Even More Regrettable Doggerel

A hotel proprietor in Nice
Had a terrible problem with fleas*
He cursed "Zut ! sales puces !
I wish zey'd vamoose.
From my scratching I need a release" !

A young nymphomaniac in Rennes
Was very attracted to mennes.
She said "Try as I might,
I just want, every night,
To do it agennes and agennes" !

The people who live down in Metz
Are disturbingly fond of their petz.
Metz, c'est un trou.
There's just *nothing* to do.
Fun with petz is as good as it getz !

Yes, yes! This kind of thing is inexcusable. I'll stop now.

*: Poetic licence. Get over it, already.

Oh, OK. Just one more.

A sommelier living in Nimes
While asleep gave out terrible scrimes
He said "Swear to Jesus,
It must be the cheeses,
That give me such horrible drimes" !

Au Revoir, PB!

Paddy, seen below with an admirer, left this morning and is safely back in Alexandria.



I miss her already, but will see her again in a month, when I stop over in D.C. on my way back to San Francisco.

I forget whether or not I have mentioned the proximate cause for my return at the end of June. The San Francisco Opera is presenting Wagner's Ring Cycle in June (the full cycle in each of three consecutive weeks) and I have tickets for the final set of performances. Yes, that amounts to something like 16 hours of Wagner in a single week. But, apparently, this is the kind of thing one does in one's golden years. I am already feeling pre-performance anxiety about not being sufficiently prepared, but not to the extent that I am doing anything about it.

But even if it weren't for the operas, I think I would be ready to be home by the end of June. Though I love Paris, 15 weeks away from home is probably long enough.

A Murky Affair

No, this post is not about the regrettable events in New York this past weekend, involving the director of the International Monetary Fund and French presidential hopeful, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. L'Affaire DSK has sparked such a media circus here in Paris that I am already heartily sick of it and, anyway, commenting on a matter about which there has already been far too much speculation* seems superfluous and wrong.

There is another recent affair about which I feel free to speculate, as it has, unfortunately, direct repercussions on my financial status. I am referring, of course, to the sad sequence of events that took place in my newly redecorated San Francisco apartment a week ago Monday morning. The facts as we know them:

• At approximately 9:45 am Brad uses the toilet in the master bathroom (upstairs).


• Brad goes downstairs, starts a load of laundry, and begins to read in the living room, while the laundry is underway.


• At approximately 10:15 am, hearing a noise upstairs, Brad goes up to investigate, to find the upstairs toilet leaking, and the bathroom already flooded.


• Water to the apartment is cut off and rescue operations begin. Fortunately, damage is very limited, though rescue operations are still ongoing, due to the threat of the dreaded BLACK MOLD.

What could have caused this unfortunate and mysterious near-catastrophe. Could it be



Boris?????

We may never know for sure. Personally, I favor the "shit happens" explanation, and am just relieved that the leak was detected before things really got out of hand.

Still, one wishes this kind of thing didn't happen. Poor Brad was beside himself - he had been so pleased about the way the repainting and recarpeting turned out - and now there is a whole lot of extra work to be done.

*: Though I promised not to comment, I do find it remarkable that fully 58% of French people surveyed yesterday subscribe to the notion that some kind of conspiracy was afoot, in which DSK was trapped by his political enemies. The most commonly held belief appears to be that his opponents deliberately introduced an attractive young woman into his room while he was naked in the shower, thereby triggering his irresistible animal lust. The truly bizarre aspect is that this "explanation" is presented as an argument for diminished culpability, assuming that he was indeed guilty of sexual misconduct/attempted rape, an astonishing perversion of logic that seems to me to be uniquely French. I will make no further comment on the matter except to remark that we have discussed nothing else in class for three days now, to the point that everyone is heartily sick of the subject. Even the Queen's visit to Ireland would be a welcome alternative at this stage.

The Twelfth of Never

When will that happen? How various cultures express impossibility or extreme improbability.

1. When grapes ripen on the willow.


2. When cows fly.


3. When pigs fly.


4. Not in a month of Sundays.


5. When hell freezes over.


6. When chickens have teeth.


7. On Saint Glinglin's Day.


8. When the 7 - 11 closes.


9. In the week with 2/3/4 Thursdays.


10. On Saint Nobody's Day.


11. When the sun rises in the west.


12. When Easter and Whitsun coincide.


13. When the crayfish whistles on the hill.


14. When it snows red snowflakes.


15. When gypsy children stream from the sky.


16. When frogs grow hair.


17. When I see the back of my head.


18. On goalkeeper's day.


19. When the linden tree bears pears.


20. When the linden tree bears pears and the willow wall-flowers.


21. At Easter of the horses and at the wedding of the cows.


22. When donkeys fly.


23. In the year of never and the month of then.


24. At the Greek Kalends.


25. When Easter falls in May.


26. When the crow flies upside-down.


27. In the year of the cuckoo.


28. When the cow coughs.


29. When the cactus grows on my hand.


30. In the birch bark month, on the day of the goat.

Extra credit for the enthusiastic reader: try to figure out the language of origin of each of the numbered expressions. Check back in a week or so for the answers.

