samedi 11 juin 2011

J'ai retoqué Tocqueville

May 18, 2004

Hullo, Thar,

This is Chief Inspector Clouzeau, of the French Sureté.

Your December letter was such a surprise that it has been taking six months to me to start answering it. Obviously, Rudy, working in a library has turned you into a writer. Quite fortunate you have not taken a bartender's job.

I hope I will see you in Paris one of these days. I just wonder what you are waiting for to spend some time and money in France or Italy -avoid England, the Brits are terrible- instead of staying in, excuse me, Bush country. One of my fantasms these days is to see Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld getting …, see what I mean, by a bunch of dirty long-bearded and sweating Arabs. It sure would do them good. I understand alas America has fallen under the domination of the most incredibly stupid, conservative, harmful and dishonest bigots, liars, moneymakers and morons one has ever seen in history since late Huey Long and Joseph McCarthy. Compared to them, Nixon was a saint. You gotta get back to Lyndon Johnson to find equivalent crap.

Of course, Clinton was a liar too, but to my knowledge he never killed anybody, and obviously he lied only to preserve Monica's honor and Hillary's sensitivity, so from my standpoint there was absolutely no harm. We French never get upset with that sort of things. We just consider a politician who does not cheat on his wife a homosexual, which is something our current President certainly cannot be suspected of, as he was long used to be called : "Ten minutes, shower included". And late President Mitterrand, who had his two wives present for his funeral ceremony, he was just the same.

Oh you know, you should see the girls in Paris streets by now. The idea is to show, well, not everything, but at least more than a half of everything. It has become sort of mandatory to wear such pants and teeshirts that you can see at least two thirds of the bra and half of the string. You can make statistics with the colours, establish a system of quotation, it's a neverending feast for he eyes. Hopefully in a couple of years the dames will go to work with nothing on them except some tiny transparent underwear. It even starts gaining industry. So it will be fun all day long for us poor engineers.

Well, let's talk about me a little bit, as it is my favourite subject. Stability as you know is not the most striking point of my character. So, three years ago I got divorced, not exactly understanding why, and I spent six months drinking and sleeping a lot with my director's secretary. Then I spent another six months all by myself and keeping drinking gallons of beer. And then I stopped drinking. And then Dominique came back, I stayed with her for eight months, and unfortunately I resumed drinking, so she left me and started living with some non smoking and non drinking guy, for a change. Then, last August, we had that terrible heat wave that killed ten thousand people in France, so I said to myself, if you keep drinking beer that much, you gonna Odie. So I quit again. But in January I resumed again. And one Sunday afternoon, I was dead drunk in my favourite bar and suddenly Dominique came in and told me she had left the non drinking guy and she did not like to sleep alone. Which was just the same for me. And I said to myself, if you keep drinking, she's gonna leave again. So once again I quit. Right now I live half time with her, rediscovering family life, safe and sober. Our homes are five minutes drive from one another, which is very convenient, and the rest of the time I watch movies instead of contemplating and sipping pints of beer.

Next summer the four of us are gonna spend two weeks in Sicily. I already have been there for one week in October, and I tell you it is one of the most amazing places I have ever seen. Nice people, fine weather, great food, wonderful works of art, cheap prices, you sure wont find that in England. So I'm very happy to go back and show Dominique and my sons the most enjoyable of what I have seen myself.

Also last year, as I was in a traveling mood and I hate Christian celebrations, I have spent the Christmas vacation in Istanbul. I liked it a lot, but far less than Sicily. It is worth going for the sightseeing, which is incredibly beautiful, for the Topkapi Palace, where you can see the most amazing jewels in the world, but apart from that, it is a terribly tiring city. Overcrowded, noisy, bumped sidewalks, dirt. And the godamn Muslims. Six prayers a day, awful wake up calls early as six am, coming from the mosques speakers, and the guys all aligned with their knees and forehead on the carpet. Ready to get …Over here we call that a bicycle garage. So, after a couple of days I stopped counting the mosques. There was one every hundred meters, all the same design, more or less. And in addition to that, I have found Turkish people of very poor education. Lousy peasants. Bums. The only thing funny they have is their money. You have to pay three million turkish pounds for a cup of coffee, can you believe that ? Fortunately, right from the beginning I had found a Greek pub right beneath my hotel, very convenient and cheerful when feeling like drinking liters of Coke at night, and every time I came in I used to say, hey, guys, I'm gonna spend twenty five million dollars in your place tonight. Thanks, Your Majesty, they invariably answered and bent down to the floor.

