Friday Ephemera (710)
Incoming. || The gathering of mussels. || “The marshmallow you never thought possible.” || New Scientist bemoans “our negative views about cannibalism,” blames racism, colonialism. || Related: human bodies are, it turns out, of “comparatively low nutritional value.” || Ask her about her nipples. || Not entirely sure what’s happening, or not happening, here. || A big dollop of Round The Horne. || Hot and cold. || Details. || Last three weeks, a thread. || The thrill of polyester. || Answers on a postcard, please. || How to pack a suitcase in a manly way. || Creepy Peepies, 1967. || Garden scenes. || I think it’s safe to say he does this better than you do. || Baby ferals. || More fetishistic role-play for the kids. || And finally, why that laser umbrella you’ve been waiting for isn’t a thing yet.
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The science fiction writer Samuel R Delany invoked racism from the opposite direction: According to him, all those reports of cannibalism by European explorers were racist lies*: The natives did not actually practice cannibalism but the Europeans were always obsessively asking about cannibalism so the natives obliged them with false stories about “the people over the next hill”. Needless to say, Delany’s repeated contortions to find racism where it did not exist did not help his reputation among non-leftists.
* Never mind the extensive testimony and physical evidence. Gotta have reasons to hate whitey.
Deleted already.
Must I?
Use the Force, Luke.
I got nothing.
Use the electroweak force, Luke.
Anyone want to place bets on whether they ever become civilized human beings?
The wrinkles are going to be like nothing you’ve ever seen.
But how do you re-pack for the return journey?
I’d watch it.
On second thought, I think I’ll stay in the car and just pee in this bottle.
If interested, a (sometimes) daily dose of Randall Munroe can be found here.
Almost this old.
Affordable PC-based spreadsheets were a god-send.
Don’t forget to hover over the cartoons to see the commentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBtsi3CkfBE – “But people have always eaten people. What else is there to eat? If the Juju hadn’t meant us to eat people, he wouldn’t have made us of meat”. Malcolm Bradbury’s novel Eating People is Wrong , about mild campus liberals and the pains they go to to assure foreigners that they don’t find them funny (ha-ha or peculiar), takes its title from the song.
Baby ferals
Come back, Bernhard Goetz, all is forgiven.
I think it is still funny
“The marshmallow you never thought possible.”
Wonders never cease it’s SNL’s Shimmer. The next thing you know, they’ll have spray cheese in a can. (Perhaps wensleydale for pst314.)
“New Scientist bemoans “our negative views about cannibalism,”…“
I did a bit of a double-take at the illustration accompanying that, until I zoomed in and realised they were grilling feet, not…well, nevermind.
*keeps on waiting*
pst314: “On second thought, I think I’ll stay in the car and just pee in this bottle.”
But now seeing that a bottle may not be sufficient.
Morning, all.
Link restored. Reddit moderators deleting stuff seemingly for no reason, especially on Thursday night, really chafes my cheeks.
Outlook not so good.
It does seem to be the chief motivation. And to achieve that end, some contortion may be required. I was reminded, for instance, of a certain Guardian columnist:
It’s not so much thinking, or indeed theorising, as a weird compulsion.
somewhat related, a story I first saw in the early 1970s.
If you are unhappy…
The Other Half and I have been listening to episodes in the car on long journeys. They basically devised a format that allowed them, in effect, to tell the same jokes every week with minor variations – it’s basically a series of riffs. But if you like, say, the 60s Carry On films and farcical double entendre, there’s some amusement to be had.
I suppose it depends on whether you’re entertained by rustic songs about nadgers and futtocks, and splod cobbling. Or the camp duo Julian and Sandy as lawyers with “a criminal practice that takes up most of our time.” Or the tale of the enormous crumpet baked for Queen Victoria. Things of that kind.
SURPRISE!
Well, I frequently feel like the world is… you know… but it seldom has in such a forceful way. I say ‘seldom’ only because I have, unfortunately, had exactly that happen during diaper changes in the dim, dark, past. While not great, it was actually not as bad as being vomited on at 3:00 in the morning.
What a way to go.
“Deploy the weapon.”
An instructive tale for our Mary Can brethren:
I require a Doctor’s appointment. They have an online appointment booking system, because they are technologically contemporary. There are no available appointments in 2024 because they are only medievally competent.
I phoned up the surgery to request an appointment. After being on hold for 30 minutes, and interrogated as to my condition by the receptionist for 10 minutes, I was told there were no available appointments since it was necessary to telephone first thing in the morning.
This morning I rang the surgery at 07:00. The surgery was closed until 08:00. At 08:00 the line was engaged. (That’s “busy” to you Yanks). I re-dialled every 5 seconds continually until 08:25 when I entered the queue. I waited to speak to the receptionist for 25 minutes, explained my medical situation for 10 minutes and was then given an appointment for 14:00 today.
I have no reason to think my experience of the NHS is atypical. Soviet, yes. Atypical, no.
So if anyone recommends the British medical system to you might I suggest you spit right in their face?
Not atypical at all. Pretty much the norm, and increasingly so.
It’s the envy of the (third) world, you know.
A few years ago, I mentioned my attempt to return a set of crutches to the local NHS hospital on behalf of someone else – and how what I’d assumed would be a simple task became a 45-minute ordeal with farcical overtones, and which involved a trek of a half a mile or so, down endless corridors on multiple floors, from one department to another, then another, then another. While walking past posters stressing the importance of patients returning their crutches.
