You'll hate me after this

Well, I guess nobody even checks this blog out anymore, which is kind of normal given that I hadn't updated it in months, but I'm still gonna write a little piece about something that annoys just about everyone (which is why you'll hate me): politics. Or actually, to be more precise, politicians.

As you may know, the presidential elections in France are very close (first round this weekend, second one two weeks after). Obviously, newspapers here have been talking about for months, and I guess it's been mentioned on the international scale too, but I just wanted to do a quick inventory of our 12 candidates to give you guys some insight as to how fucked up this is going to be...
But just before I start, I have a few things to mention. First off, I haven't read and seen everything, so don't just take my word for absolute truth, and go fish for information yourselves. Then, as I just mentioned, there are twelve wannabe presidents, 4 of them have between 15 and 30% votes in the polls and the eight others just share the, like, 20% left. After the first round, we keep only the two who got the most votes, and vote for one of the two in the second round (unless someone gets more than 50% in the first round, in which case there is no second round, but that is not very likely to happen). So, I'll mainly be talking about the four main guys, and then just a quick note on the others...

Jean-Marie Le Pen: extreme right wing candidate, who created the whole scandal (I don't know how it was on the international scale, but here in France it wast a big fucking scandal) of going to the second round for the last presidential elections (in 2002). He's the oldest of all the candidates (almost 80 years old). No point in talking about his political views, extreme right wing ought to say it all. The funny thing is that he hires arabs and black people (or whetever the politically correct terms are) to campaign for him, saying that being born in France, they're French, but then wanting to close our borders for good. He refuses to give an official statement concerning the Shoah, because last time he did it ended up in a big lawsuit (which he lost, haha). One of my favorite facts about him, is that he managed in an official TV interview to say that he was a socialist-nationalist and the interviewer didn't pick up on it (think national-socialism which, once upon a time, was shortened to these four letters: nazi). Apparently, he'd get roughly 14% votes (but keep in mind that in 2002, polls gave him 12% and he got 17%, letting him in on the second round).

Nicolas Sarkozy: official candidate for the major right wing party, bordering on the extreme (because he takes most of Le Pen's points concerning national security and makes them his, therefore getting votes from normal right wing people and from extreme right wing too). I like to compare him to (and apparently the Chinese media does too according to a Chinese friend of mine) Napoleon. By that I mean that he's short and I can't stop thinking that he's seriously trying to compensate for it. What's most disturbing about him is that he's really confident, and compared to the other candidates, it gives the feeling that he's the one who'd actually work the hardest to get things to change. However, his ideas of change are to throw all foreigners back in their home country, especially if they live in one of our "urban ghettoes" (those places where a bunch of cars were burning back in November 2005). Incidentally, he's more or less responsible for making November 2005 what it was, and actually gained popularity at the time by pointing out the issue of insecurity in our own country. He'd get something like 26% votes.

Ségolène Royal: this is a tough one. She's the official candidate for the major left wing party, which I generally agree with most. But for some reason, I don't really like her. It's like, she's literally and figuratively a pussy. Let me explain. She's a she, a chick, a girl, a female (whatever term you prefer) and is counting on that single fact to get most women to vote for her. Well, ok, some will, and even some men will probably vote for her based solely on that fact. And seriously, I wouldn't mind having a woman as president. But here's where the figurative pussy kicks in: most of her campaigning was just answering to Sarkozy. He talks about insecurity, she'll talk about insecurity. He talks about unemployment, and taxes, and blablabla, she'll talk about unemloyment and taxes and blablabla. Then again, Sarkozy was probably stealing his material off Le Pen, and then she followed suit, obviously not dealing with them the same way as the others, but somehow she just comes out of it looking like she can't decide what to talk about by herself. Basically, in my honest opinion, she doesn't have the balls (and I don't mean that as a misogynistic joke). She's supposed to get like 23% votes.

François Bayrou: last but not least among our fantastic four, neither right nor left wing according to him (because he claims he's had enough of this petty duelling between the major left and right wing parties), but generally described as centre right wing, I like to describe him as a teddy bear. I mean, he somehow seems like a nice guy, his political opinions aren't TOO bad, and at least he doesn't look like he's planning all his speaches according to what this or that other candidate said. But somehow he doesn't have the charisma. If he were president, I'd be afraid that all the other countries would come asking us for favors, and he'd just agree to help them all. I somehow can't imagine him being affirmative (or maybe the word I'm looking for is assertive) enough. He's a bit of an outsider in this whole thing, but still gets reasonable results in the polls: something like 18% votes.

