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I am a bit like an African American in prison (through the Sears catalog)

is an image I like to remember one of my earliest memories: I have four or five years of age at the kindergarten, and I 'm sitting on the lap of my guardian makes me read. Forget

Miou-Miou and all-literary associations pédophilo could come to your head. What she reads, the Sears catalog.

Sears catalog? Yes sir. In the house where I was being kept as in many others where I grew up (although not in that of my parents), the books had never been an endangered species of appearance. We sometimes had a dictionary, a Bible even more rarely, but nothing that can be described as literature. Not even Marie Laberge, yet it sells.


I had the opportunity to describe this scene, a few days ago, a teacher from the Midwest who works on the reading habits among African American women in prison. Not question the worse you'll have no fib: My life is complicated and I meet all sorts of interesting people too improbable.

Anyways, when I told him my story, proud of my originality, the teacher in question took blankly, then dropped the piece: almost identical scenes, Sears catalog and all, appear repeatedly in interviews it leads in the prisons of North Carolina to Ohio.

She then asked me why. Why the Sears catalog? Okay, there were no other books in the house, but there was still television, toys, I know, I could have fun going out, right? And at this moment that I realized I did not know, even if it's me requiring the reading of my babysitter, the reason that pushed me to do so is not part of my memory.

I was reminded a bit later, and I think I understand why: The memory remains alive in me because it has symbolic value because it is the part of my childhood with people to that reading, like many other intellectual activities, reported to a foreign world. It is a symbol, whether to be totally honest and not too polished, a world which I feel myself out.

Everything is connected to this memory without serving its symbolic value (the time of the day, what drove me to make this request or pages on which we focused), this has simply no reason for me to return to the spirit. Then I forgot.

When we talk about recent history, the first half of the twentieth century, for instance, we often feel it's a past that may affect them directly because the people who lived through that era are still there to testify. We forget too quickly that the most vivid memories are the memories that have a purpose, and that reason may be cached longer she said. Yes, of course, the dark cassock's brother who taught us in tenth years, a symbol of the influence of obscurantist Catholic Church on the education system Canaduh-French. But this image does not help us understand the experience of a guy who abandoned his right to found a family and eventually teach adolescents. I would add, it prevents us from understanding the experience.

I returned to Sears catalog a few weeks ago, and my experience has once again scored. Once again, I remember, there is a new symbol that relates to this new experience. It's something a little less intellectual, something a little more material:

Really There's people who are willing to pay three hundred bucks for a razor?!?

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Progress, decadence and two liters of Coke to Cherry

You ask me what company I think best symbolizes the United States? No no, do not protest: You are always there in my head to ask me my opinions and drink like cats used to drink a cheese whey. And you expect me to answer "Coca-Cola" or "McDonald's".

no, damn not.

For me, the American company par excellence, 7-Eleven convenience store chain that inspired the Kwik-E-Mart Simpsons.

I had never seen such a thing before arriving in the United States. Not that there is no way, I have met two or three in Istanbul later. But in Istanbul, Kwik-E-Mart 7-Eleven sell döner kebabs . And I'm not rolled over, choose the point of Turkish food as the great symbol of the American Empire.

But then 7-Eleven. Dede is like in the Convenience Store, said Plumb like it, buy a red licorice, milk udders comedy, Kraft Dinner, butter udders elastic; jams, Quik udders Glosettes; of the soup sticks worse toilet paper [etc.. etc.].

Except. Liquor. Not just a little bit. In the population of goblet who live near their soft drink machines, there is the aptly named Big Gulp (we say hello to the Big Gulp), which contains 44 ounces Translation: 1.3 liter. With a straw, and drink your cherry coke before bubulles disappear. The Big Gulp is not even the largest size, a title that comes to his big brother Double Gulp (which will knock you out, if he can stand up), almost two liters of liquid pleasure. Not to mention the go-go taquitos and other variations on the theme annealing the hot-dog saturated fat. I still have stomach pain, many years later.

But I can not deny having had a great time in the company of this fauna. In fact, it was nice to get up the heart, the fact is that this kind of food there, it's good (I have not said fine, I said good, let go your Pavlovian snobbery aside two minutes and let Homer your inner self). And on the thumb, it super convenient.

The 7-Eleven is a symbol, but not exactly what you think. It is first and foremost a symbol of a whole cultural system, economic and social development, the most extreme form of the principle that organizes most of the lives of Westerners: If it makes life easier is good. Answering machine, ergonomic seat, support services for employment, GPS navigation systems: almost all the innovations that come into our lives are intended to make those lives more comfortable. Some adverse side effects (my move to Turkey, away from the 7-Eleven, has allowed me to stabilize my body weight below 275 pounds), others not (the hatred I feel towards Apple products Hatred is a free, no rational basis).

All that to say that we raise at the ease of an ideal, perhaps not the ultimate ideal, but certainly an important factor to distinguish a desirable way of life of another who is less so. And that's when the story is seen pointing small sharp teeth (and the big hedge mustache) from my uncle Friedrich.

