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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I was reminded of a late 80s documentary I saw some years ago about the tenants of a run-down and disreputable council estate. One I’ve actually driven past once or twice, and about whose occupants I heard legends as a teenager. The film was, inevitably, made by middle-class leftists (art degrees, boarding school) and was clearly intended as some kind of indictment of 1980s Thatcherism. As if Mrs Thatcher and her policies were somehow the cause of behaviour that predated them.
Before Mrs Thatcher was elected, and certainly before her policies could take effect, the estate in question was already a topic of legends and jokes. I remember one joke, heard at school and passed down over the years, involving a taxi radio operator repeatedly calling for drivers to pick up someone on the estate, her calls going unheeded long into the night.
What struck me at the time – and went entirely unacknowledged by the documentary makers – was the infantilism of many of the tenants – their lack of agency. They seemed entirely absorbed by the state, as if it were some all-powerful but utterly negligent parent, and were consequently reduced to a kind of childish passivity.
This mindset was apparent throughout the documentary, yet somehow never remarked upon or challenged, even gently. The residents were clearly being steered towards externalising the cause of their woes, but the mindset on display seemed beyond the scope of any political policy.
One detail that lingers in the memory was that, among the residents, there was no expectation that even a simple, routine task – replacing the washer in a leaking tap, for instance – might be undertaken by the tenants themselves, or by a friend or family member. Instead, they waited for the council to “send someone.”
For months.
Hilary Cass
It woud be lovely if there was a movement to wear a t-shirt with Hilary Cass’ image on it and purposely ride public transit while wearing it. Hundreds of Hilarys on the Tube. Yes.
One detail that lingers in the memory was that, among the residents, there was no expectation that even a simple, routine task – replacing the washer in a leaking tap, for instance – might be undertaken by the tenants themselves, or by a friend or family member. Instead, they waited for the council to “send someone.”
This is akin to the Catholic “relief” agencies and how they foster dependency. I am a Roman Catholic and follow much of the Church’s etachings. But one thing that has bothered me in the past is what is almost a fetish towards The Poor. The Poor can be excused for almost everything because Jesus wants us to help The Poor. The Poor cannot be asked to help the community at large – like picking up after themselves – because they are The Poor. My former parish in Southern California had a weekly soup kitchen in which food and other items were distributed to The Poor – and I watched as a young man led his pregnant girlfriend, their arms laden with handouts, back to his late model pickup with custom wheels.and grill. But, you see, he was part of The Hispanic Poor and no one could challenge him on that.
Steak pie and beef dripping chips incoming.
It was disturbing how many of the commune people wants to work/teach the kids.
Power dynamic. Cluster Bs are drawn to fields where they are in a dominant position that’s externally enforced: child care, teaching, elder care.
You have no expectation of privacy in public.
Private places of business aren’t public. Some states define a fuzzy intermediate “place of public accommodation” status but that’s not germane. As WTP has pointed out, this is an example of Illinois making a well-intentioned law without thinking for five minutes about how it was going to actually work.
Middle school girls show more courage than many adults about this issue
Leaving aside the utter farce of middle school girls’ shot put for a moment, no, they aren’t. This doesn’t affect them at all at this stage of their lives – no scholarships are at risk, no financial rewards are being foregone, no college scouts are going home empty-handed. This is purely performative.
It’s the high school and college girls who aren’t doing a damn thing about this that are the cowards, because even though they’re not walking off the pitch, they’re still not getting the scholarships and championships because they’re getting beaten by the men in skirts.
This nonsense could be stopped overnight if the girls with something to lose simply refused to compete anywhere and everywhere men invade their sports. They won’t because they need a queen bee to follow. Riley Gaines might be it, but her influence is too diffuse and she’s largely being nullified by regime propaganda.
If the Arabs put their minds to it they could obliterate Israel in a few weeks.
Samson has entered the chat.
Oooh, this. I see it rather thicker in the Irish Catholic myself. But it’s not just a Catholic thing. Here in red, red Appalachia I have encountered this attitude among many of the Protestant churches as well. I see it even among many similar “conservative” types who want to blame the government for every little problem or personal failure.
And this. I am still in contact with most of the girls from my high school’s state championship swimming team and, as a one-off, an Olympics women’s team member or two. Out of all of those women only two of them have spoken up on the matter. One of whom I actively encouraged myself*, the other “speaks up” in the sense that she’s been very supportive of my posts.
*My specific encouragement being the tipping point for her is unlikely…but it could have been. She certainly got more vocal after I encouraged her. I only found out recently that she had been a rape victim in college in a case that was never solved.
A bit of advice: Depending on the nature of the clutter, better tools for organizing and storage can help a lot: Elfa shelving, plus a few sizes of storage bins, greatly increased how much stuff could be kept without clutter. Everything is now easy to find and nothing gets in the way.
Fair point, but I have seen a number of news reports of “migrants” staging protests, rejecting free meals, and so on.
Our own dicentra has come under the sway of the Marie Kondo Kult, and needs an intervention! Does anyone know some deprogrammers?
.
[ Returns from pub lunch, full of pie. ]
[ Considers crafty afternoon nap. ]
LGBKV1IL2++ history has so much to teach us, who knew that Queen Charlotte (of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a POC) , and that the decolletage in fashion at the time was to ward off storms?
But wait! That’s not all! You can “…join drag king and historian Christian Adore for ‘a very gay tour’ of the Queen’s House” at the Royal Museums Greenwich.
Meanwhile, as foretold by The Amazing Chriswell, the protests will continue till the left 1% are discomfited in any way.
Eco loons vs. the Green Party.
Minimalism…yes…
From the comments…
That money that they’re collecting is just going into their pockets to be spent on weed. Hopefully.
