September 25, 2007
Pave: Bottom Stories Of Last Week, II
Pave presents news reports of such insipidity, that had you noticed them at all, you'd've forborne your skim.
CECILIA SARKOZY AT FUNERAL OF CELEBRITY EX-HUSBAND
LYON September 16, 2007 (AFP)
Ah. Yes. Well. [Pause.] She was rather expected to show.
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IN FRANCE, FAT MAKES AN ENTRÉE
PARIS September 20, 2007 (LAT) - So it turns out that French women do get fat.French men also. But most troubling to a country that prides itself on an extraordinary approach to life and eating, French children are getting pudgier too.
Olivier Andrault, a food expert with the French Union of Consumers:
If you look at the statistical curve, we're now where the U.S. was in the 1970s. It means if we do nothing, in a few years the French will be as fat as Americans.
The great tragedy here is not that the French are fat, but that they will soon be as fat as Americans! [Plaintive wail.] Oh! The humanity!
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TECKTONIK DANCE CRAZE TAKES PARIS BY STORM
PARIS September 20, 2007 (AFP) - A new homespun urban dance phenomenon has taken hold in Paris and is quickly spreading to the rest of France through Internet videos and word-of-mouth.... Groups of teenagers were overheard chanting "Tecktonik" as dance-offs took place in the street and the evening news bulletins were full of images and testimony from the leaders of this latest craze.
Crazy. [Pause. Another pause.]
Ah. Le génie gauloise -- but is it enough to save France?
PFFT (What is this?): Skim fodder 4½ | Rayonnement français 0
Posted by Damian at September 25, 2007 02:45 PMYes yes. America's capitalistic entrepreneurs do look outside of our borders for more money. McDonalds, Burger King, Wendys, here we come!!
Posted by: Chris at September 26, 2007 01:37 AMChris, the unhappy American, seems to think the French are incapable of making their own choices -- that bad old American capitalism simply imposes itself.
But then Chris, the unhappy American, doesn't actually know how capitalism works, so we can hardly expect him to understand the dynamic of a free market -- that is, a market where customers freely choose among what is on offer.
No. For Chris, the unhappy American, "capitalism" is just a code word for "dark America", a convenient peg to hang his smug loathing of America. This is the same America wherein unhappy Chris resides and enjoys the plenteous fruits of the very "capitalism" he decries.
How, you ask, can we be so sure? Well, because if he is posting here he has unfettered access to the Internet and the hardware at hand to post his pietistical post. The Internet, access, and hardware all compliments of capitalism.
If unhappy Chris wishes to escape the creep of capitalism into his life, we suggest he up sticks and move to, oh, Sudan. There he can write his comments in the sand and dream about something to eat.
DGB
Posted by: Damian at September 26, 2007 02:57 AMOr Damian the tone-deaf American could wake up and smell the sarcasm. It probably would have been easier to click his name and skim his blog than to craft five paragraphs making a jackass of yourself. With, I'll point out, the added bonus of not having made a jackass of yourself.
Posted by: Doug at September 28, 2007 03:36 AMIf we have erred, it is because the hallmark of sarcasm, when done well, is its obvious bite. When the bite is not in evidence, we read the text as written. The comment in question reads very much like something an unhappy critics might post.
Oh, how we wish we had the time to thoroughly research responses like thread nanny Doug Blask. But we don't, so we confine ourselves to answering comments as we understand them.
But Doug Blask has more time than us. For example he had time enough to type some 2,814 words in furtherance of making an ass of himself in this thread. This is world-class ass-making. As ass-making goes our 189-word response is pretty small beer.
We extend the same invitation to Doug Blask that we extend to all self-important thread nannies who find our errors irremissible and too painful to bear: Click away. You will not be missed.
DGB
Posted by: Damian at September 28, 2007 06:35 AM