To get back to Sicily, there is a place in Palermo that certainly is unique in the world, that is the Catacombs. More than eight thousand mummies that welcome you cheerfully, very well preserved, pleasantly smiling with all their teeth, and beautifully dressed, and they make you think of life and death for quite a while. The most emotional is a little girl, two years old, died 1920, but the doctor made it such a way she does not seem dead at all, just asleep, and when you look at her you feel she's gonna wake up in a minute. She made me think of Emilie. She should be 25 next January, but instead of that, March 17, 2005 will be the tenth anniversary of her death, which I have always considered a terrible accident but nothing else. No philosophy, no explanation, no sense. She's gone and that's all. Generally I am quiet, peaceful, far less angry and crazy than during the first years, but I keep missing her bitterly. Children are the only reason we are here for. All the rest is for fun. But I also am very proud of my other daughter, Sabine, who has just succeeded in the written part of the University highest degree in philosophy. So, if she succeeds in the oral part, next year she will start teaching philosophy to some bunches of ignorant and pustulous teenagers, who thanks to her will discover that Schopenhauer never was a soccer player. I also think I will ask her for private lessons, it certainly can be useful in aircraft business.

I am quite proud of my sons as well. Antoine is 17, and as he speaks French fluently, he certainly is gonna get his degree to go to College next year. He plans to follow some scientific studies, the only problem being that he is vey good for all matters except maths and technology. My other son, Quentin, he is 13 and already is highly gifted. He is in a big hurry to get a bit older and have real sex, just like me when I was his age. Also I have started giving him some notions of movies history a couple of years ago, showing him lots of DVD's. And he's becoming real good now. Sometimes I feel like crying with happiness when he says things like : Hey, Dad, that's Robert Ryan here, right ? He played Deke Thornton in Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, remember, with Bill Holden as Pike and Old Ernest Borgnine as Dutch, right ?

And today is May 24 and I dont have finished this letter. That is because we have had a four days weekend, for it was that Thursday when Little Jesus went up the sky, so I did not get much time to use my computer. I have gone to my native village for two days, it's 200 miles south west from here and everytime I go I feel I should have stayed there for my lifetime, with a cheap tobacco butt in the corner of my lips, drinking cheap wine, permanently ill-shaved and dressed like Tom Joad. But generally it doesnt last for long. A couple of hours at most. As a matter of fact, I mainly feel very glad and relieved when I leave. Paris is better than any other place. And country life is no longer for me.

So, my whole family is in the local cemetery now, except my mother, 85 years old, who now lives in a retirement house. Spending one or two hours in there, in this senile atmosphere, is a rather depressing experience. They should organize wheelchairs races, I would suggest, so at least it would keep the ancestors awake for a couple of hours a day, instead of snoring, groaning and even worse. Me I am scared to death at the idea I might have to stay in such a place. The essential thing, some French writer said, is to die when you're in good health.

Hey, you know Michael Moore ? He has just received the Golden Palms in Cannes. Well, even if I dont like him too much, because too fat, too provocative, too approximate in my opinion, I think it's an excellent news. I understand his movie was encountering some difficulties in order to be released in America, but I guess it wont be possible from now on to prevent it.

Movies take a lot of my time. Mainly American and French movies, from 1930 to 1990 more or less, as the rest doesnt interest me too much. I am very conservative with movies. I am not interested in what they do now, these boring and childish computerized movies. I deeply prefer James Stewart or John Ford or Jack Nicholson. I receive in my place 12 TV channels that show movies all day long, so it allows me to watch two or three per day, and more on weekends. And moreover, the original size is respected, no ads and you can choose the language. What a nice country !

