Friday Ephemera

It’s Friday already??? Oh Lord. [ Jumps behind bar, grabs bottle of Spectator gin. ]

83 metres
A little bit of wee came out while I watched that.
Meanwhile, in fairness and inclusivity news.
I’m not surprised that the People’s Republic of Victoria engages in such behaviour, but I am surprised a street sweeper gets £34k a year. Worth claiming to be non-binary for that, if you fancy a low-stress job which gets you outdoors. Should be easy too, as the Glorious Leader of the PRV likes to keep the population locked up, decreasing their opportunities to litter.

Meanwhile, in fairness and inclusivity news.
So, a female with a broom? Did they really think that one through?

“Progressive law enforcement.”
‘San Francisco will pay people $300 a month not to shoot anyone, under a controversial new scheme designed to reduce a surge in gun violence that has been described as a “gimmick.”…’
Got to admit, ‘gimmick’ wasn’t the first description that sprang to mind..

Got to admit, ‘gimmick’ wasn’t the first description that sprang to mind.
The results of such experiments have been noted here before:

After four years of being subsidised for not being caught committing any further violent crimes, 65 of the 68 “fellows” enrolled in the programme were “still alive,” although “one had survived a shooting and three had died.” This was deemed “promising.”

More than once.
One such project was described as “ending disastrously.”

Know when to stop.

Hard pass.
The first film was entertaining and for the time visually remarkable, but each subsequent iteration was less engaging than the one before, and the downward curve was quite steep. By the third outing, the set pieces couldn’t compensate for the creaking pretension and the failure to generate a story worth telling. A fourth offering just has DOOMED TO BE SHIT written all over it.

83 metres
Am I the only one who thought, “Wow! What an utterly selfish prick?”

Am I the only one who thought, “Wow! What an utterly selfish prick?”
I’m not familiar with rock-climbing etiquette.
I know, you’re shocked.

I’ve been alive 700 months. If I move to San Francisco, will they give me $210,000?

Always respect the media:
https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1436252262725128192

Bunker: 982 years remaining lease
Aw crap, I was looking for a London apartment c/w bunker that has a 1000 year lease. Oh well, I’ll keep looking…

Always respect the media:
Would it be sinful to wish these liberals to be victims of the vicious criminals that they protect?

I’ve seen plenty of films that were bad, but Prometheus is one of the few films that I found not only bad but actually annoying.
“But the script, on which everything else in a film has to hang, is one of the cheapest parts to get right.”
Indeed. Which has repeatedly led me to ponder two mysteries: First, why so many films have bad scripts. Second, why producers steal stories when it costs virtually peanuts to pay the writer.

The longest fart ever is that white privilege TikTok.

my calendar reminded me to order grit for the winter.
True?
*shows self out*

or do you limeys use something else such as cat litter or dehydrated ground-up bangers?
It’s a sort of coarse brown rock salt with, er, gritty bits. For traction. Also quite good at buggering up stair carpets and wood flooring when people tread it indoors.

It’s a sort of coarse brown rock salt with, er, gritty bits.
Pre-mixed? Luxury!

Prometheus is one of the few films that I found not only bad but actually annoying
Yes, Prometheus actually managed to travel backwards in time and reduce the quality of the original Alien film. Turning it from a work of pure genius into a remarkably good film considering it was directed by a slap-headed fuckwit.

dehydrated ground-up bangers
My old car is already pretty dry, thank you very much. What do you Yanks do, piss on the seats?

Rinse and repeat
Farther down in that thread you will see a photo of what appears to be a child performing cunnilingus upon a cow. A public health inspector told me horror stories of efforts to get immigrants to follow even the most basic of health rules, such as refrigeration and hand-washing and keeping feces away from food. #AllCulturesAreEqual

You signed up for a deep space mission without asking what you were going to do?
I don’t think they did. I suspect they were lured out of the lunatic asylum with the promise of a fishing trip.

TBF to the Africans bathing in piss, it’s probably the only sanitizing solution for 1000 miles, and orders cleaner than the river water they drink.

Counterpoint.
How does one “genocide” a robot?

each subsequent iteration was less engaging than the one before
I am fond of the fan theory that the machines are actually bound by a form of Asimov’s Three Laws and the humans aren’t aware of this. It actually explains rather a lot.
not only bad but actually annoying
My Super Ex-Girlfriend. The premise is that a handsome young fellow breaks up with his girlfriend, who turns out to be a Captain Ersatz of Supergirl. The ex then proceeds to repeatedly use her superpowers to try and murder the fellow and his new girlfriend.
It’s presented as a comedy.
First, why so many films have bad scripts. Second, why producers steal stories
Development hell for the first (remember, the first Spider-Man movie was in development for 13 years). For any project likely to be a moneymaker there will be a lot of fingers in that pie and screenplays written by committee are rarely any good. For the second, ego. Producers are used to being able to do what they want to the legions of people with screenplays desperate to get noticed, so that spills over into maltreating people less enthused by Hollywood and with deeper pockets to pay lawyers.
Rick and Morty. I’ve seen five seasons of it now and in total have laughed out loud maybe half a dozen times
Really? I found the first two seasons anyway to be routinely gut-busting. It may be that I’m more familiar with the things they’re lampooning; like early Futurama there’s a lot of SF manatee jokes.
Alongside ads for x-ray specs and what I believe were called joy buzzers.
I have some very old comics with ads for a selling-shoes-from-home business. They give you a large wooden case full of shoes to attractively display your wares.
Also apparently the $18.95 mail-order monkey was actually real.

