Friday Ephemera
Like apple bobbing. || Modern problems, a possible series. || Limited edition of note. (h/t, STG) || Daddy-daughter time. || Dad moves deployed. || Maximum style points. || Meet the neighbours. || Snowball fights in art. || Life skills. || Flag mystery. || A lot can happen in a minute. || At last, a mushroom colour chart. || Size matters. || Sounds from around the world. (h/t, Things) || A guide to San Francisco’s street faeces. || Heh. || Not unlike eyes. || Butterflies. || He does this better than you would. || It almost sounds like a woke prayer, which I suppose it sort of is. || Why woke comics don’t sell. || Target lock acquired. || Today’s word is trajectory. || And finally, festively, via Damian, ‘tis the season of good cheer.
I hope that doesn’t mean you’re still not fully recovered, David.
Feeling warm and adorable. Oddly enough.
bottle of 12 year old El Dorado
Good call! One of my favourite rums. It’s a Beefeater martini for me today.
…Forest Lawn (the original, in Glendale, CA … the placed mocked by Evelyn Waugh in The Loved One)
Oh lay me down in Forest Lawn
[ Slurps indecently large gin and tonic. ]
[ Quietly slips WCTU pamphlet across the bar. Glances significantly at large crate by the door, perfect for any bottles one might wish to discard. ]
[ Sees that crate is still empty. Glumly contemplates cost of buying enough rum for Christmas fruitcake baking. ]
Jordan Peterson: Why I Love Great Britain. Also, video here.
Updated gender chart, please update yours accordingly.
WCTU
Little White Ribboners: 0 – 5 years
Children: 6 -12 years
A pledge of total abstinence is to be signed and annual dues paid.
Pledge
“I promise, with God’s help, to abstain from alcohol, tobacco, and all other harmful drugs.”
I wonder what the annual dues for Little White Ribboners are – and can they charge their credit cards?
While not written by Sir Pterry himself,LSpace’s Annotated Pratchett File is a cornucopia of information about allusions in his books, collated by the good folk of alt.fan.pratchett.
@TomJ
Thanks for that link – perhaps a mite too anal-ytical…
“I promise, with God’s help, to abstain from alcohol, tobacco, and all other harmful drugs.”
It appears that the WCTU and White Ribbon ignore those medical studies which show that, in moderate amounts, alcohol is beneficial. That is at odds with the WCTU’s historical view:
“Its members were inspired by the Greek writer Xenophon, who defined temperance as “moderation in all things healthful; total abstinence from all things harmful.” In other words, should something be good, it should not be indulged in to excess; should something be bad for you, it should be avoided altogether — thus their attempts to rid society of what they saw (and still see) as the dangers of alcohol.”
LSpace’s Annotated Pratchett File is a cornucopia of information about allusions in his books
It is indeed, although I don’t believe it contains anything about real-world absurd funeral rites.
Thanks for that link – perhaps a mite too anal-ytical…
Or not enough? I’ve noticed what may be a few gaps in the discussions of various characters. (But where does one go to put forward such a thought if one is uncertain of its validity?)
It’s not my fault that I did something stupid.
I wonder if they will call themselves comradx, as “trans” activists plan to lead the communist revolution, tovarichx.
The discussion lead is a part time instructor at the The NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study in which you can take academically rigorous courses such as “The Thingliness of Things.”.
However, I digress, this insight was offered in the discussion:
Oswald Bates couldn’t have said it better.
Somehow I don’t see these four on the barricades. They just don’t make commies like they used to.
A public service message in this time of holiday-related purchases.
“I promise, with God’s help, to abstain from alcohol, tobacco, and all other harmful drugs.”
Political power being the most harmful drug of them all.
I think the “counterfeit Chinese liquid ass” needs some of this.
I think the “counterfeit Chinese liquid ass” needs some of this.
David probably still has some in the basement cooler.
I think the “counterfeit Chinese liquid ass” needs some of this.
I happened to be scrolling past this just as SWMBO asked what we should have for dinner tonight.
She was not amused.
I think she wishes I could just be into sports like most normal middle aged imbeciles.
Updated gender chart, please update yours accordingly.
From that same Twitter channel: “Looks like the crime rate in the Shire is about to skyrocket”
–which references this news item: “The Harfoots [Hobbits] are also made up of a variety of other people from different backgrounds, Henry said. “So there are Black and Asian and Brown and even Maori-types within it…One of the commonly cited issues with Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings series from the early 2000s is its lack of diversity.”
