Reheated (57)
For newcomers, more items from the archives:
Slate’s Christina Cauterucci has discovered a “brilliant new weapon of progressivism.”
You see, those “right wing, centrist, or politically complacent parents” – the parents you love, presumably – must be purged of their “ill-informed allegiances” and made to conform politically, with the threat of never seeing grandchildren. Which is how well-adjusted adult offspring behave, of course… Ms Cauterucci’s parents are no doubt proud of their daughter and her charming, terribly enlightened fantasies of coercion, in which children are imagined primarily as a form of political leverage, a tool of rather sadistic emotional punishment. And all in the name of progressive piety.
Your Failure To Enthuse Is Violence, Apparently.
Roy G Guzmán is oppressed by the “violence” of people not liking his poetry.
After dismissing the recent, rather negative appraisals of his work as driven by “toxic masculinity” and “(white) male fragility” – no other possibilities being conceivable, of course – Mr Guzmán has apparently retired from Twitter. We are, it seems, a terrible disappointment to him.
Hear The Lamentations Of Unstable Leftist Women.
Their marriages failed, they have psychiatrists on speed-dial, and it’s all Trump’s fault. Oh, and white men, obviously.
A woman named Samantha complains that her husband of 25 years, a fellow lefty, has “much less rage” than she does, specifically about “white privileged men,” and doesn’t wish to spend every evening equally infuriated by the existence of people whose politics differ somewhat. “Anger,” says Samantha, is her “de facto mode.” Though she’s trying to “get rid of it through therapy.” Another lady named Sarah tells us that her marriage became unsustainable “after the 2016 election, when I ramped up my political activism.” Sarah’s husband is described as “completely aligned” politically – a feminist, even – albeit one who doesn’t care to spend every waking hour raging about politics. “Talking about the Trump election,” says Sarah, “makes me more emotional than the end of my marriage.” And presumably, more emotional than the thought of her children losing the stability and reassurance of a family structure. But hey, priorities.
There’s more, should you want it, in the greatest hits.
Also, open thread.
I wobble between considering leftism to arise from a cognitive deficit, a character deficit, or mental illness.
On reading “Hear The Lamentations Of Unstable Leftist Women” mental illness surged back into the lead.
(Btw, I thoroughly enjoyed your running commentary.)
Btw, I thoroughly enjoyed your running commentary.
Thank you.
I wobble between considering leftism to arise from a cognitive deficit, a character deficit, or mental illness.
Proving once and for all leftism is a mental illness:
Democrat congressman’s wife complains “all of my mental health therapy sessions are denied…”
In today’s exciting episode of “All The Things Are Racist”, join us for Table Manners !
But what of a spork ?
But what of a spork ?
First grade, McNab Elementary. Highly anticipated spaghetti lunch in the cafeteria. They gave me a spork to eat it with. I’ve been hating government ever since.
They gave me a spork to eat it with.
Even as far back as first grade they knew you couldn’t be trusted with the imposing violence of a knife and fork. You are lucky you got to settle for the slightly noticeable passive aggressiveness of a spork as opposed to making you eat the spaghetti with your fingers or just putting your face in the plate in true non-colonial fashion.
But did it sing?
I believe this may resonate with our gracious host.
The best bit about that Trabant colour chart isn’t that there’s only six of them; it’s that “Reed Green” and “Bali Yellow” have been transposed. Because who the hell cares?
“birds (70’s British comedy term…does anyone use this anymore?)”
Of course. Fun fact: originally, “bird” was the correct English word for a young woman. It began to be used – for some long-forgotten reason – as a slang term for “fowl”, which it eventually displaced.
But did it sing?
In the Bowen Basin in Queensland, they have a fluffy mascot – a lump of coal called Hector.
From afar, I’ve been intrigued by the UK-EU ongoing Brexit crisis, and just a little bit heartened by Boris Johnson’s Prime Ministership – the question is, is there method to his madness, or is there just madness? If he gets an election, and wins it convincingly, he may just be able to secure vital concessions from the EU before leave date. We’ll see.
Related, this was amusing.
That little white “shooting saloon” Trabant on the lower right reminded me of my old ‘69 Toyota station wagon. 2 doors. 1100 cc engine. Comfortably seated 4 for short trips. Once, I carried 9 including me and my girlfriend several blocks in Halifax NS. The extra passengers were her PT classmates who were caught out in a sudden downpour on their way to class. If the Trabant was related to my erstwhile tiny car, it was a tough mule.
That little white “shooting saloon”…
Shooting brake. Having had the chance to drive one, I’ve long been fascinated by Trabis, and comfortably seating four, not so much, unless they were short, at 6’2″ I could barely drive the thing. Four Stasi would have been high adventure. Our friends in Zwickau tried to save the company after the wall came down by putting in a three cylinder water cooled VW engine, but the former East Germans weren’t idiots and correctly reasoned they could just get a VW instead, and were actually putting Trabis in dumpsters.
