Their Teats Were Swollen With Human Kindness
And that’s a good thing. Because it’s time to remind patrons that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to help it remain buoyant a while longer, and remain ad-free, there are three buttons below the fold with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. If what happens here is of value, this is a chance to show it.
If one-click haste is called for, there’s a QR code in the sidebar, at which you point your phone, and my PayPal.Me page can be found here. As requested, I’ve added SubscribeStar and Ko-Fi accounts, via which love may also be monetised, whether as one-off donations or monthly subscriptions.
Additionally, any Amazon UK shopping done via this link, or via the button in the sidebar, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you. Feel free to buy things wildly and in bulk.
For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last seventeen years, in over 3,000 posts and 200,000 comments, the reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year summaries, which convey the fullest flavour of what it is we do. A sort of blog concentrate. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.
Do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.
As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.
By all means consider this an open thread.
Oh yes. The buttons:
Jordan Peterson interviews Tommy Robinson: “Why the Establishment Hates this Man”
Not yet censored on YouTube.
This. And the No-no square thing (which was from a couple years ago). People put so much effort into demonstrating their stupidity that it is rather hard to believe that they’re serious. Then you see the clowns that they vote for…
Ye’re an armless, boneless, chickenless egg /
Ye’ll have to be left with a bowl to beg /
Oh Johnny I hardly knew you.
There was a sixties novel about a girl with huge thumbs.
Even Cow Girls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins?
Again, thanks to all who’ve chipped in so far, or subscribed, or done shopping via the Amazon link, including all those much too shy to say hello. It’s much appreciated and is what keeps this place here.
Yes, that was it. I recall nothing else about it, indicating that it made no serious impression. But then, that’s true of many 60’s and 70’s novels that were “highly recommended” at the time.
I recall nothing else about it, indicating that it made no serious impression.
That novel came out in 1976 and was made into a Gus Van Zant movie in the early 90s, Canadian recording artist k.d. lang did much of the soundtrack. I was in my teens and early 20s for most of Tom Robbins novels. They were, to say the least quirky. They were labelled serio-comedies, but for the most part they were absurdist and surreal. They appealed to my early faux-iconoclast side. I haven’t read (or re-read) anything since Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas and I skipped his last two novels entirely. It just all got a little tiresome.
The state of public education explained.
Millionaire socialists: You don’t hate them enough. You think you do, but you don’t.
I’m just workshopping this idea at the moment, haven’t really got all the details down, but hear me out: helicopters.
The cognitive dissonance is quite a thing.
“Lizzo is beautiful.”
“You look just like Lizzo.”
It’s not cognitive dissonance. It’s just lying. As I’ve mentioned before, this kind of behaviour is a civilizational shit test and we’re failing. Badly.
I recall explaining to my former Young Charge that decent men don’t actually like clown-cloured hair, and she went on a bit of a rant about how women don’t colour their hair for men, they do it for themselves, which ended with “Besides, I didn’t start doing it myself, my mom did it first when I was thirteen because she said the boys-” followed by abrupt, wide-eyed silence and a rapid exit from the room.
A small token of appreciation.
Agreed. I was being overly charitable. It’s my only vice.
Bless you, sir. May your butter be spreadable, but not overly so.
Every man needs a redeeming vice or two.
I’m also quite indulgent of excited dogs. Though I’m not sure that counts as a vice.
[ Tries hard to think of any other personal shortcoming. ]
Bear with me.
Education…
Should I be pleased that Randi Weingarten is illiterate as well as corrupt?
David, how large are the fees taken from PayPal donations?
I despise Hollywood.
Not enough. It could never be enough.
Institutionalised coprophagy.
Hilariously satirized in John Varley’s novel Demon.
“Ageism and ableism”.
Ricardo Cortez was the ultimate Sam Spade.
They need affirmation, I think, because they know they haven’t changed sex.
It’s from 2020, from the city of Oulu (with some background info). https://x.com/MonokulttuuriFM/status/1233493251140849668
For x non-users https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc5lUbNlTtY
I knew it looked familiar. I think that’s even somewhere in the archives. But I’m not complaining: it’s a classic of comedic cluelessness.
As I may have commented here (or possibly elsewhere), perhaps the intent was to make the would-be attackers laugh so hard they collapse.
Ping. BTW, does 30 pounds still buy anything in these post election Labour times ?
I’m also quite indulgent of excited dogs
That’s more of a kink than a vice
*ping*
I think it varies depending on the currency and where in the world you are. But basically, if someone donates, say, £20, then I receive between £18 and £19. There is an option for the sender to cover the transaction fee.
Bless you, sirs. Should you find yourself in a jewellers and having a new watchstrap fitted, may you remember to have the battery changed while you’re at it. Thus sparing yourself a second visit barely two weeks later.
