for the love of the penguin

[Peter Whittaker]

At the risk of getting as off-topic as that never-ending irritating
faith thread....

On Thu, 2006-14-12 at 14:39 +0100, Jan Claeys wrote:
> Op donderdag 14-12-2006 om 08:00 uur [tijdzone -0200], schreef Hervé
> Fache:
> > Reminds me of Général de Gaulle saying "Vive le Québec libre" (Long
> > live free Quebec) when Canada was just managing to bring everybody
> > back together. Dangerous humour! 
> 
> I don't know the exact circumstances about de Gaulle's joke(?), but
> sometimes humour is the best way to make a point.   :-)

Was it meant as a joke? We'll never really know, what with the next line
(Vive le Canada francais) having been drowned out by the wildly
enthusiastic cheers of the crowd.

What do the two lines together mean? Your guess is as good as mine, but
I'll bet he was playing the classic Janus politician, trying to please
everyone and failing spectacularly.

Did he laugh? I bet he could have cared less (I won't dare to raise the
subject of the twin parochialisms of the French to their "petit cousin
quebecois" and of Quebec francophones to all other Canadian
francophones....)

En effet, on s'en fou. Qui-est-on? Tout les canadiens et canadiennes qui
ont d'autres choses a faire que de s'enmerder dans cette labyrinthe
byzantienne. Y'en n'a pas beaucoup qui s'y mele, quand y'on pas d'job,
mais faut etre d'la paroise pour comprendre.

Epistemologically yours,

pww