Friday Ephemera
We live in strange times. || Words of wisdom. || Cat is wise. || Confounded cat. || Accessories plus case, circa 1900. || When you’re all fired up and righteous but it’s the wrong colour carjacker. || Cover version of note. || Why beavers don’t rule the… oh. || Gibsmedat. || Loveliness detected. (h/t, Captain Nemo) || Duck-related drama. (h/t, Damian) || Transparent lifeform. || Suboptimal sofa situation. || A brief history of gin and tonic. || The gods, they mock us. || Radical solution, bound to work. || I believe they’re called sneakers. || Type detected: “I’ve been trying to educate you.” || Feel the love. || No pushing, form an orderly line. || And finally, from Brazil, please remain calm while you are being rescued.
When I was a boy we called a napkin a serviette. Sadly it’s not used any more–the word not the object.
I never encountered “serviette” until I visited England–aside from a reference encountered in one sf novel.
I never encountered “serviette” until I visited England–aside from a reference encountered in one sf novel.
I grew up in Canada and my Granny Fannie (insert joke here) had relatives in New York State. She would often remind us of the differences between us and her American cousins. Serviette vs Napkin was always in the top 10 as was Chesterfield vs Sofa, Pop vs Soda and Chips vs Fries. Those differences only exist for a few very old people these days. If she were still around, Fannie would be sad to know we’ve lost the culture war.
It’s a boy!
It’s a boy!
The time for the earth to move was 9 months earlier.
When I was a boy we called a napkin a serviette
For those who remember the U/Non-U era, serviette was classified as non-U and to use the term indicated that you were NOCD (Not Our Class, Darling)
For those who remember the U/Non-U era, serviette was classified as non-U and to use the term indicated that you were NOCD (Not Our Class, Darling)
Monty Python roasted both the U and Non-U classes. Would it be accurate to describe the Pythons as belonging to a third class, the Oxbridge Mafia or something like that?
Chesterfield vs Sofa, Pop vs Soda and Chips vs Fries
I, too, have never heard “serviette” even from my late grandmother – who called the refrigerator “icebox”, the sofa was the Davenport and the squares of cloth (or crocheted doilies) on the arms/back of the sofa or chair were “antimacassars”.
Tea towels aside, I wonder how many people under 30, if they threw a dinner party at their home, would know how to set a proper dinner table?
“She was a child” – No she was a tall, hefty adolescent/teenage female/girl/woman in a rage lunging at another young woman [in pink] armed with a knife.
As for “You’re telling that a grown male Police Officer is so weak and frail that he is incapable of taking a little girl into custody?”
Well I have restrained violent little girls [and boys], i.e. primary aged children, in my professional career working as a behaviour specialist in both special and mainstream schools. As a very fit and strong bloke [initially trained as a physical educator] it was not difficult. However I also worked with and had to restrain violent and large adolescents and adults in institutions and even in public; they were a different matter, especially if they were armed with a weapon. There are training courses for people working with violent students/clients and one of the primary rules of engagement is that the total body weight of people seeking to bring an enraged person under physical control must be at least twice the body weight of the enraged person. [It’s very dangerous work and I bear the scars – bite marks and a ruptured L5-S1 disc – from my 40 years of work in the behaviour field.] Tackling a large person running away toward the target of her rage [the girl in pink] from behind – if the officer could have reached her – would not have stopped the attacker from reaching her target: you can’t immediately stop someone if you are running in the same direction as they are. You need a certain distance, space and time to trip and bring down the attacker, but the young woman in pink was simply too close and had no room to back away.
Attempt at Bryant-baiting the cops doesn’t go as planned.
“This is where I usually type ‘Mission Accomplished’.”
I couldn’t help thinking exactly that while watching this. The fact that the psychological effects of the panic (let’s call it what it is, and what a pity Booker is no longer around to weigh in on it) have rendered it harder to make conservative and classical liberal arguments is, to many people, a feature, not a bug.
I wonder how many people under 30, if they threw a dinner party at their home, would know how to set a proper dinner table?
I’m over 60, and I don’t know how to do that.
If your dishes come out of the dishwasher wet, you’re taking them out too soon. Let them air dry first. I open the dishwasher, pull the racks all the way out, remove excess water from items that collected it by shaking them over the sink, and then leave the dishes to dry overnight. Nothing is ever wet in the morning.
