I was sent these pictures by Julia. who received them from her tía segunda, or first cousin once removed, her mother’s first cousin. They were taken in the United States, in New Mexico, at a garage that had been subject to several recent break-ins.
The proprietor let it be known that he had acquired a Mexican lion. Once they had seen it, the thieves fled, never to be seen again.
I’m not sure what sort of dog it is – or was – perhaps a leonberger? Its face reminds me of the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz – maybe it’s the drooping ears. It’s going to require a lot of maintenance. I love its tail.
A Bad Guide 
I love this! How clever! (And the pooch doesn’t seem to mind his odd clip.)
I wouldn’t lionize the owners for lionizing their dog in that way. He’s in for big trouble if he meets up with a lioness. She will soon discover the deception, and you know how a woman scorned reacts.
Not to mention a real lion looking for a spot of territorial dust-up.
Faux Lion (eh, Julia?).
Mab, you could do this to your dog: a miniature polar bear, maybe.
Stu, we don’t know; this could have been a bitch, and now she’s in drag as well as disguise.
Faux lion (the video is great towards the end).
Isn’t he’s lovely? Poor thing, he looks so confused… But nevertheless I’m sure he must be proud, dogs love to help their masters.
And, AJP this would be a nice thing to do when we gather together (in thunder, lightning, or in rain):
Toute l’assemblée chante, hommes, femmes et enfants scandant : “bravo les lions” et battant les mains. Après quelques pas de danse, les “lions” s’élancent brusquement sur la foule qui s’enfuie. S’ils attrapent des spectateurs, ils leurs demandent de danser. Si ces derniers refusent ou le font plutôt mal, ils peuvent recevoir des coups pas très méchants de la part des “lions”. Les attaques des “lions” alternent avec les danses exécutées par les spectateurs.
Possibly a very large Chow Chow (Chinese guardian lion dog). In any case the trimming would have to entirely change the look of the creature; in fact it would seem rather a cruel thing to do; I don’t care if you wish to chase off varmints, or what you will. New Mexico supposedly has “law enforcement” for that. You know, civilization and its malcontents and its sheriffs.
(Now Mexico, as versus New Mexico, that might be another story.)
It would not be possible to scare off anything at all with an entirely dear untrimmed Chow Chow pup, however.
ohh that’s adorable, Tom!!!
(now my dog is staring at me, trying to hypnotize me: “take me out, take me out, I need a tree right now!” So off we go…)
We got a chow-chow when I was nine — the dog and my youngest brother grew up together, and my father called them “the twins” — and that Mexican dog is nothing like it — the tail, the ears, the face, everything is wrong. Not that I know anything about other dogs, and it’s probably a crossbreed anyway, but to me it looks like some breed of continental European herding dog.
A chow chow ate our rooster Leopold, they are canes non gratæ around here. Do they have blue tongues or is that some other dog?
Julia, I’m all for dressing up as lions when we all get together for our annual general meat eating. I love those lion-men from Senegal, and the expression on the little girl’s face as they go by.
Oh, yes, blue tongue. Or was that my brother? No I think it was the dog. And a thick fur falling off everywhere and everywhen. Probably the dog then.
It could have been your brother if he liked blueberries or blackcurrents.
Giraffes have blue tongues. I doubt they eat blueberries.
Thank you for the video!
Another fake lion.
empty, that article reproduces common simplemindedness about “being and appearance”, even though its immediate subject is parables about deceptive donkeys. To me such pseudo-resolutions of pseudo-problems are pretty tiresome, though many people seem to find them reassuring.
Let’s take this first, from the first paragraph there:
This statement is misleading, on the assumption that it is primarily about deception, not “being a fool”. Consider a penniless tatterdemalion who, by dint of study, has acquired knowledge and eloquence. If he gate-crashes a meeting of rich intellectuals, they will immediately recognize him for what he is:
In contrast to what is the case in stratified societies, in the functionally differentiated societies of Western countries, a person is no longer completely defined by being an actual (or attributed) member of a particular social group. If he functions as a knowledgeable person, then he is a knowledgeable person, as well as being a shabbily dressed one.
