Living in France, le blog

Socialist President François Hollande's attempt to follow up on his campaign promise to legalize marriage for same-sex couples has met surprisingly boisterous opposition. Who knew that the land of Voltaire, the birthplace of the Republican ideal and the first European country to reject the authority of any church could be so reactionary? 

I'm in this picture. 100 clams to anyone who can find me.

So you get out of a business meeting in which your new colleague, a smarmy young lad with a freshly minted MBA and an Armani suit that he probably bought on credit, has just ingratiated himself to your boss while treating you like the butler.

What do you say to your buddies over lunch?

"That new guy sure thinks he's hot shit": nope, too Road House.

 "He must think his shit doesn't stink": not clever, and a little gross for table talk.

"That guy thinks he's the bee's knees": c'mon, you're not 12.

"Does he think he's the cat's pajamas or what?": Say that with a straight face and get ready to be hazed.

It's all just so boring and unoriginal. 

If you were speaking French, however, you could lay this one on him:

"Il pète plus haut que son cul, ce type."

Quite literally, "he farts higher than his asshole, this guy."

How brilliant is that?

What's more, in a French context it's not nearly as vulgar as we uptight Americans might be inclined to think: in fact, the phrase appeared in the title of a 2008 blog post published by mainstream left-center news outlet Libération...in reference, incidentally, to Barak Obama. 

(While I don't really know what to make of that, the author also refers to President Dubya as Bush le Très Petit, which makes him OK in my book.)

Historically speaking, it seems that this elegant turn of phrase has been around awhile: most phrase dictionaries suggest that the expression dates to at least the era of Louis XIV, with different variants reflecting changing linguistic norms and, of course, differing degrees of acceptable vulgarity. Some sources deliciously suggest that the phrase is often followed by "et se faire un trou dans le dos," which adds the idea of creating an additional orifice somewhere upon ones back for expelling intestinal gas in a more dignified manner.

I've not yet heard anybody say that, but I will be listening. 

France is the most visited country on earth (in raw numbers, not per capita—remarkable, non?), and a certain number of those visitors are bound to come by car. Fine: but most of those people are other Europeans who are either intimately familiar  with (Italians, Greeks...) or at least casually aware of (Germans, Britons...) life in a world where automobile safety and traffic laws are met by the local population with something between tired indifference and a giant middle finger.

In other words, they're used to it.

But what about those of us from the land of giant traffic lanes, cavernous parking spaces, authoritarian traffic police and the belief that our cars are sacrosanct enclaves of freedom and independence? WHAT ABOUT US???

Alas, a second term was not to be: in the aftermath of Sunday's French presidential election, one cannot help but wonder what could have been had the incumbent made an effort to be just a little more likable...and to what extent François Hollande's narrow victory really represents the socialist revolution that his supporters claim it to be.

We're finally there.

Tomorrow, French voters will go to the polls to decide who will be the next Président(e) de la République, ending a rather tiresome and tedious campaign whose most interesting moments played out around the catastrophic, worse-than-Gary-Hart implosion of Dominique Strauss-Kahn last summer. Ho-hum. Anyway, here's how it looks to this expat on the eve of the big vote.

As the great Lyon garbage strike of 2012 reaches its endgame, I thought this would be a nice time for a photographic review of the neighborhood during the past few weeks.

Babies: who knew they could be so profitable cute??