I’m Expecting Gasps, Applause

Happy birthday to the blog. This place reminds me that there are still sane people around. Lately I’ve been checking in more frequently. Ping!

Meanwhile, in the Guardian:
Couple questions:
How is the necktie descended from the codpiece? One goes around the neck, and the other goes around the dangly bits. Or is that assertion descended from the Guardianista’s fever dreams?
Why is a necktie phallic, and therefore Evil (and White Supremacist to boot!), but the Traditional Maori Greenstone (which is rather scrotally reminiscent) not evil?
Why is the Maori MP with Traditional Facial Tattooing and Traditional Maori Greenstone wearing a Stetson-style cowboy hat typically associated with the American Cowboy, and that’s ok? I mean – talk about your Symbols of Toxic Masculinity, and we could tack on White Supremacy and Colonialist too to the American Cowboy (even though they were pretty diverse in skin color and ethnicity).
What isn’t White Supremacist Colonialist Phallic clothing? Are we all supposed to wear loincloths now? What about penis tubes? Or are those Not Phallic because they are worn by primitive Black and Brown people in Africa (I may have the continent wrong)?

Happy Birthday, er, blog. Been loving this rickety barge held together by humpfat and gusto for near on a decade. Thanks David, your efforts are appreciated more than any other time!

Thank you for your forum, David. It’s always a fun place to visit.
I’ve sent a modest donation your way for the occasion. It won’t be enough to upgrade your snacks, but it might be enough to buy a cleaner set of coasters.

but it might be enough to buy a cleaner set of coasters.
[ Looks indignant. ]
[ Fondles tip jar. ]
[ Stops looking indignant. ]
Bless you, sir. May your enemies be unsure of what day of the week it is.

One wonders if these idiots actually read what they write.
Note that madam is an educator, a shaper of young minds.

Finally successfully hit the tip jar!
Bless you, sir. In warm weather, may your vitamin D capsules never congeal into a single, faintly adhesive, mass.

It might not be a bad time to make sure you’ve backed up the blog, just in case.
https://help.typepad.com/import_export.html

Need to get this thread moving again.

Now they’re just making stuff up:

On the internet nobody knows you’re not a cat. (But they may know you’re not tech savvy.)

stuff in large quantities was shipped in wooden barrels
Crackers, biscuits, salt beef, salt pork, pickles, etc.
Yes, these people make my head hurt too. Ignorant, stupid, uneducated, ineducable, insufferable.

And in charge.
The unspeakable in furious pursuit of the unachievable.

[locks door to regrooving room]
No, let’s reserve it for the idiots that give us a headache. How about advertising a “wokeness enhancement” service? David, can you adjust the gain on the regroover? Say, a ten-fold increase?

Odd that you’ve never heard the expression “a barrel of bullwhips.” You might know the somewhat more common expression “more fun than a barrel of monkeys” which has the same origin. Zoos used to ship monkeys in wooden barrels. Each monkey was given a bullwhip as compensation for being shipped in a barrel. Opening the barrels was quite an event in19th Century small-town America. The song “Roll out the barrel” comes from that era. The discarded barrels were eventually bought by a restaurant franchiser.

Oh, and what sort of cretin would use Gorilla Glue on their hair? And then sue the manufacturer?
It has been noted that there are virtually no jobs which can be done by someone with an IQ of 80 or below. As a matter of fact, there are virtually no lives that can be lived at that level of stupidity.

are virtually no jobs which can be done by someone with an IQ of 80 or below.
I see you’ve not been to your local DMV lately…

what sort of cretin would use Gorilla Glue on their hair?
I’m more than half convinced the whole thing is a windup for clicks. Always follow the money.
I’m so glad my ancestors were dumb enough to be captured by slavers.
Muhammad Ali expressed the same sentiment.
Is this provocative enough?
Am I the only one who noticed the practical impossibility of “Shot 5 times by 12 police officers”? Did they double up on the revolver, or something?
how long will it be until the bots writing these “articles”
Disturbingly prescient: http://www.broom.org/epic/ (that site is over fifteen years old, as evidenced by the fact that it requires Flash)
I’m the only thing stopping the world from shattering into atoms
Do not underestimate the value of your island of sanity in an increasingly woke-flooded world. Which is, I think worthy of a bit of something to help keep the boat docks in order. ping

RE Twelve cops hitting 5 times, I’ll paraphrase Unforgiven: it’s not so easy shootin a man, especially if the sumbitch is shootin back.

@ ComputerLabRat: “What isn’t White Supremacist Colonialist Phallic clothing?”
If a tie, originally designed to cover buttons on a man’s shirt front so as to avoid upsetting prim and proper ladies who might develop a case of the vapours at the merest suggestion that a naked male body might lie underneath a shirt, is a ‘phallic’ symbol, then what are a high hem line and low cut bodice [showing lots of cleavage] on a woman’s clothing meant to indicate? Are they carnal symbols indicating a woman’s lust?
What goes around, comes around!
[I have wonderful memories of an elderly Lady music teacher of great professional renown at the highest level who taught me clarinet. She was the Principal Clarinetist of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at one stage and performed with people such as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, e.g. Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, usw. This very gracious lady one day avoided using the word ‘leg’ in reference to a chair. When I queried her reluctance to use the word ‘leg’ she explained that legs of chairs at one time in history were ‘dressed’ or covered so as to avoid distressing refined ladies.]

This very gracious lady one day avoided using the word ‘leg’ in reference to a chair. When I queried her reluctance to use the word ‘leg’ she explained that legs of chairs at one time in history were ‘dressed’ or covered so as to avoid distressing refined ladies
In Victorian times a man’s legs were referred to in polite society as his “understandings”

pst314: “Meanwhile many high IQ people that I have known are failures.”
When I was a student teacher at IU [Bloomington] many years ago I enrolled in a class called ‘Exceptional Children in the Schoolroom’. The course covered children presenting with sensory, physical, psychological and intellectual impairments and also included those children who were exceptionally intelligent as they too have significant problems adapting to ‘average’ or mainstream society and their age peers. This is not a popular notion as many people reckon that gifted children shouldn’t need any special help because Nature has dealt them an exceptional intellectual ‘hand’ to play.

“I’m so glad my ancestors were dumb enough to be captured by slavers.”
It’s not even that. African diseases were deadly to Europeans for quite a long time. As far as I know, most of the slaves were delivered by Africans from the winning tribes of their internal wars or raids to the slavers who sold those people to work in the New World.
If anyone here can point to information that indicates the above isn’t true, please do so. I don’t like to be shown that I’m wrong, but I’d prefer that to happen by people who don’t absolutely hate my guts.

This is not a popular notion as many people reckon that gifted children shouldn’t need any special help because Nature has dealt them an exceptional intellectual ‘hand’ to play.
Very bright children can easily be alienated and demoralised by an educational system in which those kinds of assumptions are common – which is to say, most state schooling. I recall, quite vividly, a couple of leftist teachers at my old comprehensive who would positively delight in frustrating any pupils smarter than themselves. Teachers as a group are typically portrayed, by teachers, as altruistic beings. This is by no means the only kind of motivation in play.
Educators in general, and in the state sector in particular, tend to wildly overestimate their positive influence on the development and intelligence of pupils, especially precocious ones, as this is flattering to imagine. But regarding bright kids, the credit that can be taken by educators is generally very limited. Educators can, however, do quite a lot to frustrate bright children, thwarting the use and development of their abilities, and some are very much inclined to do so.
And the likely political leanings of those who indulge in such pleasures are not hard to guess.

The business about ties above is nonsense