[ Resumes gathering of sandbags, canned goods, candles. ]
Hey, I can’t help it if dogs are happy to see me.
A watchstrap you say?
They still have those?
Again, I think you can regard these bizarre ‘progressive’ contrivances – anti-rape dance moves to educate third-world newcomers – as a kind of displacement activity. A dysfunctional attempt to avoid the obvious, and to avoid the culpability that would go with any realism on the subject.
After all, the kinds of people who think that anti-rape dance moves are the solution to a surge in muggings, thefts and sexual assaults are likely to be the kinds of people who were thrilled by the prospect of those doing the raping and mugging arriving in vast numbers. And the same kinds of people who denounced any demurral as bigoted, racist, etc.
See also Bay Area commuters and their magic cardboard:
And this is where we are now. This is the game we’re supposed to play.
Pronouns in bio, obviously.
They’d rather do the ‘don’t rape me’ dance than vote for a party that would cut immigration from rapey shit holes.
Quebec socialist Nora Loreto, whose deep thoughts have amazed us before, is once again excited by theft.
Is it a flat fee or a percentage? Or, more to the point, how much gets charged when I make one £60 lump sum donation vs. a monthly £5 subscription?
including all those much too shy to say hello
It’s not shyness, some people just don’t like performative charity. Sometimes I grow tired of onomatic words. But I’m a killjoy, so . . .
It’s not a percentage as such, and the variables are numerous and fairly inscrutable; but in terms of transaction charges, larger amounts are better, for me, whether that’s in the form of a monthly subscription or a donation during fundraisers. By which I mean, a recurring £5 monthly subscription costs me around 50p or so in charges for every transaction. Ditto £5 one-offs. Whereas a larger sum, say, £50 – again, whether that’s a monthly subscription or a quarterly donation – costs me around £1.90 or so. A smaller proportion.
Again, the transaction cost varies according to the sender’s location, the weather at that particular moment, and the alignment of the planets, but not enormously.
I was told there would be no maths this early in the morning.
[ Adds more fairy lights and glitter to tip jar. ]
Re Pronouns in bio, I’ve been seeing a lot of this lately:
Along with the “Conservatives hate Socialism but they want their social security check” BS. Always delivered with a condescending, bet-you-never-thought-about-it-this-way tone. They have been raised and, more importantly, educated in a bubble of BS because people who knew better never challenged them nor the “authorities” who inform them.
But on the other hand, I find it easier to set up an automatic subscription than to get around to making larger annual donations.
Thanks. That’s sufficient to guide my decision-making.
I’ve known more than a few leftists who wanted to force everyone out of cars onto “public transportation” but who were happy to get rides from people who did own them. Explaining the advantages of cars to them was like trying to teach calculus to dogs.
It occurred to me, regarding the lovely Nora and her views on car theft, that not only should she be confronted with how factually and logically erroneous her opinions are, but also with how perverse and morally disgusting she is.
I mean, in Nora’s case, she’s not just wrong, as anyone might be about something or other. There’s an element of contrivance, of wilful perversity.
To quote one of her pet members of the criminal class, “You’ve been robbed? Oh well.”
Again, in Nora’s case, this isn’t just someone who’s bogglingly ignorant of subjects on which she opines, and who can’t be bothered to do even basic research or spend two minutes Googling relevant statistics before mouthing off. This is someone who positively exults in perversity, in doubling down, and in siding by default with thugs and habitual predators.
Because she thinks that makes her look good. If only among her equally fatuous peers. Her fellow revolutionaries.
Pronouns in bio, obviously.
How, exactly, does one “get rid of roads”, how much does it cost and who pays?
Also, not unimportantly, what happens to the businesses and people who are situated on those deleted roads?
Fair enough. Though the typed pings and other acknowledgements do make me look less of a Johnny No Mates – and more to the point, they do, I think, encourage others to chip in a few quid. So obviously, I’m all in favour.
What with the overheads, and the emotional wear and tear, and the cost of all this charisma.
Not to worry, the ambulance will be there shortly.
Encourage readers to add you to their wills, then dispatch the henchlesbians.
Can’t quite believe I got away with the charisma thing.
Can’t quite believe I got away with the charisma thing.
It may have something to do with whatever you laced the snacks with – the ones that didn’t walk away, that is.
In his city, Chicago, traffic lanes are being converted into bicycle and bus lanes. Encroach on those lanes at your peril. The rationale is to facilitate bike riding by making it safer, and to facilitate bus travel by making it impossible for buses to be slowed down by cars, but the number of bicycles seen has not increased and the speed of buses has not increased either (of course.) The true purpose, of course, is to simply make travel by car increasingly slow and difficult. Add the joys of encountering “homeless” and “vibrant” persons and the city becomes increasingly something to avoid.
