I can’t help but think of this Eddie Izzard bit when I see this McDo ad. The couple snogging in the background is a nice touch.
Do you know who I am?
“I will have the penne a la arabiata.”
“You’ll need a tray.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Do you know who I am?”
“This is not a game of who the fuck are you. For I am Vader. Darth Vader. Lord Vader. I can kill you with a single thought!”
“Well you’ll still need a tray.”
“No I will not need a tray. I do not need a tray to kill you. I can kill you without a tray, with the power of the Force – which is strong within me – even though I could kill you with a tray if I so wished. For I would hack at your neck with the thin bit until the blood flowed across the canteen floor…”
“No, the food is hot. You’ll need a tray to put the food on.”
“Oh I see, the food is hot. I’m sorry I, I did not realise. Hah hah! I thought you were challenging me to a fight to the death.”
“Fight to the death? This is canteen, I work here.”
“Yes, but I am Vader, I am Lord Vader. Everyone challenges me to a fight to the death. Lord Vader. Darth Vader, I am Darth Vader, Lord Vader. Sir Lord Vader, Sir Lord Darth Vader. Lord Darth Sir Lord Vader of Cheam. Sir Lord Baron von Vaderham. The Deathstar. I run the Deathstar.”
“What’s the Deathstar?”
“This is the Deathstar. You’re in the Deathstar. I run this star.”
“This is a star?”
“This is a fucking star – I run it. I’m your boss.”
“You’re Mr Stephens?”
“No, I’m… who is Mr Stephens?”
“He’s head of catering.”
“I’m not head of catering! I am Vader. I can kill catering with a thought.”
“I can kill you all. I can kill me with a thought. Just… I’ll get a tray, fuck it!
“This one’s wet, and this one’s wet, and this one’s wet. This one is wet, this one is wet, this one is wet, this one is wet, this one is wet, this one is wet, this one is wet, this one is wet. Did you dry these in a rain forest? Why, with the power of the Deathstar, do we not have a tray that is fucking dry? I do not…(someone has pushed in) No, no, no. I was here first.”
“You have to form a queue if you want food. Can I have, oh, penne a la arabiata, that looks nice.”
“No, no, no. D’you know who I am?”
“That’s Jeff Vader, that is.”
“I am not Jeff Vader, I am Darth Vader.”
“What, Jeff Vader runs the Deathstar?”
“No, Jeff… No, I run the Deathstar.”
“You Jeff Vader?”
“No, I’m Darth Vader!”
“Are you his brother? Can you get his autograph?”
“I can’t get it… No, I’m… All right, I’m Jeff Vader! I’m Jeff Vader!”
“Can I have your autograph?”
“No, fuck off, or I’ll kill you with a tray! Give me penne a la arabiata or you shall die. And you, and everyone in this canteen! Death by tray it shall be!”
“Do you want peas with that?”
“Peas? You don’t have peas! You can’t put red with…It doesn’t work with penne, you don’t put, unless you push them up the penne tubes, and then they’d be weird! Just…(gives up) oh, all right, put some peas on.”
Another interesting take on the bit:
Danielle & I went down to the prefecture of police yesterday to fill out renewals for our residence permits (only a month after the last ones expired). We left the office with our récépissés for our cartes de sejour, which will hopefully delay our imminent deportation for the crime of not being French. Apparently this is a serious matter and applies to foreigners in many countries.
But anyway, the other thing that we had a year to do and are doing 14 months later is getting our French driver’s licenses. You are allowed to drive with your US license for a year, but after that you have to either give up driving or get a French license. Fortunately, Virginia is one of the states that has a reciprocal agreement with France and all you have to do is swap your VA license for a French one. No drivers test required.
Ha! “All you have to do” my ass! Of course you need a billion documents, including a certified, translated affidavit that you have never buggered a dead alligator on the Moscow subway. Just in case they ask. The first problem is that we don’t have our actual cartes de sejour, only the récépissés with the expired cards stapled to them. This will not do! But we can at least apply for the licenses. The second problem is that our certified, translated copies of our Virginia driving records for the last 11 years do not indicate the date that we obtained our very FIRST US driver’s licenses, which occurred shortly after the last T-Rex drew it’s final breath. We were informed that this is a very important date in France. Well, it’s very important in the US, too. But only to the recipient of the license and the importance declines rapidly to zero, kinda like our chances of getting any actual permits or licenses that day.
Once we pass the initial gauntlet (after we are told that the French consulate would have to contact the US consulate to get this date) and wait to see the French DMV grunt that will tell us everything else we have done wrong. Surprise, these guys couldn’t care less about the date we got our first permit to crash a car without another licensed car-crasher aboard. HOWEVER, they were quite baffled that our VA license translations listed AUCUNE as the class. This means none. We have no class. Now, I have wondered about this myself before. My PA license listed a class to ensure I didn’t try driving 18-wheelers to school instead of mom’s groovy, baby-blue 77 Mustang II. But I never worried about it and it never mattered, until now. But in the end they decided it didn’t really matter. We didn’t get our licenses (because we didn’t have our residence permits), but we got a nice piece of paper that says we can drive until we get the actual license.
UPDATE:
After three months, nothing!
