Althouse: "This is the best example of animals being jerks that I think I have ever seen."

March 13, 2015

"This is the best example of animals being jerks that I think I have ever seen."

Top comment for this.

I'm blogging this mainly because I have a tag for animals are jerks.

IN THE COMMENTS:& Michelle Dulak Thomson put up the URL to this excellent video in which the cats are only scantily jerky:

20 comments:

traditionalguy said...: Somebody call PETA's Swat Team.
Swatting animals is so wrong.

And the training of cats to fight like dogs fight is just as bad as Michael Vick...well maybe that is not true since cats are untrainable.; 3/13/15, 4:14 PM
Curious George said...: Google cats are jerks...; 3/13/15, 4:23 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: POUM!

A word I learned from this YouTube video, which has been seen about a gazillion times, most racked up by me and my husband:

https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=AwrTccrSVQNVw3MANuwPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTBsOXB2YTRjBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2dxMQR2dGlkAw--?p=dansons+la+capucine&tnr=21&vid=C2F00E48D8963BE19AA4C2F00E48D8963BE19AA4&l=101&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DUN.608000591740470963%26pid%3D15.1&sigi=11r8du8ha&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailymotion.com%2Fvideo%2Fxxfeme_dansons-la-capucine_fun&sigr=11vo8fsnl&tt=b&tit=Dansons+la+capucine...&sigt=10mul4kga&back=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fyhs%2Fsearch%3Fp%3Ddansons%2Bla%2Bcapucine%26type%3Dff.36.w7.dsp.04-01.us.avg._.1214tb%26param1%3DrZFLb50wEIX_Sjd4B_L4gfHCi0sgUaUsqjZtuvWLG6rwiM0l6b_vcKNm3UUlyxwOZ2bwZz8GUyjHetmfWMfLupNdKRrVly29acqatgLathddIwoViJ9WLAAGYnMEhQDJBDRCUUpJyOb044482_ls4kwmTHIVmPQqMq28c9RzSQcNlkXJASiI0rqgrGYerGuE1gAq6JpJHlWwijVBD00jgXJyzH3dLmRNZkhkN6KCilYCgNxcUorz9sWe4_ev9-Zp29aC24INuKbfOdrknyq7nyu_TGitmMv4_Pshr28FH_wYCh4KJlX7Tyww2BWsnq5l_-2U2PGghy3jjDpkVIgUpV-uk_AYm8PtcI6rQOv9MtDAtSY0hnSUomDHaICSSvxdfNGIRQjcqMLEjokPiEfttRsiRp3PVxh1togyhLyifjmUnfMyIz33jICdt-vFj3Mk32LaY_rcmYeWlfenn-XjbU8lGVejeAWaVlpXSpMlm8dxDstr_qSIM7djisPyRtxueF1R4qN5SJdIfuV38Qc1%26param2%3Dbrowser_search_provider%26param3%3Dff.36.w7.dsp.04-01.us.avg._.1214tb%26hsimp%3Dyhs-fh_lsonsw%26hspart%3Davg%26ei%3DUTF-8&sigb=1nebj7psa&hspart=avg&hsimp=yhs-fh_lsonsw

Ick. In retrospect, I ought to have vetted that URL first. Anyway, it comes up if you type "Dansons la capucine" into Google.; 3/13/15, 4:31 PM
Browndog said...: The internet is full of cat videos.

That, or if you have a cat, put a glass of water on a table, and behold!; 3/13/15, 4:37 PM
Revenant said...: I like cats because they are naturally jerks. Getting a cat to like you is an accomplishment. Getting a dog to like you just requires bacon.; 3/13/15, 4:41 PM
lemondog said...: French cats are philosophical. This one probably reads Sartre:

Henri

I'm surrounded by morons

We cannot escape ourselves; 3/13/15, 5:20 PM
Wince said...: Have you been punked?

I think that's a fake cat paw coming out of the cabinet, isn't it?

Looks pretty long and stiff.

A person in the cabinet has the fake paw-stick in his right hand hand, and is holding the back of the cat's neck pushing its head forward with the left hand, puppet-like; 3/13/15, 5:33 PM
Wince said...: Like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's microphone paw.; 3/13/15, 5:53 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: I don't know, EDH. It looks real to me -- especially the cupping of the paw prior to the swat. I've seen my own cat do just that.; 3/13/15, 6:02 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: lemondog,

Of course Henri reads Sartre. No Exit is how he reads himself to sleep at night. Hell is other cats. Particularly the "imbecile blanc."; 3/13/15, 6:05 PM
Unknown said...: In depth commentary on King vs. Burwell is nice and all, but nothing says subscribe like cat videos and Meade's sweet pups.; 3/13/15, 6:12 PM
Jason said...: Check out the "Thug Life" compilations on YouTube.; 3/13/15, 6:29 PM
Jason said...: THUG LIFE CATS!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-P3l9ezaF8; 3/13/15, 7:00 PM
Craig Howard said...: Oh, for Pete's sake. a funnier English version of this has been around for years.

