Barrie & Viv

October 7, 2010

Barrie & Viv

You know that I like to swim in the Great Lake of words, of language.

I sent you a portion of my birthday menu that may need some clarification.

“French toast” was once known as “German toast”. “Rich man’s” and “Poor man’s” were the only variations. “French dressing” would never be used on either. “French fries” would be overkill if it were served with it. Up until the Great War it was a favorite dish of the British Army. It consists of having thick slices of stale bread dipped in an egg washed and fried a la flapjacks/pancakes. My quick study suggests that there is no connection between “French toast” and “French leave”. Possibly “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” may have been skilled in both. I don’t know.

And to think that this is from a country that changed the name of sauerkraut to Liberty Cabbage during the previous century’s first dustup with the Hun.

Jacques Barzun, as American as anyone has ever been despite having a Gallic sounding name, says that “to know America you must first know baseball”. I just heard an English business commentator use a baseball analogy that didn’t quite make it. He believes, as I do, that while “you may be in error but you may never be in doubt”. He plunged ahead. By the time his business bit was over he sounded like he was using a minor language from one of Jupiter’s smaller moons.

All of the above leads me back to our common language.

Your e-mail to me dated 10/6/10 – that’s October 6th, not June 6th – has left me in a dither.

You say that if you had written any of my notes and they found out about it you would have “either been fined or imprisoned for racial prejudice”.

It was a short 905 years ago that your forebears told a King to shut up, sit down, and sign the God Damn document.

It was a short 361 years ago that you cut the head off one of Amy’s forebears because, inter alia, he had a speech impediment. [For the sake of my children and their children I will not rest until their rightful place in the line of succession is restored. One of my favorite flicks is “Kind Hearts and Coronets”. Also, maybe their father/grandfather could get some rents and royalties or, at the very least, a free hour at the Burlington Arcade]

On my first trip to London my second stop was Speakers’ Corner. Since the main topic was the wonders of the Vegan life style and not how bad my country was/is/shall be I did not join the debate. My opening line would have been stolen from the well known American sage and pundit P.J. O’Rourke. He says, and rather convincingly, that “tofu is whale snot”.

You didn’t invent it and we didn’t perfect it.

26 centuries ago one of those famous DWEMs said, “Free men speak with free tongues”.

I looked back at all my scribblings about Muslims, either Sunni or Shia, Fuzzy Wuzzies, WOGs, and other “lesser breeds”. While I may have been guilty of some offenses to the Gods of Grammar and Syntax I would not have changed a single word.

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the burning of an American flag is a political act and is protected speech under our First Amendment.

If that is our benchmark why do we, preceded by you, have our collective knickers in a knot over some silly ass cartoons about Mohammed shagging sheep or whether or not it is acceptable to piss on a burning Koran to save it? [I had an uncle who told me that piss was an acceptable way to unfreeze a frozen .50 caliber machine gun in WW2.]

I shall continue to push the edge the edge of the envelope as much as I can in my country. Please pass this on to any like minded friends. Be sure to include my address, both electronic and the old fashioned way.

Please don’t forget that “billingsgate” was once one of your great exports.

I intend to clutch both Johnson and Churchill to my heaving bosom immediately after lunch: Johnson for telling us of the danger of “hope triumphing over experience” and Churchill for admonishing us that if we choose shame over war we would get war as a bonus.

Why not start by chaining a dozen 12 volt batteries to the legs of some vexing EU weenie and throwing his sad sack ass into the Avon? Exactly how deep is it? I wouldn’t want you to make a muck of it.




Kevin Smith