Because my uncle Friedrich, said that the ease softens her man (a hundred years later, he added "his wife" as well). He says the facility is the worst thing to blunt the drive of life that should guide us. My uncle Friedrich, it has in common with another wicked sick, my uncle Osama (a wicked sick much less excusable, but it can not be wrong all the time): It not afraid to use the adjective "degenerate." I will explain what that means, "degenerate", but I feel like it not there, there 's too bad it's too difficult a funny movie that goes to Super Écran. Besides, I think I'll bring a pizza, I go not for cooking.

Yep, if 7-Eleven is the symbol of the United States in my mind is because it is the epitome of decadence, because it is the banner behind which the entire Western world follows the U.S. example on the highway to six lanes (five from one side, one of the other) that leads to a more comfortable life, the flag leaf that the world is also trying desperately to follow.

But if you ever have the opportunity to taste the go-go taquitos with a nice little two-liter of cherry coke, enjoy it, that you will understand the profound meaning of "quite disgusting, thank you." * * *



Bravo to those who understood what I meant last week: If one has already been a few isolated and intolerant people, there is no guarantee that we can not regain a small isolated people and intolerant ... or that our current sense of superiority is completely foreign to our past torch of Catholicism in North America. * * *



In response to Marc-Andre (who wondered how I would explain what I do in life to a young child): I am looking for all sorts of little clues, like a detective, trying to discover how people thought in the old days.

That said, some incriminating documents suggest that it is better not let me interact with young children.

And I like fucking shit and impose insurmountable challenges to everyone, I pass the tag to Jonathan (whose work on string theory remains incomprehensible 99.9% of the adult population).

Eh eh.

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chronological Fundamentalism (big daddy go home!)

OK, if I understand you're telling me that fundamentalism is a disease and that the Bouchard-Taylor is there to get rid of it.

Or to express it. The vast majority of opinions we hear on the subject until now are based, implicitly or explicitly, on the principle that values such as equality between men and women define the essence of the Quebec nation. And I agree: the Quebec of today shows a very broad consensus that affirms the universal right to follow the traditional male (while implying that its intrinsic superiority over the traditional female - talk to the men and women who believe their children deserve more attention than their careers).

But Quebec, not Quebec where my parents grew up there. There are less than fifty years, the "fundamental and intrinsic values" mentioned here (and that's being built in barrier against certain minorities) were far from unanimous, or even collect more than a minority of opinions. This is precisely what gets on my kidneys, the idea that the speech dominant current is the only one that helps define us, that everything that came before was an aberration that has nothing to do with our deepest nature and especially the current state of things is intended to remain intact until the Big Crunch. It is, in other words, a blatant lack of historical perspective, and it is the same psychological process of deception that characterizes fundamentalism and totalitarianism.

OK no no no. The Family Rosary, books to the index, the Duplessis Orphans, I do not want more than you get back. Nevertheless, the essentialist attitude I'm talking about here is to render the unhealthy relationship that is relationship with our own history.

It is first and foremost an ignorance breeds ignorance. If the social history of Quebec has resulted in "Before" and "After" the Quiet Revolution, we can afford to say that no great thing has changed in Quebec culture between 1608 and 1960. And if it is asserted that no great thing has changed in the culture of Quebec between 1608 and 1960, it was really a superficial knowledge of the history of Quebec.

But it is especially the ramifications of the place it gives to secularism that worry me. Implied throughout this beautiful essentialist discourse is the belief that in Quebec's history, religion is a pathological phenomenon and outside us. The central role played by the Catholic Church in education (and thus the transmission of culture) in Quebec as a surface phenomenon, a big black hole that played no role in what Quebec is TODAY 'hui. That attendance at the church by our own grandparents is the result of oppression or external, is a betrayal of the fatherland, a form of mental illness, but certainly not an expression of their culture - a culture whose Ours is a direct descendant (of course, hey!).

Principles secularism that wants to impose "alien minorities" (the phrase is vulgar, but describes the image that we have people designated by it) through the Bouchard-Taylor, we must pretend to take wedded to become the principles that guide our laws. And if there is hell-bent without thinking, it must be applied on an equal basis, to the Catholic Church like other religions. If we allowed students to take an examination because of Yom Kippur or the Eid al-Fitr, it becomes difficult to leave everyone on Friday.

In other words, after having denied an entire section of his past, Quebec is in the process of erasing the last traces live by inadvertence, a side effect that we profess hatred toward certain religions that are alien to us (regardless of our openness to people who the practice). And all this with a blind conviction that what exists now is the only possible basis for the future.

Torpinne. Good thing the whole pathology has evaporated with the Quiet Revolution. * * *



Yep, I'm back as promised. Two relatively minor-change-this year:

In one, "The Embassy of Trépanistan" no longer "in Istanbul." I re-crossed the pond and now live the United States. The precise location is a state secret, but say there are big opportunities for us to win the World Series and the Superbowl in the next few months. Yankees suck!

Two, I get weekly. It was already more or less the case last year, but it is now official, Ambassador tickets appear Friday.

One thing has not changed: I continue to be ben ben glad you come take a look at my little paper ...