Thanksgiving

“Thanksgiving is an emotional time. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year he’s way too often.”
Johnny Carson

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Every year the press makes a big hullaballoo of the President of the United States pardoning a rather puzzled looking turkey.

Pardoning?
What kind of crime has the turkey committed to benefit from the president’s clemency?
Has he murdered a bunch of people? Has he planted a bomb somewhere? Has he sold military secrets to ISIS?
No sir. That bird was accused of a crime he didn’t commit!

Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

IMG_7414 - Version 2Thanksgiving often reminds me of a cartoon that I saw in a magazine a few years ago.
It shows a chicken talking to a man and saying “Well he may be Colonel Sanders to you but to us, he’s Adolf Eichmann”.
Shouldn’t it be the turkey pardoning the president?

I definitely side with the chicken… And the turkeys.

Every year millions of turkey are slaughtered to celebrate Thanksgiving.
Turkeys shouldn’t be the centerpieces of this holiday.
Thanksgiving was originally a secular shindig to celebrate a successful harvest.
So the centerpieces should be harvest products, shouldn’t it?

I have to admit though that a turkey looks a little stupid… and vainglorious.

As far as I am concerned, when I think turkey, Donald Trump comes to mind.
Plump and garish.

His trophy wife (Slovenian born Melania) looks and sounds infinitely better than the Donald. Besides English, I understand that she is fluent in French, Slovenian, Serbian and Austrian German.
How many languages does the Donald speak? As far as I can tell, he speaks only in tongues.

But enough with turkeys of all sorts.
In a little while, they will just be faint memories.

Personally, I could easily do without turkey. It does not taste that great anyway.
I would happily go vegan or swap pieces of that bird for “escargots” or “cuisses de grenouilles”.

But that’s just me…

“Thanksgiving, man. Nor a good day to be my pants.”
Kevin James.

Happy “Donald Day” you all!

 Alain

Privacy

We now live in very uncertain times, and yesterday’s rules and regulations have become somewhat obsolete to cope with the evil of terrorism.
These rules need to be updated and made more exacting to meet new challenges.

And the curtailing of individual freedom is the price we will have to pay to prevent the reoccurrence of horrible incidents like the Paris carnage.
In our troubled times, the key to survival is adaptation to new realities.
The new realities are that murderous fanatics can strike almost anywhere and everything possible should be done to thwart their plans.

Privacy (the condition of being free from being observed or spied on) is a casualty of this state of affairs.

enigma 3Islamist sociopaths are becoming more sophisticated and are embracing new communication technologies.
They are “going dark”.
They have moved to the latest methods of encrypted transmissions making it difficult for law enforcement agencies to monitor their chatter.

Software companies have been reluctant to provide a “back door” to allow authorities to monitor terrorists chats.
I think that this wrong.

I understand the hesitation of the tech companies to divulge trade secrets, but the safety of many should take precedence over the interest of a few.
In my book, security trumps privacy.

And those individuals who so zealously protect their secrets might become victims of their own intransigence.

We have got to become more conscious of our environment and stop wearing virtual horse “blinkers”; our eyes should not be glued on our smartphones but on the fidgety looking characters sitting next to us.

Like it or not, Big Brother has got to have a way to keep an eye on its wayward flock.

Few people like it, but like cod liver oil it might be good for our health.

Alain

Les emmerdeurs

I just came back from my daily “constitutional”. That’s where I exercise brain and limbs and that’s where (thinking of terrorism) I got the idea for this column.
I hesitated to write it in English and I finally opted to do it in French, because the French are more familiar with this expression.
Not to say, that there are no “emmerdeurs” (pain in the arse) in America -there are plenty- but I might have more fun doing it in French. So here we are:

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Tout d’abord, qu’est-ce qu’un emmerdeur/emmerdeuse ?

Le dictionnaire me dit :

« Personne qui ne cesse d’importuner, d’agacer, de contrarier ceux qui les entourent. »
Oui, c’est à peu près ça.
Et ils sont légions. Il y en a partout. Ils sont dans le commerce, la politique, l’armée, la religion, la médecine et même chez les amis ou dans la famille.

Version 2Etre un emmerdeur « is an equal opportunity occupation» comme diraient les anglo-saxons bien pensants.
On les rencontre dans toutes les couches de la société. Ils peuvent être males, femelles, entre les deux, blancs, noirs, jaunes ou caca-d ‘oie.

Au fait, « On ne devient pas emmerdeur, on nait emmerdeur. » Alain

On reconnaît l’emmerdeur dès la naissance. C’est le môme qui refuse de quitter l’utérus après 15 heures de contractions abdominales.
C’est le gars qui pisse dans le café de la cantine.
C’est le bonhomme qui se gare en double-file dans une rue étroite a sens unique.
C’est la nana qui fait un scandale au guichet parce qu’on lui refuse l’entrée de « razzia sur la chnouf » avec un marmot de six mois.

Est-ce que vous vous reconnaissez ?

Les terroristes sont les rois incontestés des emmerdeurs. Un emmerdeur ordinaire généralement ne verse pas de sang ; il sème seulement la merde.
Un terroriste est un emmerdeur professionnel. Il s’entraîne longtemps à l’avance et comme un vampire, il a un besoin physiologique de sang.

Un emmerdeur est généralement un frustré sexuel. C’est un type mal dans sa peau qui recherche l’attention qu’il pense qu’on lui doit et que l’on ne lui a jamais accordé.
C’est un type qui veut prouver au monde qu’il n’est pas aussi con qu’il en a l’air.
Mais le fait est qu’un emmerdeur quelle que soit l’attention qu’on lui prodigue ne peut pas changer de comportement. C’est dans son ADN.

Même après électrochocs, transplantation cardiaque et agrandissement du pénis un emmerdeur reste un emmerdeur.

Dans le cas des terroristes, comme on dit dans mon quartier, « c’est bien fait pour leurs gueules; qu’ils crèvent la gueule ouverte, abattus (préférablement) par des femmes aux seins nus ».

Alain