The Thrill Of Giving

Thanks for some good reads, David. Tip jar hit.

odysseys in consciousness-raising by fearless taxpayer-funded artists
Still one of my favourites.

Still one of my favourites.
Yes, it’s a feast of all that’s glorious and eternal about publicly-funded contemporary art. For me, the high point was Ms Rowledge’s ‘automated’ drawings, which entailed suspending a felt-tip pen from the underside of a chair, such that it dragged aimlessly across the paper underneath. And which was described, by the artist, as “REALLY exciting.”

Above, Ms Rowledge’s feat of staggering creativity.

Well, we’d not want you to go barefoot and hungry, would we?

odysseys in consciousness-raising by fearless taxpayer-funded artists
I was laughing and angry at the same time.
*hits tip jar*

Get a Bitcoin wallet as well.

Thanks, David. Pinged.

I was laughing and angry at the same time.
I suspect that happens quite a lot round here.
do I get a pickled egg?
Help yourself. Don’t worry, I’ve advised the local hospital to have a team on stand-by.

May your earbud cables never tangle, even after being stuffed in a pocket and jiggled about at length.

I really hope you’re compiling your modern poetic blessings somewhere, old man. Even if only a text file. They’re the sort of thing that would be useful to draw on in some situations, if helpfully assembled in a list. Wilde-ish.

“For me, the high point was Ms Rowledge’s ‘automated’ drawings…”
Where is Lord Vetinari when we need him?

I couldn’t find a foul blessings thing but did find the Elizabethan Curse Generator:
https://trevorstone.org/curse/
and a random curse generator:
http://www.yaldex.com/FSGames/Curse.htm

The Guardian thread you link… wow.
It’s one of those subjects that reveals quite a lot about leftist psychology. Apparently, if someone is prepared to spend extra money on her child’s education, while also paying via taxes for the state system she doesn’t use, this is an act of wickedness, “damaging to society,” and is an admission of racism. (Paying twice, for her own child and for others, apparently makes her “selfish” – a word that crops up at least a dozen times.) Instead, we should all want our children to make do with whatever the state offers, even if this diminishes their opportunities and entails hazards like this.
As I said at the time, it’s a strange moral calculus, but very Guardian-esque.

I really hope you’re compiling your modern poetic blessings somewhere, old man. Even if only a text file. They’re the sort of thing that would be useful to draw on in some situations, if helpfully assembled in a list. Wilde-ish.
Fortune Ish.

it was the work of but a moment for the machine,
Um . . . very vague memory states a much longer list.
Such as . . .
May you never be short of deodorant.
May your towels stay fragrant when houseguests descend.
May you always find your roasting tin spotless and ready for use.
—that, too, was Googlemancy, but noting to search for “May you” . . .

*kerching*

*ping*

Dropped something in the tip jar,
May you never be mocked on laundry day by that defiant single sock, somehow overlooked until it was five seconds too late.
despite the lack of decent snacks and the Henchlesbian floor show we keep being promised
It’s Tuesday afternoon, so I’m afraid the ladies – Melody, Harmony, Chastity and Grace – are all down the gun range honing their skills. Then it’s a quick shower and they’re off via stealth jet to a country I can’t name, to do things I can’t talk about, but which may or may not involve undercover insertion, some missing plutonium, and the inexplicable disappearance of a certain head of state.
But I’ve said too much.

But I’ve said too much.
Well, sure. That settles everything then. I assume they’re seconded to the 2e REP for a a drop into Kolwezi or something.
I’ll keep drumming my fingers on the bar in the meantime.

Love has been monetized.

