''La Saint-Jean''

So this is where the Historian in me takes over - and does it *his way* not the scholar way! Label me a vulgarisateur de blogger already, akin to that guy I used to see on TV doing this on such ``shows for the masses`` as Les Tannants...!  He was so colorful, so odd also - not at all a traditional, shall we say, historian! (If only I remembered his name...! He belongs on my ``Unruly and Not Giving A Damn`` blog! But that`s another story...) So, yes, go ahead - compare me to him! I care not - because I do this to please only one person in the whole wild, wild blogosphere - me!  So here we go - and there will be no taking prisoners, no stone left unturned and no mercy whatsoever! The Luminous Pundit Blogger has been unleashed! Thee have been warned!!! Onwards... blasted wretches!  (The following previously appeared on... TLB Prime!)

On June the 24th, in the so-called "Belle Province" (which is chock-full of unsightly things - but that is another story... which I will gladly allude to right here, right now though - read on!) today, thus, is "La Fête Nationale" - a National Holiday for a tiny bunch of people who are, generally-speaking, oafish, brutal and narrow-minded... and who can't even speak properly their own language, their chief reason (allegedly) for their "nationalistic pride" and truly half-hearted desire for independence! In fact, of course, Quebec thinks it should secede from Canada for many reasons that can be seen as justifiable even but all said reasons stem from the oddest circumstances. For Quebec's very existence came about from a chain of events that can only be labeled as a historical mistake! France had no business even being in the area - the only reason they had to come to North America was questionable at best, after the Portuguese frowned upon it! Columbus and Vespucci (whose first name, Amerigo, is the origin of the name America... and maybe also the word "Americado" - but that is most definitely another story... it would explain Frisco though... *lol*) both came, saw and did, basically, what true Frenchmen call glaner...! And then, simply because the basest feelings were stirring them on (jealousy, pride, hatred of the British) the French had to found their nonsensical, totally out of place as superfluous and baseless ``Nouvelle-France``... The King of France had high hopes of finding gold there and sincerely hoped (the fool) that his new territory would turn out to be a treasure trove for his vanity to feed off - alas, for him, he had been misinformed (legend has it that the Portuguese had tried to warn both him as anyone else coming by sea, leaving a sign that read "aqui nem cana da" which means "not even the most common grass is to be found or grows here" (they'd seen how barren the land looked, once the harsh winters hit...!). That sign and its terrifying message, quite obviously, were not heeded at all, for starters - since all that transpired thereafter, alas, it could even have been be the origin of the name Canada; indeed! Native Americans also lay claim to the name, as it describes their village, they say... But, maybe, just maybe, they were inspired by the sign to start calling their village "canada" in the first place... hmm? For anything is possible in Canada... Don`t you know? But I digress!).

The sole reason to keep up this Nouvelle-France going at all soon became the rather silly fur trade - and we are talking about beaver fur - of course (!). And the *real* reason was -does it need delineating- to simply be in the face of the English... who would soon decimate all French forces they would get to face off with, both in Europe (feel free to hum Abba's timeless classic hit now - "Waterloo" - *LOL*) and in North America where the French numbers were next to nothing really... It was, truly, a piece of cake there for the Brits to simply come and take over! And, by all logical lines of progress and evolution, that should have been the end of it for la Nouvelle-France... and Québec... and any freakish French presence or influence in North America at all (which had, most oddly of all, extended even all the way to Louisiana - to the Bayou - via a tiny contingent of fool-hardy Frenchmen doomed from the very start... or were they? Yet again, it`s another story...!). That, readers, would be when the historical mistake occurred; when the triumphant English were too lenient, showing clemency as they allowed the French to stick around! Not prone to genocide myself, I would have gone the deportation route (something along the lines of what happened to the Acadians soon enough) - for none of the newly-arrived French really liked it there, in "Canada" anyway...! They were dying, hardly prepared to cope with the winter season and other "local problems" like it. They truly would have preferred to return to France outright; had they actually voted on it; to Europe, at any rate... For, verily, the French never had any business even being there in the first place!

