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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Glory is fleeting, but Obscurity is Forever


Sitting at my dinning room table this morning, I attempted to write an introduction to my latest paper on why Napoleon Bonaparte was able to rise to power. It didn’t go very well. This stems from not having a single shred of interest in Napoleon, even if he is regarded as one of the greatest military commanders of all time.

So far I had only written several jokes about Mr. Bonaparte driving a Chevy Corsica. This led to three paragraphs in regard to how American car manufacturers take “far-off” exotic names and badge their badly made vehicles. “Oh, I drive a Chevrolet Corsica! Every time I drive my Corsica I feel like I am in the birthplace of Napoleon, the French island in the Mediterranean Sea. Feel the breeze. The air. The total disregard to civil liberties.”

I’m quite sure my Western Civilization Professor would not appreciate a six page paper on how the Monte Carlo, Malibu, or my favorite, the Buick Lucerne received its badges. She wont care that the Lucerne was named either from a town in Colorado, a brand of cottage cheese at Safeway, or the name of fourth largest lake in Switzerland.

Although since we know that in 1798, Switzerland was completely overrun by the Napoleonic French and became the Helvetic Republic (where they invented the font), I could work that car’s name into my report. My report will be, Napoleon: Greatest Military Commander of all Time, as he is commemorated in The American Auto Industry.

Did Napoleon ever make it to Grenada?

4 comments:

  1. God I've missed laughing at you. With! With you.

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  2. I don't know about your Western Civ prof, but I'm laughing my head off. If one of my students were to write something that cheeky, I'd at least give them points for originality and thought-provokingness.
    And like you, I have little interest in the Corsica-born French dictator, but I do have to teach about him every year. Actually, did so on Tuesday.

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  3. ya know Stevie - if you're going to copy and paste those hard to spell names from Gooooogle, at least then go change the font and size to where it look like you actually typed them :)

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