Friday Ephemera
Fun with fireworks. || Foldable earthquake helmet. || Refreshment table of note. || Roads of the Roman Empire as a modern transit map. (h/t, Coudal) || Always respect the media. (h/t, Darleen) || Scenes from Google Earth. || Good deed. (h/t, Julia) || His train-wreck wedding gig was worse than yours. (h/t, Shaw Taylor’s Glasses) || Giant gelatinous egg sack of note. || Speaking of big. || A touch of turbulence. || Contrabassoon II. || Suboptimal. || You can listen to your tattoos. || Headline. || Stop-motion card play. || A brief history of penis transplants. || A partial success. || Changing car proportions. (h/t, Things) || Car trouble of note. || And finally, enticingly, the chocolate toilets you’ve always wanted.
Logo fail of note:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/dgw6a0/the_logo_for_my_sons_it_class_at_school/
If you laugh at this, you’re a terrible person*:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/dge9ca/our_calculations_were_incorrect/
*Guilty as charged
Cultural appropriation of note.
Foldable earthquake helmet.
I still prefer the original.
Youtube regrets
Headline.
Headlines.
Egypt archaeologists find 20 ancient coffins near Luxor
BBC
Just ‘as the Ancient Egyptians left them’ – archaeologists discover 20 well-preserved coffins
ITV News
DEAD STRANGE Mystery as 20 sealed Egyptian coffins found ‘like the ancients left them’ – and they could be CURSED
The Sun
Changing car proportions
When noting vehicle proportions, I’ve been bemused at the differences between cars, aka cars, and when one needs a large box to carry things, vans, aka vans, as contrasted with the utter bloat of fatmobiles, aka SUVs . . .
Changing car proportions
Say, what? Ok, by the end of the 1970s, what with the OPEC oil crisis, suddenly everyone wanted smaller fuel efficient cars. But look what came before – 1950s-70s.
In 1984 I inherited my grandparents’ 1972 Cadillac Coupe de Ville — Almost 19 feet of steel land boat. With small kids, I loved driving that comfy living room on wheels.
Now THAT was a car!
Now THAT was a car!
My parents had the 1972 Buick Electra 225. It shared the same wheelbase, length and roof line with the Cadillac. It was a beast with a 455 cu. in. engine. My brother and I called it the couch. You could fit 3 people comfortably in the trunk (boot)…or so I’m told.
Youtube regrets
I regret that more people apparently can’t find the ‘off’ button on things.
I like the Vietnamese Ghost Riders. I hope they get more exposure.
The lost & found wallet story…
Not all such stories are quite so cute.
About ’85 I found a wallet between the passenger seat and door of a rental car. I found her driver license and a business card, and called her.
She was glad to hear that I’d found it, but when I said “I’ll take five bucks from it to cover shipping back to your address”, she totally flipped out. “No! You can’t! Stay out of my wallet!” and on and on. (I mean, how did she think I found her number? And there was a couple hundred in cash, too.) I put her on speaker so the other folks in my office could be entertained by her frothing.
Eventually she wound down, but stayed upset.
(Maybe she was smuggling a kilo of cocaine in there, I dunno…)
Tough for her. I DID take $5 for shipping. Because I’m just that much of a hardass. [slams back last of my sarsparilla.] Barkeep! Another round! If it’s not too much trouble.
But look what came before – 1950s-70s.
Which was covered with the caveat that . . . when one needs a large box to carry things, vans, aka vans . . .
Therefore we still have a complete absence of the point of the fatmobiles—regardless of year, actually—aside from a hipster variety exercise in inexplicable bloat.
So…the trainwreck wedding gig video was mildly entertaining. He even demonstrated connection with reality in the bit about how his ex-musician now maritime business buddy had to deal with REAL danger.
But then…
at about 9:00 in, when I’m anticipating a nice wrap-up…
he brings Trump into it.
Because of a date.
And then drops that analogy immediately.
