No I do NOT hate you, your religion, your race, your sexual disposition, your nationality (except those misfortunate enough to be French) or any other minority slice you lay claim to.

Actually the French comment above is especially topical here as the email I'm responding to was indeed from a froggy. Why do we Americans, particularly this American, hate the French? The short answer is "We don't" or at a bare minimum "I don't". The somewhat longer answer is "Because you are cheese eating surrender monkeys" but that is way overused so I'm not going to go there.

I don't hate the French. I don't hate France. On the contrary, I studied the French language for (mumble mumble) years and you just don't do that if you have an inate hatred of the people. Unless, of course, you are planning on travelling there for purposes of espionage with a plan to infiltrate the highest reaches of government in order to take over the country and send it on a downward spiral to socialist hell like Jacques Chirac did. Come on now, you already suspected that, didn't you? I mean just say it out loud: "Jacques Chirac". There's no way in the world that that's a real name. In fact, using Babelfrench we can loosely translate that name as "Michael Jackson" so we can be pretty sure that Chirac is just a freaky politician using France as his prepubescent boy toy.

Now where was I? Oh, yeah. I really don't hate any group specifically. Except the obvious ones of course: child molesters, people who spit gum on the sidewalk, fans of a block of Jerry Lewis' work characterized by the phrase "Hey, look at me being a dumbass", etc. And "hate" may just be a bit wrong for the term to use there anyway. Think of it as more like "unquenchable need to see target strapped to a chair with their eyelids forcibly removed while Master of Disguise plays in a loop on a 6 foot wide plasma television directly in front of them interrupted sporadically with photos of a nude Rosanne Barr doing rude things to a turkey in a submilinal attempt to crack their psyche that can only end in success eventually because everybody knows that sitting that close to a plasma television will give you brain cancer HAHAHAHAHAHA you cretin". Or something like that.

So why are the French on par with the homosexuals as far as frequency of being the figurative rump that I kick with my rapier wit? For much the same reason, actually. If you walk up to me and say "Boobies! Boobies! Boobies!" I'm going to laugh. Sex is funny so I use it in humorous fashion quite often. Homosexuality is just a slice of the sex pie that I use for its humor potential. Along the same vein if you walk up to me and say "Mamelons! Mamelons! Mamelons!" I'm going to look at you like you need help from a person in a white frock but then you'll let me know that "mamelons" means "nipples" in French and then I'll giggle. So you see that the French are so often a target for my humor because they are very much like homosexuals.

By the way, I might have just discovered (through the assistance of Babelfrench) a major reason for the tense state of Amero/Frankish relations. The word "boobies" is "idiots" in French. All the time we've been calling them idiots they've been thinking we were calling them boobies! No wonder the French were so pissed at us. Just for the record for all of the French reading this, you are idiots, not boobies. Glad I got that cleared up.

But there I go again, eh? Some Frenchy is going to read the preceding paragraph and think that I really think all of the French are idiots. That is absolutely not true. It takes a certain perverse genius to create the Citroen and pass it off as a motor vehicle. It's called hyperbole, people. An exaggeration meant for effect (or in this case, humor) and not intended to be taken literally. Like when I say that French people smell rather like the tapioca pudding that got pushed to the back of the fridge and forgotten until its sharply acidic odor of rot began to overpower the natural flavors of the onions, fish and tobasco sauce forcing a fridge cleanout where the lost pudding was discovered and cautiously removed after donning those rubber kitchen gloves oh so reminiscent of the ones sticking through the glass walls that they use to handle radioactive material as if that's going to help, hello dumbass get a clue and say goodbye to that nice head of hair as well as your gonads. A lot of people would think that I literally mean that all French people smell like that when what I really mean is all of the French people that I have personally smelled and most likely all the rest as well.

The French have given us many things that I am very grateful for. The French kiss tops the list. If it weren't for the French my tongue would still be virgin to the experience of massaging a lover's uvula and accidentally dislodging a piece of unidentifiable food that was lodged between two molars or the thrill of battle as a hair (hopefully not pubic) is sureptitiously passed back and forth from partner to partner.

Then there's French toast, one of my very favoritest breakfast treats. And French fries. Could you imagine McDonalds without French fries? Let's face it, America as a whole owes the French for a goodly portion of the collective obesity that we wear like the mantle of success and wonton excess that it is.

And let us not forget the many other things we have taken from the ancient and venerable French culture. Things like... Hmmm... Give me a minute here... I'll think of something...

Nope, that's it. Obesity and the classic tongue fumble. But in my book it's still enough to qualify the French as major contributors to our American "culture" (don't forget the scare quotes there) and to say that we owe them our neverending gratitude and friendship.

So to sum up my response to my Gallic detractor, I have nothing but the warmest feelings for France, the French people, the French culture and the socialist obstructionist government that oversees every facet of your life.

Veuillez m'excuser. Je m'engagerai maintenant dans la satisfaction autoerotic tout en rêvant des aisselles galliques velues.