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 26. I live in Switzerland. 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. He. As for the subtitle, I change them on a yearly basis.
The current subtitle is Desine Fata Deum Flecti Sperare Precando, which is a quote from Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid. Its translations reads ‘Stop hoping you will change the will of the gods by praying’.
My thoughts about this sentence are twofold; the stoic in me relates to the underlying assumption that, to speak bluntly, what’s going to happen will happen; that there’s no hope in praying for change.
The optimist in me sees this as a call for action: as the will of the gods cannot be changed by praying, instead of relying on them one should seek change from within oneself.
Given the context and times of that quote, however, it is likely that the first meaning is originally intended one. Thus I’ll use the quote in a tentative way, as an optimistic stoic, my copy of the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius always close by heart.
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
2008: Don’t Be a Monkey. Let Go of the Banana
The title is a reference to monkey traps I’ve found through a writeup on everything2.com.
A monkey trap is a simple but clever way of hunting monkeys, apparently mostely used in South Asia: A small basket with a banana inside is set up. The smell of the banana then lures nearby monkeys. They will try to retrieve the banana by taking it out through a small opening. However, once they catch the banana, their closed fist is too large to fit through the hole anymore. While the monkey could simply drop the banana and escape, most are too enraged to focus on anything but their beloved banana.
Don’t Be a Monkey. Let Go of the Banana resonates well with me, as I think everyone has their banana, and everyone gets trapped by them from time to time. For we all have our desires, longings and aspirations. Yet we should exercise enough self-consciousness to examine our efforts and figure out when to let go. Sometimes, it’s what we want that stays in our way.
Thus we shouldn’t make the same mistakes as monkeys, but instead reflect on our situation and don’t cling to things which in effect only affect us negatively.
2007 - Crazy Like A Fox
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
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.
