Reheated (64)
For newcomers and the nostalgic, more items from the archives:
Please Update Your Files And Lifestyles Accordingly.
Natan Last is a “fitful poet,” a Brooklynite, and a graduate of Columbia. Also, he will save us.
The world of woke crossword-puzzlers – because that’s a thing that exists – is one in which enthusiasts, via social media, grumble about white men, bemoan the insufficient prominence of “queer or POC colloquialisms,” share “off-colour jokes about hypothetical titles for a Melania Trump memoir,” and fret about the exact ratio of male and female names used as clues. Because a lack of “gender parity” in crossword puzzle clues constitutes one of “the systemic forces that threaten women.” Crossword puzzles can do that, apparently.
A woe is invented. A solution is discovered.
Gratuitous drama and “drenching guilt” aside, I’m not entirely sure why hiring a cleaner should obviously be more fraught than hiring, say, a gardener or roofer… But for the kind of middle-class feminist who as recreation writes for the Observer, life is apparently an endless moral torture inflicted by minor, everyday events, or at least an exhausting theatre of pretending to be tortured by minor, everyday events. Which of the two constitutes a more harrowing and nightmarish existence, I leave to the reader.
And somewhat related,
Telepathy Not A Thing, Women Hardest Hit.
Feminist titan Gemma Hartley bemoans the chore of getting her multiple bathrooms cleaned by someone else.
It’s been said, here at least, that when someone uses the term “emotional labour” unironically, the person doing the mouthing is most likely a bit of a nightmare. Say, the kind of woman who complains about the “emotional labour” of hiring a domestic cleaner. Or the kind who bitches about her husband and his shortcomings in the pages of a national magazine, where friends and colleagues of said husband, and perhaps his own children, can read on with amusement…
We’re invited to weep at the “emotional and mental energy” expended while remembering birthdays and writing shopping lists. Even brushing a daughter’s hair. Truly, feminists are heroic, undaunted and indestructible. Goddesses walking among us. And in the face of such crushing odds: “Even having a conversation about the imbalance of emotional labour becomes emotional labour.”
Should you want more, by all means click here, or poke through the greatest hits.
Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Listening to them whine is also harrowing. 🙂
#EmotionalLabour
Listening to them whine is also harrowing. 🙂
I have to say, as a simple-minded man, and a white one at that, I hadn’t previously considered the crushing injustice of brushing your own child’s hair, or booking a holiday.
Oh, woe is she.
#TheSufferingNeverEnds
Hm. It’s oddly quiet today. Too quiet.
I’m assuming everyone’s emotionally spent after the recent sportyball event.
One the one hand, yay capitalism, on the other, maybe it is just a piss take, but I can see this becoming popular among the mask forever crowd.
I can see this becoming popular among the mask forever crowd.
Active breathing, mind.
It has to be a piss-take… right?
I’m assuming everyone’s emotionally spent after the recent sportyball event.
“Yes, a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of football.”
exhausting theatre
Is that on or off Broadway?
I’m assuming everyone’s emotionally spent after the recent sportyball event.
The unreasonable and unwarranted hype was what did for me.
As a student of the vicissitudes of fortune which have beset my home town club, Burnley*, I am perennially pessimistic and gloomy when it comes to watching professional football. I thus find annoying the misplaced and sophomoric optimism which greets and envelops the doings of the England XI during the latter stages of any tournament.
Watching the game last night, I felt just like I did when seeing the semi-final against Croatia three years ago. I prefer to remain sober when watching a game- at the top level it is played astoundingly quickly and you need to concentrate to grasp what’s going on, and even then it is quite easy to misinterpret what just happened in about 0.25 of a second. Being surrounded by shouty enthusiastic people in *ahem* “pungent” replica shirts who were already leathered by kick-off and incapable of calculating their change from the last round, let alone follow what is going on on the pitch, does not make for a happy time.
“Yes”, you want to say, “We scored a very good goal very early on. But, they have now equalised, and deservedly so. Have we troubled their goalkeeper since then? No. Can we keep possession of the football? No. Hell’s bell’s, can we even get beyond our own halfway line? At the moment rarely. How many loose “second balls” are we winning in midfield? Very few. Why do you think we stand a chance of winning this game against a clearly superior side?”.
So, not emotionally spent, not really. Just slightly despairing at the naivety of it all, and the still ever-prevalent idea in society that a big game of association football is a licence to behave like a drunken arsehole (and I genuinely do love the game and most of the other stuff that goes with it). Having said that, I think much of the roistering yesterday was also triggered by the impending release for “lockdown/restrictions/whatever” and the blatant hypocrisy of many public figures in recent weeks.
*Old football joke: “I grew up in the belief that there was a football team called ‘Burnley Nil'”. There is much truth in there, and it probably goes a long way towards explain why I am such a curmudgeon.
I’m assuming everyone’s emotionally spent after the recent sportyball event.
