I don't understand the Parisians...

So, there I am, sitting at my desk at home waiting for my abysmally slow wireless connection to finally let me into my email. It's evident I'm going to wait a very long time and probably will have to go back to work soon so I figure to hell with it and click on a news link that's just too titillating to resist.

Something about finding the body of a famous chef.

My first thought is Holy Cow! Someone finally snapped and hit Sandra Lee over the head with the margarita pitcher from her latest "table scape".

No. Sandra is alive and well and probably making casseroles with canned anchovies, tomato soup and miniature marshmallows.

I wasn't familiar with the chef in question. And the event happened in France, about two years ago. It seems that the famous French chef's lover had her fill of the guy. I always picture French relationships in one of three ways. It's either a passionate, devoted couple that sits around and eats French food, drinks French wine and makes love a LOT (because they're French) in between strolling over Parisian bridges hand in hand, or an older couple, devoted to one another, with snow white hair and round faces with perfect complexions who sit on a porch in Provence smiling at each other, or they're Apache dancers who throw things at each other, drag each other around the floor by the hair, wear striped shirts and smoke too much.

Apparently this couple fell into the latter category.

It seems the chef disappeared about two years ago, about the same time their landlord said he'd noticed that it wasn't as noisy in their apartment as it used to be. Now I'm guessing that they've been looking for the guy but then, I'm not up on how the gendarmes conduct investigations of this sort.

Well, within the last 24 hours or so, the matter appears to have resolved itself. Apparently the chef's lover reached her secret keeping/guilt limit and confessed to her daughter that she wasn't exactly an exemplary mother anymore. Seems that the missing chef had been occupying space in her freezer.

TWO YEARS in her freezer and no one had a freaking CLUE!

According to the news, they got in a fight and she killed the guy by punching him. No, I haven't seen her, I have no idea how large she is but the mind boggles. On my best day I don't think I could have landed a lethal blow on anything bigger than a water balloon.

It gets odder.

Apparently it was a "crime of passion" or whatever phrase the French use, probably "just another Monday". Instead of calling the police, or the doctor or 911 (or whatever they call in France), she parked him in her bathroom. And, at least according to her, she kept him in there for quite some time, until she saved enough money to buy the freezer.

The obvious question here, and SOME ONE'S got to ask it, is: DIDN'T ANYONE NOTICE THE BODY IN THE BATHROOM? Even IF she never had company in, that MUST have been disturbing. Not to mention the obvious concerns. I mean, the French aren't famous for their hygiene but....

So she gets the freezer and stuffs him in it. And two years later she finally develops a conscience and confesses to her daughter that "something unfortunate" had happened. Far from me to lecture people on right and wrong, I mean, ultimately that's pretty much between you and whoever, or whatever you eventually come up against. I think it was Mark Twain who once said "France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals". If it wasn't him it was probably Will Rogers. But "something UNFORTUNATE?" Litote. According to freetranslation.com, litote means "understatement" in French. Le GRAND litote!

But wait! It gets better!

The French prosecutor, who I'm guessing is the equivalent of a district attorney, was quoted as saying "It would have been a banal affair if there hadn't been a cadaver lying in a freezer for two years."

Quote of the year, friends.