Another underwear ad. Not an ad for underwear, that is, just another ad with some dude in his skivvies. And a bunch of other crap. Now you can recharge your iPod with your johnson.
I think I’ve posted these everywhere on the internet except the blog so far. This is the third snow I’ve seen in a year in the city where it “never snows.” phhhht! So here are some pics I took lundi after dropping Sarah off at school.
http://longtermtourists.com/albums/2009/paris_neige/
Or is it “La Première Année”? Je ne sais pas.
I looked at the calendar and realized that it was a year ago today that the three of us got on a plane to Paris with one-way tickets. Sarah is speaking French with no accent and Danielle is always being complimented on her French. Meanwhile, I still get that “durrr” look when I get blindsided with a question in French. “Désole, je ne parle pas bien français.” I think I can say that almost perfectly (the irony!). Hey, it’s not MY fault that I studied German in high school and had no knowledge of French until a year ago!
Anyway, I wanted to let our readers (lol! Yeah, both of you!) that I am thinking all the time about a big entry on Christmas and our trip to the Rose Bowl. Thinking about it, I said. Maybe I’ll get around to it later. Right now I need to order Doritos on-line.
À bientôt!
Here are some pictures from the flight back to the US.
Sarah ready to leave the apartment in Paris
My "salmon" salad. Good thing I don't like fish.
A rare occurence
Halfway there!
Sarah squishes her camambert
Flight Info
We’re back! Well, we are back in the US for a few weeks over Christmas, anyway.
We hauled four large suitcases all the way from Paris and we got three of them at the other end. I have no idea how they can lose one suitcase from a group. It was the only red one we had, so maybe it went on a special luggage cart for red suitcases and got sent to Malaga. Of course, it had my underwear, shaving kit, pants, allergy pills, etc. Since we drove immediately to Bob & Tiffany’s I don’t think it will catch up with us as quickly.
The flight was all right, except for the complete lack of ventilation control. I don’t like this trend of removing the little individually controlled air-flow nozzles. It got really warm where we were sitting. Sarah was a little over-exuberant a few times, but she was good considering it was a seven hour flight. I think she is used to flying at this point. This was her eighth plane trip this year.
Security had a new surprise for us! We were cutting it close to catching the plane, so they had to slow us down somehow. We had just rolled our eyes at the newbie in front of us, who didn’t take his laptop out of the bag and still had his belt and watch on. We stepped up, shoeless, beltless, with the Macbook pro in it’s own tray when the guy asked about laptops. I smugly pointed to the naked Mac in its tray and started to move to the metal detector when he asked if I had any cables in the bag. Wha…? “Oui, bien sûr! J’ai beaucoup des cables!”
Please take them out.
What? You have to be s******g me! (I did not say out loud).
And any other electronics?
So there I am, unloading power adapters, phones & chargers, extra batteries, USB cables, PDAs, iPods (why do I have all of this CRAP!) into a tray while looking at the clock and thinking, “I do not want to miss ANOTHER flight!”.
But everything else was relatively painless. Our car was waiting at the Hertz plaza WITH the child seat I had only added the day before. It wasn’t installed, but it and the car had LATCH, so that was painless. I went to get my GPS out of my bag when I discovered the mess.
Sarah had handed me the (allegedly) empty smoothie container (a juice box-like thing). At the time, we were waiting in line or something, so no trash can was readily available and I just stuck it in my bag, carefully making sure it was upright and wouldn’t move. Well, it probably got upended in the security bag-emptying frenzy and proceeded to empty itself during the flight. It was all over the inside of the bag. My two old cellphones that I brought to use in the US seemed to get the worst of it along with the Macbook’s power adapter. I spent a good twenty minutes cleaning them this morning.
I stopped in DC and got a diet Dr. Pepper. It was freaking fantastic!
Sarah was in a very festive spirit at dinner last night! She serenaded us with her rendition of some French Christmas songs:
She is also very into the Wii-Fit! Here is one of her early attempts at the hula-hoop and running.
If you want to see the high-quality versions, click these links:
Sarah singing (153 MB – New Window)
Sarah Wii-ing (76 MB – New Window)
Apparently, CNN has fired all their proofreaders and replaced their staff with high school interns.
We needz mor munnies!
Non. Cette article n’est pas à propos de pee pee!
So, I finally broke down & got a Wii. I figured that since these things were still scarce after being on sale for two years, that they must be a lot of fun. They aren’t scarce in Paris, so I went to Auchan one day after work and grabbed one from the large stack.
Then I ran out the door.
Not really, but I did set off the alarm when leaving the game console area. The guard was standing there watching me buy it, so he just gave me the “whatever” look when I waved the receipt at him. And they don’t give you bags at Auchan unless you buy one, so I was just carrying it out naked when the guard at the main entrance stopped me. He took my receipt and stamped it. The French love stamping things!
So I got home that Friday night and promptly put the box aside and drank too much wine. By Sunday, I was feeling better and set it up. Sarah wanted to try, of course and she was pretty good at golf, but I just couldn’t teach her the right timing for bowling. You need to release the trigger on the remote at a certain time. She is a little “impatient” and just wants to do things.
A few days later I come home and she has kicked Danielle’s butt in a game of bowling after getting FIVE strikes in a row and scoring 251 points!
Sarah the Wii-master
I have yet to break 200.
