lundi 29 mars 2010

a few things I've discovered about myself

Occasionally people who knew me from before ask me, by email for example, "Who is Julius Beezer?" I could point them to an earlier somewhat cryptic post but I generally don't bother. I thought it would be amusing, if rather up my own arse, to look for those emails I sent, and publish the edited highlights here see if any pattern emerges.

In fact there were only two emails.

[For T. ]

Julius Beezer is my nom de plume online. He writes a blog in English and one in French, which may be already one too many.

He is a grumpy old man who has retired from London society to better
direct his ire at the many failings of his former culture :-) He has a
special green ink hotline
to the Guardian's comments pages.


Actually, I'm really not at all grumpy. It would be a lie to say anything else. I'm much less grumpy as a French person; though it would be socially acceptable for me to be grumpy, it doesn't really work for me, and I don't enjoy it. Better to eschew grumpiness and guard your sense of humour.

[For A.]

Someone has been telling tales about Julius Beezer though: I did hear tell of a retired French provincial lecturer determined to spend his retirement studying and eventually enlightening British culture (which he naturally detests). In order to achieve his ultimate goal, he maintains a blog in English as a cultural and linguistic exercise in his adopted tongue. His grammar is almost always impeccable, though his posts suffer from occasional literals during rapid editing. I hope he is slightly stiff and uncomfortable in his new intellectual posture, and attempts to submerge any possible offence in a politeness that can be icy, but is most often warm.

He can't be both, for this would be to depart into the realm of fiction, deprecated not least by 17th century puritans. Putain! It's a problem. For now anyway it's all as true as wot I can make it, artistic exceptions and deviations aside.