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.
Can’t say I’m feeling chuffed.
The major chains are fearful of lawyers and a court system that no longer concerns itself with justice.
Hope you brought enough for everyone.
Stephen Maturin asked me to mention that you can make laudanum with whatever flavor liquor you most enjoy. Peppermint schnapps, even.
.
One of the ‘special’ parts of Texas we don’t like to mention.
I we’d better take away David’s bottle and give him a soft drink and headache tablets.
Pay no attention to the fact that I covet what’s in that bottle.
I think you’re being generous
No, I’m thinking in terms of how this is going to play out in court. I watched the entire surveillance video rather than rely on the newspaper account.
Contrary to what people think, there’s no “fightin’ words” exception to initiation of force laws and the video makes two things clear: Brown is packing up his food order, not robbing the place; and the store employee is the one who threw the first punch.
As I said, there are a number of points where either Brown or the store employees should have de-escalated. And this whole incident is reflective of a deeply dysfunctional shame culture where the only acceptable response to “disrespect” is a bench-clearing brawl
Like the McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit, the details aren’t what you’ve been told and the result isn’t going to be what you’re expecting.
That’s a point of contention.
Should have known it was them.
.
Esther Williams & Ricardo Montalban
Betty Garrett & Red Skelton
SEVENTEEN CHUFFING YEARS
Just like cicadas, I suspect a plot.
If this blog starts making a buzzing sound, run like hell.
Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck‘s 15-year-old, formerly Seraphina Rose, made their first official appearance under a new name, Fin, at a memorial service for Jennifer’s father last weekend.
Wearing a black pantsuit and buzz-cut hairstyle, Fin introduced themselves by their new name before reading a bible verse to the congregation at Christ Church United Methodist in Charleston, West Virginia on Saturday.
Fin has been pictured with their new short cropped hair as early as February this year, but the funeral was the first time the top actors’ kid introduced themselves in public with a new name.
Nothing like using Grand Dad’s funeral to come out as trans.
Nothing like using Grand Dad’s funeral to come out as trans.
So she basically did the meme…
Here’s a clue:
This is pure social contagion plus with celebrity kids trying to step out of the shadow of their parents. I mean, what are the odds of every other celebrity off-spring ‘suddenly discovering’ they’re not just a normie girl or boy?
Rather than everyone celebrating the passing of grand-dad, this girl will be paid attention to getting “we’re so proud of you” and “you’re so stunning and brave” applause.
What’s sad is that these indulged children will, by the fact they live their lives in public, will find themselves trapped in the identity. They are unequipped to face the backlash detransistioners get.
As bad as celebrity culture is, it’s probably worse for the celebrities. So very few of them seem happy. They put on a big show about being a big deal and projecting their image as being happy. But the drugs, hyperpromescuity, alcohol, etc. belie much of that. It’s doubly bad if they’re actors. Many actors are good at what they do because they have no real sense of self. Those that do spend so much of their lives pretending to be someone else, especially the method actor types, that that’s got to eat away at them to some degree. And God help the children.
I suspect that as soon as it’s no longer fashionable to transition, a lot of sheepish kids are going to return to their sexes without any backlash at all.
“Taken the lion’s share,” for instance, is a rather question-begging term, suggesting that the person who gets rich – richer than our professor – just randomly stumbled upon some pre-existing fortune and then fenced it off for themselves.
And as so often, there’s little thought given to the enormously overbearing state apparatus that would be required to enforce such covetous fantasies. And so, we’re told that, “It’s… a bad idea to allow people to have that much power,” i.e., the power of being wealthy, but our professor wants the power to do great harm to others and to confiscate whatever she deems too much. I.e., more power than those she regards as being too powerful. And, one assumes, the power to prevent her victims fleeing her Great Plan.
Oh, and she’s not keen on you little people taking an occasional flight to visit relatives or to go on that holiday you’ve been saving up for.
New instructions.
Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.
And as so often, there’s little thought given to the enormously overbearing state apparatus that would be required to enforce such covetous fantasies.
History has shown such an apparatus isn’t needed for very long. Once all private wealth is confiscated, there is little incentive or ability to create new wealth…and viola, everybody is poor.
Banning ‘gendered language’ isn’t neutral. It’s just mental.
Well, quite. The word that comes to mind is contrivance.
It reminded me of Ms Silpa Kovvali, a Salon columnist, who insists “gender-neutral language should be the norm, not the exception,” and for whom needless and compulsory ambiguity is the new clarity:
According to Ms Kovvali, who is of course Harvard-educated, transgender people and the terminally pretentious are to be accommodated in every linguistic way possible, with a flourishing of neologisms and mannered grammar to be imposed upon everyone. But the rest of us aren’t supposed to mind having our preferences erased, even though almost all of us are contentedly male or female and may be quite attached to the customary pronouns and honorifics.
