Department of French products that may be tough to export to the U.S.:
Around the same time that I encountered this fine product, in a grocery store on the Rue Cler, I shared dinner with a schoolteacher from Kansas. He said “the weirder the name the more difficult the kid. When a child comes in named Diamond or Precious I know that it isn’t going to work out well.”
[Separately, the Kansas schoolteacher (art) and his wife, a former schoolteacher of French, mentioned their passionate hatred of all things Republican, especially Kansas’s Republican governor, who has tried to cut the growth in the state’s spending on education. (I wrote “cut the growth” rather than “cut spending” because it seems unlikely that spending could actually go down; BallotPedia says that state spending increased by nearly 5 percent, or $686 million, between 2014 and 2015, but the schoolteachers perceived this as a cut.) Kansas is a fairly conservative state (though not so traditional that working pays better than out-of-wedlock sex; see this chapter for Kansas’s offer of unlimited tax-free child support revenue to those residents or visitors who have sex with a high-income partner). If people in Kansas who get a government paycheck are this passionate about the Democrats it will be tough sledding for Donald Trump in November. The percentage of Americans who work for or depend on the government goes up all the time.]
Typical liberal reaction to the explanation of the difference between reducing the planned increases to a budget, and actual reduction of the budget: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3qyO_WFOhM
I’ve been tired of this since the first Clinton presidency. I’m utterly flabbergasted that this sort of political slander works.
Never go to Switzerland, they will wait for you with pitchforks!
Lindt is a Swiss company, not French 🙂
Philippe: I’m aware of Lindt’s glorious heritage, including the Swiss heritage. But if I’m not mistaken, this particular product is actually made in France as well as being sold in France. Probably would have been better to say “Swiss/French product”, eh?
[Lindt also makes chocolate in tax-free New Hampshire, a short ride from my home in Massachusetts. Sadly for Americans, however, they don’t seem to offer the “My name is Crispy Nuts” bars here.]
I’ve never seen it in my local supermarkets, I’ll take a closer look.
It would not be the first time some unintended pun was made by marketing people while toying with English expressions.
The percentage of Americans who work for or depend on the government goes up all the time.
One large government defense contractor put bread on the table for four generations of my family; the oldest of whom has been collecting a pension for over 40 years! I’ve worked for three different branches of government – city, state, and federal, and as a government contractor. I’ve never earned six figures, but I will ultimately collect four government-funded pensions!
I don’t know whether to decide if USA is becoming like Japan, or Argentina.
My grandmother was a school teacher in Argentina.
She retired at the age of 41 (!) and has been collecting her pension for 45 years now. So my grandmother — god bless her I love her — has probably worked for only ~20 years, and has collected pension more than twice that time. Still sharp as a whip.
Btw – when she gets her pension, she carefully goes through the stack of bills, and removes the 100 peso Evita bills (printed with her face on it). Why? Because counterfeiters stole rolls of legitimate paper and printing plates from the government and started printed their own money!! The only place that takes 100 peso Evita bills now is…. the government! So she saves those and uses them to pay her taxes with!