As a consequence, is no longer makes much sense to draw an absolute distinction between “being and appearance”. You can be one thing, and appear to be another, completely unrelated thing. This is not to claim that “appearances are real”, or that “there is no such thing as mere appearance, because being itself is appearances”. It is, instead, a claim that “being and appearance” are not useful concepts for explaining deception.
Instead, we have the more useful notion of function, i.e. consistency over a given period of time. From time t0 until just before time t1, we see a lion. At time t1, we see a donkey wearing a lion’s skin. With the dubious benefit of hindsight, we can say we were being deceived up until time t1, and try to discover by what means we were deceived. But we can’t be sure that what we now see will not later be discovered to be a lion in a donkey’s skin, the whole covered by a lion’s skin, and pretending to be a donkey in a lion’s skin.
What this all boils down to is that we can be provisionally sure about things, based on consistency, but not absolutely sure. This is nothing new, but it tended to be forgotten in many older types of “philosophical” discussion – and still is in fables. I am provisionally sure that it would not be a good idea to buy the Brooklyn Bridge from a smart-ass banker, even one wearing a lion’s skin, but who knows for sure ? If his bank has a good Moody’s rating, and the skin is of high quality, perhaps I could risk it ?
That’s the trouble with the idea of “being and appearances” – people are always trying to identify something absolutely reliable on which to base inherently uncertain choices. Even hesitating forever is unreliable, as discussed in connection with Buridan’s ass here. Note especially the Spinoza quote from the Ethics.
When did the word “professional” change from meaning, say, “autonomous deployment of skill and knowledge on behalf of a client, effected with courtesy and propriety” to “wearing approved clothes and haircut”?
But, Grumbly, I think you’re forgetting the (I don’t know how to call it, so please be gentle with my vagueness) “state of mind” or the “ideology” where the fables’ statments are uttered. I think you would agree with me that in this mentality the problem of discontinuity among being and appearence it’s a central concern, because the world is thought in those terms.
In fables with animals, the basic principle is that one animal represents a bunch of qualities culturally accepted for each of them. So the donkey IS a fool, the fox is shrewd, the lion is brave, etc. The fable uses them as personifications of such absolute qualities.
Please forgive me if I just said a bunch of silly things…
We should better use our time planning the lion dance (I can provide a couple of amused-looking girls, but we have to hurry, because they grow up very quickly and instead of looking at us amused by our magnificent dance, they would look at us annoyed by our stupidity)
When it was realized that courtesy, without the rest of it, is a sufficient selling point. This is due to the placebo effect (ignorance), combined with planned obsolescence and a wide choice of purveyors . Economic efficiency, in other words.
The most important thing for many people nowadays is to feel “comfortable” with what they get, whether sofas or advice. Why spend a lot of money on something of whose value you can’t judge, when you can throw it away and buy another one if you decide it doesn’t suit you ?
My last post was in response to dearieme’s about professionalism.
Julia: In fables with animals, the basic principle is that one animal represents a bunch of qualities culturally accepted for each of them. So the donkey IS a fool, the fox is shrewd, the lion is brave, etc.
But cultural acceptations are changing. As a result of all the animal documentaries I’ve seen over the past decades – I’m sure you too have seen many – I know that the lion is lazy, it’s actually the lionesses who are brave. Donkeys are not fools, they are just less amenable than horses and dogs are to being pushed around on the agenda of some human. And crows are much smarter than foxes – possibly because they took Aesop’s fable to heart, whereas foxes are still resting on their reputation.
As for goats … not a million miles from here a group of them is being taken care of, indeed waited on hand and foot, by an entire human family that also handles their public relations for free. Pretty clever of them, don’t you think ?
Of course! But we’re talking here (at least, I was talking here) about the mentality of the times when those fables were created and successfully transmitted. Our ways of thinking and seeing things are completely different, but that’s one of the beauties of studying the literature from the past: it show us different ways of thinking and makes us re-think or re-evaluate our own.
¿Se entiende algo de lo que digo?