The imbecile dishonesty of trying to transform the Shire, a European setting based on the culture of rural England, into some sort of pan-racial, pan-cultural, global hodgepodge, deserves a little mockery. (Time for more jokes about Amazon looking to peddle elf-dwarf-goblin-orgy porn?)
“The jurors all agreed he was guilty. Some of them refused to convict him simply because he was black.”
Much the way we forgave our dog for killing a chicken. He can’t help it, he’s a dog. It’s his nature to kill chickens.
Anyway, moral responsibility was created by white men to oppress people of color. Thankfully, we have Chesa Boudin as the enlightened white man to show The Way in ‘reimagining’ justice.
I’m shocked, SHOCKED that masking should be forever.
The glorious train wreck.
Funny and well done, but shouldn’t do that. Think of all the 911 calls.
Rudolph wasn’t going to play any damn reindeer games.
you can take academically rigorous courses such as “The Thingliness of Things.”
That’d be a fun name for an ontology course, but somehow I doubt that’s what’s on offer.
The imbecile dishonesty of trying to transform the Shire
I haven’t yet figured out if these people don’t know that, prior to the invention of modern methods of transportation, inland rural communities tended to be relatively genetically uniform for the blindingly obvious reasons, or if they know and don’t care when it makes everyone who does twitch on seeing a medieval-esque village full of people with wildly different genetic lineages. Ironically, one of the only ways you’d get that would be if there were some strong taboo on intermarriage between those races. I believe Reich’s excellent book on archeogenetics, Who We Are and How We Got Here discussed a system of lineage-clans in India that had been maintained so thoroughly down to the modern day that people whose families had lived on opposite sides of a street for generations turned out to be less closely related than a Swede to a Nigerian.
Much the way we forgave our dog for killing a chicken. He can’t help it, he’s a dog. It’s his nature to kill chickens.
The traditional attitude of farmers is not that forgiving, I hear, based on reading All Creatures Great and Small.
I haven’t yet figured out if these people don’t know…or if they know and don’t care…
Probably both, considering how badly the left has corrupted our educational system.
Reich’s excellent book on archeogenetics, Who We Are and How We Got Here…
One of the pleasures of this blog is occasional citations of interesting books.
* France remains culturally very French.
* they know and don’t care when it makes everyone who does twitch on seeing a medieval-esque village full of people with wildly different genetic lineages.
There was a three hour TV debate the other night where a dozen panelists lined up to interrogate Eric Zemmour, the presidential candidate whose status as a supposed media controversialist is based on saying things that French people a generation ago would have seen too obvious to say out loud because we’re all sophisticated and French and we implicitly understand these things better than other nationalities – men are different from women, the French nation should be run according to the interests and sensibilities of the French people – banalities that are now raciste and sexiste.
The actor Matthieu Kassowitz told Zemmour that France has always been a nation of mutts. Ok, he said metis, which has its own nuances. But that’s really an American kind of thing to say, sometimes as icebreaking self-mockery when comparing family trees with Europeans, and sometimes as an invidious way of demeaning and erasing the specific British protestant roots of the United States. Kassowitz, as the son of a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, might find it better for his ego, less of an imposition on his gratitude, if the French nation was Rick’s Bar. But as Zemmour said after one of the panelists gave a sermon about the moral values of France being based on Acceptance and Tolerance – France isn’t a McDonalds, you can’t just turn up as you are.
Another of the panelists, Karim Zeribi, deployed the line that Zemmour was nostalgic for a Christian monocultural France, a past that never existed. Not a college guy, so it’s not an intellectual provocation he picked up in a seminar. A working class guy, distinct regional accent, went to work on the railways after an injury in his early 20’s ended his professional soccer career, and got into left wing politics via his union. Proud of his Muslim identity, to which he doesn’t apply the “a culture which never existed” analysis. Strangely made a particular point of calling Avignon, his home town, the city of popes: a celebration parallax where on the one hand he can dismiss France’s distinct Christian history and identity with a thought-terminating slogan, and on the other hand he can reinvoke that history when he’s taking pride at being a Muslim who’s living in a space that was formerly so Christian. What is that pride: you’re not normally proud of being a resident, you’re not normally proud of being a blow-in, maybe he’s proud of being an assimilated Frenchman (assimilating to a history which never existed), but I suspect also the pride of a triumphant invader where offending the sensibilities of the historical population is a policy and a perk.
…the French nation should be run according to the interests and sensibilities of the French people…
As indeed it should. It would be a tragedy and catastrophe for France to cease to be French.
but I suspect also the pride of a triumphant invader where offending the sensibilities of the historical population is a policy and a perk.
