Today is Bastille Day in France.

Yes, July 14 has rolled around once again. [Big deal,  it predictably rolls around every year, just like my birthday does - sigh]. Ah, Bastille Day!  It commemorates that world renown uprising of the wretched of the earth against an effette, arrogant, uncaring, parasitic, indolent cabal of monarcharists, nobility, and the Church, all selfishly eating cake at Versailles while the French peasantry and the urban mases starved for want of bread.  A day of political tectonic plate shifting, to be sure, rivaled only by our own beloved July 4th.  But without the gaudy pyrotechnics.

So, i'm wondering, do any of the contributors to this here fine forum have any plans to do anything special to mark this event?  Yes, I know, doing anything to express approbation for the French is a real hard sell in the USA.  They are difficult at times, especially when they're conscious.  They are not humble.  They are positively insufferable and preternaturally arrogant, and sometimes it's the other way around. And can we forget their pretentiousness to the nth power?  I'm told many of them at heart are sharp-dealing, beedy-eyed, tight-fisted peasants.  No doubt a severe generalization, but i've known a few who fit that discription to a T.  They shamelessly revel in all manner of ill fortune to America's political and economic interests. But in the spirit of letting bygones be bygones, at least for today, I think it would be a nice gesture if Americans would do some real simple stuff to show their appreciation for, and sense of oneness with, our Gallic brethren, despite the fact that the default emotional response to the French is to want to catch them in a hammerlock and choke the breath out of them until they pass out.

So, here's some relatively easy and simple things we can do to shown respect for France, if not the French themselves, on this most important of its national holidays :

1. eat a lot of garlic

2. drink a lot of wine

3. eat some French vanilla ice cream

4. chain smoke those god-awful, fatally odiferous French cigarettes

5. wear a stupid looking beret

6. idly lounge around an outdoor cafe for hours at a time, wearing a stupid beret, smoking those awful French cigarettes, sipping vile coffee, and pretending to read "Le Figaro"


7. substitute a croissant today for your usual bagel, doughnut, cupcake, brownie, or crueller on your coffe breaks

8. ask that your hero/hoagie/sub be made with a baguette instead of that really bad imitation Italian bread you are usually served

9. fantasize about Bridgett Bardot [circa 1959]

10. express interess in a Jerry Lewis film retrospective

11. learn to say 'I surrender" in German [and looking to the future, in Arabic?]

12. fantasize about Carl Bruni, the First Lady of France

13. search the web for explicit images of Ms. Bruni prior to her Fisrtst Lady status

14. fantasize about Letecsia Casta

15. peruse the works of the Marquis de Sade [according to legend, he was one of the 7 prisoners in The Bastille when it was stormed]

16. ponder the political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau [on second thought, don't.  Let's keep it simple]

17. contemplate how the slogan "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite"" stacks up against the best of America's political ideals.  For example "We the people..." or "...all men are created equal"  or ...inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

18. search the TER reviews for French providers




-- Modified on 7/14/2008 12:17:19 PM

-- Modified on 7/14/2008 12:29:02 PM

sorry, foreign language software is definitely getting uninstalled ASAP!

... so just skipping a bath and deodorant will have to do.  C'est la vie

Le peuple de la France est des singes de reddition. Ainsi nous buvons le vin et le rire au sujet de notre viande de singe.

I went from English to French and then back to English and ??????

Liberté, égalité, fraternités d'étable et accès aux femelles disposées avec le vagin juteux humide. Oui, that' ; s la quelle Amérique a besoin.

Je pense aux souris quand j'entends parler des Français.

could'nt help your self with #11, could ya?

it is rare indeed when i refrain from going for the cheapest laugh possible.  that's totally not how my politics usually run [lol].

BTW, BILLKILE, TYVM for actually getting that far.  you're probably the only one.

-- Modified on 7/14/2008 6:06:27 PM

War for Independence.  Britain may have lost it’s American empire, in part because the threat from France demanded the Royal Navy’s priority; in the Napoleonic Wars. Britain needed nearly ten years for the direct threat of invasion to be destroyed at Trafalgar and another ten for Napoleon to be defeated – during which time Britain was never able to raise and sustain an army big enough to open more than a secondary front. With Britain fighting Napoleon, the United States of America was allowed to experiment with this theory of a representative Republic.

In another front, Napoleon shifted the paradigm of military forces and operations into the interstate industrial warfare we know today.  In my opinion, Napoleon's genius was innovating an invention, General Washington initiated in the American War for Independence. The sustaining idea from this period of history was the birth of the citizen soldier.  In Napoleon’s innovation no longer were serfs in uniform fighting for the King; these were French patriots fighting for the glory of France. Indeed on your point number 17, the theory may be advanced that the idea of the citizen had a duty to the state to serve as a soldier was a product of “liberte, egalite and fraternite” that underpinned the French Revolution.

Regardless of point #11, in which I agree, this new model of manpower, the national soldier allowed the introduction of the “levee en masse” i.e. mass consciptions, and allowed for subsequent excursions to Italy, Espana, Egypt, et al and new strategies of warfare to numerous to discuss in this thread.

In the relm of politics even today, nothing strikes more fear in a politician than the two words "food shortage". The image of the guillotine had a profound effect. Think about it, are there food shortages where a representative Republic exists?

Long live the Revolution.


-- Modified on 7/14/2008 9:01:11 PM