How to tell if you're Louisiannan
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If you are Louisiannan...
- You are first and foremost a republican. Having a Royal House and a King is not so much a Bad Thing as something Not Good For Louisianne. Why, you're not exactly sure. It's just always been that way.
- You are familiar with Louisiannan programmes, and have heard about programmes from New Francy, but wouldn't watch them with their monarchist drivel. French télé isn't so bad once you get past the accent.
- Football is what you do on the weekends that aren't around Christmas and Easter. If you're male, you probably know the rules backward and forward and chat the latest match up in the bar on a weekly if not daily basis.
- You're quite peeved if you don't get your five weeks, or thirty days, and typically get more because you're between contracts (unemployed).
- You think of canned food, McDo (Mac-Do) and so on as cheap food, and think there is nothing like an open-air market. You find it amusing that tourists consider a visit to an open-air market as much of a must-see as one to the Chateaus of the Loire-Neuf. You also say that you prefer small shops -- but you mainly go shopping in supermarkets.
- Sauce from a powder (aside flour) is an unforgiveable sin.
- Télévision is something commonplace, as are clothes washing machines. Dryers are for those sorry sops who live in Nouvelle Navarre. You don't butcher your own food unless you're on the farm outside of the big cities. If you're not having a picnic in a park, you expect to eat at a table sitting on chairs.
- You DO NOT think of insects, dogs, cats, monkeys, guinea pigs, and rodents (aside luscious rabbit) as food. Snails, frogs, and crawfish definitely are.
- The smallest room in the house/apartment is the "WC" (vay-say or vé-sé). The bathroom is where your shower/tub and sink and mirror are. If you need to go, ask for "Les Toilettes".
- You expect, as a matter of course, that the phones will work. Getting a new phone is routine. You consider the minitel something you use at La Poste, and don't see the need for it in one's home.
- The train system is getting better, especially for the northern prefectures. Trains average faster than cars; airships are still marginally your best bet.
- It seems natural to you that the telephone system (yes, singular), the power company (yes, singular), the railroad company (yes, singular), and the post office are public companies; they have no reason to be private, since they have missions de service public. In particular, the price should be the same for the same service anywhere in the country, no matter if it is in Paris-sur-Mizouri or in the deepest hole in the Alps, or furthest flung Amerindian encampment.
- You find a multi-party system natural, and can hardly imagine another fair way to run a country. You have usually three major parties and a number of smaller ones and you're used to two parties forming the national government. You find parliamentary systems with an entire left to right scale of parties normal.
- Socialism is a serious opinion, even if it it tends towards social-democracy. Communists still exist, sometimes you think they're slightly out of touch with reality. SNOR is a bad-dream.
- Most people are white, although they can also be yellow, brown or black. It doesn't really matter most of the time anyway, since you're familiar with people of African extraction, especially the further south you go.
- You think most problems could be solved if only people would put aside their prejudices and work together.
- You take a strong court system for granted, even if you don't use it. You know that if you went into business and had problems with a customer, partner, or supplier, you could take them to court, but had better be ready to pad your court fees.
- You'd respect someone who speaks Spanish, German, English or Japanese, but you very likely don't yourself speak them well enough to communicate with a monolingual foreigner. You learned bits of English in collège (when you were 12-16), but you've forgotten most of it unless you're from the South. You think everybody should speak English. You cannot understand why native English-speaking persons refuse to learn any other language. But, before learning any foreign language, kids should first speak good French.
- You think a tax level over 50% is not scandalous. After all, once those in that bracket have paid, they still have more money left than you do.
- School is free through the baccalauréat (roughly equivalent to the first year of college for Americans), provided you go to public schools, collèges (French meaning!) and lycées. University (post-baccalauréat) is not free, but it does not cost much.
- College is (normally, and excluding graduate study) four years long. If you want to be a doctor, you need to get a master's first.
If you died tonight...