It certainly wasn’t the velour blogging thong.
Quebec socialist Nora Loreto…
Apparently has a relative in New Hampshire.
So repeated death threats, perpetual anxiety, and gunfire near the children. Sounds like weirdly poor parenting. Among other things.
A big reason, since at least the 1980’s, that I have never taken the leftist’s ‘concerns’ about pollution and similar issues in the cities seriously. If one truly wanted people to live in tighter spaces, they would do something about the crime. Instead, we get further degeneracy and crime and filth and then these same clowns try to pretend that that sort of pollution is no big deal and you should learn to tolerate it. Not to mention Kitty Genovese and other made-up BS.
As much as I despise these people I have grown to absolutely loathe the vast majority of my friends and relatives who go along with this stupidity. Until Covid hit, I could be polite, patient, and to some degree tolerant*. In 2020 with the lockdowns and the add-on BS involved with that, it got personal. These people are way too sympatico with real threats from both government and the criminal scum.
*OK, sometimes I do let my guard down and am polite and engaging. The next day…or hour…I hate having done so.
A project in grad school.
Song title? Confession of uselessness? Both?
Comets.
You forgot the effects of comets.
And noctilucent clouds.
Habitually drunk driver who killed 3 and injured 8 is substance abuse counselor and author of the book The Sober Addict. Just like the urban “anti-violence counselors” who turn out to be violent punks.
Or more broadly and dangerously, the mental cases who are in charge of our society’s mental health.
You misunderstand. They want you to live in tighter spaces.
I do often enjoy X’s Community Notes feature.
“[…] multiple convictions in Georgia, Wisconsin and New Jersey on charges ranging from driving with a suspended license to DWI to assault and criminal mischief.”
Busy sod.
Meh. You may misunderstand. I’m considered less and less of a ‘people’ with nearly every interaction that I have with ‘people’. Or so they tell me. Especially the BSCWW kind.
Garbage removal.
she’s concerned that evicting them will just move the issue elsewhere
Moral principle/smokescreen: until there’s no poverty in the world you can’t have your own home (or your own country). Practical equivalent: as long as 2+2=4 and the force of gravity exists you can’t have your own home or your own country. It’s a nasty trick played on people who are either true believers (like Ms Bach and maybe her husband) or who can’t afford the armed security.
Principle: forcing yourself (if you’re a true believer) or other people (if you’re a moral opportunist) to live near human degradation is a morally improving exercise that will engender empathy and equality. Reality: callousness, resignation, thirdworldization with slums right up against the walls of luxury residential compounds.
Nora Loreto and car theft as victimless crime: they don’t even take seriously old women getting punched in the face. As to a car, without a car you can lose your job and end up on the street. In upsidedown world, it is the criminals who are victims and you wytepeepo can just go pound sand
There is merit in the idea of encouraging people like Nora to deport themselves.
Treat them as you would advocates for child rape, slavery, and cannibalism.
Roads: one of the big lessons of economic history is that trade has always been what made countries rich and cities located where trade is easy (Cairo, Rome after they dug a canal, Athens, Constantinople, London) grew. Countries cut off from trade such as eastern Europe always lagged behind. Trade enables you to exchange what you have lots of for things you need. Roads made America rich because it became possible, especially after container shipping and railroads, to deliver goods to the interior cheaply and get interior agric products and manufactures to ports easily.
The Left’s hatred of roads is simply insane. If you have kids and need to go shopping, taking the bus is a nightmare. If you are old, standing in the snow waiting for a bus is dangerous. For everyone, public transit eats your time. My friend who commuted by train to downtown did not get home till 8pm because each way was 1.5 to 2 hrs.
Indeed. I still remember how, when I was young and relied on public transit, shopping took far longer–and many businesses (and even friends) were simply too far away to be practical.
But part of the “public transit” fantasy is that cramming everyone into high-density cities in which (it is assumed) everything needed will be easy to get to. But that isn’t really true even in big cities like Chicago.
Damned miserable even when you are young. Even with heavy thermal socks and boots and gloves, down parkas, etc. I even used to keep ski goggles for the occasional “traveler warning” arctic blasts, lest my face and eyes get damaged while waiting for the train. And how about the pleasures of hour-long “standing room only” train rides, when the previous train broke down or ridership is up due to a sports event?
And how about hauling perishable goods on hot summer days and freezing winter nights? How do you get that beautiful bouquet home from the florist without it getting killed by the frost, when you must wait for a bus? You could pay for delivery, but now you cannot afford those beautiful orchids.
