Just doing my best to brighten everyone's day! HT Michael Froomkin.
I actually can't watch wmv files on this computer, which currently makes me very very happy. Though not as happy as reading some obituaries would (this unrelated story made me feel the same way).
I saw V for Vendetta yesterday.
Bridgeplate, are you feeling lonely right now?
Come what may, I'll make it through somehow.
My review of V for Vendetta: my mom used to make eggs in a basket (only we called them "eggs in a picture frame") when I was little. If someone kidnapped me but then made me those for breakfast, I'd probably have to forgive them out of sheer sentimentality. Other stuff happened in the movie, but that's all that matters.
That boot camp story encapsulates all the vicious fantasies about tough love. There is no way in hell I'm clicking on that video link. That kid was suffocated to death by guards WHILE suffering from sickle cell anemia, one of the most insanely painful diseases out there? Oh, that's not fucked up or anything.
The advertisement should go something like this...
Parents: "We want our kid savagely disciplined, but we don't want to do it. Fortunately, there's an organization we can pay to do it for us! We just write the checks while they do the brutalizin'!"
Boot camp trainers: "We build character, just like the Marines do. So we treat juveniles like Marines, first by stripping away the vestiges of their old, deficient personalities with a regime of deprivation, humiliation, and violent exercise. Then, if they survive that stage, they're ready to respond to the new structure of authority! Many of our graduates actually go on to join the military! See: lives turned around!"
Becks, are you commenting from SPACE???
Your source for Vendetta cuisine terminology.
JM I think the circumstances under which kids get sent to these camps vary, but I'm pretty sure in this case the kid was sent their by juvenile court; it wasn't the parents.
Becks, are you commenting from SAN FRANCISCO?
Oh, duh. It's LB that's traveling right now. KTHXBYE.
8 - One-Eyed Egyptian Sandwich? That's fancy.
I don't leave for SF for another 2 hours. Getting soooo much done at work today, lemme tell you.
Oh. I have heard cases where parents shell out money to send their kids to such places. I suppose legislators sold it as a revival of the old "go to jail or go into the army" judicial leeway. Which might make sense for people over 18, but is totally crackpot for juveniles.
Any idea of what was supposed to happen to the kids after their spirits were broken? Did they then start to learn algebra in their barracks? "Can't plot this equation, eh? Give me twenty on the ground, soldier!"
I haven't quite dared to see V yet since I loved Moore's version and the reviews have been so, um, mixed. Should I overcome these qualms (and my usual disinclination to spend money at movies theaters)?
JM, I think they are put to work digging ditches and building fences &c. The idea is something like, the labor will focus their energy on not using drugs, and they will get used to being in a heirarchy and obeying their superiors. There might also be a learning-a-craft component too. A friend contemplated sending her very troubled son to a boot camp, I think in North or South Carolina, a couple of years ago. I don't recall what came of that -- right now the son is not doing very well, though I guess better than he was then, but I don't remember if they ended up sending him off.
I thought it wasn't as good as it could have been, but still worth seeing.
6/9: Tia is right; Anderson was sent to the boot camp by juvenile court for joyriding in his grandmother's Jeep (file under "bet this doesn't happen to rich white kids"), though Bacon was sent by his parents.
The end of the Mikey Wiltsie story is particularly insanely sad. That poor surviving kid.
I haven't read all of the "Camp Fear" story yet, but be it recorded that Bill Janklow, who brought boot camps to South Dakota and called juvenile offenders scum, later did 100 days in jail after running a stop sign and killing a motorcyclist.
15 - I never read Moore's version. I believe w/d was a fan so he may be able to give you a better idea of whether you'd like it. As a non-fan, it was OK. On preview, I agree with Joe - good but could have been better.
Should I overcome these qualms
What Joe said. But I'm not familiar with Moore's original, so grain, salt, etc. Don't see it if you're at all allergic to milking the giant cow.
Weiner, why you gotta fuck with me?
[God, South Dakota is an embarassing state to be from.]
Those'll be the kinds of mixed reviews that might get encourage my tendency to wait for the DVD; still, it's annoying not to be able to opine along.
OK, sorry for monologuing and obviously no one should read these stories if you don't want your day spoiled, but having finished the Camp Fear story I don't think it actually is unrelated to the link I posted in 1 (which is about Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the man put in charge of ramping up the torture in Guantanamo and Iraqi prison camps, being cleared of lying in an Inspector General's report on a completely implausible technicality).
