at the Airport

“It happened at an airport—not even Incheon International Airport, but Gimpo Airport. A foreigner who was wearing sunglasses approached me and asked ‘Are you a rock star?’ It seemed like he was very curious, so I was having a conversation with him to use the opportunity as a way to make SHINee known, when he told me that he was also a rock star. He was wearing sunglasses so I still didn’t know [who he was].”

“Who would think that they would meet Jack Black at Gimpo Airport and not even Incheon Airport? So I asked him ‘What’s your name?’ He told me [his name is] Jack Black as he took off his sunglasses. I said ‘Are you Jack?!’ and at that moment, all of the [SHINee] members ran over [to us].”

Jonghyun also left a message for the Hollywood actor, saying “If you come to Korea again, please use SNS [to make it known]!”

VAPING APE TOKYO( *｀ω´)今日は風が強いなあ。。 #VAPE