“Let them fight”
The inertia, the lack of agency – of any expectation of agency – was pretty striking. And so, if an annoying, leaking tap didn’t get fixed promptly by someone “from the council,” it would just be left to continue leaking, and being annoying, for months, and presumably indefinitely. I should point out, the residents in question weren’t disabled or infirm. They were just weirdly passive and inert. And yet, this went unremarked by the makers of the documentary.
In turn, that reminded me of something the late Peter Risdon once wrote, regarding the pernicious influence of the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee:
There’s more at the link, some of it quite… earthy.
[ Watches Rio Bravo. ]
Was it here or Insty I saw linked an article about the poor oppressed Somali migrants in the US version of council housing in Minnesota, and how they’re getting such poor sleep and it’s all due to systemic racism and probably islamphobia on top of it. The link also mentioned that their smoke alarms are chirping the “low battery” alert day and night, for months on end, because they’re waiting for “someone” to come fix it, until they no longer are conscious of it. Think it was the Lutheran do-gooders that were partly responsible for the Somali takeover of Minnesota. But the same lack of agency is all over anywhere there is a large amount of government-supplied housing. They discover agency in their gangs and drug cartels though.
IIRC, it wasn’t specific to Somalians. It was a black thing in general. Something people became aware of as a result of the schools being closed for the Scamdemic for remote “learning” via Zoom meetings. Students, and I believe some teachers as well, just lived with it until the batteries ran out.
agency: I read an account by a guy in San Fran. He had a landscaping business and could always use day labor. When he would encounter a homeless person he would give his card and tell them to come and he had work. He said he gave out over 100 cards and not a single person ever showed up.
Around 1900 (earlier?) when immigrants poured into New York, they would immediately start making clothes and selling to garment shops. One family I read about within 3 months had 3 sewing machines and 2 employees, all working from their tiny apartment.
To be fair, one of the problems today is that all the rules make it hard to start a business. For example, Chicago has gradually put all the little news stands (a little box on the corner) and souvenir stands out of business. They harass food trucks. To do nails you must attend cosmetology school. Barriers to entrepreneurship.
Everything we eat is racist.
Original post here.
Ergo propter hockey.
While redefining “big” and “little”.
The more immoral we become in big ways, the more puritanical we become in little ways. ― Florence King
We have a strong desire to view ourselves as moral, as good. Even mafiosi defined themselves by a “code”. If you get rid of religion and following the law and family and patriotism, you latch onto trivial good things and really milk them.
There is an interesting contrast, Jesus told his followers to pray in private (vs those who prayed loudly on the street corner). My uncle funded his church ball teams (baseball?) and I only found out after he passed. In contrast, you can’t get the wokies to shut up about how morally superior they are in spite of their provably lower contributions to charity. urgh
Having given birth to three children, she’s given up entirely on keeping things clean.
[ Straightens coasters. ]
Ed Smart was remodeling his home, so he’d go downtown and pick up vagrants to work in his home, and he’d give them a hot meal and a few bucks, plus a bit of pride in work, he hoped.
And then his daughter Elizabeth was stolen out of his home one night, because one of the vagrants wanted another wife, so he and his current wife took her up into the mountains, violated her, and kept her captive for nine months.
She was walking down a busy street with the other two when some people recognized her and rescued her.
Meaning that you’ve gotta be careful who you’re nice to. Some of the homeless are truly dangerous people.
Ah. I thought the bar-biscuits were getting a bit soft.
Caption competition:
And before you ask, no, I’m not entirely sure.
Perhaps this will help.
Looks like the work of some kind of instigator or provocateur.
And before you ask, no, I’m not entirely sure.
Nothing says “I’m pregnant” quite like a sagging scrotum.
Your tax dollars at work. One way or another.
As it is
“Earth Day”Lenin’s birthday, a protest of note.I do like a happy ending.
I laughed and I’m not sorry.
Calls to mind the old sports cheer, “Let’s have another one, just like the other one!”
And before you ask, no, I’m not entirely sure.
“Black baby factory”?? Is this guy for real? Or is this just more of the power of trans that they can fetishize even the sacred black people and expect to get away with it. The look on the mannequin’s face in the second photo is perfect – like he’s saying “WTF is WRONG with you???”
I was thinking tactical nuke.
Again, it seems to be the conceit, common among such creatures, that they can act with impunity. That the people on whom they impose themselves, gratuitously, will always show restraint and never risk doing them harm.
It’s a fashionable conceit, very now, and one that I’d quite like to see stamped into oblivion. The understanding that if you fuck about you may very well find out is, it seems to me, generally a good thing, a reason the rest of us can for the most part endure each other’s proximity.
Curiously, those environmentalists calling for a dramatically smaller population never seem to lead by example, and always manage to give the impression that no matter how small the ark is they’re a shoo-in for a first-class stateroom. — Mark Steyn
Curiously, those environmentalists calling for a dramatically smaller population never seem to lead by example…
TBF, the co-founder of
“Earth Day”Lenin’s Birthday did.Of course it was his girlfriend and not himself, but again leading by example, he “composted” her.
See also the second update here. The lack of any interest in reciprocation – indeed, the open disdain for it – is pretty much a signature of the activist mindset. Make of that what you will.
“And in the blue baby-grow – this year’s winner of the ‘Gonna Tear You a New Asshole‘ competition!”
Whereas in reality they are the ones least deserving.
A Boston-based influencer has sparked outrage over inflation after claiming she paid $7 for a single apple at a Whole Foods.
It’s not called ‘Whole Paycheck’ for nothing.
$7 apple at whole foods
If you are going to whole foods, you have no room to cry about inflation. Also, from my few times in one it has the most neurotic clientele ever. If whole food makes you healthy it isn’t working.