frogsmoke.com

Dear friends,

This is my last post on Frogsmoke. I've decided to stop this blog for a few reasons.

In a few weeks time I will be moving to my new home, in the middle of my own forest, in the south of France (pic above). It's a dream come true, living in absolute tranquility, with the nearest neighbour at least one kilometer away.

The new owners of my current house will arrive soon, and I'm extremely busy moving and organizing things. In the short term I won't have electricity (and thus no Internet) in my new house, courtesy of the incompetence of the bureaucrats who run the state monopoly on electricity distribution. In the long term I will be a busy forester, taming the growth of 5 hectares (12 acres) of oaks and pines, and (maybe) hunting wild boar and deer.

It was fun writing nearly 4,000 posts on Frogsmoke over the past 2.5 years, and I'm grateful for your visits and comments. Maybe I'll be back after some time, but I'm not making any promises.

I wish you (and those near and dear to you) a healthy and prosperous New Year!

Romke Soldaat

Most people know Gustave Eiffel as the man who built the Eiffel Tower, but this master engineer created many more wonderful constructions. The Garabit Viaduct is one of them:

From the Wonders of the World Databank: In the late 1800s, a mountainous barrier blocked the railways from reaching Southern France. For years, engineers tried to figure out a way to bridge the windy Garabit Valley in France's Massif Central. Finally, one of the era's best engineers, Gustave Eiffel, came up with a brilliant solution. He built a huge wrought-iron arch in record time with just a minimal amount of material. How did he do it?

Rather than building his bridge with thick, solid beams, Eiffel used beams with lots of holes — holes in the shapes of triangles. Eiffel knew that if his bridge was made of thick, solid beams, it would be very heavy and the beams would rattle in the wind. But if he used a series of open triangles, called a truss, the gusty wind in the valley would blow right through them. Not only is the truss pattern lightweight; it’s very stable as well. Depending upon the position of a train on the bridge, the connecting vertical and diagonal segments are pulled into tension and pushed into compression — forces that resist one another. A push on one segment is resisted by an opposite pull from another, all along its length. So the bridge remains strong and rigid, despite its lightness.

In 1976 the Garabit Viaduct was blown up (but not for real!) in the disaster movie The Cassandra Crossing. Here's a scene from that film:

Christmas is not a happy time for everybody: man fails three times to kill himself in one evening

A 65-year old man in the north of France, abandoned by his wife a few days before Christmas, couldn't face being alone, and made three failed attempts to kill himself on Christmas Eve.
First, he tried to hang himself, but the rope broke. Then he tried to slit his throat, but the knife was too blunt. Then, he opened four bottles of gas, drenched his house with petrol and set it alight, but the neigbours called the fire brigade who saved the man. He's now in hospital, with only minor injuries.

Source (in French)

According to the Expanded Beard Type Chart, facial hair grow can be categorized in 33 types. Some of them are classics (mutton chops, goatee, Franz Josef), others are more modern (The Zappa and Super Mario), but only two are associated with a country: Old Dutch and French Fork.

The French Fork looks like the one shown left. The official definition is: A French Fork is a full beard that extends off the chin and is split down the middle into two segments. But, in spite of extensive research, I haven't been able to find out who invented or pioneered this beard type. As a matter of fact, all men that I found wearing a French Fork were not French, and all bearded French that I found were not equipped with a French Fork. Here are some examples of Unfrench Forks:

The only discovery I made is that the French Fork is a unisex beard — even girls can have one:

Other than that, the origin of the French Fork remains one of the greatest mysteries of our time. Does anybody know the answer?

I don't know what's going on in France when Spring starts, but the amount of newborn babies around Christmas is astounding. On 27 December 1925, little actor-to-be Michel Piccoli [wiki] saw the light, which makes him 83 today. On the same date in 1948, Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu [wiki] took his first breath and became one of France's most celebrated (and richest) actors. Piccoli played in nearly sixty films, Depardieu in more than eighty, and neither has stopped yet.

Happy smoking, guys!

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Jean Ferrat [wiki], one of my favorite French singers, was born December 26, 1930, so he turns 78 today.

According to his own website he hasn't done much in the past 15 years, so I have no recent photos of his trademark moustache, but here's a song that must be one of the most beautiful chansons ever made:

Aimer à perdre la raison - To love until it drives you insane

OK, Eartha Kitt [wiki] wasn't French so officially she doesn't belong here, but one of her most famous songs was French so that's some justification. Here's she is, performing C'est si bon [wiki], with the original French lyrics by André Hornez.

One of the charms of this song is that, like many Anglophones, Kitt couldn't pronounce the letter 'u' the way the French do. So when she's supposed to sing Bras dessus bras dessous, it comes out as twice Bras dessous. Never mind, rest in peace, Eartha!

You wouldn't believe it if you walk though a French supermarket, but the French are not the greatest chocolate eaters of the world. As a matter of fact, they're only ninth in Europe, with an average yearly consumption of 6.8kg. Absolute winners are the Swiss, who eat 12.3kg of the stuff — one kg per month! But maybe they make better chocolate than the French…

The photo shows a chocolate Eiffel Tower, erected during the Salon du chocolat in Paris this year.

Just when I wasn't looking these two ladies got a year older:

Singer and actress Vanessa Paradis [wiki] turned 36 on December 22

Prima Donna Carla Bruni [wiki] (who is no longer a man-eater) turned 41 on December 23.

Happy smoking girls!

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Yours truly is taking a smoke break until after Christmas. Be happy, stay alive!

Sometimes, the face blur technology in Google Streetview fails. That dog is clearly recognizable.

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On The Catalyst: famous people & their cats. There's only one that looks French to me, from 1956:

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