Friday Ephemera (733)
Gambling den of note. || From 1978, a brief guide to stuffed chine. || Cross-section of something familiar. || Not finding it didn’t matter. || Meanwhile, in Wales. || Leaf sheep, also glows. || Now that the clock is ticking, name the countries of the world. || Humans next to enormous things, a thread. || Careful now. || Wooing tip. || Yam fondling. || Joe has had a face transplant. || The thrill of patent leather. || An elevated pig. || Pole dancing. || Perhaps he identified as a slow-moving truck. || “Be real,” much hooting. || A lowering of the scrotum. || A tool for every job. || She’s got a big one. || Suboptimal location. || Burdensome behaviour seen from afar. (h/t, pst314) || Don’t send gifts. || A footwear choice was made. || And finally, because you demanded it, AI does breakdancing.
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Not from that perspective it’s not.
Dendrocalamus Giganteus – God’s own soda straw.
You can just feel that social credit score slide away.
Blessed are the cheesemakers.
‘Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.’
Meanwhile, in Wales.
Certainly walks like it has balls.
Humans next to enormous things, a thread.
I seem to recall a song called “The Big Bamboo.”
Yam fondling.
I can’t tell if it’s angry or blushing.
The thrill of patent leather.
Patent leather is the only thing I can think of worthy of the description “snazzy.”
An elevated pig.
Homer Simpson warned us.
She’s got a big one.
That almost brought my Baba back to life. Cabbage rolls and kapusta for everybody. Accompanied by polka music from The Shmenges, Yosh and Stan.
Wooing tip.
…
…
What kinda cheese we talking about?
That’s a LOT of parsley.
Morning, all.
Hundreds.
Described as ‘a taste of Britain’, is stuffed chine. One we probably don’t want to bring back…
And on the subject of cookery, why don’t American cooks ever ‘rub in’ fat to flour with their fingers, as we were taught to do here in the UK? They all seem to use a contraption of some sort called a ‘pastry blender‘….
[ Fetches greaseproof paper, slides large quantity of fat towards Julia. ]
I’m mindful of my patrons’ fat-rubbing needs.
Why is there a NSFW warning?
Just to remind Steve of the Old Country.
Update on Griffin Sivert, the unfortunate phalloplasty patient, on her cause of death.
I was taught to use two table knives, doing a criss-cross motion through the butter/lard, cut the two ingredients together.
[ Slides large quantity of fat towards dicentra. ]
[ Sets up camera to record impending fat-rubbing competition. ]
Some interesting choices were made.
Gambling den of note
Are those colorful laundry baskets you can win that are hanging up?
[ Taps watch. ]
What time do you call this?
Was up earlier but first a walk through the woods so the Weim Crime Syndicate could pee, then makes toast and coffee, and then first read news headlines.All before 5 am MY TIME.
Humans next to enormous things, a thread
Reminded me of this and the rhyme, “If it’s black, fight back; if it’s brown, lay down; if it’s white, say goodnight.”
I appreciate an eye for detail.
Only just noticed them. 😀
Well, to be fair, there was a lot to take in.
I’m now pondering a world in which people play guinea pig roulette to win a nasty plastic laundry basket.
Why is there a NSFW warning?
Why is there one and an 18 & over warning on leg in an anatomy lab?
Some interesting choices were made.
That may be the UK HQ of the Velvet Jones School of Technology, but why the hell are there charcoal briquettes in the fireplace?
Because it was automatically generated by software that looks for “red flag” words and phrases.
I hate to be a décor snob, but, taken as a whole, it is a bit much.
Because it’s more efficient? My mother had one, I recall.
[ Waits for womenfolk to start fat-rubbing contest. ]
Attention, readers. I bring TikTok fad news.
Wow, High Culture on display.
(can’t believe I am wading into this topic after several nsfw notices and a phallic yam…)
Size of fat particles determines flakiness of pastry. In “short” pastry the fat is blended into flour. It is not flaky, more like a french pate sucree. So I assume that’s what you get when you rub (=melt) shortening with your fingers.
