"There may be blood-sucking monsters under your bed."

A screen-shot of this blog taken just now, after I put up one and then another posts about rats:



The web knows. It knows what you've been reading. It knows what pests really worry you. No, I'm not worrying about bedbugs out here in Wisconsin. But I am wary of them when I go to hotels... especially in NYC.

If you imagine yourself in the market for pest control services in the near future... what pest do you picture? And I mean some kind of animal (including insects and arachnids and so forth). I'm not setting up your lame political jokes.

"[T]he only thing preventing these giant swamp rats from destroying all of Louisiana are our very own Rat B*stards and their crafty hunting tricks...."

It's the new reality show — "Rat Bastards" — with "larger-than-life characters in extreme situations, facing down these rodents with everything from hunting weapons to dynamite."

Nutria are considered such a problem in Louisiana that the state offers a $6 bounty on each tail. Ray said the money is nice, but he calls that program it waste of good meat.

"I catch'em, kill'em and put them in the pot. They are darn good eating," Ray said.

 Here's Ray:



Can we get a reality show where Ray barges into that NYC art show "Tomorrow We Will Feast Again on What We Catch" and takes over the cooking and serving? Let it be one of the competitive shows where we eliminate contestants one by one. Each week the least interesting human being goes home. We could have a Heidi Klum-like arbiter of interestingness who, along with 2 other judges, would assemble the 3 least interesting contestants each week, critique them, and ultimately select one to be told "I'm sorry — you bore me — goodbye."

But who could be the judges of interestingness? Who specializes in that? I mean other than bloggers....

Gallery-goers eat rats at the art show "Tomorrow We Will Feast Again on What We Catch."

And the NYT gives the show 2-pages of glowing description (and warnings that — ooh! — you may be disgusted).

Twenty people, mostly friends of [the artist Laura] Ginn or the gallery owner, [Allegra] LaViola, nibbled on goat cheese bruschetta topped with rat leg tenderloin, and rat-pork terrine encircled with beef fat, prepared by a chef after much trial and error with his proteins. The rats were shipped from a United States Department of Agriculture-approved West Coast processor that supplies pet owners with humanely killed, individually flash-frozen rodents, in classifications ranging from “jumbo” to “fuzzy.” Seventy five rats were skinned and cooked — and broiled and smoked and grilled — for the dinner, and most guests paid $100 each to attend, signing a liability waiver, some not entirely willingly.

“If I see an entire carcass, I might throw up,” said Clifford Owens, a performance artist. Mr. Owens, who had an exhibition at MoMA PS1 this spring, invoked the daredevil spirit of the performance artist Marina Abramovic, to get himself through the evening. “This is about risk,” he said.

It's like a Tony Robbins fire-walking event... for the sophisticated, arty crowd.

“I don’t care about it as art,” [said "artist and video editor" Timothy Hutchings.] “I care about it as something that makes me a more interesting human being.”

So another artist doesn't care about it as art. He cares about it as something that makes him a more interesting human being.

But isn't that what art is all about? Being the artist who is the most interesting human being? I can just imagine what was reeling through the brains of the artists who submitted to Ginn's art performance — and what's still reeling now that there's this drooling write-up in the New York Times. Why her?! Why not me! Look how interesting I am. This is all about me displaying myself as a more interesting human being. It can't be that she played me into her getting the recognition as more interesting.

I don’t care about it as art.

"As London prepares to throw the world a $14 billion party, it seems fair to ask the question..."

"What does it get out of the bargain aside from some shiny medals, pleasant memories, and an excess of David Beckham bobblehead dolls?"

"Some of the sadness and frustration following Aurora has to do with the fact..."

"... that no one thinks anyone can, or will, do anything to make our culture better. The film industry isn't going to change, the genie is long out of the bottle...."

"Five guys take same photo for 30 years."

Here. Via Metafilter, where one commenter says:

Holy crap, I know one of these guys. He was the founder and CTO of a company I worked for for 7 years. Knowing him, this is exactly the kind of thing he'd do.

Another says:

Holy shit. I'm going to get old and die.

"Romney book: Britain is a tiny island that makes stuff nobody wants."

That's the headline in Foreign Policy, which is getting attention (according to Memeorandum), especially after Romney supposedly said something that upset the Brits today. (Surveying the London Olympics, Romney saw "a few things that were disconcerting." The Brits are keen to mock, and the mockery is magnified here in the U.S., because American media is inclined to boost Obama whenever the opportunity arises.)

Let's look at the paragraph Foreign Policy highlighted:

England [sic/[FP's sic]] is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions. Yet only two lifetimes ago, Britain ruled the largest and wealthiest empire in the history of humankind. Britain controlled a quarter of the earth's land and a quarter of the earth's population.

Oh, there's where they cut it off? Well, obviously he was in the middle of making a point. But you know the rule in journalism: Taking things out of context is okay when you do it to hurt conservatives. But I happen to have my Kindle copy of Romney's book "No Apology: Believe in America," so it's easy for me to give you the context. Here are the next 4 paragraphs:

Late in the eighteenth century, after the loss of their American colonies...

Foreign Policy didn't want to remind us Americans that Britain antagonized us.

... the British set out to compensate for what had been lost, first by defeating Napoleonic France and then by expanding the reach of the crown in colonies from India to the tip of South America and from Africa to the islands of the Western Pacific. 

And all that imperialism by the British doesn't make them look too appealing.

Britain’s might was military, having built the most powerful navy the world had ever seen. But what enabled their military superiority was their industrial might. The British had pioneered the Industrial Revolution, and they enthusiastically promoted free trade, understanding the huge export potential for their products. By 1860, the nation’s economy was the biggest in the world. 

Here's the great compliment to the British, but you know there's a big but...

But maintaining leadership proved more difficult than achieving it. Whereas other nations extended the manufacturing revolution by embracing new technology and innovation, the British reversed course and tried to contain it. The country’s culture of class immobility stymied the entrepreneurialism and initiative that propel a competitive economy. 

Here's the serious critique.

From owner to laborer, the British were eager to protect the status quo. Industrialists secured subsidies for themselves and tariffs on foreigners rather than face foreign competition and technology head-on. When subsidies proved insufficient for the most unproductive businesses, the government took them over. The nation spent national resources to keep sick companies alive rather than inventing new ones and investing in those that were strong.

Britain’s economic missteps were compounded when it was forced to fight and endure the cost of two world wars. By the end of World War II, its national debt had tripled. Massive loans were required to shore up the ailing economy; they came from its former colony.

Now Foreign Policy — a respected journal? — ends its out of context squib with snark: "Its roads and houses are small? The trees probably aren't the right height either." I'm giving you the whole context that Foreign Policy didn't want to deal with. It's about the British decline into socialism. What do you say we take that seriously?

Socialism/capitalism — that's how campaign 2012 has been framed. Let's stare that issue in the face. Sorry if the Brits' feelings are hurt, but this is about us.