Especially this. I hope that Eric Zemmour’s growing popularity is a sign that immigrants will soon be expected to assimilate or get out ASAP.
Its members were inspired by the Greek writer Xenophon…
I would prefer they march towards Persia.
Man Mistaken For Redhead Complains Of Being Misgingered.
British prejudice against red-heads still puzzles me, and I wonder why it either did not cross the Atlantic to the Colonies or else why it did cross but died out. Raw speculation: The demographics of the Colonials included many red-heads and persons from regions where red hair was common.
Oh dammit, I screwed up the above link. Correct link: Man Mistaken For Redhead Complains Of Being Misgingered.
Oh dammit, I screwed up the above link.
We warned you about demon rum. We warned you.
Multi-racial hobbits doesn’t even make sense (oh, I know, the woke never do). In the LOTR the hobbits are a race: short, hairy feet, modeled after the Irish. They are not a culture. Same with the elves. A separate race, almost species. Wokeness is an illness. They complained that the movie Dunkirk was all white–but you can’t have a realistic historical movie and throw in black people like flavoring, it screws up the historicity.
The trans are going to lead the communist revolution? hahahah oh boy. First of all, communists tend to execute such people. Second, they are too busy posing and doing their makeup to fight. Third, if they don’t get their way do they think they can keep pushing and demanding when the country is communist? ahahahhah Communists demand obedience, not protests.
English issue with redheads is their issue with the Irish.
Multi-racial hobbits doesn’t even make sense (oh, I know, the woke never do). In the LOTR the hobbits are a race
Tolkien did have three varieties of hobbits, but the differences do not justify what these woke fanatics are doing.
Quote:
“Before the crossing of the mountains the Hobbits had already become divided into three somewhat different breeds: Harfoots, Stoors, and Fallohides. The Harfoots were browner of skin, smaller, and shorter, and they were beardless and bootless; their hands and feet were neat and nimble; and they preferred highlands and hillsides. The Stoors were broader, heavier in build; their feet and hands were larger; and they preferred flat lands and riversides. The Fallohides were fairer of skin and also of hair, and they were taller and slimmer than the others; they were lovers of trees and of woodlands.”
–The Lord of the Rings
Oh damn. I forgot to change my name back from WCTU to pst314.
English issue with redheads is their issue with the Irish.
Merely that? From what I’ve read this prejudice goes back to the Middle Ages, which led me to surmise that the English attitude cannot be simply attributed to “the Irish troubles”. And aren’t some Scots red-headed too?
Truth.
pst314: if you read about Saint Patrick, in about 600AD he wrote to the English church protesting the taking of Irish slaves, since both countries were now Christian. He said they were brothers and should not be enslaved. During american colonial days (ie 1700s), the English still took Irish on their ships (pressed into service–still slavery).
Truth.
Marx probably owes money to everyone at the table, which is the true reason he’s the center of attention.
Castro looks like he’s sending Che to bed. Poor Che has a skull in his place when, in truth, the whole table should be upheld by an enormous pile of skulls.
In the interest of open thread…I have a question that has been burning in my mind for a few months now…Are my wife and I the only two people on the planet who have never been tested for Covid? Not tested positive. I mean not tested at all. Had no (or very little except long after the fact) reason to be tested. Has anyone heard of others like us?
Are my wife and I the only two people on the planet who have never been tested for Covid?
Nope. No one in my family has been tested.
Never been tested – strongly intend to keep it that way. I’m not going to put my life on hold because some dipshits in lab coats insist on running a PCR for 30+ cycles.
My wife, daughters, and I haven’t been tested either.
In the LOTR the hobbits are a race: short, hairy feet, modeled after the Irish.
Not so. Rural English midlands/Worcestershire, mostly
From what I’ve read this prejudice goes back to the Middle Ages
I have always thought of it as a relatively recent thing, intended to be mostly humorous but, as always in the hands of teenagers, often cruel.
The glorious train wreck
Excellent – thanks for that link!
The chef responds. Mostly with pictures of horses. Some of the pictures are less good than the others. The “chef” does not seem to know this.
English issue with redheads is their issue with the Irish.
As with the Scots redheads, it may well go back even further into pre-history as a speciesist thing. Apparently redheadedness comes from the Neanderthals with whom we share from interbreeding about 2% of our DNA. Maybe the Celts, being older occupants of ther British Isles, are just a bit more Neanderthalish which brings out more reheadedness than the rest of us.