If you can't wait, most of the answers are available at this excellent link, from which the majority of the phrases are taken:

Flying Pigs and Toothy Chickens

Geek's Corner (8) : More French Expressions You May Not Learn in School

There are just too many of these to include them all, so I've picked out some of my favorites from the rest of the list. Note that, if you were to attend the ACCORD school of languages in Paris, you would learn these, because I will be making a presentation about them in class tomorrow morning:

Démerden Zie sich
German-like expression for "solve your problem yourself" (literally: "get out of the shit yourself")

Donner sa langue au chat
To give up a riddle (literally: "to give one's tongue to the cat")

Être fagoté comme l'as de pique
To be dressed any old how (literally: "to be dressed like the ace of spades")

Être habillé à la six-quatre-deux
To be dressed any old how (literally: "to be dressed like six-four-two")

Il en a bavé des ronds de chapeau
His eyes nearly popped out of his head (literally: "he dribbled hat circles")

Être comme une poule qui a trouvé un couteau
To be at a complete loss (literally: "To be like a chicken who has found a knife")

Haut comme trois pommes
About a person: small (literally: "tall as three apples")

Il n'y a pas de quoi fouetter un chat
It is nothing to make a fuss about (literally: "It's no reason for whipping a cat")



Il y une couille dans le potage
There is a problem here (literally: "there is a ball (i.e., testicle) in the soup")
[One might reasonably wonder why "couille" is feminine]

Je te vois venir avec tes gros sabots
Now we are finally getting to the point (literally: "I see you coming with your big clogs")
[This is my personal favorite]

Ne pas avoir inventé la poudre
To be a little dumb (literally: "not to have invented gunpowder")

Noyer le poisson
To confuse the issue deliberately (literally: "to drown the fish")




Peigner la girafe
To do something useless (literally: "to comb the giraffe")



Quand les poules auront des dents
Never (literally: "when chickens have teeth")




Tous les 36 du mois
Never (literally: "each 36th day of the month")

Vendre la peau de l'ours avant de l'avoir tué
To count one's chickens before they are hatched (literally: "to sell the bear's skin before killing it")

Many thanks to my friend Bill B., who sent me the entire list in the first place.

Doggerel : The French Cycle (I)

Continuing in the tradition of the Iberian cycle -
Iberian Cycle (I)
Iberian Cycle (II)
Iberian Cycle (III)

If invited to visit Bordeaux
My advice is to get up and geaux
Their luxuriant vines
Make excellent wines
You're a fool if you think of saying "neaux"

A young ballet dancer from Nantes
Was concerned with the fit of his pantes
"They're Toulon and Toulouse
And the belt's just a noose
So I dance like I've antes in my pantes!"

Woody Allen is opening at Cannes
I'm sure there'll be oodles of fannes
Europe loves Woody
I think he's no good - he
's become just a dirty old mannes.

Busy Week

Paddy has been here all week (she leaves on Wednesday morning); in addition, my friend Peter Compton stopped off for two nights on his way back to California from the south of France, where he was attending a cooking class in some luxury chateau or other. So I've been out every night this week, with no end in sight. It's a tough life, but somebody has to do it.

The weather was glorious all week, so mainly we've been amusing ourselves by roaming the city, stopping off at the occasional museum. After hitting the Balzac house and Pere Lachaise last weekend, we went to the Fragonard perfume museum on Monday afternoon. (I went to my classes every morning, but my afternoon attendance this week was fairly spotty)



Paddy and David, in the lobby of her hotel.



Peter and David, at a random sidewalk cafe.



Peter, rocking the unshaven look.

Paddy hit a few museums on her own during the week; yesterday afternoon we went to Shakespeare and Company. This afternoon we set out to go to the Musee Jacquemart Andre, in the very classy 8th arrondissement, but the line to get in was too long, so we had to console ourselves by adjourning to a nearby patisserie. It's a good thing I walk everywhere in Paris, or I'd be fat as a piglet by now.



The definite highlight this week has been all the delicious meals, especially every evening. For instance, on Friday evening, Paddy and Pater and I joined Ellen Gilkerson, a former colleague at Genentech (Ellen and I worked together for 15 years), who now lives in Paris for part of the year, for dinner at an extraordinary restaurant in her neighborhood.



Ellen and David, at dinner on Friday evening, in Ellen's neighborhood.

Then yesterday evening, Paddy and I were invited to dinner at Nancy and Gabriella's home in Belleville. Nancy is a folklorist friend of Paddy; Nancy and Gabriella also know Ellen; the other guest at dinner was a folklorist called Frank Proschan, who comes from a family that is famous as a statistical dynasty - he kept us entertained with anecdotes about his uncle Frank, a statistician who is famous for practically inventing reliability theory. It was a hilarious and wonderful evening, livened by excellent wine, great conversation, and copious amounts of Limoncello that had been made by their upstairs neighbor Rodolfo. Maybe a little too much Limoncello, it turned out this morning. But a tiny hangover seemed like a small price to pay for such a great evening.

All in all, an exhausting week, but a terrific one. Paddy and I had planned to go to Fontainebleau tomorrow, but I suspect we may end up choosing a less ambitious option instead. Possibly one involving some more great French food.

And when Wednesday rolls around, and Paddy has gone, I'll get right back to the gym - that's a promise!