Not me. I didn’t watch it. I don’t like football, so I’m not bothered if we win and I don’t care if it’s “coming home” or going elsewhere. I’ve been having a clear out. It’s surprising just how much random stuff accumulates in drawers and suchlike when you’re not paying attention.
… naturally complements the human body…
Especially the “Face Screen” model, because nothing compliments the human body quite like wearing a transparent satellite dish over your face.
Three questions – for us in the humid zone, does it fog up instantly when you go outside, can you eat corn on the cob, and what happens when you sneeze ?
…”from lockdown…”
Damn.
I grew up in the belief that there was a football team called ‘Burnley Nil’
That actually made me chuckle. Also, I now know a footie joke. My first, I believe.
#PersonalGrowth
I’ve been having a clear out.
Living it large, I see.
It’s surprising just how much random stuff accumulates in drawers and suchlike when you’re not paying attention.
I was recently trying to fathom why we possess about twenty-seven pairs of tired-looking socks. None of which, so far as I can tell, have been worn in several years. Yet there they are.
[ Starts sorting old crap out of drawers. ]
*Old football joke
tired-looking socks
At what point in the steady separation of my underpants from their leg hems should they cease to be considered an item of clothing and become dust rags?
Probably if I had a girlfriend she’d tell me.
At what point in the steady separation of my underpants from their leg hems should they cease to be considered an item of clothing and become dust rags?
[ Has fashion-related seizure, faints. ]
it is played astoundingly quickly
Clearly a different standard for “quickly”…
*ducks out. Again*
Probably if I had a girlfriend she’d tell me.
Repeatedly.
Good choice of jacket…
Living it large, I see.
Yes, quite.
I was recently trying to fathom why we possess about twenty-seven pairs of tired-looking socks. None of which, so far as I can tell, have been worn in several years.
Heh. I didn’t discover any socks, but I did find one odd boxing glove (no idea what happened to the other one); several miles of old phone and laptop chargers, cables and accessories; and sundry other oddments now disposed of. It wasn’t all junk though – I also found a small Edwardian silver travelling clock I meant to have repaired before last year’s lockdown, plus a pair of antique glass decanters that I had been searching for for about a year and a half. So some good with the bad. #LifeInTheFastLaneIndeed
I also found a small Edwardian silver travelling clock
As one does.
Who knew that was what “Libertad! Libertad!” meant ?
Being surrounded by shouty enthusiastic people in *ahem* “pungent” replica shirts who were already leathered by kick-off and incapable of calculating their change from the last round, let alone follow what is going on on the pitch, does not make for a happy time.
So no American College Football for Oik, then, unless it’s the Ivy Leagues. A minimum BAC is required for entry at some stadiums.
I’m not sure what the second sentence is supposed to mean. My best guess is that “structural devaluation of women’s work” can be translated as “the market rate for a cleaner”.
Middle class people feel uncomfortable hiring cleaners, because it goes against their egalitarian fancies where everyone wears jeans and everyone is or could be a college graduate. There’s been a 3-5 generation gap since middle class homes had domestic servants, so they haven’t learned from their mother or grandmother what tone to adopt.
In that context, a language barrier with your cleaner (Jurate is a Lithuanian name) is a feature and not a bug. It allows you to project characteristics onto your cleaner that may or may not be there. It allows you to play the role of a patron of marginalized outsiders instead of as a self-conscious member of an oppressor class. And there’s less sassy talkback, or if there is you can be blissfully unaware of it. With a working class person of your own ethnicity, you understand each other far too well, and there’s too much opportunity for what are called Conversations.
Hey look! I just found a Faberge egg in between the sofa cushions!
As one does.
It was a Christmas present from over a decade ago. The spring broke last year when the clock fell out of my hands after I sneezed while winding it up. A fortnight later we were in lockdown and the clock repair place was closed, so it went in the drawer to make sure it wasn’t damaged further and then I promptly forgot about it. As to why I have it, I collect antiques. It’s not uncommon for me to purchase something, wrap it up, put it away in a drawer or cupboard because I can’t quite decide where it looks best, forget about it and then rediscover it at some point in the future.
Middle class people feel uncomfortable hiring cleaners, because it goes against their egalitarian fancies where everyone wears jeans and everyone is or could be a college graduate.
As so often with such things, there is an of neuroticism. In this case, not least regarding social class.
Ms Howard’s ultimate solution to the “structural devaluation of women’s work” – a phenomenon that somehow includes paying them generously – was to make two women, her cleaners, unemployed. In the name of feminism, no less. As noted in the original post, the cleaning ladies’ preferences were not deemed of sufficient importance by Ms Howard to share them with her readers. Presumably, the now-poorer cleaning ladies took comfort in Ms Howard’s intersectional convolutions.
