Some items from the archives:
Crotch Funk As Art.
Come, fellow aesthetes. Let us visit the Vienna International Dance Festival.
Sweat is a performance piece by Peter De Cupere, choreographed by fellow Belgian Jan Fabre, in which five dancers spend fourteen minutes rolling about and jumping up and down – naked, obviously – while attempting to fill their transparent plastic overalls with all manner of body odour. “The intention,” we’re told, “is to catch the sweat from the dancers and to distil it. The concrete of the sweat is sprayed on a wall of the dance lab and protected by a glass box. In the glass is a small hole where visitors can smell the sweat.” Yes, you can smell the sweat.
You’ll Notice They All Wear Shoes.
Militant nudists wave things. Or, “Mommy, what’s a cock ring?”
The denials of any sexual aspect are also unconvincing, especially given that so many of the participants are enthusiasts of fetish clubs and websites catering to people who like public sex and scandalising others, and for whom the whole point is to have an audience, whether titillated or repelled. It’s rather like how the people at last year’s protest claimed they just wanted to be left alone – while squealing for attention on a traffic island in the middle of a busy intersection.
For many, if not most, of the activists, this isn’t even about an enjoyment of being naked per se. It’s about confronting other people with unsolicited nakedness. That’s the enjoyment – it’s a juvenile kink. Being nude in private or among consenting nudists in dedicated bars, clubs, spas, on nature trails, at specialist beaches, etc. – of which San Francisco has plenty – doesn’t give the activists enough of a thrill. Because the people there are willing… Hence the demand to display their genitals in front of random passers-by, including children. An audience is required in order to feel transgressive and it’s pretty obvious that’s what matters. They want to be naked near you.
Flatter, Mythologize, Rinse, Repeat.
Because, admit it, you miss Laurie Penny.
By all means take a moment to realign your mind with the notion of Ms Penny as a “cyborg” writer and in some way marginalised – “marked as other” – and struggling against the pressures of not being heard. Except of course when she’s on TV, or Five Live, or Radio 4, or when airing her various and bewildering concerns in the pages of the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Independent.
Vibeslayer.
A song is pondered.
Still, one has to marvel at how the default progressive line is not only tin-eared and wrong, but actually an
inversion of the songwriters’ intent. The song isn’t about ignoring or overriding the woman’s preferences, or indeed
drugging her – but quite the opposite. Throughout the song, they’re both thinking of ways to delay her departure. Half a drink, another cigarette. And despite the woman running through the list of obstacles to her passion, and saying that she “
ought to say no,” because social convention expects her to forego her own preferences, the song concludes with the woman deciding that she’s “gonna
say” that she tried to go home but was thwarted by the blizzard.
The two of them then agree, in unison and in harmony, that the weather outside really is terrible.
Just Surrender To The Will Of Clever People.
Attention, parents. Reading to your children causes “unfair disadvantage.”
Readers may wish to ponder the oddness of the idea that caring, functional parents, parents who make sacrifices for their children, have something to atone and apologise for. That, having done the best they can for their children and having given them opportunities, they have sinned against “social justice.”
Artists For Gaia.
Our betters sail north at taxpayer expense. Gas is released courageously.
Such was the level of inspiration, some of the assembled artists began to work their creative magic immediately: “Tracy Rowledge constructed three series of ‘automated’ physical drawings, mapping the movement of the boat during the expedition.” For readers of a technical inclination, these ‘automated’ drawings involved
suspending a felt-tip pen from the underside of a chair, resulting in random scribble on numerous sheets of paper positioned underneath.
This feat was “REALLY exciting,” we learn, as it “explored movement, time, place and permanence.” The radical innovation also freed the artist to leave the dangling pen and do something more interesting. According to her two brief blog entries, the sum total of her commentary, Ms Rowledge spent much of this liberated time struggling with Greenlandic place names and making sure her fellow passengers knew how “overwhelmed” she was.
Consider this an open thread.
Goodness. Buttons. I wonder what they do.
And from personal observation: His daughters are leftists.
That’s a point of contention.
By who? Be specific. Neither the police nor Fox 2 make any contradictory claim; they explicitly describe Brown as packing up his food.
All thinking is performed right up until an
excuse“reason” for Marxism is evident, then no more thinking or questioning happens.That more wrench-turning type guy, not so much. But the conservative, moderately successful millionaire professional, the guy with the small engineering or insurance firm, the accountant, etc. much more so. Or at least that’s been my observation twixt the suburbs and the mid-sticks.
…then no more thinking or questioning happens.
Meanwhile in California (surprising no one)…
Study: It’s a myth that promiscuous women have low self-esteem.
Rather like the popular liberal myth that young urban thugs have low self-esteem and need to have their self-esteem boosted by caring liberals?
(Granted, this is only one study so we should not assume it is the last word.)
Somewhat related.
Full video here.
And so, as is the way, one absurd situation leads to another.
“[S]elf-esteem is a kind of flabby, bullying solipsism.” – Theodore Dalrymple, Second Opinion
Madness is self-reinforcing.
Case in point: the expansion of the IRS was promised to only go after “the rich” defined as income over $400,000 but since there are few such people and politicians lie, the truth is that some 80% (can’t remember the exact #) of audits last year were <$200,000 income.
“As of last summer, 63% of new audits targeted taxpayers with income of less than $200,000. Only a small overall share reached the very highest earners, while 80% of audits covered filers earning less than $1 million.” The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, The Editorial Board, 2 April, 2024
Usually because he bought into the “they need to go to a good college” routine and right after high school. And he never had questions about their liberal arts/art history/angry studies majors (not that STEM or Business majors have escaped the long march through The Olds).
