Old, 'Frozen,' News

This fall in Paris the leaves are greener than usual.

And Not Much Of It

Paris:- Monday, 15. October 2001:- Until the time arrived to do this week's 'news' column I was looking forward to doing it. I've given the papers a fair daily skim all week, and there's a lot of nutty stuff in them.

There is a lot of very serious news too, so you deserve something a bit lighter.

But the time of the week that has arrived is also the time when it is much later than I wanted it to be, and my apartment is not getting any warmer which means my energy level has fallen far below the 'Wonder' bunny's.

The same thing happened last week, and for almost the same reasons. Last week the difference was that there wasn't so much nutty news available.

I can't just rattle off the front pages either. I've got things like 'What's Changed Us All' and 'The Real Dangers' and more of the same.

Since it will be over by the time you read this, tomorrow is 'Black Tuesday' for public transport in France.

Actually this is a regular post-summer event, almost scheduled like Halloween. The head CGT cheese, who looks like an over-age Beatle - even the Beatles look like over-age Beatles - more or less said it was a 'custom' to hold a day of transport strikes at this time of year, because everybody would forget them if they didn't.

At least we know one thing is true in France - the unions keep their promises to hold a couple of annual one-day nationwide transport strikes.

Meanwhile, over the weekend 'Les Verts' party managed to survive a major internal crises by dumping their designated presidential candidate and choosing another one on Sunday - one who made an irrevocable decision 'not to run' on Saturday.

Alain Lipietz was pushed out, and the reluctant Noël Mamère was shoved in. There was a bit of a vacuum for a few hours overnight with no candidate at all, but secret breakfast meetings yesterday morning turned things around.

For the layman this is difficult. Both candidates have moustaches and both never wear ties and always wear jeans. Both speak well in public, and both look better than most right-wing candidates.

The far right-wing is in a lot of trouble because they are mostly invisible. There are two camps of these but they are impossible to tell apart even through they are deadly enemies, because both of their leaders say that 'Jospin is worse than Chirac,' while meaning exactly the opposite.

On the presidential front, a high court has finally decided once and for all that a president in office can not be hauled into court as a witness, just because some investigating judges would like to ask him some questions concerning the period when he was mayor of Paris.

I hope this news puts your minds at rest, in case they were concerned.

On the far-left front, long-time readers will be pleased to learn that Arlette Laguiller, the leader of 'Lutte Ouvrière,' has again collected enough signatures to qualify as a presidential candidate.

This is her fifth campaign for the office. This means she has been trying for it for at least 35 years, while winning campaigns for other elective positions - which were mentioned in full on TV-news but I failed to note.

Is It Me or My Browser?

I think I am suffering from 'Internet-Overdose.' When I first went online in late 1994 the Internet was a fascinating, undiscovered planet, or a whole universe. Of course the Web part of it was much smaller than now, but it seemed to have treasures wherever I clicked.

I used to get shivers just by seeing the software announce 'network.' Now I have a modem that makes such awful noises that I've turned its sound off. I don't hear that spacy whistle and crash and bump of hitting 'online.'

Since I've been online myself for a long time and all sorts of people find Metropole and me, I get a regular deluge of 'spam' that I can't turn off or hide from. Why is everybody offering me 'free credit' these days? Is there a lot of loose money lying around?