- You may believe in God; if you do you are, in decreasing order of probability, a Catholic, a Lutheran, a Mormon or a Protestant. In any case, you believe in the separation of state and church. The last time you were asked if you believed in God, it was by those nice boys in suits on bikes with the Cournouaillian accent.
- The normal thing, when a couple dies, is for their estate to be divided equally between their children.
- Average Louisiannans are buried after death. Embalming is something quite normal, and cremation is just as normal, becoming even more popular.
Everyone Knows that
- Mustard comes in jars. Shaving cream comes in cans. Milk comes in bottles or in cardboard boxes. You can get milk delivered to you. Any liquid drink can be obtained at the local hyper-marché in Tetra-Pak UHT. Alcohol is a must in any household, especially a lovely Loire-Neuf rouge.
- Dates are in the DD/MM/YY format.
- The decimal point is a comma, certainly not a dot.
- Great War II was a just war, and (granted all the suffering of course) ended all right. It would have been shorter if the Federated Kingdoms hadn't dithered over making peace with the German Empire. It was a time when the country came together and did what was right, mostly by joining the French foreign legion. You still have your (grand)father's French medals.
- You expect marriages to be made for love, not arranged by third parties. Many marriages happen in church but only after they've been to La Mairie (the mayor's office). You have a best man and a maid or matron of honor at the wedding -- a friend or a sibling. And, naturally, a man gets only one wife at a time (and vice-versa).
- You use the informal tu only with persons you know well, which usually means that you can address them by their first name, or with fellow students.
- If you're a woman, you might go to the beach topless.
- An upmarket hotel room has a private bath, a cheap one has a bathroom in the corridor.
- If a man has sex with another man, he is an homosexual.
- You'd rather a film be dubbed than subtitled (if you go to foreign films at all).
- You seriously expect to be able to transact business, or deal with the government, without paying bribes that are too exorbitant, despite what Monsieur Young has promised.
- If a politician has been cheating on his wife, you consider this bad form, but no reason for him to resign. It may influence your vote next time around.
- Just about any store will take your credit card.
- A company can fire just about anybody it wants.
- Bacon? Is it that stuff that's a tad like lardons but in strips?
- Labour Day is III Sans-Culottides. It's a holiday, and EVERYTHING shuts down. And why the poor saps outside of Louisianne celebrate it in May, you'll never understand.
- The church was only powerful in colonial times, and is a purely religious institution. When saying "The Church" one usually means Catholicism, but in New Cornwall, one more often means Mormonism.
Contributions to World Civilization
- You're often embarassed by the type of films coming out of New Orleans. Il ne sont pas très catholique.
- You're very proud of Space Voyage 2245 because it was all started, right here, in Louisianne.
- You measure things in factors of ten of the gram, meter, and liter. You can't understand why the rest of the world hasn't caught on to this straightforward and simple system.
- Your money, too, is in multiples of ten. 1 Écu = 100 centimes. You can't understand why foreigners insist on using all sorts of weird multiples. Base 10 is so easy with our 10 fingers, after all...
- You are not a farmer, necessarily, but most likely know people that are.
- The biggest meal of the day is in the evening. And the sauce is to die for.
- The nationality people most often make jokes about are the Neofranciens. You probably don't make jokes about the NALiens - when they're in ear-shot.
Outside the Capitol
- You think that the Welfare State is a necessary part of a civilized society.
- You'd be hard pressed to name the leaders of all the nations of Europe. The capitals you could probably find on a map. North America you know, or at least you knew, when the Bushes were raising Cain.
- You think of opera and ballet as rather elite entertainments. It's likely you don't see that many plays, either, unless you're in Paris-sur-Mizouri or Baton Rouge, and there's something on you want to see.
- Christmas is in the winter. Unless you're Muslim or Jewish, you spend it with your family, and put up a tree. Presents are given at December 25th.
- There sure are a lot of lawyers (to say nothing of accountants!)
