Taureaux piscine

I really wanted to use that phrase. "Taureaux piscine."

Yes, it has been stuck in my head since last week and maybe I'll finally be rid of it. An old review (The New York Times, 22 Oct 1989 to be precise) of "Travels with Alice" calls taureaux piscine "a (deservedly) little known sport". I don't know about that. Most sports come with pretty lame rules. What's so bad about trying to be in a swimming pool with a bull? It's like getting a little ball into a hole 300 feet away.

Right I should translate. Taureaux piscine is french for bulls (taureax) and swimming pool (piscine). I bet you could have checked that out pretty easily online but I'll save you the trouble. It's a rare sport in the south of France, and I don't know if it exists anymore (too lazy to google that unfortunately). Even if the sport is as bad as the kind reviewer has suggested, the sheer enthusiasm of Calvin Trillian has me totally sold. I won't go searching for it, but it might be fun to see it someday. I definitely think that it's something you should shout aloud, coz it sounds so good and I'm sure we can all mess up on the word "piscine". If you've hung around an "Au Bon Pain" in the US enough, you know how easy it is to mess up when saying something foreign, especially French. And the thing is, it's no one's fault that we're not all multilingual.

The other foreign phrase I would like to chant aloud, if I weren't that embarassed, would be this ...

"Muss es sein? Es muss sein!"

...quite a few times for the effect. If I were really good, I would complete it and say "Es könnte auch anders sein" but my bird brain can only stomach 3 German words. Yes, I know, brains aren't stomachs, and I'm extremely lame. I don't remember a thing from the Unbearable Lightness of Being, but these strange German words that make not much sense. "Must it be? It must be! It could just as well be otherwise." It sounds so much better in German.

One day, possibly soon, I will print this phrase out and stick it in my wallet.

"Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput."

There have been rabbit's foot, four-leafed clovers and horse shoes. Clearly, given the size of our bulging wallets (damn those receipts), the best thing to carry around is a slip of paper. You can say it however you like, but I think it works best read aloud with a British accent. After all, wasn't that how World War II was won? (If you don't know, you should really read up on joke warfare.) Long live and prosper!