I wonder how many people under 30, if they threw a dinner party at their home, would know how to set a proper dinner table?
…or fold a napkin, or know the difference between plate service and family style? Hell, how many could even prepare a complete meal so that everything was properly cooked and ready at the same time? It’s a lost art. So many under 30s use Uber Eats or DoorDash these days. They even struggle with the meal services that pre-prep everything for you.
There are still a dedicated few who, either on their own or because of the their family, can pull this off and enjoy it. My wife and I will entertain 12-14 people 4 to 6 times a year for a sit down dinner. It’s a lot of work, but we’ve got it down. My wife sets a beautiful table.
We used to belong to a dinner club with 5 other couples. We would rotate hosting meals and setting themes for the evening. We have a large family room in our house. One evening, we cleared out the furniture and set up an old style French Bistro with tables for two. We did a classic Steak Frite dinner. The key to the successful evening was an apertif of Absinthe at 124 proof followed by copious amounts of red wine.
Television taught me how to cook. I would wake up early on the weekend to watch the 2 to 4 hours of cooking shows on PBS from WNED Buffalo — Julia Child, The Frugal Gourmet, Yan Can Cooks, Martha Stewart, Maryanne Espisito and more. Then the food channel came along and spoiled everything (though to be fair, in it’s early stages it just stole what PBS did). Today’s cooking shows (with the odd exception) don’t teach you anything. They’re mostly competitions designed to embarrass as many of the participants as possible. Even when the competitions are between professionals the focus is on entertainment and not information. If you know a little bit about cooking you can pick up the odd technique by watching. But if you’re a newbie you’re not going to learn anything. Still, if you really want to learn YouTube and its specialty channels have it all.
As I was typing this my son, just back from university, said we should try our hands at making sushi again–we’ve done it a couple times in the past. It warms my heart.
If your dishes come out of the dishwasher wet, you’re taking them out too soon.
Try using JetDry or use a detergent capsule that includes a drying agent. Trust me it works. Air drying without it leads to streaks and water spots on glassware and flatware.
Did BLM’s useful idiots just assume that a carjacker would be black?
I truly hate to be fair to them at all, but they probably assumed (wrongly and maliciously, of course) that someone shot by police would be black.
Did some one say JetDry ?
Laurie Penny has really let herself go.
Serviette is non-U
I would wake up early on the weekend to watch the 2 to 4 hours of cooking shows
Yes, actual cooking shows. I, too, watched The Frugal Gourmet and Yan Can Cook and Julia Child – later Emeril Lagasse and Alton Brown. I can’t stand most of Gordon Ramsey’s shows but I thoroughly enjoyed his Ultimate Cookery Course.
If you like something a little less high strung, Amazon prime also offers Michael Hutchings, “The Santa Barbara Chef”.
What I liked about growing up in the 60s was it was still the era of people entertaining at home — people dressed nicely, cocktails before dinner and music afterwards with coffee and dessert. And while the husband and I have put on dinners for a few friends now and then complete with a well appointed table, there just doesn’t seem to be the same enthusiasm from others to actually eat at someone’s home. They’d rather everyone gather at a restaurant.
So now holiday dinners seem the only gathering where the good china and silverware is brought out.
semi retired conservative: “Wondering what the take is from current inmates of the capital ?”
My take is that – as you surmised – he’s got a snowball’s chance in hell. The best he (and the others) will do is lover the percentage of Khan’s vote, and that’s all. He can’t win, Khan has it sewn up.
The Frugal Gourmet was a creepy pervert. The unhealthy looking diet food he was always gushing about was equally vile.
I enjoyed the original “Good Eats” series.
I’ve seen some of Mr. Brown’s current YouTube offerings. (He’s been divorced and remarried since the original series; you may or may not believe that’s important to his later behavior.) Since he’s a content provider whose paycheck includes whatever YouTube pays him (I would think that he’s got some residuals from the “Good Eats” series, but his ex-wife may well get a large chunk of that.), I understand that he’d have to act somewhat current.
Like many things in this world, the later version is a lesser copy of the original.
Yes, actual cooking shows.
I’ll just leave this here.
Cooking shows are so yesterday.