I’m not sure why so many people don’t notice that the Moist von Lipwig books are barely thinly veiled apologetics for massive state control of the economy.
Oh, prolly ’cause they’ve read the books, and can assess for themselves instead of being told to think of barely thinly veiled apologetics . . . .
Let’s have a look at Making Money, quite highly recommended, ’cause Discworld.
*********************************************************************
“But I’ll tell you what I’ll do; if you open an account here today for, oh, five dollars, we’ll give you a free dollar on Monday. A free dollar to take away, ladies and gentlemen, and where are you going to get a better deal than—”
“A real dollar, pray, or one of these fakes?”
There was a commotion near the door, and Pucci Lavish swept in. Or, at least, tried to sweep. But a good sweep needs planning, and probably a rehearsal. You shouldn’t just go for it and hope. All you get is a lot of shoving.
The two heavies, there to clear a path through the press of people, got defeated by sheer numbers, which meant that the rather slimmer young men leading her exquisitely bred blond hounds got stuck behind them. Pucci had to shoulder her way through. It could have been so good, Moist felt. It had all the right ingredients, the black-clad bruisers so menacing, the dogs so sleek and blond. But Pucci herself had been blessed with beady, suspicious little eyes and a generous upper lip which combined to the long neck to put the honest observer in mind of a duck who’d just been offended by a passing trout.
Someone should have told her that black was not her color, that the expensive fur could have looked better on its original owners, that if you were going to wear high heels then this week’s fashion tip was “Don’t Wear Sunglasses At The Same Time,” because when you walked out of the bright sunlight into the relative gloom of, say, a bank, you would lose all sense of direction and impale the foot of one of your own bodyguards. Someone should have told her, in fact, that true style comes from innate cunning and mendacity. You can’t buy it.
“Miss Pucci Lavish, ladies and gentlemen!” said Moist, starting to clap as Pucci whipped her sunglasses off and advanced on the counter with murder in her eye. “One of the directors who will join us all in making money.”
There was some clapping from the crowd, most of whom had never seen Pucci before but wanted the free show.
“I say! Listen to me! Everyone listen to me,” she commanded. She waved what seemed to Moist to look very much like his experimental dollar bills. “This is just worthless paper! This is what he will be giving you!”
“No, it’s the same as an open check or a banker’s draft,” said Moist.
“Really? We shall see! I say! Good people of Ankh-Morpork! Do any of you think this piece of paper could be worth a dollar? Would anyone give me a dollar for it?” Pucci waved the paper dismissively.
“Dunno. What is it?” said someone, and there was a buzz from the crowd.
“An experimental bank note,” said Moist, over the growing hubbub. “Just to try out the idea.”
“How many of them are there, then?” said the inquiring man.
“About twelve,” said Moist.
The man turned to Pucci. “I’ll give you five dollars for it, how about that?”
“Five? It says it’s worth one!” said Pucci, aghast.
“Yeah, right. Five dollars, miss.”
“Why? Are you insane?”
“I’m as sane as the next man, thank you, young lady!”
“Seven dollars here!” said the next man, raising a hand.
“This is madness!” wailed Pucci.
“Mad?” said the next man. He pointed a finger at Moist. “If I’d bought a pocketful of the black penny stamps when that feller brought them out last year, I’d be a rich man!”
“Anyone remember the Triangular Blue?” said another bidder. “Fifty pence it cost. I put one on a letter to my aunt; by the time it got there it was worth fifty dollars! And the ol’ baggage wouldn’t give it back!”
“It’s worth a hundred and sixty now,” said someone behind him. “Auctioned at Dave’s Stamp and Pin Emporium last week. Ten dollars is my bid, miss!”
“Fifteen here!”
Moist had a good view from the stairs. A small consortium had formed at the back of the hall, working on the basis that it was better to have small shares than none at all.
Stamp collecting! It had started on day one, and then ballooned like some huge…thing, running on strange, mad rules. Was there any other field where flaws made things worth more? Would you buy a suit just because one arm was shorter than the other? Or because a bit of spare cloth was still attached? Of course, when Moist had spotted this, he’d put in flaws on purpose, as a matter of public entertainment, but he certainly hadn’t planned for Lord Vetinari’s head to appear upside down just once on every sheet of Blues. One of the printers had been about to destroy them when Moist brought him down with a flying tackle.
