Michel Drucker found the right words

French TV is supposed to be in color.  I prefer to say it's black and white: either incredibly lousy or splendid. The time-honored TV celebrity Michel Drucker had harsh words concerning a nitwit named CH who would make me vomit if ever I were obliged to watch him for any length of time. Drucker has been around for decades, and his TV credentials are the finest in French media history.

Concerning the vomit guy, Drucker came up with a delightful formula:

It was impossible for me to do that kind of bad TV work. My mother would have been disgusted. She wouldn't have let me come home. She would have changed the door locks to keep me out in the cold.

Latest map of Mosul

This map has just appeared on the French Internet :

Click to enlarge slightly

How many days, weeks or months will it take

for the black zone to disappear... forever ?

In an upside-down world, roles change

Hollande has unleashed a terrible truth

In the book Un président ne devrait pas dire ça by Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhomme, the most outlandish « ça » consisted of admitting that a chief of state might decide, outside any kind of legal framework whatsoever, that it is better for the nation that a particular extremely dangerous individual should simply cease to exist.

[photo Martin Bureau / AFP]

Many observers consider that Hollande was a nincompoop in enabling the publication of this secret information. One might imagine that, in doing so, he discarded his moral right to remain at the head of France.

I do not intend to say publicly whether or not I share these opinions.

I've changed the sense of Antipodes

Looking out upon an upside-down universe

Many voyagers have imagined for ages that the word "Antipodes" refers to a land on the other side of the globe. So, ever since the day I started this blog, I saw this term as a suitable title, since the blogger was born in Australia, which is roughly (very roughly indeed) an Antipodal location with respect to my new home place, France. Besides, that blog title gave me a pretext for popping in fragments of Australian news.

But, in recent years, the challenge of incorporating into my blog the theme of my land of birth has become hard and tedious. First, there's not really a lot of interesting stuff that happens in, or can be said about, Australia. Second, above all, I have fewer and fewer communications with Australia, even through the Internet. So, I was finding it more and more difficult to write anything at all on that subject.

So, I've finally decided that it would be preferable to eliminate altogether the subject of Australia from my Antipodes blog.

Maybe not the nice novel I need

I don't often read novels, and I'm not really looking for one at the present moment. Still, I thought it might be worthwhile glancing at a description of the novel that has just won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in Paris. Well, the author is Leïla Slimani. The theme of her novel Chanson douce [Sweet Song] sounds about as charming and soothing as a kick in the balls from a guy wearing football boots. She deals with the assassination of two children by their nurse. I'm sure I should read it... but I fear I won't. There's so much exciting news on the Internet and television about killings of all kinds.

Now kids, if you'll calm down, put your pyjamas on, and jump into bed, I'll read you a few pages of a nice story about children. And I'll give you a handful of cyanide lollies.