Friday Ephemera (717)
Custom cars for rats. || Mouse trap. || Incoming. || Incoming 2. || Navigational error. || Nature and its wonders. || Also available in red. || “What’s your job on the leftist commune?” “Pouring hot cocoa for folx in the reading alcoves.” Also, “writing workshops,” “therapist.” || Related. || Also related. || Having it both ways. || Bath time peekaboo. || By “radical pursuit of pleasure,” she means her amputated breasts displayed in a jar. (h/t, Paul Dover) || The top speeds of beasts. || The progressive retail experience, parts 546, 547, and 548. || It’s amazing how quickly the day can turn to shit. || Tread carefully. || Let’s go ice fishing, they said. || It’s “fully functional” and will sort itself out in no time. || “The fake bus stops keep them from wandering off.” || The perils of fitness activity.
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Eppure si sono mossi.
“Cowards,” are they? The high school girls, most of them, are — by definition — children. They have essentially no agency and are totally dependent on the adults in their lives. Likewise the college girls, even if they are technically adults because they’re over 18. And you expect them to defy all the indoctrination they’ve undergone since birth, potentially risking their futures, to address a problem that was created by politicians and school administrators? (Who are adults and have plenty of power and agency, thank you very much.) It’s the parents and other adults in the community, i.e., taxpayers, who should be fighting this battle. If this were happening in your town, would you be raising hell at school committee meetings, organizing parents in opposition, and / or running for a position on the school board? Or would you sneer at the girls and call them cowards?
I’m reminded of the Japanese exchange students (high school aged) I hosted back in the 80s (did about 5 summers’ worth). They were in open awe of the large selection of produce (SoCal) available and the size of the supermarkets and were amazed that they could eat as many whole oranges as they desired. In Japan, naval oranges were very expensive and sold individually wrapped. One student said she felt lucky when she was able to have half and orange (split with her brother) more than a couple times a week.
Also, from my few times in one it has the most neurotic clientele ever.
You mean 50-year old woman with glass smooth and straight hair that has been allowed to gray naturally or otherwise has been died silver gray for status (think Darlene Marcos Shiley, the richer-(inherited from her husband) than-god woman who sponsors Masterpiece Theatre). You’ve heard of the silverback mountain gorillas; these are the silver-headed, urban banshees (SUB) or if they’re gay (SHLUB).
They feign a crunchy-granola lifestyle while shopping at Whole Foods, carrying their Stanley vacuum bottles, wearing the de rigueur designer du jour. In Canada the species is known as Toronto Woman.
Many years ago John Stossel did something like this on a 20/20 segment. He offered some few people (all white men, IIRC) minimum wage plus bus fare plus a sandwich and a soda for lunch. No takers.
[ From the cellar, muffled chuckling. ]
A) Orange Crush 2024: Crowds but no chaos for HBCU beach party near Savannah
B) Spring breakers go wild in chaotic footage of booze-soaked brawls, Savannah beach flooded with trash
I suppose that is interacting, not sure about the mental health part.
The . . . divergent . . . depictions of events does not bode well.
Presumably a very special variety which is given very special treatment in selection and shipping and packaging. Sort of like, on a smaller scale, those melons in Japan which are sold as gifts for astronomical sums.
A depressing reminder of how it is still prudent to follow John Derbyshire’s advice.
Sugarbee. Available at the local Albertson’s for $3.49 / pound (about $1.75 each), though probably lacking the inherent snobbery.
By the way, and since you ask, I enjoyed Rio Bravo. Westerns aren’t usually my thing – in my mind, they tend to blur into one enormous mega-western, spanning decades and starring everyone. It took me several minutes before I recognised Angie Dickinson. But I was… entertained. There’s camaraderie, shootins’, stockings, even some crooning. It was oddly charming. Which, frankly, I didn’t expect.
I’m putting it down to personal growth. Or possibly the gin and tonic.
I highly recommend The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. Also the other river movies like Red River, Rio Lobo, and Rio Grande. Not that they’re related but just good Wayne films. TMWSLV has a lot to think about.
We finished the last episode of I, Claudius. Now the wife wants to see more similar historical series if anyone has recommendations. There was a Masterpiece Theater series regarding the royal family descendants of Queen Victoria that I recall seeing in the late 70’s that I could stand to watch again.
It’s quite the yarn.
Elizabeth R, with Glenda Jackson as Queen Elizabeth.
Likewise the college girls, even if they are technically adults
Further proof of the Schrödinger’s Feminist Principle: a modern woman is simultaneously strong and empowered and an oppressed victim; her state is determined solely by what benefits her most at that specific moment.
Let’s leave aside the issue of whether athletic scholarships ought to exist at all (they oughtn’t); women’s athletics at the US college level only exist because women used Title IX lawfare to force universities to give them athletic programs and scholarships at the expense of men’s athletic programs. Riley Gaines and her ilk have at least dropped the fig leaf that this is about “love of the sport” and are now admitting that it’s about the championship prize money and scholarships.
Which means this is an NBA/WNBA situation. Men’s college athletics is not about education, it’s a form of fundraising/boosterism and it brings in massive amounts of money to the institutions. Women’s college athletics brings in nothing because no one cares about women’s college athletics, and their lawfare in the 1990s caused the shuttering of a number of self-sustaining men’s athletics programs because there wasn’t enough extra to carry the women’s team in addition.
So I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the little darlings. They went whining to Big Daddy Government for free handouts at other people’s expense, and now they’re no longer Big Daddy Government’s favoured class. Cry harder. Maybe try going to class and getting a real degree.
Yes. A bit uncomfortable on the historical accuracy side but in the realm of speculative history, very well done. I see Acorn TV has something called Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty, The Plantagenets. Anyone familiar with it? Still on a free trial with the Acorn thing but I probably need to cancel today or tomorrow if not.
Motive: make the world safer for criminals.
Now the wife wants to see more similar historical series if anyone has recommendations.
The Borgias was interesting viewing. I quite liked Medici, Masters of Florence, despite the fact it was all over the place and Dustin Hoffman plays Lorenzo di Medici with a Brooklyn accent. Alexander, the Making of a God, was so-so overall, but had its moments. My favourite was Wolf Hall about Thomas Cromwell during the time of Henry VIII. The acting is very good.
Men’s college sports: minor sports like wrestling got canceled because they could not get the numbers of women in sports up enough to match the men, so some of the men had to go to achieve parity. Women are not as competitive and don’t enjoy it as much.
Graves based I, Claudius and Claudius the God on Suetonius & followed De vita Caesarum fairly closely.
DEI: a jobs program for lazy and stupid people.
Hey, she change ‘types’ to ‘examples’. That took some effort.
Also: a way for lazy and stupid people to get revenge on their betters.
Trans or zombie?
David and The Other Half.
I’ll send myself to the Correction Booth forthwith.
It’s also about having the major leagues outsourcing the minor leagues to the NCAA, and better yet, not having those minors cluttered with the also-rans and never-was players who might educate the up-and-comers about how things actually work, both on and off the field.
Try the 1970 BBC2 series The Six Wives of Henry VIII – I watched it when it was first broadcast, and still think it was absolutely brilliant.
the major leagues outsourcing the minor leagues to the NCAA
That’s true, and no different from corporate America[1] outsourcing job training to universities generally. “Higher” education has long since lost its raison d’etre.
[1] And Canada, and the US, the UK and every other major Western nation