"All human life is there"

Here's a link to an oddity, passed on to my husband by a friend of his via the dreaded Facebook. Because there's no English translation available, it's up to each viewer to make of it what they will. The video was skillfully put together, for sure!

VIDEO

After I watched it, first words coming to mind were: "All human life is there". Where did those words spring from? I pondered. They were buried in files at the back of of my memory bank. A now defunct British Sunday newspaper, News of the World used to carry its motto, those words, under its banner header during the 1950s. Originally a broadsheet, later a tabloid, that newspaper was one of Britain's most disreputable, its focus was on scandal, celebrities, sex and sport - it was popular with the masses, and nicknamed "Screws of the World". The newspaper had borrowed its motto from a line in a 19th century short story by Henry James, The Madonna of the Future. Full text of the story can be read at The Literature Network.

Cats and monkeys — monkeys and cats — all human life is there!

The story is about art and artists, their illusions and delusions.

All of which has little to do with the video, apart from the fact that a lot of human life is there too.

Cats and monkeys... ring a bell also. These bells are a pesky nuisance! A little fable - recalled with the help of a blog HERE

...a 16th century fable entitled The Monkey and the Cat. A monkey and a cat are roasting chestnuts in a hearth. The monkey persuades the cat to let the monkey remove the roasted chestnuts from the fire and embers by using the cat’s paw, promising the cat a share for obliging. As the cat scoops them from the fire, one by one, burning its paw more and more, the monkey eats all the chestnuts. They are disturbed by a maid entering and the cat ends up with nothing except burned paws.

The fable has given rise to two expressions:
To do someone else's dangerous or unpleasant task is to pull the chestnuts out of the fire (for that person) or to pull (that person's) chestnuts out of the fire.

A person who is tricked into doing something dangerous or foolish for someone else
is a cat's-paw.

Coincidentally, accidentally, or serendipitously, mention of monkeys reminds me that in Chinese astrology the Year of the Fire Monkey is about to begin.

Monkey year begins on February 8, 2016 on the new Moon in Aquarius at 6:39 am PT. Chinese New Years Eve is the the second new Moon after Winter Solstice.

Those born in Monkey years 1932, 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004 can read about themselves briefly HERE, and elsewhere on Chinese astrology websites.