September 22, 2015
A mumbled entreaty to a rat: "Live your best life."
Would you have had the presence of mind not just to photograph a sudden encounter of a beast at his best, but to speak to him, to speak words of wisdom?
Ah, but "Live your best life" seems to be an entire franchise of pop culture wisdom. I'm a little sad to see that. It seems to be Oprah-connected in ways I am not willing to explore. But for a rat, a rat who has hit the heights, finding an entire slice of pizza, the aphorism is exalted, even as the unseen human mumbles with, perhaps, only irony.
ADDED: The video made me think of the old Frank Sinatra song, "High Hopes." ("Just what makes that little old ant/Think he'll move that rubber tree plant
Anyone knows an ant, can't/Move a rubber tree plant/But he's got high hopes, he's got high hopes..." — famously repurposed as a JFK campaign song. Insert "Rat Pack" joke.)
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26 comments:
I like it but I don't know how the rat was going to get that piece of pizza into the hole. Maybe gnaw it into the shape of a gun.
I'm still on London time.
I didn't know he lost the pizza in the end. So sad.
^^^^^ SPOILER ALERT
I know, I hate when you think of something and it turns out to be a meme. It is the problem with the internet, it reminds us daily of our complete ordinariness. The hardest thing is to say something new.
^^^^^ SPOILER ALERT
Maaan!
I didn't want to know that. I was picturing him like Templeton in Charlotte's Web.
No anchovies, no peace, man. Furry lives matter..
He sang an ode to a rat? why didn't he get a stick and kill it?
That's what is wrong with you people today. So far removed from the realities of life you don't have a clue. Rats carry disease. not just a rash or something you cure with a cream, I'm talking puke-your-blackened-guts-up-on-the-sidewalk disease. Only by constant efforts does the city keep the damn things from overrunning the streets.
1 female rat can have 15,000 offspring in a year! See Here: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/rat_indian_reproduction
Oh, and you kids get off my lawn!!!
Another reasons why I wouldn't want to live in NYC.
And Ben could not be reached for comment.
Best fed rats in the world. Nothing like waiting for the train and watching obese rats struggling to get over each rail of the track.
Yes, Oprah is all "Live your best life...by buying my stuff!"
I've got to believe that he scooted down into the hole because he sensed he was being watched — by a million people on YouTube — and that after the filming ended and the photographer moved on to his subway train, the rat came back and got that pizza and pulled it down into that hole one way or another, either by folding it up like he folds up his ribcage when he climbs up your toilet or by dismantling it, shred by shred. It's not like some person was going to pick up the pizza at that point. Saving yourself comes first, for the rat. Later, there will be pizza. If not that pizza, other pizza.
De Blasio is determined to make NYC a rat sanctuary city.
I choose to believe this is a still rat-sized Master Splinter planning to feed four still turtle-sized soon to be ninja turtles.
In college I was driving past the cafeteria when a squirrel with a whole apple in his mouth jumped off the curb into the street. I believe the comment from my passenger was 'livin' large right there!'..
If a man can't see himself in that rat then he's not looking hard enough.
"It's not like some person was going to pick up the pizza at that point."
Not a safe assumption in DeBlasio's NYC.
The google-search link for 'live your best life' seems to reveal Althouse verifying the definition of 'imprecation' just prior. Linker beware!
Just another of God's creatures trying to make a living.
"The google-search link for 'live your best life' seems to reveal Althouse verifying the definition of 'imprecation' just prior. Linker beware!"
Thanks for the heads up. That's very weird. I wanted to use the word imprecation, but it wasn't right. I went with entreaty.
I should have said that it was intended more in the sense of a benediction or blessing.
As for mumbled, why mumbled? He sounded clear enough for being on the ass end of a smartphone mic. It was a candid clip and nobody had any time to be getting wired for sound. You know this, with your dinky little efforts at videography, so I suppose you are once again being insincere.
Did the rat ever get the pizza off the stairs. Or does he give up?
Couldn't he just have it delivered like everybody else? Sure it costs a little more, but the convenience is worth it.
I'll never understand New Yorkers.
Obviously you are not from around here. Cell phone reception is lousy that far underground. Plus the pizzerias that speak rat don't deliver to that area. You have to have a little realism. Of course the rat could have just settled for Oyster Bar, but sometimes you just gotta have a slice.
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