Really? I found the first two seasons anyway to be routinely gut-busting.
Well, it’s manic and meta, and sometimes clever, but the gags, while frequent, tend to be quite small ones. The kind of thing you might smile at, faintly, but not actually laugh at. I don’t think it’s bad, as such. The thing’s been sufficiently diverting for me to have watched five seasons of it; but I couldn’t say it’s actually very funny. I did laugh at Summer’s misguided attempt to use one of Rick’s devices to enlarge her breasts, with monstrous results; and I did like the “Dr Strange lab coat” gag; and the split-screen breaking of reality; but for the most part it’s a bit too sour and nihilistic to elicit deep laughter. In me, at least.

for the most part it’s a bit too sour and nihilistic
Fair. I’m not sure I could binge it, for that reason, but I do enjoy someone skewering the pretensions and simplistic assumptions of a lot of modern SF. Plus there’s often meta-humour; the voice casting of Kelsey Grammer as Morty’s adult Gazorpazorpan son had me literally LOLing.

On that fine dining experience clip, with all due respect there must be a ton of videos out there now of overweight, badly-behaved women causing a mess in a fast food joint over bugger all, though in fairness the knockout blow was better than the average windmilling style we often see.
Maybe it will become an Olympic Sport, with categories for heaviest eater, highest counter climbed, most burgers thrown. My favourite technique would be the overhand coffee cup throw with incoherent screeching and full buttock cleft display. I might even watch that event.

I have some very old comics with ads for a selling-shoes-from-home business.
There’s an episode of M*A*S*H where Radar O’Reilly does just that. He sells wingtip shoes from the Style-Rite Shoe company. Their motto is “If your shoes aren’t becoming to you, you should becoming to us.” At the end everyone in the camp welcomes Col. Blake back from his trial while wearing Syle-Rite wingtip shoes. In my house we recall the motto every time someone buys shoes.

The game is defending concepts and rights, not producing movies you might want to see.
If you dig up a recent print copy of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, there’s a foreword where he talks about why it took so long for the book, having been optioned, to get made into a movie. Mostly due to internal studio politics.
My limited exposure to Hollywood production has convinced me that most studios are so disconnected from their market that they have absolutely no idea what people want to see, and this isn’t a recent wokeness phenomenon either. For decades, studios have been producing tons of absolute stinkers starring major talent that no one ever sees because having poured all that money into the bomb, when it flops at test screenings they bin it and it never sees the light of day. Fantastic amounts of money are wasted by studios doing this. I can’t help but think that if an independent studio put some serious effort into market research, writing, and crafting quality films for a general North American market, they would be able to carve out a nice living for themselves.
I suspect that’s actually happening, but it’s happening in long form television rather than film.

A lady has an opinion about recent diktats. (NSFW language)

That’s the problem with hiring screenwriters to work over a previous script. No one’s going to read someone else’s work and say, “This is fine…”
I have read that studio executives will even sabotage films made by their predecessors because they don’t want those predecessors to have successful films to boast of: “Everything done before me was crap.” Thus no advertising budget, poor distribution, etc.

(oh, another black cat has gone past, ho hum, time for another fight scene)
I’d ask why filmmakers (and writers) don’t realize that endless fight scenes are boring except that there does seem to be a substantial audience for them. 🙁

I’d ask why filmmakers (and writers) don’t realize that endless fight scenes are boring except that there does seem to be a substantial audience for them. 🙁
Oh, the gratuitous violence is very quaintly traditional Hollywood. I object more to the world building on flimsy pretexts.

But perhaps not such seemingly continuous gratuitous violence.
Fair. Unless it’s Big Biffs in Big Bifftown and Big Biffs in Big Bifftown 2: Electric Boogaloo, one wants at least a little bit of plot.

Serious for once.
The 83 metre clip reminds me of a work acquaintance whose son has been making news over the past couple of years for free-climbing various buildings including most famously the Shard. A period of incarceration has done nothing to persuade him to give up. The likely outcome of this obsession and the devastating effect it will have on those who care for him are plain to see.

The underworld of the Matrix escapees looks almost as boring as the actual cities of the Matrix.
Yes, by the time we reached The Rave At The End Of The World, I was gnawing through my restraints.