…
What the F is wrong with these people?
Is it the meth? I’m guessing it’s the meth.
Baarkeep, please make me a nice virgin pina colada.
I thought for a sec the marriage train wreck guy, after he’d gone back to the site where it all took place, was going to do a re-enactment, which could have been weirdly cool.
Those bees at that country fair might end up making an interesting cordial. Great pic.
Always respect the media.
I’d like to go on record and state that I have never, ever, run a wide shot backwards in a Friday night surf report.
Expelled. Frankly, I’m surprised she wasn’t burned at the stake. UNCLEAN!
Morning, all.
The hero you’ve always wanted to be.
he brings Trump into it.
As noted previously, The Blurting is a real and under-studied phenomenon. It’s fairly mild in this instance, as blurting goes, but still, it does rather sour the milk.
Most relaxing piece of music in existence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGPPlf9LEV8
Most relaxing piece of music in existence
It’s chill, as I believe the cool kids used to say about twenty-five years ago. Oddly, it reminded me of one of Jerry Goldsmith’s themes for Star Trek: Insurrection, which is a film I cannot recommend and would actively urge you to avoid.
Speaking of big.
She is right you know, I can’t help but reflect back on the 100 genders that bloomed before western colonialism in the Ming dynasty, pre-Columbian meso-America, in the outback before Cook showed up, indeed, even the Arthurian legends of the round table and the Knights of the Gender Neutral Outhouses.
In related news of bigness, Donald Trump
turned me into a newtmade me fat. “The diet don’t work for you the same !” because of racism, of course. We have see @DrCrunk here before, but I am pretty sure she didn’t get that size since November 2016.In sporting news, a coach is fined $500 because a five year old scored one too many touchdowns, because we mustn’t make a team that sucked so hard they were being beaten like a rented mule feel bad.
because we mustn’t make a team that sucked so hard they were being beaten like a rented mule feel bad.
We’ve been here before, I think.
From the previous thread:
…(I)n the UK Plod has made it abundantly clear whose side he’s on
True. I fled from my heathen backwater© to Cheshire, and I think that ACC Julie Cooke, the head of the real-life grammar police, could probably see my house from her office window if she were minded to look at the world outside; given her wokeness I am dubious that she ever does, but in case she is reading this: I am the one who gesticulates rudely from his back garden at your noisy police helicopter when it circles endlessly over your HQ on Sunday afternoons, disrupting convivial and bibulous lunches.
And, inevitably, Corbyn the Magic Grandpa and that preposterous little twerp Owen Jones had to jump on board the great big rainbow-striped bandwagon.
[© D. Thompson]
Car trouble of note.
Brick 1, scumbag 0.
…(I)n the UK Plod has made it abundantly clear whose side he’s on
Perhaps not all…
Changing car proportions.
This is not entirely correct. As it notes, some cars, e.g., a 3 series BMW, have gotten a whole foot longer, but in general, particularly in the US&A, cars got bigger, and are now getting smaller. A first generation Chevy Impala, then and now a “full size car”, was 17.5 feet long, that went up to 18.5 feet, and is now down to 16.5. That is a full size car, however, because of government fleet mileage requirements, the other end of the spectrum is tiny shitboxes such as (for Chevy) the Spark, Sonic, and Cruze. This gets us to effetes who aren’t minded to look at the world outside and can’t understand why someone would want/need an SUV. Personally, I don’t like them, but the fact is, nobody in the US makes a station wagon* (estate/shooting brake) anymore, and some real people actually have friends, families, jobs, and activities and often need something between a shitbox or sedan/coupe and a truck to haul their friends, families, and gear, and not everyone has either the frogskins and/or space to have a sedan/coupe, shooting brake, and a truck/van to use depending on the need du jour, so they go with what fits the maximal need.
*(VW, Volvo, and Mercedes sell them in the US, of course the latter will set you back 66-108K minimum)
Gaia and Mother Nature, in all their gentle and nurturing ways.
even the Arthurian legends of the round table and the Knights of the Gender Neutral Outhouses.