Laughing at this…
You must be over the target. 😀 They’re such f*cking clowns.
Let’s say, it didn’t make her argument sound any more convincing. If memory serves, Ms Kovvali was upset with me because I’d been insufficiently flattering and had quoted verbatim from her own LinkedIn profile. She did strike me as acutely status-conscious.
I think that may be the first time I’ve been called that.
A ‘bro’, I mean.
Whereupon you:
Having difficulty reconciling those two images. I mean, there don’t seem to be any “bros” on fainting couches in Renaissance and Neoclassical painting. “Radiant beings”, on the other hand, are not uncommon, from thunderous Jupiter to semi-divine Napoleon.
I think you meant “memorializing” or “solemnizing”. Haven’t had your coffee yet, have you?
Their pronouns are asshole/asshole/asshole.
New instructions
Fine, then I go all Buffalo Bill on them. “It will put my coffee in a cup, then it will place my pastry in the bag. I will thank it and hope it has as pleasant a day as it is.”
I shall try to be more party-loving and rowdy from now on.
I don’t recall the Buffalo Bill allusion.
It’s a bit pedantic to point out that by the simple meaning of ‘power’ that the ability to take power from a powerful person necessitates another person having greater power. But none of this is about reason and rationality. It’s about power. The problem is with letting these people have power over the rest of us. Reason and rational thinking are only useful tools within a powerful entity. Once two powerful entities come into conflict, reason and rational thought are abandoned. It’s all just propaganda at that point. People on the right don’t like to allow themselves to see this because, by their nature, people on the right have little desire to have power over others.
Silence of the Lambs. “It rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it is told”.
Presumably, Professor Robeyns imagines that hers will be The Good Kind Of Enormous And Intrusive Power, and that this enormous and intrusive power will never, ever be put to uses of which she might disapprove, or to which she might fall victim. And the rest of us would all be cheering bystanders and not at all worried – in her mind, at least.
And yet our professor’s “social justice” fantasy is premised on a sweeping and audacious coercion and its practical implications include other, appalling uses of that power. For instance, preventing her would-be victims from fleeing to somewhere saner and taking their wealth, and jobs, with them.
She’s an intellectual, you know.
That. Intellectuals seem to have a built-in attraction to Philosopher-King tyrannies.
They always start out by promising that their only targets are the “extremely wealthy”, but sooner or later it becomes obvious that everyone is a target–because why not? As has been pointed out innumerable times, there are no built-in limits to Progressive ambitions. None.
Case in point: Marxist professor Richard Wolff explains how, under socialism, you can attempt to get permission to acquire a PS5.
The NY real estate market is fixing to learn this the hard way.
It reminded me of the Guardian’s imperious sow Polly Toynbee and her endless, innumerate bitching about “the unjust rewards of the rich,” by which she means, “the 1.5% who earn over £100,000.” Week after week, devoid of imagination, she whines about “pigs” and “fat cats” who should be “ashamed” of their earnings. Earnings, which, it turned out, were barely equal to her own, and in some cases, slightly more modest.
A few years ago, she was demanding that all high-earners and public figures should be forced to publish their incomes, so that the bitter and resentful could fume and rumble. But when some pranksters unearthed details of Ms Toynbee’s own six-figure Guardian salary, plus appearance fees, royalties, and property portfolio, she was, shall we say, not amused.
Presumably, Dear Polly has somehow found a way not to see her own earnings as “unjust” or “extravagant,” or a basis for “disgust” and personal shame.
[ Updates list of retailers to avoid. ]
Like this?
Or this, metaphorically speaking?
Although that does tend to lead to this.
Can’t talk. Practising my fist bumps.
“What do we mean by poverty? Not what Dickens or Blake or Mayhew meant. Today no one seriously expects to go hungry in England or to live without running water or medical care or even TV. Poverty has been redefined in industrial countries, so that anyone at the lower end of the income distribution is poor ex officio, as it were – poor by virtue of having less than the rich. And of course by this logic, the only way of eliminating poverty is by an egalitarian redistribution of wealth-even if the society as a whole were to become poorer as a result.” ― Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
I tend to think of David as more this kind of guy.
But how about this?
Banning gendered language: So if you want the waitress’ attention, instead of saying “excuse me miss” you should say “excuse me them”? arghhh what idiocy. There isn’t even a replacement word. I guess you can just say “hey you!” to get their attention. Maybe “hey dork”.
Redistribute: under a free enterprise system, you cannot get rich except by making others better off. Otherwise, they will not buy your product. Under state monopolies of course you can get rich while making others poor. Interestingly, except for doctors and lawyers, the typical millionaire owns a small business such as a plumbing supply store, drives an old car, and lives in a modest suburb. (according to a survey I saw).
[ Buys skateboard, motorbike. ]