This is me, Eccles

This is me, Eccles
This is me, Eccles
Showing posts with label franglais. Show all posts
Showing posts with label franglais. Show all posts

Saturday, 10 January 2015

Je suis Eccles

After the distressing events of this week, you may be unsure how to react. We suggest a few possibilities: which of these slogans is yours?

Je suis Charlie

Look, I know some people are going to find my views controversial here, but I really feel I should stick my neck out and say that I am not a fan of murdering journalists and cartoonists. I mean, I found one of the Alex comic strips in the Telegraph totally pathetic and unfunny - well, most of them, actually - but I didn't feel I had to kill someone. Call me a woolly liberal who jumps on whatever bandwagon is going, but that's just how I am. If my views have caused offence, I apologise.

Charlie Chaplin

Je suis Charlie.

Je ne suis pas Charlie / Je suis non Charlie / Je non suis Charlie pas / Suis-je Charlie / Qui suis-je / Je suis la plume de ma tante (depending on level of fluency in French)

Of course I don't think those guys should have been murdered. However, unlike them I don't think that throwing bricks at the gendarmes in the 1968 riots was a pretty neat trick, and I've actually seen some of the repulsive anti-Catholic cartoons that the Charlie Hebdo staff produced. So I don't identify with them either. Sigh... I'll explain this again, slowly...

Je suis Ian

Of course my own magazine, Private Parts, which was originally intended as a radical alternative to Punch, is now as much part of the establishment as I am (I hope you watch me on my show Haven't we got any jokes for you?) We don't do much satire in the Parts these days, although we occasionally slip in a joke about child abuse whenever the Catholic Church is in the news. So we shan't be publishing anything that might actually upset someone, or even make them laugh.

Ian Hislop

The voice of the establishment.

Je suis François

Franchement, je suis hors de mon depth here. Vive la France séculaire, with its même-sexe mariage, l'abortion and le bashing de religion. Eh bien, les Musulhommes are bienvenus en general, particulierement les Musulhommes séculaires. However, I've got trop de femme trouble at le moment, and apart from sending in les gendarmes with all guns blazing je n'ai pas de grande stratégie pour dealing with a crise.

Je suis Jihad Jean

Ever since the days when I used to pull the heads off my dolls, I have been a fan of senseless violence, and defending the reputation of the prophet Mohammed is obviously a cause close to my heart. Starting a bloodbath is the only way to make people appreciate that Muslims are essentially peace-loving people, almost indistinguishable from paid-up members of the Church of England. And when all this is over I'm coming back to England to train as an actuary.

Fr Jack

A lecherous, foul-mouthed alcoholic religious figure. I hope this was not based on any particular prophet.

Je suis Tony

As a full-time internet troll in good standing, I will question your motives whatever your reaction to the week's events. If you say nothing I will say you don't care, and if you make a comment I'll say you're attention-seeking. To those people who claim "Je suis Eccles", this is evidence that Brother Eccles - who, my spies tell me, is really Fr Jennifer Eccles, the transgendered Dominican referred to in the previous post - is still using dozens of sockpuppets.

Sunday, 10 November 2013

Bad Hymns 27

Aujourd'hui nous are writing ce blogue en Franglais, la langue internationale, car nous avons invité M. Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle to tell us about La Marseillaise. Our own anthem God Save the Queen est un hymne religieux, and a very effectif un, since, spurred on by "Long to Reign Over Us", La Reine has already reigned soixante ans and is in bonne forme for another soixante. La Marseillaise est un peu plus séculaire.

Rouget de Lisle

Well, it's O.K., but wouldn't Savez-vous planter les choux be a better anthem?

Curieusement, La Marseillaise n'a pas les silliest lyrics de tous les national anthems. In Delingpoland, ils chantent "Long live the Grand Duke and may his breakfast egg and bacon cause his ears to flourish"; while in West Ed they are moved aux larmes by the mots "Bless the land of West Ed, and its men and women, its dogs and cats, its donkeys and goats, its llamas and possums" (and so on throughout tout le kingdom des animaux); enfin, the Republic of Odone anthem consists of le seul mot "Odone" sung 1728 times, although une version plus courte de 640 repeats is allowed en cas d'urgence.

Casablanca

Patriots singing On les plante avec le nez, à la mode de chez nous!

E: Still here nous sommes, avec M. Rouget de Lisle. Claude, je gather that vous êtes un membre of the sans-culottes?

CJRdL: That's rather une question personnelle, M. Eccles. In fact je porte des "longues-Jeans" knitted by my Tante Fifi. Il fait froid à Paris, mon vieux.

E: Now, your chanson is très bloodthirsty, all to do with des personnes waving blood-stained drapeaux at vous.

CJRdL: La Tyrannie raises son bloody banner, Eccles.

E: Could you donner un exemple?

CJRdL: Well, par exemple, Louis XVI brought in a loi about le mariage bogus, le même-sexe mariage, and his gendarmes used gaz-de-larmes to attack anyone who manifestait pour la famille, dans les rues.

E: Terrible, Claude, and I gather that he decided to sack any maires who refusaient to conduct les même-sexe mariages. Clearly such a personne deserved rien less than the guillotine!

Francois Hollande Louis XVI

Long-lost cousins? François (L) and Louis (R).

CJRdL: So that's pourquoi we have so many blood-soif sentiments dans ma chanson.

E: Oui, indeed I see that vous voulez remplir some ditches with impure blood?

CJRdL: It's very good for the terre, Eccles. However, by the Commune Agricole Policy, we're no longer allowed to do this. We shall have to rewrite La Marseillaise to make it plus politiquement correct.

E: Ah, les EU bureaucrats, hein? Tous les traditional country ways are disappearing, n'est-ce pas?

CJRdL: I blame the Belges.

E: Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (now that's a nom aristocratique!), merci beaucoup.

Cameron and Poirot

David Cameron explains same-sex "marriage" to a Belgian.


Previous entries for the Eccles Bad Hymn Award:

Lord of the Dance.    Shine, Jesus, shine.    Enemy of apathy.    Walk in the Light.
Kum Ba Yah.    Follow me.    God's Spirit is in my heart.    Imagine.    Alleluia Ch-ch.
It ain't necessarily so.    I, the Lord of sea and sky.    Colours of day.    The red flag.
Go, the Mass is ended.    I watch the sunrise.    Bind us together, Lord.    Our god reigns.
My way.    Ding-Dong! The witch is dead.    If I were a butterfly.
Journeys ended, journeys begun.    The Galilee song.    The perfect face.
Jesus Christ the apple tree.    On eagle's wings.    Moses, I know you're the man.