A fortnight later we were in lockdown and the clock repair place was closed…
I’ve got a few things I want repaired, some of them important to me. I’m leery of taking them to a shop only to be blocked by another lockdown, and then finding the shop has later gone bankrupt.
Ms Howard’s ultimate solution to the “structural devaluation of women’s work” – a phenomenon that somehow includes paying them generously – was to make two women, her cleaners, unemployed. In the name of feminism, no less.
But of course.
I’m leery of taking them to a shop only to be blocked by another lockdown, and then finding the shop has later gone bankrupt.
I once read newspaper articles about a luxury fur retailer that also operated a cleaning and storage service: When they went out of business the liquidators sold off the entire contents of the refrigerated storage facility. I never saw an adequate legal explanation of how they could do that.
Anyone else get creeped out by someone cleaning your house in general? During the brief time I spent living in a house with maid service I would thoroughly clean my room ahead of the weekly visit. Perhaps Ms Howard very much enjoys the service and is emotionally wrecked as a result, as it challenges her own well-manicured self-identity.
Living it large, I see.
Nothing cleans out closets, garages or random storage corners of the house like either 1) moving 2) major house reno
Count me and hubs on the latter. After several years of money spent that doesn’t show (new HVAC, ducts, Pex repiping) plus an unscheduled new kitchen after slab leak (which prompted the pex) … when you do one thing and it looks good, it makes the rest of the house tired and sad.
Had some major windows replaced a couple weeks ago, now planning to vacate the house for 3 weeks, cats in tow, for all new floor coverings and paint inside and out.
So now slight panic at packing up the house. Amazing how much stuff one can accumulate in 14 years in one small house.
Nothing cleans out closets, garages or random storage corners of the house like either 1) moving 2) major house reno
We did the former. Started eight weeks ago cleaning, shredding, throwing out, donating; small repairs like window cranks, thermostat, wonky light fixtures, leaky faucets, etc. The house looked so good we almost…almost…didn’t want to sell. The house sold in three days with multiple offers.
Now I can’t find a bloody thing.
when you do one thing and it looks good, it makes the rest of the house tired and sad.
Heh. There’s a short story (French author?) where he gets a new set of slippers, which makes his dressing gown look ratty, which makes…
Yep. Complete redecoration.
When the science ignores the empirical.
When the science ignores the empirical.
British comedian Jimmy Carr: “The male gypsy moth can smell the female gypsy moth up to seven miles away – and that sentence also works if you remove the word moth.”
He doesn’t do those kind of gags any more. I wonder why?
There’s a short story (French author?) where he gets a new set of slippers, which makes his dressing gown look ratty, which makes…
🙂
I am surprised that neither here, nor in the previous post’s comments, nobody mentioned the saga of Marie Kelly.
The Wall Street Journal publishes six crosswords a week (no Sunday). Their puzzles editor is Mike Shenk, who writes a considerable number of them himself. To make it seem a bit less one-sided, he published some under his own name, and others under the name “Marie Kelly”, which the astute will notice is an anagram of “Really Mike”. For the woke crossword crowd, this was simply unacceptable – not only must women’s names be used, and female constructors celebrated, no man can publish under a woman’s name. So the WSJ caved within a couple of days. Never mind that Mr. Shenk had done this since his undergraduate days.
What do you expect Devilbunny? A man cannot simply change his name and suddenly be a woman, especially if said *man* is trampling on other women’s accomplishments. I mean, can you imagine?!?
The Wall Street Journal publishes six crosswords a week…
More woke wankery: “Why is America offended by the initials BLM and not offended by the initials KKK?”
That was posted by an individual with an advanced STEM degree, even though everyone knows that the KKK is almost universally reviled.
Yes, like no one could possibly remember when “AmeriKKKa” was considered the most trenchant political critique possible.
“not offended by the initials KKK?”
Well, that does tend to make for a quick half inning…
…life is apparently an endless moral torture inflicted by minor, everyday events, or at least an exhausting theatre of pretending to be tortured by minor, everyday events.
Entitlement, depression, and the flattering caress of a cult.
“…and not offended by the initials KKK?”
On the one hand, I hate encountering such vile stupidity. On the other hand, it does serve as an early warning that the poster can be avoided without loss.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1414323826402349057
…
…
David, do you have any anti-nausea medicine?
It was a Christmas present from over a decade ago. The spring broke last year when the clock fell out of my hands after I sneezed while winding it up. A fortnight later we were in lockdown and the clock repair place was closed, so it went in the drawer to make sure it wasn’t damaged further and then I promptly forgot about it.
I can imagine that as the plot of an episode of One Foot in the Grave or some BBC sitcom of a generation ago. One of those sitcoms that didn’t really grab me at the time but I would now happily watch on Gold.
Probably if I had a girlfriend she’d tell me.
Indeed she would.
She would write them off when they still a good 2 or 3 years left in them.
He might have a sausage roll to spare.