Does it suggest that Mallory and Irvine made it to the top?
Yes. The story is told such that they died on the way down, gosh darn it. I suspect the Kiwis, any who should be taken seriously anyway…which I’m beginning to believe is not a very large number because why would serious people be concentrated in NZ…but I digress…wouldn’t take the book itself seriously. It probably is just typical book hype BS. As Jeffery Archer is a familiar name to me and I was vaguely aware of his being a conservative…”conservative”, the harping on feminism in the context of mountain climbing seemed even more odd. It wasn’t so much the casual reference to suffrage or whatever, it was imbuing a historical figure with such passion for the subject when I see no references to it being the case. Like writing such a story about George Armstrong Custer and filling it with references to his position on tariffs or something.

His name is Bronx and he is a blue Weimaraner.
I am available for puppy-fussing duties.
Just sayin’.
[ Added: ]
Obviously, all the ‘back-end’ work will be handled by my glamorous assistant.
[ Rummages under bar, hands Stephanie bejewelled gown. ]

As Jeffery Archer is a familiar name to me and I was vaguely aware of his being a conservative…”conservative”, the harping on feminism in the context of mountain climbing seemed even more odd … imbuing a historical figure with such passion for the subject when I see no references to it being the case.
While in recent years I’ve come to realise that many of those portrayed as villains in the media when I was growing up actually often turn out to have done nothing more serious than decline the offer of taking the one true path as a fellow traveller.
Many plays, novels, and films from the 1920s and especially from the end of the second world war that were presented to me as modern classics are, in fact, shit; in fact, they are either shite, but carrying messages approved of by the aforementioned fellow travellers, or, despite everything, actually compelling and affecting as an added bonus to their carrying messages approved of by the aforementioned fellow travellers.
I mention all this only to make it clear that this one of those broken-clocks-being-right-twice-a-day situations.
In other words, while it’s true that Jeffery Archer would have received abuse and bad reviews in the media regardless of the quality of his writing, he is nevertheless an odious human being and a hack writer.
But like those other talent wastelands, Dan Brown and E. L. James, this does not mean he can’t also be successful.
Fiction of any kind is mostly read by women, not men, and my guess is that Archer is simply throwing in whatever he thinks will make it appealing to the profile of an ideal reader for his book. I’m only surprised there isn’t also an environmental message of a kind St Greta might approve of.
Hence, any references to Mallory’s homosexuality have been expunged, and his one, literally fatal mistake, is to keep on climbing rather than settle down with the love of his life.

“If we want to see more trans athletes,
If.

’ Alongside ads for x-ray specs and what I believe were called joy buzzers.’
And don’t forget the ‘sea monkeys’..!

Look at the picture. The woman on the left is a well-toned female athlete. The purple head on the right with its hands raised in victory is…………a bloke.
Funny how in the MCU even the smallest woman is capable of beating up 2 or 3 grown men. Real life is somewhat different (the clue is the word “real”).

What disappoints me most is that Hollywood doesn’t even bother trawling the wealth of sci-fi writing to nick ideas
Harlan Ellison wrote, many years ago, of at least one Hollywood producer who boasted that he didn’t need to pay writers to come up with plot ideas because he had a collection of old science fiction books and magazines from which he could steal. If Hollywood is not even bothering to do that anymore, then, well….

In a nutshell, that is pretty much the formula for all activism of the last decade or so.
A formula for provoking anger and hate. Accidental? Not likely.

She’s right you know, if there is anything Islamists hate, it is heteropatriarchal systems.
Of course she is a professor, silly.

She’s right you know, if there is anything Islamists hate, it is heteropatriarchal systems.
That’s Darwin Award level stupidity.

Accidental? Not likely.
I would go as far as to say not even remotely.
For example, I forget who it was exactly as I have a feeling it involved more than one individual performing pretty much the same deception, but for sake of argument, let’s say it was a certain Mz P. Dreadful.
Dreadful put out a Tweet to the effect that “It is impossible for a woman to have an opinion in pubic without being deluged with hate.”
Since the very message itself blatantly undermined the premise on which it was based, naturally it received a deluge of messages explaining precisely that point.
Notwithstanding the widespread use of avatars and pseudonyms of varying degrees of ridiculousness, therefore making it impossible to determine the age, gender, nationality, social class, etc. of the senders, this prompted Dreadful to triumphantly declare something along the lines of:

You see? What did I tell you!?!”

The only parallels to this that I can think of in terms of sophistication are “I know you, but what am I?” and “He who smelt it, dealt it.”
And these are people who are demanding we put them in charge?

I do not believe in Freud.
Acknowledged. But on the other hand, there are a lot of radical feminists who do seem to think with their pubic regions–as demonstrated by those pussy hats they like to wear.

@judijg, thank you for your reply. I would not care to live under those constraints, which doesn’t imply that you do.