Friday Ephemera (709)

Karl’s comment about child-grooming sex pests was fully justified. These are very bad people.

Well, as noted in the linked posts, there’s a kind of weird coyness, an air of things unsaid. And a preoccupation with supposedly liberating children from the care and authority of their parents – and introducing a wedge between them – does tend to raise an eyebrow.

An irony being that children and teenagers tend to be quite selfish and self-absorbed, to a degree unbecoming in adults, and are typically accustomed to free stuff, all paid for out of sight by someone else, much to the youngsters’ indifference. It would therefore hardly be surprising if voting children tended to favour policies that pile up unsustainable debt, all left for whatever generations follow them.

Apparently, this constitutes “planning for the future.” According to the Head of Politics at Cambridge University.

The flimsiness and incoherence of the arguments on offer may be a function of the proponents not being entirely honest about their motives. And so, we get creaky rationalisations for an absurd idea, and an obviously false premise, because being honest about one’s motives and saying, “We’re counting on the credulity of children to advance our own childish ideas” may still sound a tad suspect. At least among much of the general public.

And in alternative lifestyle news:

“We’re polyamorous. We get jealous and turned on at the same time.”

I know, I know. You’re itching to join them. 

I blame the Link-O-Matic 9000™ 

[ From the cellar, muttering. ]

Ping!

Bless you, sir. When belatedly watching a documentary about H.G. Wells, one saved some months earlier, may you not find that the narrator pronounces ‘aitch’ with an ‘H’.

Remember this from 2 years ago? An ACLU attorney vowed to suppress a book.

Ah, the chronic fantasist Chase Strangio, a moustachioed dysmorphic woman who insists that, with regard to sexually dysmorphic people, any acknowledgement of physical reality – terms such as “anatomically male,” “male genitals,” etc – are “both factually wrong and dangerous.”

The same moustachioed woman who claims to be “systemically oppressed” by the fact that she occasionally receives mail using her original, i.e., female, name, the mere sight of which supposedly renders her traumatised and “afraid to check my mail,” thereby resulting in unpaid bills and a poor credit score. 

As promised, Ping, good Sir, and may your blog have many more happy birthdays.

Bless you, madam. May setting up your new phone be a swift and effortless process.

I simply don’t believe you, madam. You look and sound as if you’re about to burst into tears.

Somewhat related, “Imagine they’re embracing you instead of that other tramp.”

I paraphrase, but only just.

It’s not enough to have an unusual set of sexual desires. Then you have to change your sex. And it’s not enough to change your sex. You also have to change your religion. And then you change your religion to that which is most antithetical to your life choices.

That. Why, it’s almost a clue.

Or, Mentally ill man who kept his severed, rotting testicles in the fridge, “next to the eggs,” is mentally ill. 

Congratulations on 17 years. Token of appreciation on its way.

Bless you, sir. May your enemies forget at least one thing on their shopping lists. Ideally, whatever it was that prompted the list in the first place.

And again, thanks to all who’ve chipped in so far, or subscribed, or done shopping via the Amazon links, including all those much too shy to say hello. It’s much appreciated and is what keeps this place here.

And this place being here is, I think, a good thing. 

Today’s word is symbolism:

I took an Avanti train recently painted in all the colours of the rainbow and others beside. On the side of the train, more than once, in huge capital letters was painted the word “Pride”. Apparently, the train company had run a train with a staff exclusively of LGBTQ+ personnel.

Pride in what, exactly? If sexual orientation is not a choice and therefore nothing to be ashamed of, then it can be nothing to be proud of either. Taking pride in what is not an achievement is stupid, self-congratulatory and arrogant. It is an invitation to poor behaviour, insofar as it exculpates in advance in the name of being proud ex officio.

On the train, the reservation system did not work, and the shop on board could not take credit cards because of “technical problems”. At one station there was an announcement that the rest of the train’s journey had been cancelled, though it had not been, leading to the impression that we, the passengers, were not in fully competent hands.

Personally, I want trains to run on time, to coin a phrase. I want them to be clean and not overcrowded. I do not want to have to stand in the corridor squeezed like a sardine in a tin. I do not much care what the sexual orientation and spare time activities of the staff are, so long as they are competent and polite.

Theodore Dalrymple, quoted here. 

Helen Joyce on “hermetically sealed nonsense.”