Goodbye to all of you, have a nice Saturday, I’ll begin mine by crossing the city to go to a class. Luckily of a subject I love (we’re offering a seminar of the II Part of the Quijote, let’s hope the students love it too…)
My, this thread got serious. Perhaps now inappropriate to say that my dog is mostly Finnish Spitz and has a fox face, so I don’t think the lion cut would work. However, she is finally starting to shed about 15 pounds of winter coat, so shaving does have its appeal.
Mr Crown, how is your spring coming along? Here on Ice Planet Moscow it’s been freezing with snow, hail, rain and other non-spring weather. The park is an icy swamp dotted by ice-filled ponds. The only little joy is a pair of shelducks that are taking a rest stop on one temporary pond, despite the attempts of various retrievers and setters to catch them.
Oops. Sorry for weirdo name. A leftover from another blog…
“Ice Planet Moscow”: I figured it was you anyway, mab. The godawful inclemencies of Russian weather are a recurrent theme in your posts. But it must have survival advantages – for instance it probably freeze-dries the cockroaches, who can then be shipped unscathed to West Texas for a hot summer’s resurrection.
You could have a fox in sheep’s clothing, mab. Our spring is hot and sunny with occasional heavy fog. Now, it’s possibly – I don’t know – 15C? That’s plus, not minus, so in a matter of ten-ish weeks we’ve gone up 30 celsius degrees. We have crocuses, snowdrops and buds on the trees, but no daffodils yet. I have pruned all our rose bushes without using gloves, and now I look like I have severe eczema; when I’m standing at a shop counter and I hold out my arm for change I hear a sharp intake of breath from the assistant and the other shoppers.
The literal answer to dearie’s question is during the Thatcher & Reagan era, in about 1980 – 85, when after a lapse of about 20 years it became trendy for men to wear braces and a suit and when everyone who’d previously just had ‘a job’ became ‘a professional’. Incidentally, I never know what to wear nowadays; should I wear a coat and tie, etc., but a few weeks ago I started wearing an orange jacket with a grey wooly collar that my wife and daughter wear (my wife found it at a thrift store). I wore it because it was on the coat rack when I was going out, but my wife says it’s very stylish and I look like a film director in it. So, if anyone’s interested, I’m going for the casual, film-director look. All I really need is the orange jacket, but I may buy sunglasses just so no one’s in any doubt.
You know, Grumbly, I’m beginning to forget the advantages. I think when I was younger I liked being in survival mode, but now… I begin to wonder what it would be like to live in a congenial climate. If there is such a thing (and place).
the lion is lazy, it’s actually the lionesses who are brave
The lionesses are the hunters, they go after other animals for food but I don’t think they fight adversaries. The male lions look like they don’t do much but they are quite capable of fighting if the need arises, eg to protect the cubs. They look large and menacing (the mane makes them look bigger), they roar impressively to advertise their presence, but like most big guys they don’t often need to actually fight.
My favorite part of Grumbly’s first long post was the word “tatterdemalion” (not that I did not appreciate the rest of it). Not so much because of tatterdemalion as because it’s an enjoyable word. So I looked up the origin of “tatterdemalion” (not much to tell about that). Then I looked up the origin of “mountebank”, because both my son and I (re)learned what it meant the other day.
He came across it while reading Hamlet in school and was shocked to find that it did not mean a kind of large cat. He must have been thinking of “catamount”, which is one of the many names for the largest wild cat of North America. The mountain lion, I mean. Anyway, the nearest thing to a real Mexican lion.
I on the other hand had thought, vaguely, that a mountebank is something like a scoundrel. (A quack doctor may well be a scoundrel, so in context it might sort of mean that, sort of …)
(when I say “relearned” I mean “learned right, having formerly learned wrong”)
When used as a surname “Mountebank” is pronounced ffanshaw-Crown.
About an earlier thread: I went off for my customary Saturday brunch today, and noticed an interesting development on the “healthy eating” front. As well as fried bread, there was fried brown bread available.