That is: Both of them are about how easy it is to be sadistic. The things you read about, shackling girls spread-eagled in the SD camps or making Iraqi prisoners do tricks on a dog leash, the people who did that obviously enjoyed what they were doing. And the people in charge of the policies probably got a kick out of it too. Read about Janklow (Christ he's a piece of work; sorry Chopper) posting the descriptions of kids assaulting guards even though it proved that his boot camps were making the kids more violent.
But I think that it's not just raw sadism. When faced with difficult problems, people like to take violent and dramatic measures, because they feel like they might work. It's like smacking the television when it's getting bad reception; you feel like you've done something, even if it's actually counterproductive. Except smacking the television is victimless.
And I don't exempt myself from these sadistic and violent impulses; what I wouldn't like to do to the torturers right now. That's why we need restraints on people who have power over others, to keep this from happening.
Finally, a kitty in a laundry bag.
We called it a Toad in the Hole; which really isn't the most appetizing name ever devised by humanity.
Matt, I read about half of the "Camp Fear" article -- it is pretty rough going -- but thanks for prompting me to -- and thanks Tia for posting the link.
CCP, if you follow Bridgeplate's terminology link you will be relieved of your misconceptions about toad in the hole.
Also I think based on that Mother Jones article, that the camp in Carolina to which my friend considered sending her son may have been in a different category from the ones under discussion here -- these do not appear to have any work skills component.
Yeah, well, we're such a pro-child culture, you know.
When faced with difficult problems, people like to take violent and dramatic measures, because they feel like they might work.
Cf. Invading Iraq. Sometimes it feels good just to do something, even if it makes the situation worse.
Tia actually deserves full credit for the Camp Fear article. (Y'hear, Chopper?)
Great call, SCMT. A lot of people made that argument pretty much explicitly. Here's Bill Wang saying (in retrospect) she wanted to take some decisive action, anything; here's Walt Pohl saying (in advance) "We can't fuck up any worse than it's fucked up already." And these are smart liberals who are usually reasonable; I think I saw a lot of people *cough*tomfriedman*cough* saying something along the lines of "we must take decisive action to shake up the Middle East! It hardly matters what it is!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toad_in_the_hole
I'm Canadian. Here a Toad-In-The-Hole is an egg in a piece of bread: I think, because we hate the queen. Mind you, we also invented poutine, so, maybe we are wrong about the whole toad-in-a-hole thing.
Camp Fear Thing
Similar, but not at all the same, there used to be a program up here for youth offenders call Outbound? I think - can't remember. Basically the state sent groups of kids up into the wilderness to teach them how to eat bark. I knew a bunch of kids who went through this program, and I knew a bunch of kids who went for traditional lock-up, and the former came back completely altered (in a good way), and the later came back with new scams, and a permanent sense of pissed off.
Nobody died though. No one got hurt. A guy fell in a bog I think.
Outward Bound is an actual really good program, unlike these boot camp bullshit things.
Finally, a kitty in a laundry bag.
*gasp* KITTY CATS I LURVE YOU
32: Outward Bound! Ya, it is, or was good - I don't think it's still around. But, it's still a result of the tough-love phylosophy.
More on poutine... I totally forgot about this (from wiki).
In an election 2000 segment, Rick Mercer of the television series This Hour Has 22 Minutes convinced then-Governor of Texas George W. Bush that Canada's Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, was named Jean Poutine and that he was supporting Bush's candidacy. A few years later when Bush made his first official visit to Canada, he said during a speech, "There's a prominent citizen who endorsed me in the 2000 election, and I wanted a chance to finally thank him for that endorsement. I was hoping to meet Jean Poutine."
Laughing at Americans really is a Canadian institution.
Just to note that I have a couple of friends that work with a program that's essentially outward bound for adjudicated youth and it's a great program. Not to defend, in any way, the camps mentioned in this post, but just to say that the general idea of sending troubled kids to have an experience that combines getting them out of the situation their in, winderness experience, and a strucutred and disciplined environment isn't a crazy idea.
Of course the threat in that case isn't so much, "if you don't do this I'll punish you" as, "if you don't clear the campsite we'll have nowhere to build a fire and can't cook dinner."
I see that CCP and BPhD made my point before I did.
if you follow Bridgeplate's terminology link you will be relieved of your misconceptions about toad in the hole.
Huh?
I don't think Outward Bound is about "tough love" at all. It's more like some of the nature/wilderness camps: about teaching kids self-reliance and giving them something to be proud of. Seems to me that the "tough love" thing is really about treating kids like shit and "breaking" them, rather than building them up. Any kid with an ounce of spirit is gonna get worse, rather than better, with that kind of treatment.
