Billy's Lines Of Gibberish

Saint-Alexis-des-Monts, Québec — July 2005

Kissing Customs Regional Distribution in France

More than one year ago, I wrote a blog about handshake in France, almost a national sport here. Yet it is way more interesting to know of La Bise (to be pronounced 'beez'), these quick kisses the French are used to exchanging all the time.

Careful here though: you'd better not mix up a French Kiss and a Bise. I am pretty sure you don't need an explanation about what a French kiss is, do you? Let's focus on the bise then.

Although a word in the singular, la bise refers to a couple of pecks on the checks given and received when you say hello or good bye. Men in France usually shake hands and don't kiss other men but close relatives such as father and son, or brothers. Women usually don't shake hands of other women they know. They kiss each other. Between a man and a woman, la bise is also the usual way to greet, as soon as you know the other one reasonably well. Male and female friends exchange la bise to say hello and good bye. At work, male and female colleagues will practice la bise also.

There is no standard French pattern for the number of kisses kissed in a bise. Some regions go for only one, others for three or four. Parisians once used to give four pecks, alternately put on each cheek, but modern speedy life did a lot of damage there also: it is usually made of two pecks only now. For your information, and because a scientific article such as the present one should supply detailed and accurate information to the reader, the map above displays French kissing habits among French regions. I found it somewhere on the web, but since there were a couple of errors, I amended it so that it depicts the state of the art in 2008 — isn't it mere professionalism?

Briefly said then, there is nothing suggestive in la bise, but socialization and friendship. Granted, friendship between a man an a woman is usually enlivened with just a touch of seduction, a flake of titillation. However, such a kiss is not at all intimate. It does not even matter if it is an air kiss, that doesn’t touch skin, or if it does.

In fact, being a Frenchman, I consider a bise as much less intimate than a hug. Just think about it: pressing your body against someone else's body... even when, say, you're a heterosexual man and the other person is male also? How weird.

When I opened my email box the other morning, there were a couple of job-related mails... and 37 spams! Granted, the latter got filtered by my spam firewall, but I waited for an important mail then, and was afraid of missing it, if it was considered a spam by mistake. Therefore, I explored the spam folder also. You know what? I don't like spam!

The word SPAM was coined in July, 1937 when Hormel foods, a company that processed a meat product called Hormel Spiced Ham, decided to change this name to a more memorable one. The precise meaning of the acronym is disputed though: SPAM may be the contraction of either Shoulder of Pork and hAM, Spiced Pork and hAM, or simply SPiced hAM — although malicious gossip would say it should rather be Specially Processed Artificial Meat or Spare Parts Already Minced.

During the WWII and following years, SPAM was among a few products excluded from food rationing in the United Kingdom, and the British grew heartily tired of it.

Several years later, the Monty Python broadcast a sketch that parodied an advert for the canned meat: in a restaurant, a couple tries to order a breakfast. The lady (Graham Chapman in drag) dislikes spam, but every dish in the menu contains spam (egg and spam; egg, bacon and spam; egg, bacon, sausage and spam; etc.). A group of Vikings seated at a table starts chanting "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM..." and progressively jams every other talk in the restaurant, while John Cleese gets picked up by the police for Hungarian-accent-induced obscene words.

This hilarious sketch became highly famous, as well as the Vikings' song. That's why, several years later, the phenomenon of marketers drowning out discourse by flooding email boxes with junk advertising messages was named spamming, recounting the repetitive and unwanted presence of SPAM in the sketch by the Monty Python.

Codex Seraphinianus (Click to enlarge)

The book opposite is called Codex Seraphinianus, after Luigi Serafini, an Italian architect and graphic designer, who wrote and illuminated it in the 1970s. It is an encyclopedia guide that depicts and explains a totally fantastic world, where lovers transform into crocodiles and rainbows can be bow tied.
The Codex is well structured, as any encyclopedia would be. It is divided into eleven chapters with many brightly coloured illustrations. The first chapter deals with the flora of the alien world, the second one with its fauna, and so on.
As a whole, it is a coherent, constantly creative work. Writing is present throughout the book, in the paragraphs, tables of contents, captions of pictures. Only... you cannot read one word, because Serafini used a fluid cursive writing he has invented and nobody has been able to decipher.
We don't know in fact if the pretty curly squiggle we see all over the book is actually a writing, or... just squiggle. We only know that the number system in which page numbers are written does have a meaning: it has been cracked as being  base-21.
Every chapter of the Codex Seraphinianus is amazing but I love the eighth one especially. It depicts the history of the alien writing system used in the book, with the help of a Rosetta Stone... that is of little help because the languages displayed on the stone are not languages that we know, but a mysterious glyph language... and the 'usual' Codex language!
While I was skimming through the plates the other day, I felt as if I was going through a museum dedicated to some unknown civilisation.
Also, I was like a kid who cannot read yet: I had to rely on the pictures to understand the rules of such a foreign world and imagine what the text might tell. It made me think that babies may well feel about the same when they discover the incomprehensible world they have been suddenly thrown into.

Paris, rue de Sèvres — May 2006.

I live in Paris. Paris is the capital of France. Twenty centuries ago, when France was called Gaul, Paris was called Lutetia. Gaulish people living in Lutetia were called the Parisii Tribe, hence the name later given to the city.

Like a lot of cities, Paris has been built on the banks of a river, and on a couple of small islands between the banks. This river is called the Seine river. It is my river, with gorgeous views and marvelous light. The left bank (la rive gauche) is where I live now, and will always rather have a stroll. The right bank (la rive droite) is where I work, and lived for long time in the past. I have a lot of memories in both areas.

I don't know every street in Paris for sure, but always know approximately where they are. I could hardly get lost in Paris, even on purpose. When I take the metro, I always know what direction I should take. I can explain to a taxi driver the way I want him to go. I know where the train stations are. I know the buses routes reasonably well. Also, I have a lot of landmarks here. A café, a monument, a park, a church... Paris is the place where I belong.

I love to stroll in my city. At random often. Sometimes, I take the metro or the first bus that stops where I happen to be, and get out of it later as the mood takes me. At other times on the contrary, I follow a well-prepared itinerary. At other times again I walk with constraints, such as "take the 1st street on the left, then the 2nd on the right, then the 3rd on the left, and so on" or any other silly rule I imagine on the moment.

It may sound crazy, but it is efficient: when you do this, you cannot but have another sight of places you think you know well. You discover small streets, tiny places or public gardens. You walk this usual street in the opposite direction, and it looks different. You reach by chance a place where you have not been for years. You remember friends who would live in this street long time ago, or see again the café where you once awaited that ravishing brunette who never came to the date.