That said, they do have a certain Soviet indestructible simplicity – as long as you didn’t crash the thing, the sheet metal of the frame, nor the duroplast body panels hung on it, is not exactly what you would call sturdy.
In today’s exciting episode of “All The Things Are Racist”, join us for Table Manners !
How to eat spaghetti.
PodShare where you too can pay $1200 a month to share a bunk bed. The upside is you might be assigned to the Escape Committee working on the tunnel.
OTOH, you could just go down to Mexico and cross back over the Rio Grande, claim to be a Honduran, and get better conditions, as well as free food and medical care.
…reminded me of my old ‘69 Toyota station wagon. 2 doors. 1100 cc engine.
I had the ’68 Toyota Corolla 1100 cc Coupe. My first car. I once had six crammed in mine. Pulled over by the police and given a warning.
I later jacked up the back end leaf springs and put 50-series Radial T/A’s and a pair of 70 series on the front mounted on Shelby dish mag wheels. I had to put rubber blocks in the springs so the tires wouldn’t rub against the body.
It looked real mean but still only had 1100 cc’s under the hood. The tires were worth more than the car.
My girlfriend at Berkeley had a late 60s Toyota 4door wagon thing. No problems. Parked it close to the main Oakland Police dept one evening. During dinner someone broke a side window and stole my gym bag. Fortunately the contents of the bag were worth considerably less than the folding knife the crook left behind.
I still have the knife some 4 decades later. Also still have the lesson about urban living.
“If you can’t lose an election without going crazy, you’re unfit to participate in democratic society”
Perhaps. But for the audience she believes she is addressing, having terrible insomnia since Trump’s election is a kind of twisted bragging, e.g. she is suffering more than you. It’s virtue signalling taken to a competitive level.
I owned and drove a Suzuki Swift for eleven years.
I’m 6’4″.
I believe this may resonate with our gracious host.
Using their own words is a must. It’s the best way to convey the arrogance and neuroticism, the sheer dumb malevolence.
Pussies, I managed to transport 6 very understanding young women home one night in my original Fiat 500. We did have to organise it so the young lady who sat between the two front seats used the clutch and gearstick (these things didn’t have synchro on any gear either, so there was a significant amount of graunching going on) while I managed the accelerator (pretty dubious acceleration from 500 cc two cylinders air-cooled) and brake. And it was a long way to take each to their respective residences. And try as I might I could not engineer the route so the pretty one who I fancied was last out. It was, I must say, a remarkably slow trip as well especially up hills, and the front transverse leaf spring never did recover its original profile and front wheels were a little splayed out ever after.
But it was successful in delivering them home and I was (thankfully) not stopped on the way.
I owned and drove a Suzuki Swift for eleven years.
Swift wheelbase – 93.1″
Trabant wheelbase – 79.5″
Go to The Annual Parade of Trabants at the International Spy Museum and see the difference 13.6″ and Japanese engineers makes on an interior. The Trabi, with its four on the tree, my knee would hit the steering wheel while shifting unless I rotated my hip sideways one way or the other. If you had an automatic (a rare option in a Trabant) you would have been walking in tall cotton.
OTOH, some enterprising comrades made it to the west by folding themselves into the engine compartment, so that is one up on the Swift.
I managed to transport 6 very understanding young women home one night in my original Fiat 500.
Going to and from swim practice, it wasn’t unusual for us to fit 7 kids in a VW Beetle. Driver, two front passengers, three kids in the back seat with a girl stretched across their laps. It was…ummm…cozy. We also used to get up for 5:00 AM practice (a half-hour before we went to bed) because school started at 7:00 AM. We were out by 12:20 though, so…ah, but we were happy then.
Using their own words is a must. It’s the best way to convey the arrogance and neuroticism, the sheer dumb malevolence.
I followed this link, and found this gem:
I think that this is exactly the Left’s strategy re education: by encouraging to attend university students who have no business whatever being there, they intentionally raise expectations of status far beyond the capabilities of said students, the better to make them fertile soil for agitation.
In this way those who lack the intellectual chops (and/or industry) to master a serious subject instead “graduate” with a degree in sociology, grievance studies, or some other intellectual sandbox subject. They then blame the system for their inability to become more than a barista (excuse me, a “hot beverage engineer”), when after all they’re college graduates. As they remind all and sundry.
Is that an English way of saying “drinks a lot of gin”
Speaking of the French…Silly English knigit.
My question was confused because because I was confused: For some reason I was associating elderberries with gin whereas in reality it is flavored with juniper berries.
The correct question would have been: “Does ‘smells of elderberries’ imply that she is an elderberry wine drinking alcoholic, or that she drinks elderberry wine and therefore is a stereotypical old English lady?
For some reason I was associating elderberries with gin whereas in reality it is flavored with juniper berries.
You can buy elderberry gin. I only know this because I’ve been drinking with my sisters-in-law, whose gin consumption is truly prodigious.
So…various varieties of flavored gin, just like vodka?
I’d assume the elderberries are there in addition to the traditional juniper.