American style pie stresses flaky crust. To get that texture cooks will use shortening cut into pieces up to the size of marbles or walnuts to make something like “rough puff pastry”. Everything is chilled to keep the fat particles separate. This is where the pastry blender comes in to keep things cool and minimize disappearance of the shortening into the flour.
Unfortunately, that twitter account also publishes chemtrail and 5G paranoia.
[ Slides greaseproof paper, large dollop of fat to Ben David. ]
At some point, my mother began using cooking oil instead of shortening, but I do not clearly recall if this was because she liked how the crusts turned out or because of government health warnings about saturated fats.
Is that hump fat?
Is she taking that to the Highland Games?
For those unfamiliar with the substance in question.
[ Uses foot to discreetly push enormous bucket of fat out of sight. ]
[ Uses foot to discreetly push enormous bucket of fat out of sight. ]
Imagine the mindset.
Our betters and their recreational malice.
A quite thorough video playlist on deleted and unfilmed scenes from Alien.
Oh no! How will black, gay, disabled people be seen, welcomed, and included now?
Just FYI, putting three x’s in a comment at Instapundit will get your comment sent to moderator limbo. Again just FYI, you may resume your regular programming. No, I don’t know why. Jeeze.
Imagine the mindset.
Given the day late/dollar short police intervention in that clip, it’s worth listening to David Starkey on the mechanisms of two-tier policing.
She’s gonna tell you how incredibly proud she is of you.
After asking about your emotional support bird’s fabulist pronouns.
There’s an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which Guinan, alone, senses that something has gone terribly wrong with reality, that she and the entire crew are somehow in the wrong timeline, and has to persuade the captain to do something drastic in order to correct this.
I can’t imagine what brought that to mind.
At some point, my mother began using cooking oil instead of shortening
Mine too, although for her it was probably cost-related. We used shortening because it was cheaper than butter, so maybe cooking oil was cheaper still.
Many American pastry purists insist butter is the only way to go, for the flavor, but shortening is more forgiving if you’re a rookie. I’ve only ever read about suet as the fat in pie crusts in old English novels – not sure if you can even get it in the US these days. I did buy a brick of lard once, to see if I could make a decent shortcrust with it.
Well this is sad: model train company forced out of business by anti-terror law.
Hexamine is the newly-prohibited substance.
Wasn’t there a Julia Child comedy sketch in which she kept going on about butter?
encounter with “teens” results in “I no longer want to live here”.
A better outcome would be “the teens no longer live at all” and “their friends and relatives no longer want to be near civilized human beings”.
F*** the police. Notice how they are very confrontational and agressive with this victim whose car was damaged while several cops were standing right there, actually coaching the perpetrators. And the victim is a minority himself. Vile scum. As is anyone who thinks this is an acceptable way for our government to function. A nation, even an entire civilization of bloody idiots.
[ Waits for womenfolk to start fat-rubbing contest. ]
So this isn’t part of the fat rubbing contest?
‘I’m a JOLX therapist; of course I’m going to laugh at your pretentious derangements.’
Encounter with teens – Staten Island, lots of NYPD live there as well as a large Italian population (IYKWIMAITYD) so those encounters might not go to plan.
Wonder if that explains this somewhat cryptic post.
Wasn’t there a Julia Child comedy sketch in which she kept going on about butter?
This is the only Julia Child comedy sketch I remember.
Money can’t buy class…
pole dancing: omg no no no
Driver: in history there are infinite examples of gangster government and two-tier justice—BUT the two-tier was rulers vs peasants. A gov that backs up criminals is…novel.
Statistic of possible interest.
A motif of our time.
Married to the state.
Top
menwomen.If the BLM activists were sincere, they would be marching when this happens.
And they would be burning gang-bangers.in their homes rather than burning and looting innocent people’s shops and homes.
This fits my experience. Most of the supposedly conservative/libertarian men I’ve known who married liberal/leftist women turned out, after I’d known them a while, to really be liberals or leftist libertarians who had been hiding their true views. Or else they were so desperate to find a mate that they married someone who quickly “converted” their weak asses.
Diversity! At least 3 stabbed to death by Arab-looking man at “diversity festival”
At least 9 stabbed and 3 dead.
This sort of thing never used to happen and now happens often. Inexplicably.
