 My husband wrote this for Foreign Languages Forum few years ago. ;-)
A Simple and Logical Explanation of Why France is Definitely a Part of Russian Empire (As is Everything Else)
France is a great country. The rest of this world is forever in debt due to France with 19% monthly interest, because France gave this world a Civilization. A Civilization was invented, actually, in Italy, and lately the French borrowed it from America and Russia, but you see, they gave it to the world. There cannot be any argument about it. For this simple reason everything French is greater than anything non-French, and everybody French is greater than everybody else. Texans disagree, but again, Texans don't ever go to France, because in order to go to France Texans have to cross Louisiana, and those Texans who agree that everything French is the greatest, remain in New Orleans, while those who disagree get killed there by Cajun mafia, and their rotting corpses float in those infamous swamp mausoleums. For a Siberian, I am relatively civilized: I have seen some of France. I am a sophisticated Siberian American. A loan officer in my local bank is quite familiar with my knowledge of Paris restaurants. In one of those restaurants, so expensive I am afraid to name it, there were three waiters serving me alone. The food looked very beautiful but was hardly edible. The main entree was a raw beef kidney. They told me it was Cuisine Moderne. But I know for sure it was a raw beef kidney, I ate one before in Siberia. Their sweet wine (Chateau d'Yqsomething) was OK, though I prefer Greek Maurodaphne. Like all of us Russians, I tried to tell the truth outright, explaining to the closest of my waiters that this was the first time in my life I wore a tie, not counting that unfortunate circumstance in Afghanistan when my Muslim friends tried to hang me, but this waiter wouldn't believe me, and, when I told him about Afghanistan, actually became pale in his face, and stopped talking to me completely. I thought they would at least talk to me for the $600 I left there, especially since I don't like raw beef kidneys, but they were so much greater than I, being French and all, that I shut up, and finished my dinner in silence. I've read "And God Created the French". I know why Jambon de Bayonne is the only appellation-controlled porker (because of the Basque terrorists' clout, that's why). The French eat cheese instead of dessert. I am also civilized, and I like their cheese very much, and their desserts too, so I always order both. I don't understand why those waiters are always upset about it: hey, everybody's taste is different; you like cheese for dessert, and I like cheese _and_ dessert, what's the big deal? Chateauneuf du Pape 1988 is excellent but many French wines are quite mediocre. People buy and drink them only because these wines are French, to pay their debt for being given a Civilization. I drove a car through Avignon, Arles, and Nimes, and survived (I survived, not the car). The French use roundabouts instead of street lights, but they are always out of order because I have never seen a roundabout lighting up red or green, or even flashing yellow. That's why everybody in France drives everybody crazy, going around one and the same thing many times, while looking for a way out. They call it existentialism, and it was invented in France by a Little Prince who flew his plane into Sahara occupied by Germans, and there became irreversibly post-existentialist. I am the only person on Earth who managed to enter the Fauchon tea room, and to actually drink a very expensive tea there, sitting amidst a fashionable crowd, with an unzipped flyer. The waiter blushed and mumbled. He tried to make jokes about it, probably, to attract my attention to the fact, which was, apparently, uncomfortable to him, but his Russian was too bad, and I only smiled, and continued to drink my tea, and to taste their excellent sherbets, being absolutely, imperturbably comfortable. I zipped up my pants only in the St.-Madeleine's church, where everybody around me spoke Russian. Russians always cut right through to the bottom of things, rudely but philosophically. They told me my flyer was unzipped. Uncivilized country bumpkins. I can find Venus de Milo, Nice de Samothrace or somebody shaped and dressed very much like them, in two minutes after being blindfolded under the Glass Pyramid, which should be moved to Quebec where it originated, and shoved up the architect's who designed it, glass, metal rods, and all. There are beautiful women in France, this is true, but they are very, very expensive, more expensive than a dinner for two in Tour d'Argent (a raw beef kidney was in the other place, and I disclaim and waive everything, anyway). They don't let you smoke in Louvre, no matter how many times you come there: they recognize you, yes, and smile, and nod, and already start to follow you, because they suspect that you are an art thief (why else a person would come to Louvre ten times?), but they don't give you any slack: you cannot smoke in Louvre, anywhere, period. Civilization. I know what Balsac said about Rabelais, and what Rabelais said about Mitterand collaborating with Sainte-Yorre. I spent many weeks and many thousands of dollars zigzagging through Pays-Basques, Languedoc, Pyrenees, Provence, and Hautes-Alpes. In all these places people told me, in French, that theirs is a special, separate country, not really France, that France is something different, alien and unwelcome, out there in the rainy North, beyond Lyon. Breathtakingly beautiful country for American lawyers, fantastic food and wines for Japanese executives. The fast-food stops on the French highways are to MacDonalds' what honeymoon night 's supper of a billionaire on a Caribbean beach is to the last convulsions of a mass murderer being french-fried in electrical chair. An average bed in an average French hotel invariably breaks under an average American couple trying to do it, for the sake of authenticity, French style. Americans eat at least ten times more, and move ten times less, while French talk ten times more, but only to their cell phones: they don't like talking to humans, because humans are mostly French, and they talk back, while cell phones never talk back, they just beep or play gaudy music in the most inconvenient places at most inconvenient times. In France, if you are a foreigner, even a cop insults you with politeness and grace of a king in absolutely incomprehensible local patois while pounding the face of some poor bastard who just had a misfortune to say something wrong using the same patois (you will never know what is wrong and what is right in France, because you don't need to know, France is for your eyes only). American cops don't beat up the detained in public, they rape them with broomsticks in private. France, actually, is only a province of Russia, since Cossacks entered Paris in 1815, after beating like a baby their much touted Buonaparte, a Corsican terrorist who started his carrier by blowing up a seafood restaurant in Ajaccio, and blaming it on the prefect of the Paris police whose favorite entertainment was drowning Arabs in the Seine. Right in the center of Paris, in front of all their presidential and governmental palaces, is the bridge built by our Russian tsar, Alexander, to remind the French who is really in charge there. French try to fool themselves and everybody else by turning their Russian flag 90 degrees and inside out, but it's a Russian flag anyway. We Russians were and are the first in the world in everything, from ballet to ice hockey. Moreover, baseball is a Russian game brought to Californian Spanish monks from Alaska, where the children of Russian fur traders played it with Native Americans who are really from Siberia. That is, first Americans were Siberian Americans, like me, that is, Russians. That is, North America as a whole belongs to Russia, not to mention Alaska which was swindled away from us! In France, in Europe, Russians are everywhere, Russian language sounds from every corner, Russian missiles can fly down your chimney. Russia is around the globe, world belongs to Russia. The sun never rises over Russian Empire.
To be continued, may be. - Alexander Feht
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