Now, watching wood milling, like Out of the Woods (“Hello, friends!”), hosted by a bearded backwoods boy, is hot: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiPGkIebcT4QmEw6P6Lkubw
He’s in my neck of the woods and I really want to head up to his mill and do a portrait of him.
Laurie Penny has really let herself go.
You know I had quite forgotten she even existed.
So prompted by something like nostalgia to see what you meant, I came across this:
My Highly Unexpected Heterosexual Pandemic Zoom Wedding
So, at the age of 35, Laurie Penny has got herself married.
And not just married, but married to a man, just the one, ad not one part of a polyamorous huddle or whatever they call it.
An actual man, not a transman, a biological male; one noticeably taller than herself in that traditional could-be-mistaken-for-patriarchal male-female, husband-wife dynamic.
And in a ceremony involving a traditional exchange of wedding vows (from the article: ‘…“by the power vested in me by the state of Utah, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”’).
The only thing “highly unexpected” about this is that she seems to think this state of affairs would be seen as highly unexpected to anyone at all instead of being, as it is, drearily predictable.
Who did she think she was convincing with those regular announcements of her being genderqueer, or polyamorous, or nonbinary polyamorous toaster-kin or whatever it was that month?
And this is why I’m bringing this up at all.
If it were just that she had got married, this would be a kind of ‘So what? Just let her be’.
But it irks me because Penny, and all those activists cut from the same cloth, not only never express the slightest regret for having berated others in the most insulting, the shrillest and most blood-curdling tones, even up to and including accusations that you are literally killing them for not accepting whatever gibberish they happen to think is in vogue that day, but they always just laugh off all their hypocrisies with a kind of “Oh, well, Tee-hee, oh, you didn’t think I was being serious did you?” kind of shrug.
All that venom, all that vitriol, they drenched you in with such vehemence turns out, apparently, to have meant next to nothing to them at all.
And moreover, they seem to display ingenuous surprise should you still seem aggrieved at them for having put you through all that tortuous bullshit.
Without any irony, naturally, this is an actual line taken from her piece, but with my italics:
THE MOST DEVIANT commodity on the modern internet isn’t sex, it’s sincerity. By definition, it can’t be manufactured, and it’s difficult to replicate and resell, both of which make earnest enthusiasm suspect.
As ever, I see she’s still telling us far, far more than she intends.
Now, watching wood milling,
The Other Half has been watching these.
As ever, I see she’s still telling us far, far more than she intends.
Years of practice.
Also, polyamorous huddle.
So, at the age of 35, Laurie Penny has got herself married.
Want to place bets on how long it lasts?
Ms. Julia M
Thanks. I was curious as he seems a decent enough fella despite being a bit of a “luvvie”
I’m afraid I don’t have any relatives in Londinium anymore as they have all died off or returned to the land of Plaid Cymru.
Which as a party is an indulgence of a different sort of political fantasy than ol’ Sadistiq. No less destructive though.
Laurie Penny’s recent nuptials reminds me that The Clash had her number several decades before:
He who fucks nuns, will later join the church.
I watched the cooking shows as a sprong, possibly influenced by my mum’s watching of Graham Kerr, a.k.a. the Galloping Gourmet. I grew interested in cooking when I moved out and realized that, if I put out a little effort, I could make a pepperoni pizza the way I like it, any time I liked.
But what really interested me were the home shows. “This Old House” was on top of the list. My Sunday TV watching was an afternoon of “TOH,” “Hometime,” “Victory Garden” and whatever else came along.
I came to realize that homes were pretty tough, and you could pretty much take down and put up anything your imagination can conceive, bar weakening the load-bearing wall to the point that it collapses around you.
serviette was classified as non-U and to use the term indicated that you were NOCD (Not Our Class, Darling)
Serviette just sounds too… fussy.
My two cents:
1st cent: Laurie Penny probably enjoys needlepoint and scrapbooking in her spare time. She daydreams of owning a suburban house with a white picket fence and having four or five children playing happily in the yard.
2nd cent: Dollar General and Advance Auto parts locate in lower income areas to provide access to goods that would be unaffordable or inaccessible otherwise. Even Walmart (Always low prices) locates in high-traffic areas. A lot of people can’t drive to Walmart. Auto Dealers and “Brand Name” garages charge $95 or more per hour for labor plus retail prices on parts. Advance and other autoparts retailers will often let customers do their own repairs in the parking lot and sometimes even lend the tools or assist in repairs.