David, have you considered serving drinks in this sort of vessel?
An ecological catastrophe that threatens Italy’s very existence
At least 9 stabbed and 3 dead.
In Solingen…
I have this fantasy about such terror attacks:
“Citizens apprehended the terrorists and proceeded to remove their fingers and toes in one-millimeter slices. Once the slicing had reached the knees and elbows, the citizens staunched the bleeding with slabs of bacon and awaited the arrival of the police.”
I don’t often make pie, but when I do, I buy frozen crusts. Besides, my mom used hot-water pastry for her fruit pies.
Expertly trolling the Dems at the DNC. Watch for his exquisite encounter with Trump prosecutor Letitia James at 00:54.
People whose politics are largely rooted in pretence, in affectation and dishonesty, seem likely to have unique difficulties when faced with piss-takes of this kind.
[ Added: ]
I mean, if your political persona is largely an affectation, a pose, and entails asserting any number of things that are incoherent and obviously untrue – but terribly fashionable, even mandatory – then it’s not clear to me how far the pretence can be taken, mischievously, by a troll or satirist, before the pretence itself has to be conceded.
It may explain why there are so many videos of pranksters visiting campuses or conferences or protests and extending progressive positions to some glaringly ludicrous extent and still coaxing enthusiastic endorsement out of progressives. Ami Horowitz has done this many times. There’s one video, from 2017, in which Mr Horowitz visits a “White Privilege Conference” in Kansas City, which illustrates this phenomenon quite vividly.
There’s a competitive, self-ratcheting aspect to progressivism that invites parody, and which can make insincerity difficult to acknowledge.
For instance, if your career advancement and social status depend on a pretence of fretting about “whiteness” and your own alleged “white privilege,” and some other clown comes along and makes an even bigger deal of their affected fretting, then, however fatuous the display, you can hardly accuse them of bullshitting without the risk of reciprocation, and of attracting unwelcome scrutiny of your own questionable claims. On which so much is staked.
A potlatch of pretense.
Good morning, David.
[ Crunches toast. ]
Morning, squire.
[ Returns from morning exercise. Contemplates eggs, sausage, and coffee. ]
Best to enjoy the morning, as it will be the last good morning before the next heat wave.
How to guarantee that nobody sits next to you on the train.
Is that a hazmat suit?
A very unusual burglar.
Borders are natural.
Mysteries are often more interesting than answers.
Yes. And the answers that Scott and his writers offered us were particularly dull. Contrived, often illogical, and generally underwhelming. The original film’s implications – and general economy – were much more effective than the ham-fisted attempts in later films to spell everything out.
It’s rather like the deleted and scripted-but-unfilmed scenes from the first film, linked upthread, which elaborate on some plot points, with varying degrees of success, but which also reveal more – too much – of the creature. The decision to leave those questions hanging, and to show (and explain) as little of the antagonist as possible, was very much correct.
There are only two good ‘Alien’ films.
Yup. The first two are close to perfect. The rest… not so much.
Mine’s not nearly so elaborate but doesn’t trouble the police, though the street sweepers might be inconvenienced.
The apocalypse features monkeys?
Hollywood keeps making sequels as long as they make money, because #money, and there are always directors and writers and actors willing to sign up for crap projects that promise to make money. And worse, Hollywood is notoriously short on new ideas.
In the book biz, publishers often pressure authors to keep writing sequels for the same reason, even when the authors know the story has been mined out and they would rather write novels about entirely unrelated ideas. “Okay, we’ll sign a contract for a new novel, but only if you also agree to write another sequel to that story you’re sick of.” And then there are the writers who keep writing sequels because they don’t care–I suspect Philip Jose Farmer was one such. Frank Herbert, too? Sadly, the trade magazine biz is largely staffed by reviewers who will write glowing reviews for any old crap.
Or Minions.
It has been pointed out in the past that, were women to be disenfranchised, both the UK Labour party and the US Democrats would cease to exist as a serious political force.
I’ve just remembered, with some amusement, how much Prometheus irritated me. First time I can recall leaving the cinema feeling annoyed. Actually annoyed. Much rumbling on the subject in the comments following this.