Abbe Boulah’s Weblog

– Say, Bog-Hubert: What’s going on out there on the Fog Island Tavern deck?
– Good question, Vodçek. I thought I’d seen everything, but this…
– That bad, eh? Who’s that guy there with Abbe Boulah?
– It’s a tourist from the EU. Don’t know he got lost out here. must be a friend of a friend of Otis. And he got into a bragging contest with Abbe Boulah about which part of the world is crazier; more polarized, has weirder politicians.
– Must be a toss-up, if you ask me.
– Right. So now Abbe Boulah is trying to teach the EU fellow — I couldn’t really figure out if he’s a still-EU Brit or from another part over there — how to fix the Brexit mess.
– Good grief. So what’s Abbé Boulah’s solution?
– It actually looked like a brilliant idea for a while, but…
– Now you’ve got me curious. Do I have to bribe you with a shot of your own moonshine production, the Tate’s Hell Special Reserve?
– Psst. Okay, talked me into it. He stunned the poor guy with the simplicity of the idea: Let the good, compassionate Europeans help the poor Brits out of the conundrum they voted themselves into. Instead of haggling for years about the details of a hard or soft or a medium-well done exit, he said: Why don’t you simply dissolve the EU?
– Urkhphfft: What??
– Hang on, don’t choke on that Zin of yours. It’s only for a day, Abbé Boulah says: All the other countries who want to stay in the union voting the next day to re-unite the union, just with a little change of the name. So: Brexit? Done. Stroke of the pen. Paid vacation for a day, for all the EU employees. Get it? A few crazy regulations not getting written, it’s actually a benefit for everybody…
– But…
– Yes. Worried about things like the trade treaties? He said, they are all reinstated as they were, for now; and the UK can either choose to re-join the new thing, or stay out and re-negotiate the individual agreements one by one, without any deadlines, while the existing arrangements stay as they are until replaced.
– Weird. But, I must say, it has a certain Abbeboulistic appeal, eh?
– Yes — but now they are arguing about what the new name should be. They agree that it should just be a minimal exchange or change in the current name, so it wouldn’t cost too much. Such as just adding or deleting something in a single letter of the name.
– Makes sense.
– You’d think so. But now they’re up in arms about whether it should be ‘Buropean’ or ‘Iropean’ or ‘Furopean’ or ‘Luropean’ or Nuropean’– all just messing a little with the ‘E’ — or European Onion’ or ‘RUnion’ or just adding a ‘2’ (starting a series of ‘generations’ like some computer system: ‘ EU2’, 3, 4…) or a star ‘ European* Union’ or ‘*European’ or ‘European Union* — ‘EU*’ And another star in the flag. Or just put the whole current name in quotation marks… It’s getting vicious, I tell you — you may have to go out there and throw them into the channel to cool them off…