He would have done his daughters and sons a bigger favor by having them work at his business while doing college core classes at the local junior college. Let them see how their childhoods were paid for.
That, madam. That.
Here is a print article about that lunatic bill to allow people to sue grocery stores that do not give six months notice before closing.
With every passing year it becomes easier to make a case for building a wall around San Fran and treating it as an asylum for the incurably insane.
Israel can give us valuable advice on the proper construction of such a wall.
Inclusive Scrabble
Band name?
:::snort::: Translation of his “you’ll just have to work a little harder” … not in earning/saving your own $$ to buy one but at how good you are at licking the ankles of your “fellow workers” who hold the power to approve whether you get one or not.
For those who know, this is the template of the story of Twentieth Century Motor Company within Atlas Shrugged.
Hence my perennial counter-suggestion that Marxists should not be allowed to do or say anything without the permission of people hostile to Marxism. Or, in the interests of efficiency, that we just lock them up and give them Thorazine. You know, because we learned from them the importance of taking care of people. Strangely, none of my leftist acquaintances appreciate the humor of that.
that lunatic bill to allow people to sue grocery stores that do not give six months notice before closing.
It occurs to me that the ones who scream the loudest about how evil the US was because slavery was allowed at one time in its history are the same ones at the forefront of these new laws and movements to enslave their fellow citizenry. The “health care is a human right” and “access to food is a human right” crowd never stop to think where that all comes from, that other people must devote their time, energy, and resources to provide the goods and services that the “it’s my right” crowd demand. To force another human being or group of human beings to provide you with goods and services regardless if there is a gain or benefit to other person(s) is, in effect, enslaving them, with the force of law and government behind it.
A right imposes no obligation on others beyond forbearance.
And I’m all out of forbearance.
attraction to Philosopher-King tyrannies.
At first glance, I read that as “Philosopher-King trannies.”
I tend to think of David as more this kind of guy.
Really? I’ve always gotten a Flock of Seagulls kind of vibe.
Israel can give us valuable advice on the proper construction of such a wall.
The Egyptians are no slouches either.
On the other hand, David does report himself as “radiant”, so maybe this guy.
Yet another anti-violence street activist arrested.
Gosh, it’s almost as if these programs are scams. Ways to channel government money to politicians’ criminal friends.
Inclusive Scrabble
And within hours the reactionary (in the literal sense of reacting instead of taking information in and evaluating it on principle) news network panels (UK, US) are howling about it.
Is Scrabble a conservative principle? Is Scrabble what made the nation great? Is the meritocracy of Scrabble under attack? Are there heartfelt NY Times columns about “The Unbearable Whiteness of Scrabble?”
There’s a clue in the name “goal cards” – you either achieve a goal or you don’t, and some players end up with more goals achieved than the other players. Still competitive, but the goal cards might be a focusing and learning tool for ungifted players like me who spend 20 minutes being intimidated by the combinatorial explosion and then just stick their S tile at the end of a three letter word.
As for the non-competitive snowflakes, my impression is that Gen Z can’t escape competition – they can’t relax in school because of competition from Asian cramming, and they can’t relax at home because everything they do every minute is online and compared with other people. Even their non-competitiveness is competitive – I don’t think Stephen Potter could teach that generation anything it didn’t know already about gamesmanship.
[ Compiles tomorrow’s Ephemera. ]
It’s the hair, barkeep.
It’s just too fabulous to imagine it having aged a day.
He speaks the truth, this man.
Really?
Now you’re really being silly.
And your sarcasm is sophmoric.
Well, as a matter of fact the meritocracy is under attack, as anyone can see. Or have you been living under a rock?
Are there heartfelt NY Times columns about “The Unbearable Whiteness of Scrabble?”
Pretty much –
Of course the easily and/or perpetually offended will find slurs anywhere for any reason, so you have to wonder if “watermelon”, “cracker”, “coconut”, “oreo” or any number of innocuous words will be banned.
On the bright side for GenZ, at least the tiles aren’t in cursive.
See also crossword puzzles.
Likewise “moron”, “imbecile”, “cretin”, and “idiot”.
Not to mention “cuckoo”, “crackers”, “loonie”, and “moonbat”.
The lunatic is in the Times.
The lunatics are in the Times
…and every day the paper boy brings more.
Likewise “moron”, “imbecile”, “cretin”, and “idiot”.
In the same vein, I am filing this under the heading of “Things That Never Happened”™…
First you have to believe that a Scrabble nerd is going to play a variant of the Latin word for black opposite a black player, then you have to believe that she will sit there for 45 minutes pondering it.
Another solution in search of a made up problem, it seems.
Good News Everyone!
Whitey, hick, hunky, paddy, jock, cracker, redneck, and goombah are all playable because there could be no possible misinterpretation hence no “pain” they could inflict.
A highly competitive, highly antisocial player might do it to rattle an opponent.
Or she could respond like Richard Pryor in that SNL sketch.
And there seem to be a lot of black professionals who shamelessly use “crackers”.
The real issue isn’t the racial slur that comes to the top of most people’s minds; they removed a bunch of “slur” and swear words, any number of which are extremely useful for being able to use high-point tiles in a short word. JEW (as a verb meaning “to bargain”) and WOP are the first two that come to mind.
About 20 years ago, the organization that runs the National Scrabble Championship (which broke off from Hasbro/Mattel’s National Scrabble Association in the 1990s when the corporate-owned NSA bowdlerized the OSPD to keep it in schools), bought time to get the finals on cable TV. In the finals, one of the players tried to play the word LEZ and was forced to remove it and play something else since they couldn’t use LEZ on TV.
Many years back I was playing on line when I suddenly realized that the letters on my rack spelled ASSHOLE. You better believe I played it to get the 50-point bonus. 🙂