My daughter and I had French toast this morning. I made it with organic “white whole wheat” bread. I fried it in our everyday organic non-dairy butter substitute. (In Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, olive oil is called “peasant butter-substitute”.)
marie-lucie: The male lions look like they don’t do much but they are quite capable of fighting if the need arises, eg to protect the cubs.
They also kill cubs whom they figure are not their own. They are not alone in this, of course. I recently saw a film of a male zebra mauling and kicking the previous offspring of his new mate, until it was dead. Females have not been observed to do this.
I’m all for fables, but we should not let them seem to be illustrations of non-human animal behavior. I bet kids could easily absorb the explanation that fables are about the behavior of human animals.
” fried brown bread ”
Hahaha.
Kingsley Amis – more likely Mrs Amis – would have had to buy olive oil at Boots in those days (Boots: “shop by product” or “shop by condition“). Later on all young Martin’s teeth fell out so I don’t trust the Amises about food. They probably drank Tizer* with their dinner.
Grumbly, please remember a kid is a baby goat. I think we’ve been through this once before.
*Red sugary carbonated soft drink. Wikipedia says Tizer’s recipe has “never been made public”. Unlike Coca Cola, in the case of Tizer it’s because nobody’s interested.
So a mountebank was someone who climbed on a bench and tried to con you into buying things you didn’t need. And one who climbed on something equivalent to a bench, like a stool, was a tantamountebank.
A peccant politician who has had to stand down would be a dismountebank.
To buy what you don’t need with bread that you don’t have, you may need the help of a banker. They’re called bankers, or tellers, because they count their money on benches. Or on counters. Or so I’m told.
These countebanks, or paramountebanks, hold all the cards. In three-card monte there aren’t that many cards to hold. I think that the count of monte crisco fried his bread after counting it.
Then there’s fried dough. Related to those beaver tails of Canada and in some sense (through the local word tottellers, which is totally new to me — I don’t even know how to pronounce it) to my last comment.
It must be “tot-tellers”, because there’s a smaller version that could only be pronounced “tot-eeters”. I would know this, in NY, as a zeppole. Very nice.
Calling this stuff “fried dough” always strikes me as a little odd, like calling cakes “baked batter” or bread “baked dough”. But “dough” is a good word. I think that it owes its distinctive texture to the silent “gh”.
totteller, totteeter/i>
Could these be mangled forms of Spanish tortilla and tortita ?
As to beaver tails, the Belgian provenance of french fries was explained yesterday in a German TV program as follows. According to a document from 1781, Belgians were fond of eating fried fish. In wintertime, since there are no fish to catch, people would cut potatoes into the shape of little fish and fry these instead.
That is:
totteller, totteeter
Could these be mangled forms of Spanish tortilla and tortita ?
As to beaver tails, the Belgian provenance of french fries was explained yesterday in a German TV program as follows. According to a document from 1781, Belgians were fond of eating fried fish. In wintertime, since there are no fish to catch, people would cut potatoes into the shape of little fish and fry these instead.
Here’s a kind of back-to-the-future mangling, from the “tortita” link:
Like sardines, then. Do Belgians make the very long thin French fries?
Is tortilla related to tortellini?
Did anyone read the article in The New Yorker about modernism in food, starring Myrvold the man from Microsoft? I thought it sounded interesting, though possibly a bit pretentious, (and out of my price range by quite a lot).
Do Belgians make the very long thin French fries?
You can get them in posh restaurants, but the ones Belgium is famous for are the perfectly ordinary ones, see picture on this page: http://www.visitbelgium.com/?page=other-specialities
Off now to the “longest bar in the world” (Düsseldorf ).
Just up the A57 from here in Cologne. “The longest bar” is just an area of town where there are a lot of bars.
“totteeters” keeps making me think of Tater Tots.
The authors of The Joy of Cooking offered the theory that a “hush puppy” (i.e. what you get when you take a blob of the sort of batter meant for coating fish with when deep-frying it and then fry the batter without any fish inside) is so called because you can use it to appease the dogs who are hanging around waiting for some fish. They added that this may be the best use for it.