Ah, here we are – presented below in abbreviated form. If I repeat the whole saga, you’ll be gnawing at your own elbows:
I should stress I do not exaggerate for comic effect. This is what happened. And presumably, this is what happens every goddamn day.
It seems like anything run by government eventually becomes primarily a jobs program with the original purpose being secondary.
Having visited the hospital several times, as next of kin rather than a patient, my impression of the place is that, while there are competent and friendly doctors, surgeons and nurses, the admin staff is a very mixed bag and largely unfamiliar with notions of customer service or even common civility. As illustrated above.
Competence, too, is very hit and miss, and during my recent experience, escorting a patient, an important appointment notification was never sent, a set of records was accidentally deleted, and a set of x-rays was simply lost, never to be found. For just one patient with one ailment. None of which was regarded by the staff as particularly unusual or embarrassing. Which I suppose might explain the lack of any apology for wasting my time and effort, or indeed the time and effort of the patient.
And because the notion of customer service is apparently so alien, the result was of being made to feel like an inconvenience, as if we should be grateful for any attention at all, however belated and inept, because they’re doing us a favour, don’t you know.
I didn’t even go into the ludicrous need for this particular doctor’s appointment. Which I shall now do:
I have for years used an asthma relief inhaler on a regular but infrequent basis. Recently the surgery has begun pressuring me to adopt the twice-daily usage of a steroidal “preventative” inhaler. I leave it as an exercise to the reader as to why a doctor’s practice would be particularly keen on pressuring its patients into adopting a frequent, expensive, patented medication instead of an occasional, cheap, generic one. But I mention in passing that this surgery is affiliated with a pharmacy in the adjoining premises.
I have tried many of these steroidal inhalers and found them unsatisfactory. So I persist in requiring regular but infrequent prescriptions for my preferred inhaler.
A few months ago my repeating prescription was stopped. Apparently by the pharmacy.
I issued a request for the medication on the surgery’s online prescription system.
I received a message that I needed to obtain the permission of a clinician to allow this prescription to be fulfilled.
I contacted the surgery and was (eventually) told by the receptionist that she could request the medication for me. I heard nothing more.
I contacted the surgery and (eventually) arranged an appointment with their dedicated asthma nurse. She said she would arrange for my medication with one of the doctors. I heard nothing more.
I contacted the surgery and (eventually) arranged an appointment with one of their doctors. He argued with me for 15 minutes about the advantages to me of their expensive and no-doubt lucrative cortico-steroidal inhalers, but finally provided me with a prescription form and agreed to restore my automatic repeat prescriptions. I took this paper prescription to the chemist and obtained my medication, but heard nothing more and the repeat prescription was not restarted.
And so here we are – I continue my ongoing battle to obtain a medication which I prefer, which I require, and which I have been happily using for years. The only way of currently obtaining which seems to be to spend OVER A FUCKING HOUR EVERY TIME arranging an argument with a doctor so that they can fill out a paper form for me.
… the admin staff is a very mixed bag and largely unfamiliar with notions of customer service or even common civility.
Very likely your experience matches that of ours in the US&A.
To be completely accurate the “physician” line should include nurses, PAs, and anyone else directly involved in patient care which would raise the line, but not anywhere near the “admin” line.
The term “administrators” includes the likes of your magazine gazer, but not the army of social workers and their ilk who insinuated themselves into the system and added bloat of dubious value.
Ah, the ephemera! Let me first take the Weim Crime Syndicate on their post-breakfast walk so they stop mudging me and make a second cup of coffee so I can enjoy these links in peace and serenity.
[ Taps watch, peers over spectacles. ]
Similarly for any private sector monopoly, although the rot may take longer to spread and may manifest in different ways.
It’s a mystery why services with high call volumes do not take advantage of “leave a number and we’ll call you back” voicemail systems. Or maybe not a mystery: Bureaucratic inertia can explain a lot. And discouraged customers/clients who give up cease to be a burden to the system.
I’m more disappointed that my mobile phone doesn’t have an auto-redial-when-busy-then attract-your-attention function.
Perhaps more modern versions, which expect to deal with more modern health “care” systems, do?
I once individually vacuum-packed all my shirts and socks and underpants for a space-restricted ski-trip.
I returned wearing rather more clothes than I left in.
And probably smelling less appetising.
Incoming.
Yes, I laughed.
Baby ferals
The question raised in the tweet was “who let out society degrade to this level?” After reading this article in today’s New York Times, I would have to say, “Pretty much the majority of parents today.” (That link should get you behind the paywall)
[ Taps watch, peers over spectacles. ]
Did you know dogs prefer to poop on a north-south magnetic axis? You can’t hurry science!
No more Vice.
https://twitter.com/Slatzism/status/1760899400237273581
My brain has now suggested to me, as a band name, magnetic dog anus.
So thanks for that, I guess.
Why, it’s a mystery for our times. And yes, I laughed.
“RIP in peace” 🙄
It’s strange how so many disgusting jokes have come closer and closer to reality.
Unbelievable moral sewers of human beings. And I’m not even talking about the drooling perverts.The woman who wrings her hands about nonces knocking one out over the photos she publishes of her daughter in bikinis etc, but says the follower numbers are too good to shut it down.
There does seem to be a striking correlation between “trans woman” and “aggressive pervert”. Meanwhile I’ve yet to see a ‘trans man’ who isn’t a self-hating tragedy. That poor girl still looks obviously feminine, even after her surgical mutilation.
At some point, you’d think mobs and fire and piano wire would get involved but the only mobs I’ve seen recently have been demanding Jewish genocide.