37 -- at the link you posted in 8, Des von Bladet (of piginawig) clashes with Ralph Hitchens and other people and crustaceans over the practice of calling the dish in question "Toad in the Hole".
There was nothing in that thread, though, that would relieve anyone of a preconception—except for a preconception that denied the existence of such eggs and bread configurations, or names for same; and so on.
A preconception, perhaps not -- but a misconception is another story entirely.
15: I wouldn't say anything more positive about the movie than Becks or Joe did, but I should add that a lot of it is the sort of thing that works better on a big screen.
For instance, let's say hypothetically that CCP had been suffering from the misconception that an egg fried inside a toast-based frame should be called "Toad in the Hole" -- if he followed your link in 8, he would be disabused of this misconception. That's all I meant.
15 -- w/d thinks you shouldn't even bother with the video.
39:
I'm willing to concede that Toad-in-the-hole means different things in different places, however, if we're going to press the issue of an authoritative meaning: I have to go with the North American / Australian recipe as the original. These two places are very far from each other, and historically share culture by way of England. This would indicate that a toad-in-the-hole was at one time an egg in a piece of bread, but at some point after this original recipe had spread to the colonies, the name was identified with a different dish in England.
B is right about Outward Bound being more about self-reliance than tough love. The things these camps do is way past OB. I didn't read the linked article but I've seen 60 Minutes episodes and stuff on them before and some of the camps do things like restrict water while forcing kids to go on long walks through the desert. That's just dangerous - and a far cry from your average wilderness camp. (As a former counselor at a camp that worked with at-risk kids, I'm a little touchy on this.)
he would be disabused of this misconception.
What, by sheer force of desvonbladetude? It begs the question of whether, if you think that, you have another thing coming.
Do you happen to know how the term "at-risk" was chosen, and when it came into wide use? I have long wondered about that.
Becks, in the linked article from MJ they talk about stuff in South Dakota like strapping kids upside down to boards for hours, routinely kicking and punching them, shackling them to their beds 24 hours a day, kids being pepper sprayed naked, male guards patrolling female showers even though some of the girls had been sexual abuse victims...it's not Outward Bound.
47 -- do you then not find von Bladet's argument compelling?
My point wasn't to point out how Fear Camps are just like Outward Bound, but how Outward Bound shouldn't be mistaken for Camp Fear.
Nor likewise, egg-in-a-basket for toad-in-the-hole.
We could send the at-riskies to Al Qaeda training camps. You know, sort of infiltrate the place, heh-heh.
Alternatively: Ninja Training Camp.
desvonbladitude is a very shéer force indeed.
That reminds me: late, latter, last, but, uh, for? form?, former … first? formst? fost?
53:
Ah, but egg-in-a-basket *is* toad-in-the-hole, unless you find yourself situated on a small idiosyncratic piece of dirt off the coast of Europe.
Actually Mr. F is right; the OED says, "[First recorded in the 12th century; a comparative formed on the analogy of formest, FOREMOST. In 16-17th c. the ending was sometimes assimilated to MORE.] "
So: late, latter, last; fore, former, foremost.
but egg-in-a-basket *is* toad-in-the-hole
Kids these days.
Another mystery solved.
I can't wait to have an opportunity to write something as hideous as "the latter is the foremost example, and the former the least, of such and such".
you have another thing coming.
Aieeee!
What this is is an attempt to bully me into conformity.
There's a lot of these in Arizona too; kids die of dehydration all the time. It's pretty fucked up.
47: s/b another "think"?
google wars: 213,000,000 to 151,000,000 in favor of "think"
63: has this question already been exhaustively studied?
67: oh. in that case let me just say that, obviously, "think" is correct.
hell, it's the quotes, isn't it?
I don't care. If "You've got another think coming" is wrong, I don't wanna be right.
I concur with the concurrence. Let the record show that the concurrence concurs concurrently.
In Buck's family, it's 'cowboy eggs'. 'Toad in the hole' is supposed to be sausages baked in Yorkshire pudding batter.
Last night's post got everyone opinionated up.
Last night's post got everyone opinionated up.
No exciting dish -- Kotsko is charming but taciturn, 'Smasher is far more bearded than someone relying on the picture posted as the old header of Grammar Police would have expected, I am apparently less blond than my posting style would suggest, and I should go to sleep now, given that I'm supposed to do this mock trial tomorrow.
Made egg-in-a-hole this morning. So good! Forgot to kidnap Becks, though.