About This Blog
Introduction
This blog is no public journal. I use it to keep track of my thoughts, and write about some of the stuff I care about. Topics may range from short and silly remarks about life, to full scale reviews of books and movies, to more serious political and medial articles. In any case, if you don’t know me, chances are high you’ll find this blog boring. Goodbye.
About Me
My name’s Stefan Donati. I’m 24. I live in Switzerland. Yawn. You can visit zaki.ch if you are interested in some of my other sites.
About this Blog’s Name
Shuarian is my long established Internet handle, hence Shuarian’s Weblog. Oh, you’re asking about the subtitle. Right. Every year, this blog gets a new subtitle.
For 2006, it has been Neutralität, Chuchichästli & Rösti, a tribute to the country I live in and a synopsis of my relation to it (you can read the old reasoning for it further down).
For the year 2007, I’ve chosen a title which is as ambiguous as it is ambitious - Crazy Like A Fox. If you’ve never heard the expressions before, here’s a short definition of its meaning:
CRAZY LIKE (OR AS) A FOX - “.seemingly foolish but in fact extremely cunning.” From “Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Volume 1, A-G” by J.E. Lighter, Random House, New York, 1994. And from a second reference: Crazy (Dumb, Sly) Like a Fox. Smart and resourceful. The fox has been celebrated for centuries as a crafty animal. Its wiles were remarked in the ‘Trinity College Homilies,’ dating from about 1200. S. J. Perelman made one of the phrases (Crazy Like a Fox) the title of a book in 1944.” From the “Dictionary of Cliches” by James Rogers (Ballantine Books, New York, 1985).
If you say, “He’s crazy like a fox,” you are saying that person is smart and can outwit other people. The image I get is that the actions of a fox appear a little crazy but he is in fact acting in a brilliant manner to save himself.
Source: The Phrase Finder: Crazy Like A Fox
A Note Concerning Private Entries
As said above, this blog is no private journal, and there are no hidden entries for you to discover, nor is there a deeper meaning to all of this.
Former Subtitles
2006: Neutralität, Chuchichästli & Rösti
Since I live in Switzerland, I wanted to use a fancy and silly title which features many umlauts and even more swissness. After much thought about my beliefs, my home country and my relation to it, I came up with the perfect synopsis: Neutralität, Chuchichästli & Rösti.
Neutralität means Neutrality. It describes perfectly the long standing tradition of Switzerland, and maybe explains some of the bourgeois apathy of its people, including me.
Chuchichästli is a Swiss German expression for kitchen cupboard. It features some sounds most English speaking people usually have a hard time pronouncing right. It’s my revenge for having to use English as a world language, instead of my much easier to use mother tongue, Swiss German.
Rösti is a national Swiss dish. Popular among the young, urban, trendy and poor population of Switzerland. But it’s really tasty, especially with a Bratwurst and hot french mustard. Read more about it here.
