Tongues Were Bitten

Should have said, “Sorry, I’m Jewish,” and closed the door.
It was one of those moments when you have to choose between a very long conversation and a very short one.

Scenes from Guild of Evil headquarters, moments ago:
No boiling oil?

‘Headlines of note’
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/350709/

@Darleen PH thinks every terrorist who happens to be a follower of toxic Islam is deranged by dope. Ditto any mass shooter.

Not a happy camper.

Makes a call from the Jehovah’s Witnesses seem like tea with the Queen.
These sorts of comments about the Jehovah’s Witnesses have long puzzled me: in all my interactions with them they have been unfailingly mild and courteous.

I do worry about the long-term effects of marijuana on the developing brains of children consuming the drug – I have worked with children and adolescents who suffered brain injury in utero due to their mothers consuming alcohol and/or drugs. I cannot believe that there will not be a price to pay in future decades with increasing numbers of young drug-taking adults presenting with psychoses as the human brain takes a long time to reach full development, but to ascribe religious-based terrorism [I include certain animal liberation types, vegans and global warmists under the banner of religious terrorism] to drug use alone is pushing brown matter uphill.

Scenes from Guild of Evil headquarters, moments ago:
I was at work one day as the phone rang.
Hi, I’m calling from Microsoft to sell you software!!!
Ah, you just called into an ISP.
. . . . . Right, therefore you use Unix thank you for your time CLICK.
There wasn’t even a comma in that sentence as it came out.

I rather like Peter Hitchens, but I part company with him when he describes the ‘gentle academic people’ as innocent victims. These gullible fools (I’ll be generous and not ascribe any sinister motives to them, which can’t truthfully be said of all ‘progressives’) and the ridiculous theories they espouse are a danger to us all.

(a) people now rarely drop by unannounced
Especially when it’s Santa Claus. The look on some people’s faces. Heh.

in all my interactions with them they have been unfailingly mild and courteous.
Where I live you’ve got a 50/50 chance of that happening. Some are very persistent and take proselytizing seriously. If you just accept their literature they’ll usually politely leave. If you engage with them and their “message” they can be rather pushy. YMMV

Now if you’re looking for obnoxious and pushy proselytizers try the left.

Every time some proselytizing sky pilot comes to save my soul I explain I attended a Church of England school which I was required to attend, in my senior years, 7 days a week. There were regular daily assemblies with prayers and the odd hymn. Tuesday was a whole school service in the Chapel wherein I learned to appreciate Bach organ music. Saturday was for sports and Sunday evening was for another full chapel service for senior boys. In short I soon became cured of the need for religious observance and, having studied the history of the Reformation, realised that Religion was often another excuse for mass murder, e.g. St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of 1572, or daylight robbery – Johan Tetzel comes to mind – hence I always inform said sky pilots that all that religious observance as a lad cured me of any need to attend to formal religions including the Church of St. Greta the Warmist, the Alphabet people Church, the #Metoo church, etc.
On another [trivial] note I was reminded by a line in the opening post of our host: “Hello, I’m Simon and I’m canvassing for the Labour Party…” that we in Australia spell the party that used to represent the honest Working Man ‘Labor’ because one of the founders of said Labor Party was a Yank who clearly did not spell the Queen’s English correctly in one of her dominions.

Jonathan Kay on transgender mysticism:

I am hardly the first to point out that the most militant forms of trans activism now look and sound a lot like morbid sketch comedy. “As I often say to my long-suffering wife, it’s impossible for me to write comedy when a man with a beard here in the UK—just a normal forty something bloke with a beard and eyeshadow—goes into schools, as a representative of Stonewall, and tells a bunch of puzzled kids that he’s a lesbian,” declared comedian Graham Linehan in a speech to the Freedom Of Speech In Comedy event at St.Peter’s College Oxford. “When Sam Smith tells us he wishes to be addressed as ‘they’ and ‘them,’ we’re supposed to take this manifestly absurd request as if it was holy writ. Sam Smith, it appears, is the first narcissistic pop star we’re not allowed to make fun of.”

Somewhat related.

Meanwhile, in the Clown Quarter, clownery ensues.

Our betters do like their glue.

TimT: “Perhaps the American politician we are thinking of is King O’Malley?”
I think he was involved but the party was impressed also with American trends in labour relations.
Have a look at this site: https://www.quora.com/Why-has-the-spelling-of-Labour-been-Americanised-to-Labor-for-the-Australian-Labor-Party-2
Jim

Scenes from Guild of Evil headquarters, moments ago:
Just a lone Corbynista ? It could have been much worse.

Crap like that makes me realize how blessed I am to live in the South.
You and me both, but if such a bunch of cretins showed up at my door, I have an amp that actually goes to 12.