Not exactly so nice, as a matter of fact. Lets not talk about the cops, theyre the same everywhere, but let me tell you, our politicians are almost as terrible as yours. They take from the poor and give to the rich and thats all they do. Yesterday I have talked a little bit with the Mayor of my place, Asnières, eighty thousand souls, west of Paris. It's not very difficult to meet him because he spends most of his time in the streets and market places, smiling stupidly and getting pictured with old ladies, children and dogs. He is a young and ambitious man, and his best friend is Nicolas Sarkozy, maybe you've heard of him, who is our current Finance Minister and who is a professional betrayer, and who has one single idea, that is to be our next President in 2007, even if the current one, Jacques Chirac, doesnt like the idea at all and even deeply hates him.

So I was very happy to see him because I was in good mood and I felt like being nice as I usually am, and as he was explaining half a dozen of grandmas how lucky they were to have him as a Mayor, I went to him and said well, I got two things to tell you, first is that the socalled local information periodic newspaper you put in our letterboxes is just Stalinian Bullshit, second is that your friend Sarkozy is the worst politician asshole we have ever seen for fifty years. Well, me I didnt kill six million people, he rather angrily told me (in fact he was wrong, Staline killed forty). And I replied that’s because you just didnt get the means to do it. And he sighed and went away and me too because the grandmas seemed to be willing to kill me. Well, Mayor and me used to be in good terms, but I'm afraid it's over. And now I think it wont be necessary for me to apply for any job at the City Hall anymore. Too bad. I certainly would have been excellent for public relationships.

I had Bob on the phone yesterday. He was just back to Afro because of a pain in his back, he said. I also met Alex in March. Cute as ever. He came along with IwoJima President for some information about the 7X Flight Controls. I was in charge of the hydraulic presentation and the idea was to show as little as possible because highly confidential, probably that's why I was selected. It had to last one hour and a half, so I made it straight one hour and a half. More than that it would have been impossible. But everybody looked happy, except my boss, who told me I had talked too much and not slowly enough for him to understand. Cehap bastard is a Catholic, so I hate his guts.

So now I am absolutely ready to get retired and do nothing but reading, writing and watching movies. I already have started. If everything goes well, it should take place in 2013. Only eight years left. Free, at last, after forty years of talent wasting and aeronautic slavery.

Again, hope to see you and Robin in Paris some time. And all the best to Jon as well.

Friendly yours.

Mike

July 6, 2004,

Well I guess this letter must be on Edgar J Hoover's desk by now and you will hear of it soon. So this time I send it directly to Bob, so he gets in jail too. Hey, you know what can happen to you, a respectable librarian, with that Patriot Act 2 stuff ? Well, you will have to answer positively to any request from the Department of Justice as for the list of books any of your customers may have borrowed since the end of Civil War. Even if its Harry Potter and nothing else. I swear its true. So well, lets take an example. You got a guy, he borrows Hustler Magazine every month because he is too por to buy it. That's his right, no, according to the Fifth Amendment ? And Hustler Magazine is available in your library, I presume ? If not, you should ask the manager. Well, anyway, all you can do in such case is to accept the request, because if you dont, you will be sued. So the poor Larry Flynt supporter soon will be summoned to the Court and if he is lucky he will be only sentenced to put on sign on his doorhouse saying, for example : I am a Hustler Magazine reader and I should be ashamed of it. His wife will leave him and children will spit in his face. And now, just imagine what may happen to someone who would have borrowed let us say, sort of guide like : How to manufacture your own bomb in twelve lessons, or, How to assemble a Scud in half an hour : Guantanamo Bay, direct flight, one way ticket. Not less.

Do you understand now why I aint feel like going to the States anymore ? At least not as long as the bastards will be ruling over it.

En 2010, aux US, j’y suis allé, j’ai beaucoup ai aimé, mais j’ai eu de petits problèmes.

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