Monday, November 16, 2009

Poor cows


He greeted me at the door saying, “You have to see this! Cows with their heads in air conditioning because they give more milk!” Of course I understood nothing. “What cows? What milk? What air conditioning?” To top it off the three products are not familiar to me: I never see cows, I rarely drink milk, and air conditioning is one of the things I hope to have before I’m forty.

It was some archive footage from the sixties. Fidel Castro seemed to have discovered that if the cows had their heads in air conditioning while the rest of their bodies were in the ambient temperature… they would give more milk.

I could hardly believe it, I realized the craziness of the Round Table* had begun thirty years before I was born. The delirium was an everyday thing since 1959 and the experiment, above and beyond the human race, had also disturbed the animal kingdom.



Translator’s note:
*Round Table is a Cuban television talk show where Fidel used to drop in regularly before his illness and talk, sometimes for hours, about… well the things Fidel talked about, things like air conditioned cows.

1 comment:

John Two said...

Hilarious. I think the Cuban people are no longer laughing with Castro, but rather at him.

The person at the door who gave you the archival footage would be called a whistle-blower in Canada, giving you what we would call a brown envelope.

Another sign that the people are losing their fear, and the regime is losing its grip.