Category: Fourre-tout

“To God I speak Spanish, to women Italian, to men French, and to my horse – German.”
Emperor Charles V

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To my wife I speak (bad) Russian, to my cat German and to my pétanque colleagues I speak body language and Petanlingo, a mixture of colorful French words and their approximate English equivalent.

Because you cannot possibly play pétanque in America without using that language.
The game having its roots in France employs words and images that are often difficult to translate and you have therefore to use the original words to make yourself clearly understood.

For instance, the word “carreau” (tile/pane/window) has no real equivalent in English and it would be ludicrous to use any other word to refer to that feat.

A “biberon” (a nursing bottle) is when the boule hugs or is “nursing” the cochonnet.
Again, it would be ridiculous to use any other English word to describe this action.

Kissing Fanny by the way is not a reward but a humiliation for the players who lost a game without scoring a single point. Originally, the losers had to kiss the buttocks of a waitress named Fanny.
But “Kissing Fanny” in my opinion sounds much classier than “kiss my ass”.

I like the expression “Tirer aux papillons” (shooting butterflies) meaning poor, erratic shooting.

So during a game, you have to constantly switch from French to English and vice-versa to communicate with your partners.
That’s why anybody playing petanque in America needs to speak Petanlingo.

It is also why I urge parents to send their kids to play pétanque instead of playing football.
On a pétanque field, your kid will improve his/her French vocabulary, will learn how to count and won’t get physically hurt. Unlike football, only his self-esteem could take a beating, but it is seldom permanent.

So, to be a respected player in America you must learn Petanlingo. No ifs or buts.

Alain

PS: For a modest fee, I will teach you all the intricacies of Petanlingo.

“Prescription: A physician’s guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.”
Ambrose Bierce

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Like millions of Americans, I am a pill popper, a junkie, a stoner, a drug abuser.
Every day, under doctor’s orders, I generously contribute to Big Pharma’s retirement fund.

Because no matter what, some day your doctor will sharpen his pencil and prescribe some little blue, pink, green or whatever color pills to cure what is bothering you. It might possibly alleviate (not cure) your problem.

In the evening I watch my fair share of TV and I am subjected daily to a slew of pill commercials bearing very peculiar names. As a matter of fact, I always wondered where and how they get these names.
From another planet?

But (under activists’ pressure) Big Pharma must now warn you that their multicolor offerings might have some undesirable side effects. You might get gastrointestinal problems, blurred vision, become impotent or even worse.
Not a problem. If the green pills don’t work, your doctor will prescribe pink pills or even horse pills.
Doctors have thousands of them in their arsenal and every day they get more ammo.

“If all the medicine in the world where thrown into the sea, It would be bad for the fish and good for humanity.”
O.W. Holmes (Prof. of medicine, Harvard University)

I believe that and that’s why I have been fighting a protracted war with my doctor. Each time I see him, I ask him “is this particular drug really necessary?”
My old Pakistani quack would say, “you take it or you die”. I fired him after a few months. Yes, you can do that and you definitely should. If your doctor does not listen to you or has second-rate bedside manners, give him the boot.

To his credit, my relatively new doctor listens to me.
Let’s try to gradually decrease the dosage he says. Good man.

My ultimate goal is to entirely get rid of all medications through exercise, meditation, goat milk baths and a weekly regimen of oysters and Champagne.
It might sound peculiar, but Charlie Sheen (I have a different constitution. I have a different brain; I have a different heart; I got tiger blood, man) swears by it.

You cannot argue with a guy like that.

Get rid of those freaking pills! They are costly and might be entirely unnecessary.

Alain

 

I am sick and tired of hearing about the Super Bowl but I am even sicker of hearing about an odd duck named Donald.

Being a fairly unsophisticated political bumpkin and desirous to further my education I checked Wikipedia for further details about Donald Duck.

Here is what I found:

“Donald is most famous for his semi-intelligible speech and his mischievous and temperamental personality.

His anger is a great cause of suffering in his life. On multiple occasions, it has caused him to get in over his head and lose competitions.

There are times when he fights to keep his temper, and he sometimes succeeds in doing so temporarily, but he always returns to his normal angry self in the end.

Donald is also a bit of a show-off. He likes to brag, especially about how skilled he is at something.”

 Blimey! Is this the character running for president? No?
Is there another Donald?

Excuse my French, but the above description fitted mister Trump so well that I thought they were really talking about him.

Wanting to know a little more about mister Trump I went back to the Internet and I found that this is what the man said while campaigning for the highest office in the land:

• “I’m the most successful person to ever run for the presidency, by far”
• “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
• “I will build a great wall — and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me —and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”
• “One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace. Good people don’t go into government.”
• “The only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear “yamaka”s every day.”
• “Hillary Clinton was the worst Secretary of State in the history of the United States. There’s never been a Secretary of State so bad as Hillary. The world blew up around us. We lost everything, including all relationships. There wasn’t one good thing that came out of that administration or her being Secretary of State.”
• “You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”

After carefully reviewing his background and profanity laden tirades, I reluctantly (not really) came to the conclusion that Donald Trump is egotistic, bombastic, crude, racist, sexist, prejudiced.
Am I leaving something out?

And this is the man who is going to “Make America great again”. I don’t think so.

I cannot help thinking that this guy reminds of Benito. Do you remember him? Il Duce. “Il Duce ha sempre ragione” (The Duce is always right).
This fellow also wanted to make Italy great again. If I remember correctly, it did not work too well for him.

But like all bullies, Donald has a tongue of steel and feet of clay.
I predict that by mid-summer this duck will stop quacking and return to live in splendid isolation in his golden pond.

Alain