I dunno, clean fresh air, exercise...mud.

(Although I'll admit I find the idea of subsistence farming is actually rather appalling.)

Possibly it was the fact that I spelt it "appealling" the first time. I kinda had a foot in each camp.

The idea appeals. The reality? Not so much. Unless it's all about needlework. And books, they're a subsistence item, right?

And books, they're a subsistence item, right?

Um.

There's ALWAYS mud...books, NSM.

{taps on screen}

Heck, throw is some Standard Grade German a few sentences of something almost but not entirely unlike French and suddenly everyone goes all shy.

I read Asterix in French in high school. The bookstore on campus here has a ton of Asterix books in English.

Gerard Depardieu plays Obelix.

I must see this.

(Although I'll admit I find the idea of subsistence farming is actually rather appealing.)

colour me unsurprised that I'm now ear-wormed by the theme from The Good Life.

Hey Jimi, I was getting a little worried that we hadn't seen 'much' of you since you were sprung performing your impromptu strip-tease over on WX.

some would say they'd seen more than enough

I loved both Tintin and Asterix as a kid, although we had some books only in French, so I didn't know that The Blue Lotus was about the opium trade and World War II for many years. Alas that a lot of the Tintin books are unforgiveably racist. The only parts of Tintin in the Congo I cna bear to read are the parts where he comes across a rhino, can't figure out what to do with it, so he bores a hole in its back and tosses in some dynamite. Okay, that's juts my appreciation of inappropriate explodey humor.

My chief memory of Asterix? The giant Viking dog who talked with Dogmatix, who, to signify his Vikingness, barked like this: Wøøf! Wøøf! (Those are Os with slashes in them.)

Favorite names: English Gauls Selfemploymentax and Valueaddedtax, and most especially the Coriscan Boneywasawarriorwayayix. You know, I was probably 22 before I realized whom "Boney" refers to.

The UnAmerican thread is my most lurked thread. The handful of other threads I read I generally pop in and say something. I almost always read this thread and alternate between being educated and entertained. Thank you very much. Yet I rarely have anything to add to the discussion, and this is no exception to that rule.

ooer, I feel compelled to say something witty, or insightful.

However, since I've never done so in the past, I'm not about to start now.

Zoe, I'm in New York City.

For some reason, there was a minor Asterix cult in the science-fiction circles I moved in in the late eighties. I enjoyed it but not enough to seek out a lot more of it. You can get them in the larger comic book stores here in English translation. I looked at Tintin but he never did it for me--I don't really understand the appeal of it, looks like a less well-drawn version of the earlier Little Nemo in Slumberland, which I love.

Edit: Wow. I never knew people actually said "ooer"!