Poutine for Putin

Canada is being asked to supply more weapons to Ukraine.  I think we should do something.  I think we should send poutine.  To the Russians.

Hear me out.  For one thing, an awful lot of people (mostly Americans), consider poutine to be a biological weapon.  They have a point.  If you come from a culture, and an ethnic and genetic background, that is not used to tolerating an extremely high level of cholesterol in your diet, poutine could definitely be a killer.  I understand that, someplace in the United States, there is a restaurant that styles itself as the heart attack cafe, and they specialize in big burgers slathered with cheese.  These people are wimps.  Potatoes, deep fried in lard, covered with cheese curds, and then the whole covered with gravy (which, you will recall, is primarily fat which has been made somewhat soluble in water, with the addition of flour and salt), now that's a cholesterol laden meal.  Serve that to somebody who is used to growing up on a diet of cucumbers and beets, and you're pretty much guaranteed to generate a lot of heart attacks.

Of course, initially, poutine does not look like a weapon.  It's delicious.  So this is one of those sneak attack weapons, that you can serve to an enemy, and they'll happily lap it up.  They won't know they've been poisoned until it's too late.

But there's more reason to serve poutine to the Russians.  There is the name.  Now president Vladimir Putin has his name spelled one way, and pronounced one way, in most of the English-speaking world.  (Of course, in Russia, his name is spelled differently, with different letters, since it's the Cyrillic alphabet.)  But I was amused to note that on a French report about Putin, that the French refer to him via a Latin alphabet spelling that is identical to poutine.  The thing is, there is a difference in the way that poutine is pronounced, in Canada, between the French speaking population, and the English speaking population.  The original joual word, which gave its name to poutine, is pronounced much closer to the way the English pronounce Vladimir Putin's name.  And, of course, the original joual word, which was used to name poutine, means mess.  I think it would be a very good idea to point this out at every possible opportunity.  Vladimir Putin, or as the French speaking people know him, Poutine, has created a poutine, a mess.  It is a poutine, a mess, of his own making.  It is only right that everyone, Poutine included, be reminded at every possible opportunity that he has created this mess, this poutine, and that he is the one responsible.  I think poutine is just the vehicle to do that.