Heretic.
Your mundane problems are of no concern to your betters.
The exchange in question, between Mr Anderson and Councillor Knox, was touched on here at the time.
Again, it’s worth noting the extraordinary conceit that you can insult hundreds of firefighters and support staff – by suggesting they’re racists or complicit in racism – while having no examples to hand to support the accusation. None at all. As if serious and insulting accusations of racism can just be tossed about with impunity.
Related: Remember when Michael Moore said that he strongly favored corporations over small businesses, and preferred for the latter to fail or be made to fail, because corporations were run by armies of bureaucrats susceptible to ideological “guidance” while small businesses were run by ordinary individuals who were likely to have “wrong” opinions?
Today’s word is clientele.
I do often enjoy X’s Community Notes feature
How her surname must burn…
Jackie with the cute doggie in her profile asks “Well aren’t they both equally pathetic?” See? This is exactly why I f*****g hate people. Unless the whole thing was staged. In which case, this is exactly, exactly why I f*****g hate people.
Hire these women to persuade your readers to donate more.
They say no human male can resist them.
The Telegraph by way of Not the Bee.
Picked unripe?
on the recurring subject of the White Supremacy Of The Great Outdoors, this smells a bit like a troll. No bites yet tho.
Looks very ripe. Zaftig, even.
This is hilarious…for alternative meanings of the word ‘hilarious’. Jake Tapper is shocked! SHOCKED! At what has been going on here. Why those elitists! Those elitists in the party!…You know, that party…The one way over there….not anyone close to him or cnn….Those elitists! They’re trying to mislead you! Damn those elitists! Damn them all to hell!
https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1810677522847392004
Picked unripe?
My friends and I called her the green space bitch. But in a good way.
[ Cue 0:50 to 1:00 “The Ancient Battle/2nd Kroykah“. The music we’d hear in our heads as Kirk boinked the Green Space Bitch ]
A woman in lesbian pajamas?
‘Tardive Dyskinesia’ – something or another from Doctor Whom?
Antediluvian rock star fails to read the room…
‘His family’ or ‘his mom’? She was a busy woman as I recall, and rather fond of the demimonde.
Why can’t entertainers just entertain? These contrived “I love X and Y and Z about your town/nation” are so contrived and tiresome. Shut up and sing.
There’s an element of contrivance, of wilful perversity.
It’s right there in the name. “Quebec socialist.” /shapiro
Habitually drunk driver who killed 3 and injured 8 is substance abuse counselor
You can pretty much bet on any “addiction counselor” being a former or current addict. Ditto psychologists and mental illness and social workers and terrible life decisions.
Antediluvian rock star fails to read the room
I kind of wonder if he was trying to make a joke. It’s widely known that Margaret Trudeau, the mother of our current Prime Minister, was a Rolling Stones groupie. How long that relationship lasted into her mariage with Pierre Trudeau is a matter of much speculation.
Just got my last good paycheck, so I’ll lob a few quid in yer tip jar, Good Sir. Hope this helps cover some of my tab at least – the way thngs are going I’m afraid it’s gotten quite large of late.
B-b-but Mick Jagger is Kew-well!?! Everything Mick Jagger says is Kew-well. It’s been that way as long as I can remember? Heh. Maybe Joey B. can rejoin the Rolling Stones. They had a lot of hit records when he sang with them, Fat!
Here’s something that I just saw on Facebook that’s just super, super cute. What a great daddy, teaching his little girls how to be ladies.
After learning how a lady wipes her butt, next lesson is putting on makeup!
What the hell, England?
The two Bidens.
As a last resort, mind.
Well, Nora’s position isn’t just an error, a mistake made in good faith. It’s not like some disagreement over dates or statistics, or some other thing one might get a bit wrong. It’s fundamentally perverse.
Creatures like Nora, and they are legion, exploit a pantomime of compassion, of pretending to care – and of pretending to care more than you do – when they evidently don’t care, at all, about the people being robbed, sometimes repeatedly, or terrorised, or injured, or worse, by car thieves and carjackers. Car thieves and carjackers that dear Nora wants to spare from any meaningful consequence, even when their thievery is habitual, thereby allowing them to continue their predation.
The law-abiding and preyed-upon – the people being robbed and violated – simply don’t figure in Nora’s pronouncements. It’s as if the victims aren’t real people and don’t exist: “Victimless crime,” says she. They’re simply erased from consideration.
It seems to me we should not indulge this pretence of good intentions, of being well-meaning people. That fig leaf has to go.
Bless you, madam. May chunky chips always be an option.
It’s Cluster B, heavy on the sociopathy. You have to wonder what was done to her to extract her humanity.
And then you square your shoulders and determine to stop her.