Hush now, we must heed her wisdom. She’s a Philosopher Queen. Albeit one with a septum piercing and charming knuckle tattoos. Clearly, her life hasn’t juddered violently off the rails and into an intersectional ditch.
Hush now, we must heed her wisdom.
I will report for regrooving.
Albeit one with a septum piercing and charming knuckle tattoos.
It is the quality of the tattoos, as well as the magenta hair and bile colored nails, that does give her the gravitas I obviously overlooked.
Youtube regrets
Interesting read — I do think Youtube is a menace, because there is so much garbage uploaded on there to game the ad system and the auto-play and recommendation engine can take you to very bad places very quickly.
However, there were also a lot of complaints about how it’s bad because people who disagree with you can have a platform. I’m sorry for the people with who are struggling with gender-identity issues, but that Youtube has people on it saying that it is a mental illness is, in fact, a good and helpful thing.
I regret that more people apparently can’t find the ‘off’ button on things.
I regret that people keep hiding the damn thing. Having said that, yes, if you click on things intentionally and don’t let the algorithms run riot, it’s a lot easier to enjoy Youtube.
And finally, enticingly, the chocolate toilets you’ve always wanted.
I was expecting an actual toilet made of chocolate.
I was expecting an actual toilet made of chocolate.
It’s not an unreasonable expectation, all things considered. Though I suspect that the weight of one’s personage, and the water and flushing, combined with the warmth from one’s, um, hindquarters, would seriously jeopardise the structural integrity.
But by all means, prove me wrong.
But by all means, prove me wrong.
Voila.
nobody in the US makes a station wagon
SUVs are how you buy a minivan without buying a minivan.
Voila.
My, it’s hard not to be impressed. Though I noticed this line,
Which, it seems to me, is a fairly important caveat.
“Foldable earthquake helmet.”
You used to get paper hats that folded a little like that, sold for corporate advertising and suchlike.
“Roads of the Roman Empire as a modern transit map.”
Heh. “Tabula reticuli”. And it turns out all roads didn’t lead to Rome. But they spelled “Eboracum” wrong.
“Good deed.”
I fell in the snow a few years back and my keys fell out of my pocket. I didn’t realise until I got home. Fortunately some good Samaritan had handed them in to a nearby Subway station. I never found out who it was. It restores your faith in humanity, that kind of thing.
“at about 9:00 in, when I’m anticipating a nice wrap-up… he brings Trump into it.”
That’s what I thought, but he does at least say, “For these people, in that place” (or words to that effect), which, like it or not, is probably true. These idiots did think the world was falling apart.
This would seem a more fitting venue, though.
You know what? I should have put this link over “Subway” above. ’70s promotional films are always good value. Dig the fake Vangelis.
fake Vangelis
I’m laughing and I’m not sure why.
Always respect the media
The most amazing part of that ABC “Slaughter in Syria” video?
You can see the audience in the foreground filming the pyrotechnic display of firepower with their smartphones!
How stupid and/or corrupt can you get?
How stupid and/or corrupt can you get?
Based on what I’ve noticed over the last few years, I doubt there’s an upper limit.
If the Speaking of big girl finds out You can listen to your tattoos she has sufficient – ahem – real estate to get this one.
SUVs are how you buy a minivan without buying a minivan.
There is some truth in that, but I am having a hard time coming up with an off-road (or even bad road) capable minivan (which is an acronym for “manhood is not intact vasectomized and neutered”).
The reason that SUVs replaced shooting brakes is that the latter for CAFE purposes were categorized as cars, but SUVs as light trucks and were thus exempt from various regulations in the US so the manufacturers could sell something with shooting brake like capabilities, but which didn’t have to get car fuel mileage. Now they are in two classes, basically with the 4X4s still considered light trucks, and the two wheel drive as cars.
.. he brings Trump into it.”