Don’t you just hate that colonialist, patriarchal, supremacist, capitalist mentality? I do.
Now, watching wood milling,
Added a Roku to our no-cable/streaming-only set-up and I’m thrilled to watch This Old House again.
BTW my late FIL (we lost him at Christmas) was quite the woodworker. Made all sorts of segmented bowls, goblets, etc. There were still about 3 unfinished bowls which my grandson has taken to woodshop and the teacher said he’d be happy to help him finish at least one. Both the boys have enjoyed woodshop.
Amazon prime also offers Michael Hutchings, “The Santa Barbara Chef”.
I remember watching Michael Chiarello and his show about cooking in Napa on PBS. He was very laid back Cali. The only salt he would use was grey salt. There was a video I saw recently (it was probably here) where the cook says, “it’s important to use sea salt because it’s chemically identical to all other salts.” lol
I always enjoyed watching Guy Fieri on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Whenever we planned a trip south of the border we would look up the city on the show’s website to see if they had featured any restaurants in the area. If they had we’d check them out. Always fun.
pst314: There must be a name for that sort of setup…ghetto?
“Africa.”
Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
how to set a proper dinner table
For my ex-girlfriend and my first dinner party I printed and laminated detailed timings and instructions for her and her daughters.
Hmmm. Dunno why that relationship failed 🤔
“Africa.”
Maybe not. Consider:
Theodore Dalrymple has written about his travels in Africa in which he liked and respected the people he met.
Africans who come to America tend to have a low opinion of race-obsessed blacks born in America, and have no patience whatsoever with “ghetto culture”.
America and England have multigenerational dysfunction in some white “communities” too. Again, Theodore Dalrymple has written extensively about this.
The whole topic is very depressing. The left and race-hustling black “leaders” have been pushing American society into problems for which there are likely to be no solutions which do not have horrible consequences.
I printed and laminated detailed timings and instructions for her and her daughters.
Smooth. Very smooth.
“Laurie Penny has got herself married.”
Did she wear all white?
In regard to the term ‘serviette’ we had table-napkins, neatly rolled and presented at the left of each place at the table in a silver holder. That was a long time ago; my mother was a proper English lady and of the style and period of the inimitable Hyacinth Bucket.
There was a video I saw recently (it was probably here) where the cook says, “it’s important to use sea salt because it’s chemically identical to all other salts.” lol
the “You Suck at Cooking” channel on Youtube.
He can be mildly amusing. Other times he definitely suffers from “trying to hard” and “film school wannabe”
Laurie Penny got herself married.
Does this mean the Penny finally dropped?
What did Penny drop?
I believe every word of this, don’t you?
https://www.salon.com/2021/04/24/how-racism-found-my-son-on-fortnite/
I am never sure if the Woke don’t have kids, or if they think their readers don’t have kids and so are unaware that 5-year-olds do not talk like miniature Woke adults.
@Lady Cutekitten of Lolcat: “”Sh*t,” a second, louder, curse slipped out when I realized my son is an actual Travis Scott fan. My G.O.A.T. Top 5, dead or alive, rank in this order: Jay- Z, Nas, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and Lil Wayne. I can’t believe my son idolizes Travis Scott. Where did I go wrong?
“Hey, watch your mouth, Daddy,” Waylon chided. “I’m only a child “”
And everyone applauded.
I believe every word of this, don’t you?
File under ‘things that never happened’ or ‘parody account’. My big take away is that it is one of the most overtly racist screeds I have come across in a long time. As usual though, I feel sorry for the kid, but at least he only has to spend one night a fortnight with him.
And this: https://twitter.com/hoggomcswineass/status/1383128027761160192?s=20
What did Penny drop?
A lesser man might say her knickers but not me, oh, no siree, not me.
Of course it’s true. Because no one is willing to be as adamant in refuting obviously Smolleting and similar fake noosing as those who insist that these things that never happened happened. Thus, for all intents and purposes, they happened you racist. Denial is one of the signs.
Wallace Lane is a poet, writer, and author from Baltimore, Maryland.
As Scott Adams says, #Artist