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Is it safe to come out?  (looks around...)  Ok.

Hi everyone.  You might think that with all the drama in my life I don't have time for relaxing activities.  Au contraire.  

I am finally reading Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".  Wow.  I can't put this down.  A while back we were talking about the simultaneously exciting and annoying feeling you get when you find someone has thought your brilliant thought before you (affirming you are have a great mind, but ensuring you don't get any credit for it...) like Marx, the ancient Greeks or Sartre.  I have that same feeling reading this book.  READ IT.  It's bloody brilliant.  Er.  Unfortunately, it is also making it a bit difficult to go to work these days. ((cough))  Oh well.  Like Pinochet, I too have to eat...

Last night I saw "Ia Liubliu Tebia".  Yay!  It was a movie I suspected I would love.  And I did.  That just doesn't happen enough.  It's a pretty light-hearted fim.  You could even call it a romantic comedy.  Nothing groundbreaking, artistically speaking.  But (and I didn't actually realize this) it was the first film made in Russia about homosexuality.  I'm hesitant to label it like that, because it's really just about people and love.  But still, it is an achievement they even got it made.  It's a funny and charming movie.  Reminds me of those French or Spanish romantic comedies.  

I am working on a Shoe Blog.  

And have developed a small obsession with cabbits.  I understand they do not actually exist.  They say.  But for years I've been under the impression that I am the only one who finds their cat distinctly rabbity in both appearance and behavior.  (My step-father, a gourmand, calls the poor beast "hasenpfeffer.")  Apparently not.  There are sites all over the internet.  So it must be a real phenomenon.  ;)  

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

by poemless on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 01:19:32 PM EST
poemless:
someone has thought your brilliant thought before you

I've not read the book, but am interested in what may be the "brilliant thought" or insight you perceive?

"Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 01:24:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Pure capitalism is pure evil?

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
by poemless on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 02:09:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I wouldn't argue against that statement.

"Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 02:31:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Also the theory that a lot of suffering isn't an unfortunate side effect of an otherwise noble economic system, but that it is intentionally built into the system, and that the success of the system explicitly depends on it.

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
by poemless on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 02:35:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I plan to read it in the near future and, hopefully, provide a critical review.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 02:28:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Oh, you are reading again!  I am so happy!

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
by poemless on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 02:31:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I bought the book. I will try to take the time to read it.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 04:26:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Hmph.  You're not really going to read it, are you?  I suppose that's not you rockin' out in the windfarm concert pic either, huh?  Neither a real Marxist nor a real Rockstar.  So disappointing...   ;)

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
by poemless on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 04:41:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]
And have developed a small obsession with cabbits.  I understand they do not actually exist.  They say.  But for years I've been under the impression that I am the only one who finds their cat distinctly rabbity in both appearance and behavior.  (My step-father, a gourmand, calls the poor beast "hasenpfeffer.")  Apparently not.  There are sites all over the internet.  So it must be a real phenomenon.  ;)  
In Spain, in times of food scarcity (most recently in the long post-civil-war "autarchy" lasting into the 1950's), it is said that sometimes people (and inns) would serve cat cooked like rabbit. This was called "giving cat for hare" and the expression dar gato por liebre has passed into the Spanish language meaning "to scam (by substitution)".

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. — John M. Keynes
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 01:26:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
My father came back from Nigeria once during a period when it was undergoing an agricultural revolution. the only thing that was coming out of this revolution for the locals was chicken. However some times he was fairly certain that what was served to him as chicken was actually cat, as there seemed to be  too many legs and the bones were too solid.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 01:36:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Just to clarify - I'm not advocating for the stewing of my cat!  Or of eating cats at all.  (Though I will eat a rabbit.  yum.)    

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
by poemless on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 02:13:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I first came across this Parisian menu in one of my high school history books. I was able to google up a source for it on the net, with a bibliographic reference to boot:

In Paris in Its Splendor (1900), Eustace Reynolds-Ball gives the menu of a popular restaurant in the Latin Quarter at the beginning of January 1871, "which gives a good idea of the gastronomic straits to which the light-hearted Parisians were reduced":

  • Consommé de Cheval au millet.

  • Brochettes de foie de Chien à la maître d'hôtel.

  • Emincé de rable de Chat. Sauce mayonnaise.

  • Epaules et filets de Chien braisés. Sauce aux tomates.

  • Civet de Chat aux Champignons.

  • Côtelettes de Chien aux petits pois.

  • Salmis de Rats. Sauce Robert.

  • Gigots de chien flanqués de ratons. Sauce poivrade.

  • Begonias au jus.

  • Plum-pudding au rhum et à la Moelle de Cheval.

This happened during the siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian war. The novel meat sources are dog (chien), cat (chat), rat (same as in English), rat pups (ratons), and horse (cheval). Begonias, of course, have neither legs nor hair. I don't think I need to translate the rest of the culinary French above. Or do I?

You're clearly a dangerous pinko commie pragmatist.

by Vagulus on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 09:08:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Yeah, war-time substitution scams... WWII stories of horse meat, dog meat, rat meat, even human flesh. But the funniest (well, at least for me) was not food.

My elementary school afternoon class teacher (who was a real ex-proletarian) told that in the chaos before and after the final days of WWII, she had to buy new clothes, and on the black market in some village, some cheap cloth was peddled to her.

She bought it, went into some house, changed into the new clothes from her rags. Soon after, she felt her skin burn. She walked for a few minutes, but the skin burning would only get worse. Then she examined her clothes more closely: they were made of nettle...

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 02:28:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Which reminds me of Hans Christian Andersen's tale, The wild swans, where a young girl spins nettle flax to weave coats for her brothers, who have been turned into swans by their wicked step-mother.

As the executioner seized her by the hand, to lift her out of the cart, she hastily threw the eleven coats of mail over the swans, and they immediately became eleven handsome princes; but the youngest had a swan's wing, instead of an arm; for she had not been able to finish the last sleeve of the coat.


You're clearly a dangerous pinko commie pragmatist.
by Vagulus on Wed Apr 30th, 2008 at 09:41:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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