I don’t think he was bringing Trump into it so much as that was the point of the original “disaster”. That mess was such an obvious setup to begin with and thus the purpose of using that video in the beginning as a tool to tell his story, it did need an explanation as to why that happened that way. It wouldn’t surprise me how the wedding band guy felt about Trump one way or the other, though I do have my suspicions. It’s the LA band that was much more heavy handed about brining Trump into their performance/tantrum. It’s that California cerebral hipster BS that was doing the heavy lifting of politicizing other peoples’ time whilst pretending, sort of, otherwise.
shooting brakes
Cultural appropriator! Cultural appropriator! Report this man to the Cheshire Police! Pronto!
Easy does it.
Via Holborn.
How corrupt?
Weren’t NBC the fine folk who added incendiaries to a pickup truck for a documentary on how dangerous it was?
Sure, not ABC, but hey, the networks have to compete with each other somehow, and reality is often too darn boring.
Slick parking manoeuvre of note:
https://twitter.com/johncardillo/status/1184945108879396864
2019:
Meanwhile in New Jersey…“Heh, now we are one up on California !”
A moment of poetry, because we have been short on art lately.
New fo0tage of Turks bombing Kurds.
On the subject of “perhaps not all”, someone in academia pointing out the clowniness of the Quarter ususally documented hereabouts.
It is tough in the NBA.
“Watch your mouth woman”.
Poetry…
OK, the guy closing his laptop and tossing it out the window made me LOL for real.
(Of course, I had the video on mute. Even though I’m at home, alone.)
(What?)
Trump, and “blurting”…
OK, I live and work in Silicon Valley, and have since long before there was any refined silicon here. (Hell, I even worked on some of the early refining equipment.) I participate in many business groups in the area, from San Jose in the south, up to Berkeley. In any such meeting since Nov. 2016, there’s about a 80% chance that Trump will be mentioned, for no discernible relevant reason. Uniformly, such mentions are accompanied by a so-modest smirk, and a glance around the room to give and receive social credits. Sometimes there’s chuckling or even applause. Fortunately for my sanity, I’ve found a significant percentage are happy to find a fellow heretic. In private, anyway. I’m doing my best to create a preference cascade, but in this neighborhood it’s difficult. I frequently give thanks that I’m not employed for salary anymore.
OK, that’s getting to be an annoying habit. Stop it.
OK.
Things are different with the rank and file, but the top brass in Plod have completely bought into the post-Macpherson Blairite bollocks, so far as I can tell. God, Blair was a disaster.
OK, that’s getting to be an annoying habit. Stop it.
OK.
OK, so on a post on the previous thread regarding Canada and XR protesters I used the word “stupid” three times. I caught myself and tried to edit it down to just one usage. While I was able to convince myself that one of the three was overdone, I couldn’t make up my mind which of the other two to eliminate. So I constipated on it and I constipated on it and finally came to the conclusion that rather than edit it down to one “stupid”, it really would communicate my feelings better to just slam a “stupid” in there wherever I could. Because…well, the whole thing was so stupidly stupid, it just felt right. I like to go with my gut in these stupid situations. I was pretty much OK with the results. Damn near happy, actually.
Barman, beer that guy.
There is some truth in that, but I am having a hard time coming up with an off-road (or even bad road) capable minivan
When was the last time you saw an SUV off-road?
SUVs are like those $100,000 supercars that dentists and stockbrokers buy. They’re never going to drive them any faster than I can in my 2008 Sonata[1], but they’re showing off that they could.
[1] The last year they came with a 3.3L 234 HP engine
Ending in a draw.
When was the last time you saw an SUV off-road?
Where I live, frequently, people use them for hunting, camping, and fishing, I have an acquaintance who is a fossil hunter and goes off road to digs, I’ve been places they are popular beach cars because you can throw surf boards and scuba gear in them. Even you hosers take them ice fishing, not that everyone appears to be good at it.