The whole business was unreal, and unreal was Moist’s world. Back when he’d been a naughty boy he’d sold dreams, and the big seller in that world was the one where you got very rich by a stroke of luck. He’d sold glass as diamonds because greed clouded men’s eyes. Sensible, upright people, who worked hard every day, nevertheless believed, against all experience, in money for nothing. But the stamp collectors…they believed in small perfections. It was possible to get one small part of the world right. And even if you couldn’t get it right, you at least knew what was missing. It might be, f’rinstance, the flawed 50p Triangular Blue, but there were still six of them out there, and who knew what piece of luck might attend the dedicated searcher?
Rather a lot of luck would be needed, Moist had to admit, because four of them were safely tucked away for a rainy day in a little lead box under the floorboards in Moist’s office. Even so, two were out there somewhere, perhaps destroyed, lost, eaten by snails, or—and here hope lay thick as winter snow—were in some unregarded bundle of letters at the back of a drawer somewhere.
—and Miss Pucci simply didn’t know how to work a crowd. She stomped and demanded attention and bullied and insulted and it didn’t help that she’d called them “good people,” because no one likes an outright liar. And now she was losing her temper, because the bidding had reached thirty-four dollars. And now—
—she’d torn it up!
“That’s what I think of this silly money!” she announced, throwing the pieces in the air. Then she stood there, panting and looking triumphant, as if she’d done something clever.
A kick in the teeth to everyone there. It made you want to cry, it really did. Oh, well.
He pulled one of the new notes out of his pocket and held it up.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he announced, “I have here one of the increasingly rare first-generation One Dollar notes”—he had to pause for the laughter—“signed by myself and the chairman. Bids over forty dollars, please! All proceeds to the little kiddies!”
He ran it up to fifty, bouncing a couple of bids off the wall. Pucci stood ignored and steaming with rage for a while and then flounced out. It was a good flounce, too. She had no idea how to handle people and she tried to make self-esteem do the work of self-respect, but the girl could flounce better than a fat turkey on a trampoline.
The lucky winner was already surrounded by his unlucky fellow bidders by the time he reached the bank’s doors. The rest of the crowd surged toward the counters, not sure what was going on but determined to have a piece of it.
Moist cupped his hand and shouted, “And this afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bent and myself will be available to discuss bank loans!” This caused a further stir.
“Smoke and mirrors, Mr. Lipwig,” said Bent, turning away from the balustrade. “Nothing but smoke and mirrors…”
“But done without smoke and in a total absence of a mirror, Mr. Bent!” said Moist cheerfully.
“And the ‘kiddies’?” said Bent.
“Find some. There’s bound to be an orphanage that needs fifty dollars. It’ll have to be an anonymous donation, of course.”
Bent looked surprised. “Really, Mr. Lipwig? I’ll make no bones about saying that you seem to me to be the sort of man who makes a great Razz Arm Ma Tazz about giving money to charity.” He made razzmatazz sound like some esoteric perversion.
“Well, I’m not. Do good by stealth, that is my watchword.” It’ll get found out soon enough, he added to himself, and then I’m not only a jolly good chap but a decently modest one, too.
*********************************************************************
—Daniel?
Are you related to the Lavishes?
Flounce much?
—For those who’ve not yet read the book, Pucci getting arrested is about as funny as the auction scene.

As is often the case, I have no idea what’s going on here.

Great blog. Pinged.

A small contribution towards a chemical study of the murky grey liquid the “pickled eggs” dwell in.
May your toilet seat hinges never discolour, or suffer untimely structural failure.

I saw something “eww-yuck-ohgawd[vomit]” on Twitter just now, and I’m not sure I should post a link here. The images are not in and of themselves offensive, but by implication, they are horrifying… and might explain why an a successful and attractive young English movie actress ran off to an American Ivy League university and became a social justice warrior feminist.
Here we go: https://twitter.com/davealvord164/status/917304869610024960

the bewildering mental contortions of leftwing academics
Heh. Good stuff. Tipped.