Here; 3/13/15, 7:34 PM
richard mcenroe said...: Our cats have "fort fights". With rules

They have a box lid that can't be more than four, five inches tall with a couple of finger holes on each side. No way they can't see each other.

But the rules say they have to lie down on opposite sides of the box and either swat at each other blindly over the top of the box or poke at each other through the finger holes.

Finally the outside cat leaps into the box, the inside cat leaps out, and the blind fight resumes.; 3/13/15, 8:24 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Craig Howard,

For different values of "funny," possibly. I massively prefer the French version, but, as always, YMMV.; 3/13/15, 8:53 PM
Quaestor said...: Hilarious. I’m not into cats, as it were, but these two are amazing.

A word or two about the song, Dansons la capucine --

It’s the lyrics to a children’s dancing game that’s just like the English “Ring Around the Rosie” except the chant is different. Here’s a rough translation:

Dansons la capucine!
Y’a pas de pan chez nous.
Y’en a chez la voisine,
Mais ce n’est pas pour nous.
You! les petits cailloux!

Dansons la capucine!
(The children start to promenade in a circle, holding hands just like Ring Around the Rosie.)
There’s no bread at our house.
There is at the neighbor’s house,
But it’s not for us.
Weee! Little stones!
(The children drop down on their haunches.)

Further verses of the chant substitute wine for bread and fire for wine. In other words “our house” is a place of great poverty — no food, no drink, no heat.

"Dansons la capucine!” is hard to translate. If you use translation software the English is “Let's dance the Nasturtium!” Nasturtium is a garden herb like watercress, but that makes the French chant into nonsense, just like "Ring Around the Rosie” is nonsense. But is it?

Capucine is just a final e away from capucin. Before being the name of a kind of pet monkey and the root of the most popular coffee drink at Starbucks, a Capucin was and still is a member of an order of Catholic friars. The Capucins were breakaways from the Franciscans. They believed in extreme poverty, and by extreme I mean owning literally nothing. A Capucin novice started out completely naked, and he stayed naked until some passerby took pity and gave him a tunic, a hood, and bit of cord to serve as a belt. By charity they received a few other things. No shoes or sandals, no food or heat, a Capuchin’s worldly goods amounted to a tunic, a hood, a cord, and a bowl. One of their rules forbade them to even ask for charity. When a Capuchin was hungry he’d rattle stones in his empty bowl in hope that a passerby would surmise his need and help. In spite of their hunger and discomfort Capucins were to be cheerful and joyous at all times. When not begging they spent their time preaching and praying. So the Capuchins seem to be a harmless and happy brotherhood of hermits, but there’s a dark side as well. Catherine d’Medici used them to incite the Parisian mob to slaughter their Protestant neighbors.

If one thinks of the monk and not the salad, the nonsense chant makes perfect sense.; 3/14/15, 7:12 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "In the side walls of the vaults are niches where skeleton monks sit or stand, clad in the brown habits that they wore in life, and labelled with their names and the dates of their decease. Their skulls (some quite bare, and others still covered with yellow skin, and hair that has known the earth-damps) look out from beneath their hoods, grinning hideously repulsive. One reverend father has his mouth wide open, as if he had died in the midst of a howl of terror and remorse, which perhaps is even now screeching through eternity. As a general thing, however, these frocked and hooded skeletons seem to take a more cheerful view of their position, and try with ghastly smiles to turn it into a jest. But the cemetery of the Capuchins is no place to nourish celestial hopes: the soul sinks forlorn and wretched under all this burden of dusty death ; the holy earth from Jerusalem, so imbued is it with mortality , has grown as barren of the flowers of Paradise as it is of earthly weeds and grass. Thank Heaven for its blue sky; it needs a long, upward gaze to give us back our faith. Not here can we feel ourselves immortal, where the very altars in these chapels of horrible consecration are heaps of human bones."

Hawthorne, Nathaniel (2012-12-06). The Marble Faun (Kindle Locations 2526-2534). Kindle Edition.; 3/14/15, 10:05 AM
Quaestor said...: My seventh grade English teacher gave me The Marble Faun to read as a personal assignment. She was an elderly spinster who worshiped Robert E. Lee as the ideal of gentlemanly decorum, and was feared more than loved by her charges. One afternoon as we filed out to our other classes she called me aside, and pressing the foxed and worn volume into my hand, gave me the reading assignment.

"This in no way relieves you of your other obligations," she said, "but I'm certain you shall benefit from the experience."

Hawthorne is pretty rough terrain for a twelve year old, let me tell you. I just didn't have the cultural depth to even begin. Take the faun of the title, for example. It took me quite a while to realize the faun was a kind of satyr. Up to that moment I was thinking of a kind of Bambi, and getting mightily confused as a result.

I took nothing away from the experience except a small appreciation of the long road ahead, which may have been Miss Hall Nance-Carpenter's intention all along.; 3/14/15, 10:51 AM
CatherineM said...: Lemondog. Thank you for Henri! I just watched all of his videos. So funny. I love his mockery of the other cats.; 3/14/15, 12:57 PM