Not everyone lives in a city and is a soccer mom.
Medieval tech support.
Even you hosers take them ice fishing…
Bought a fridge with an ice maker, haven’t been ice fishing since.
“Hate crime” of note.
“Bought a fridge with an ice maker”
Those are handy if you lose the recipe.
An offense to public morals in Ireland: somebody put a sticker riffing on “Arbeit Macht Frei” over the entrance of a government job centre.
A plausible explanation: it’s an unemployed creative type who resents the little Eichmanns pressuring him into applying for jobs that are unworthy of his talents. It’s a hackneyed comparison (schoolboys for 75 years have been comparing their teachers to Nazi camp guards), but he’s put a bit of effort into replicating the typography (hate-hoaxers who put up three-legged or counter-clockwise swastikas could learn from this), getting a sticker manufactured and installing it on the premises. The prankster celebrated his private triumph, the janitor had the sticker removed by 10am and everyone got on with their day. Of course not.
Implausible explanations: an ploy by the Irish Nazi Party to reintroduce labour camps, starting with office buildings that have the word “labour” on their nameplates; a graphic design campaign by the Irish Department of Social Welfare (that one really takes an effort to believe); an incitement to hatred requiring police resources to investigate (hatred against whom? the clerk who won’t stamp the guy’s form so he can get the dole?)
An offense to public morals in Ireland
“Egged on by nationalists, including Sinn Féin leader Arthur Griffith, who believed that the theatre was not sufficiently political…”
So, not much different from today’s leftists.
Speaking of big
According to the T-shirt: Gender is a pseudoscientific product of Western Colonialism.
It would appear that the same could be said for species …
With regards to SUVs; on a personal note we’ve owned both a minivan and an SUV. Hands down the SUV is far superior. Yes, not for everyone but for us it is much preferable. My wife does catering for both businesses and personal dinners and the like. You’d have to pry our SUV from her cold dead hands, so to speak. 🙂
Cheers
Skills for post-Apocalypse.
Damian’s post-gig adventure.
Safe space violated. “What is wrong with you?” they ask.
Safe space violated.
We’re going to see a lot more of this. Good.
We’re going to see a lot more of this. Good.
It seems to me that these ladies actually got off lightly. If you choose to block the roads, determined to needlessly frustrate hundreds, even thousands of people, just so you can indulge in some in-group preening, then you should expect some physical push-back from the people on whose freedoms and imperatives you’ve chosen to piss. Because, hey, sabotaging people’s attempts to get to jobs, airports and doctor’s appointments, while impeding emergency vehicles and thereby endangering lives, is such a lark, baby.
Acts of planned and gratuitous aggression, including narcissistic aggression – which is what these ‘protests’ are – should be treated accordingly. It’s important that these cossetted pinheads, so gorged on their own sense of entitlement, learn to fear the people on whom they recreationally impose themselves. Their expectations of impunity should be shattered.
I think we’ll give that one a post of its own.
https://quillette.com/2019/10/18/the-defenestration-of-domingo/
Skills for post-Apocalypse.
Rather a bit of oversimplification.
It seems to me that these ladies actually got off lightly.
They are, in part, depending on the cultural taboo against men hitting women. (Has every reader of this blog witnessed a woman getting in a man’s face in a way which if she were a man would get her punched to the ground?) But radical feminism has been undermining that taboo, and sufficient provocation will do so as well.
They are, in part…
We’re over here now.
Skills for post-Apocalypse.
I was expecting “how to cook a hippie”.
One of these things is not like the other.
Alabama fan tries to rob hotel. Puts gun down to stuff money in plastic bag (apparently they aren’t banned in Kentucky yet). Clerk takes his gun. He leaves and then actually comes back to ask for the gun back.
https://www.wpsdlocal6.com/news/suspect-in-paducah-hotel-robbery-arrested/article_166f2cce-eab3-11e9-8e9a-13a900f4a302.html
Stupid, stupid ‘Bama fans.