Our betters do like their glue.
I love their matching attire, too. It takes a keen fashion sense to become a protester of distinction these days.
Never mind that everything they’re wearing was made with fossil fuel.

Scenes from Guild of Evil headquarters, moments ago:
I’ve created a bit of a stir locally…
Background: a few months ago, I was invited by a friend to join the board of a fledgling local charity, the aim being to buy an-end-of-lease pub/nightclub from its “pubco” landlords and, with the aid of funds raised via a community share offer, various grants and “match-funding”, to transform it into an arts and music venue for the benefit of the town nearest to where I live. It’s mainly a blue collar place with a few interstitial white collar estates, and is part of a much larger Parliamentary constituency which is basically old-fashioned “Middle England” and which usually returns a Tory come election time.
For a while all went well; also on the board were a couple of local councillors and a vociferous activist who basically came along with the building as deejay/lighting man/emergency electrician/emergency plumber. I found the councillors to be rather odd and obsessive but very “on-the-ball” when it came to securing funding, whereas the deejay bloke seemed to a cheerful and likeable sort. To my (and my fellow non-politico and business-minded board members’) complete surprise we succeeded in our fundraising.
“Whahey!” I thought. “Well, an object lesson learned- don’t judge a book by its cover, they can pull their weight, this non-political community trust will succeed. Just think of the bands and acts we’ll be able to attract- it’ll be like Holmfirth Picturedrome only better”. That kind of thing. I’d contrived to ignore just about all the political stuff flying around on social media- with hindsight I was probably wrong, but I did.
Until the election was called.
Anyway, the last few weeks have seen the councillors and the activist deejay guy go into frenzied overdrive on social media, until last week I’d just had enough and resigned on principle over a particularly nasty item which emanated from one of the councillors and which portrayed a well-known national politician taking a selfie accompanied by two nationally famous TV presenters, superimposed over a shot of the burning Grenfell Tower.
And so I’ve quit. I’ve quit because of their sheer nastiness towards anybody who has the temerity to disagree with them. I’ve quit because the Grenfell Tower image-posting bloke showed such a dearth of compassion and a lack of taste and sensibility that he thought that using the image was a bit of a wheeze, that it was fine to politicise the tragic deaths of those unfortunates to make a cheap political point, and that furthermore he was so cocksure of himself that he failed to realise he could easily have been sued for defamation. And I’ve quit because collectively they are so utterly lacking in self-awareness that they doesn’t realise that it’s generally a really bad idea to publicly insult, belittle and alienate a large swathe of your potential future customers. There comes a time when you just think “These people are seriously deranged. I’m outta here”.
No prizes for guessing as to which end of the political spectrum they gravitate, which political party they belong to/represent, and which current party leader they hero-worship and whose praises they extol.
I know, I know. At my age, I really, really ought to have known better.

“Dominic Cummings and senior No10 aides have drawn up plans over the last few weeks re BBC licence fee. They are looking either abolishing it entirely or decriminalising non payment”
https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1204071314304196608
Yes, yes, yes.

Music history. (Speakers/headphones required. The 1920s and 1850s are particular favo(u)rites.

“Social justice education directly contributes to the skyrocketing cost of tuition,” said [report author, David] Randall. “Once social justice advocates capture university bureaucracies and administrations, they divert student tuition to pay the salaries of more and more fellow social justice advocates. Offices such as First-Year Experience, Community Engagement, Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, Sustainability, and Equity and Inclusion have larded higher education with hundreds of thousands of jobs. Students, parents, and taxpayers pay exorbitant tuition fees to fund social justice patronage.”

Today’s word is parasite.
[ Added: ]
Related.

So it’s like Climate Change™ but for really smart people?
Heh. But no. For one thing, it’s not built partly on lies. For another, the physicists would love nothing more than to find ways to test it. And third, athere is no associated political agenda.

Today’s other word is journalism.

Today’s other word is journalism.
Amazed that someone thinks Buzzfeed is a ‘credible news source’.

Trump often wields salt and pepper shakers almost twice the size of everyone else’s.
Surely this will be the final nail in the coffin of his so-called presidency. First he had the temerity to defeat Clinton, and now this. What a monster.

Amazed that someone thinks Buzzfeed is a ‘credible news source’.
One twitterer mentioned that he admired Buzzfeed UK’s political coverage, and regretted that they pissed away what little credibility they had built on this silliness.
Buzzfeed US, of course, remains a blocked sewer.

Political door-knocker of note.

The trick is to keep them talking – make out that you normally vote Labour but you’re concerned about something or other. Let them waste time persuading you.
When I was younger and had the time for the BS, I used this tactic frequently. Especially with phone solicitors. If I sensed they were the type to talk and talk and talk, I’d get them going, then if I got bored with it I’d set the phone down and walk away.