The results of them being allowed to stay are... dumb-founding! The Cajun speak such an unintelligible dialect that one needs to pay the closest attention AND to carry around a glossary, just to get all that they say! It does give interpreters, linguists and translators a basic raison d'être I guess... But there was truly no need to bother with that! The culture, gastronomy (exceedingly spicy) and that language begotten out of the experiment is a curiosity - nothing else. And speaking of which: Quebeckers mangle their supposedly precious French language mercilessly too - often truly beyond recognition! They claim to love this language - but they misuse it so terribly and are, quite frankly, nothing more than the black sheep of the Francophonie - how can it be otherwise, when they are truly the bastard child of France? It has thus de-evolved into a bastard population that cannot even sustain itself - they have to keep their population levels up via massive injections of immigration. And then they will enforce the French language first rule, because even the run-of-the-mill immigrant -or refugee from a war-torn country- will be smart enough to give the edge to ENGLISH upon reaching Canadian shores; the anomaly that is Québec is only, to most of them, perceived as nothing more than a stopover... a stepping stone... on their way to another province (all of which are predominantly anglo-saxon founded and, thus, anglophone - despite Federal efforts to pass Canada as a whole as a "bilingual country" with two official languages... ha! And soon it will be what - a bipolar, identity-crisis stricken, bisexual country as well? (Thanks to the crazed Prime Minister of Canada, Paul Martin, who does originate from... Québec! He wasn`t even elected; he only took over from his boss, Jean Chrétien! Robin Williams' favorite, remember? What a coincidence...! But I'm digressing again!) The new arrivals will either get assimilated therefore, or... if these refugees are really smart, they'll be on their way to the land of the free / home of the brave... you know where! *lol*

Thus, in the light of this ridiculous comedy of vainglorious errors of history, spurred on by vain so-called "discoverers" and kings of France (mercifully, a crown that no longer exists - and I say that with the knowledge that one of my ancestors was a part of the Court of France...! Yes - another story!) - the little "holiday" today is truly a FARCE... way beyond the fact that, for some very obscure reason, Québec chose to celebrate itself on the Christian day of a most favorite saint of mine - The Baptist! Joseph of Arimathea, Jesus' uncle, was in England - that is what triggered all the Holy Grail stories... And the most ridiculous theories have placed Jesus in France too (don't ask)... Jesus-Christ may have easily traveled indeed, in his formative years (his twenties) to many places we know not of, officially... I am even willing to listen to Latter-Day Saints who claim that Christ visited Native Americans, shortly after His Resurrection and before His Ascension, right here, yes, on North American soil... However, John The Baptist, Christ's cousin, never came close to Québec - there is, verily, no link between him and this God-forsaken place!!! Of course, when choosing a patron saint, logic was not always observed in the old days...

Now, don't get me wrong folks - I do not hate le peuple Québécois...! I certainly do not feel contempt for them because of their forefathers' stubbornness in sticking around (or butting in) where they simply didn't belong... I despise them for far more personal reasons than that, actually! *LOL* I execrate them for their massacring of a not-so-bad (until they use it, that is) language... I despise their hypocrisy, nepotism, racism and "nombrilisme" (the worst form of vanity) when they are the epitomy of incompetence - and I certainly hate to death their professing to be a bastion of faith, still, in the world... HA! That is hardly displayed by their usage of sacred words as common-day SWEAR WORDS; the only spot on the damn rotting planet where I know of this as a rampant abominable bad habit! Simply put, Quebec sucks for a whole lot of reasons... Catholics, are they? No wonder Catholics have such a bad rep now, then... Honestly though, Quebeckers are as religiously-inclined and "faithful" as the Pope (John Paul II, anyway...) was a satanist... in other words, NOT AT ALL!!! Thus, for them to celebrate themselves under the umbrella of a saint is truly the height of insincerity, hypocrisy and worse still - but of course, no mention of the saint is ever really made, either!

Bonne St-Jean Baptiste quand même... québécois! One of your own says ''culbécois'' *LOL*
Even though it might well be nothing more than... la fête de la médiocrité!
(Don't look now but... Your annual birthrate is constantly dipping further and further below the mortality rate - and those few bastards that you do manage to give birth to are simply not up to par, are they? They take after their fathers and mothers - they are inept. Statistics show that there is an ever-increasing depletion of qualified laborers in many fields - but I might want to save that for... Statistics Sundays! Same luminous blog channel - roughly at the same luminous time! *ROTFL*). ;)
Be my guest now... please...! Go listen to your classic quasi-anthem now - Offenbach (an odd band from an odd place) seminal tune... "Rirolarma" (literally; "laughing in tears"). Always loved that one; found it so very fitting for the entire province's history overall... ;)