Thursday 6 October 2011

French logic

You're economy is on the brink of collapse, your country is being overrun by an unstoppable tide of Muslim immigration, car burnings are a national pastime, you can't even tweak the budget without starting a riot, your pseudocurrency is on the verge of imploding, and your European Empire went from birth to decadence in one step, so what do you do?

Ban ketchup!

2 comments:

Sergej said...

Which reminds me. I need to get a big old bottle. I don't even like the stuff. Just the thought that somewhere, a Frenchman is bristling his mustache and snorting contemptuously about it. Pity they couldn't declare Tabasco Sauce the standard reviled American barbarism. That stuff's good.

eon said...

Wasn't Charles the Bold of Burgundy French, as well?

As James Burke notes in "Connections", Charles was noted for devising elaborate rules for conduct on the battlefield, and then losing the battle. In fact, he apparently never won a single one, but could always could rely on his mercenaries to show up, because he could always pay them- with money borrowed from the Medici Bank.

This might be one explanation for modern-day French "national consciousness"- "It doesn't matter if we lose, as long as the proper forms are observed! (And we can blame somebody else when we come a cropper.)"

cheers

eon