We now move on to the eight minor candidates (and don't worry, this won't be too long):
Olivier Besancenot: he's a postman, and his political party is called the communist revolutionary league. Apart from that (which already says a lot about the man) he did actually get quite a lot of people (young electors, mainly in the aforementioned "urban ghettoes") to actually go get their names on the electoral lists.
Frédéric Nihous: his party is hunting, fishing, nature and traditions. The fun thing about him is that he has ABSOLUTELY no opinion concerning international issues. He's 100% concerned about farmers and hunters and stuff like that. Nothing else.
José Bové: he's kind of weird. First off, I think he's in prison right now (like, was imprisoned at the beginning of the electoral race and would get out if elected as president, but very unlikely). I actually don't know that much about his political views, but I know that he wants to totally ban GMOs and that he raped Ronald McDonald (well, to tell the truth, he destroyed a couple of McDonald's).
Marie-George Buffet: woman and communist. I don't know what else to say...
Philippe de Villiers: this guy has a few fun points in his program. The ones I prefer are to make uniforms in school mandatory, and also to get a French flag in every school recreation area...
Dominique Voynet: where would an election be without someone shouting "sustainable development" (actually, someone did most of the shouting in her stead, Nicolas Hulot, but that's a long story). So, this is our green party candidate.
Arlette Laguiller: candidate for a minor left wing party, what's amazing about this woman is that she's benn candidate in every election for as far as I can remember...
Gérard Schivardi: last but not least, or maybe so, last and least, the only thing I know about this guy is that he wants to cut all our ties to Europe and the European Union, get the good old franc back instead of the euro, and stuff like that. Yeah right...

So, there you go, I hope you enjoyed the read. Once again, go fish for information yourselves if you actually give a shit (which you probably do if you're still reading) because I'm VERY far from being a political expert, I just wanted to express my views on the situation, which I see as a big bag of turd.

Fuck this shit.

Update

Yeah, it's been the better part of a year since I last wrote in this blog, but I haven't forgotten it. I even thought about writing quite a few times, but being a lazy ass mofo I never actually got to the part where I actually write something. That time has come to an end, because as you can see I'm writing this right now (or, when you'll read this, I have written this, but tight now I'm not over yet (whatever)).

So, where're things at right now? Well, as most of you know, I'm doing a PhD (whatever the fuck that means, probably something like Plumbing Hardware Dispatcher) in Strasbourg, and things are going mostly well (ie I like the PhD, but the results of my experiments don't suit me, which is more or less of a classic for a PhD). But that's not the point I wanted to develop in this post. No, what I really wanted to talk about was...

Yes, Berlin was ours, but soon Chile will be mine, oh yes, she will be mine. Basically, instead of just glueing my ass to my seat and just complaining about how all my mates from last year are all far from here, I've decided to go and see them. Yes, I will be going to Chile. Well, all isn't arranged yet, but I know I'll do it. It's like Nike: just do it. So a whole bunch of the people I was whining about in my last post, because they were gone, I'll see next summer (or winter, according to which hemisphere you consider).
Yes, I'm still a lazy asss mofo, but I've decided that whining wasn't the solution to my problems, and have therefore decided to go there instead of just scratching my balls and complaining.

Ok, that's said and almost done (it'll be done by August normally). But while I'm at it ("it" being writing a post here in my blog) I'll tell you of a little story, something that happened to me some time ago (cause I can't write everything that happened to me since last time), actually my first real going out in Strasbourg...

So, it all started out as a sort of special dinner at the place where I do my PhD, because I started in december, and they have these special dinners for christmas and some other special occasions. SO, they'd bought a bunch of wine and prepared a "raclette" (for all you non-French ou there, if you like stinky cheese, try it out). So we all had dinner together, me, my PhD friends, and all the more official people working there. So, I drank some wine, always behaving myself properly because I knew I was with some important people, and ate not too much, because I only had enough money to get drunk on an empty stomach. After the meal, with my mates, we went out to have a few drinks (too many) bacause it was the birthday of one of them. So, obviously, as you can guess, I got reasonably drunk, just enough to not remember what I did for a while. I managed to gather this much the following week: I left at roughly 3 AM. But I do remember that I was still walking around town when the sun rose, when I realised I was too drunk to find my way home, at which point a tobacconist's agreed to call a taxi to bring me home (yes, I remembered my address). That's not the funny part (although you may make fun of me for it).
No, the really funny part was what happened in the next couple of days. When I woke up at home, I realised that I'd forgotten my backpack at the bar we'd been to. So after a couple of calls to get the appropriate pgone number, I call the bar, and ask them if they still have my bag. They tell me that they do, so all's good. But I was too tired to go get it that day. So I tell them I'll come and get it the next day. The Problem being that the aforementioned bar only opens at 10 PM. As I had some presents to buy (Xmas was coming up), I went into town to find some stuff, and then just drank a few pints until the bar which had my backpack opened. And here comes the funny part...
I was just sitting at one corner of the bar, alone, doing nothing, just watching people go by, when some other guy starts miming to me that he'll offer me a beer. Being a dickhead, I agree to it. So the guy pays my next beer, and then comes over, and starts talking. So, the guy wasn't some evil raping asshole. But, basically, that was the time when I fully understood the definition of "metrosexual". When the guy started saying things like "No, I'm not gay, but if you want me to suck your dick, just say so...", that's when you know something's wrong. But I just couldn't tell him to go fuck himself, the guy had payed my beer and was willing to pay a few more...
Long story short, the guy paid me two or three pints, and it was really very awkward talking to him (he even wanted to swap phone numbers), but in the end I got my backpack and all was right, but I never really felt the same way after that about 40 year old guys hanging around in bars...

Ah, whatever, I don't really know what else I can talk about, so take care y'all, and hope to see you soon