Unauthorised Jam Consumption
And other modern dramas.
First, from the comments, where Clam warns,
What grates, I think, is the routine overstepping of boundaries, the casual insult. Judging by the transgressive sandwiches, to which the note is attached, it seems the child was prevented from eating and, presumably, publicly embarrassed.
A while ago, one of my nieces received a snotty note scolding her for sending her son to school with a packed lunch consisting of a banana and a peanut butter sandwich, an occasional treat. Apparently, peanut butter, like jam, is a verboten foodstuff. And so, as a result, someone is employed to poke through children’s lunch boxes and to then write snotty notes to parents. A function doubtless enjoyed.
But here’s the thing. If you aren’t paying for something directly, even if you’re still paying indirectly, via taxes, you won’t by default be regarded as a customer, for whom some minimal regard might be shown, and whose boundaries should be respected. Instead, it’s quite likely you’ll be treated as an inconvenience, an irritation, someone who can be insulted and subjected to condescension.
See also, our glorious NHS.
The item linked above recounts, in abbreviated form, my attempt to return a set of crutches to the local NHS hospital – and how an ostensibly simple task became a 45-minute ordeal with farcical overtones. Entailing a trek of a half a mile or so, down endless corridors on multiple floors, from one department to another, then another, then another. An odyssey enlivened by encounters with bizarrely rude and unhelpful staff, and while walking past posters stressing the moral imperative of patients returning their crutches. An undertaking made as impractical, as maddening, and as absurdly complicated, as would seem humanly possible.
And it’s not entirely heartening to realise, as you trek down yet another corridor, that you’re entrusting your wellbeing, perhaps even your life, to an institution that can’t organise a practical system for the returning of crutches.
Oh, and while I have your attention, I bring dating instructions from the land of the badly tattooed and terminally self-involved:
Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.
Also, open thread.
2020: Governor Cuomo sends COVID patients to nursing homes, knowing this will kill many elderly residents.
2024: Labour Party, inspired, looks for more ways to do the same thing.
I still recall someone’s post-war stories of having to wear a winter coat to bed because of the lack of heat. And she was only about 25 years old.
As I’ve been saying for years… The next few decades are going to come as an object lesson to all concerned about what a bad idea it is for the “leadership elite” to turn on its own people.
Around the world, totalitarian state and “democracies” alike, the leadership has no respect for their people, or any idea at all that their primary above-all-else priority ought to be taking care of them.
Observe the outcomes in all these nations that just don’t bother: Russia, China, Japan… There are reasons that the fertility rates are what they are, and those boil down to the “misery index”, right along with the profligate expenditure of human life in places like Russia and China. Russia is scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel to try and take over Ukraine. This isn’t going to end well for them, even if they win. They’ll have managed to create a running sore that will suck in people and money to try and control it all, and that’s if they win militarily. The hordes of citizenry that the Russian leadership is congenitally conditioned to assume with all their nefarious plans simply don’t exist, any more. It’s all one-and-done only children they’re killing off, not the youngest son of a healthy family.
China thought that the one-child policy would work out, but forgot about the way that people would write off the female babies being born, because daughters don’t support their elders in Chinese culture… They support their in-laws. Because of this, most Chinese family planning revolves around sons, because apparently, some sort of social security system would have been too hard to do. In the end, we don’t know what the actual Chinese population is, but we can safely assume that it is almost certainly not what the central government is reporting. Because, everyone lies to their higher-ups, in the Chinese system.
You don’t take care of your people? They won’t be there. Klaus Schwab and his ilk have made a bunch of assumptions that are highly unlikely to play out the way they are thinking they will. I suspect that the reality of things, by about 2100, will be very much the way things were at the close of the Black Death years of plague. The peasantry will be looking about themselves and recognizing that they’re in a buyer’s market, and it’s gonna get pretty damn pricey for actual human capital in all sorts of areas. I laugh my ass off thinking about the Klaus Schwab’s of the World Economic Forum during those years, cursing their predecessors, as they go about their little efficiency apartments doing their own washing-up and laundry. Because, hiring someone to do that work is going to be prohibitively expensive even for them.
The other thing I’m going to laugh my ass off, should I live so long as to see it, will be the inevitable “baby draft” that will almost certainly become a feature of life around the world. You’re probably going to see draconian measures taken, like telling young women that abortion is not only illegal, it’ll get you involuntary service as a womb-host, and ohbytheway, if you don’t break any laws, you’re still not going to get full civil rights until you’ve had your requisite 2.1 babies and gotten them into the work force successfully…
There is gonna be one hell of a lot of unpleasant adaptation to the “birth dearth”, once the effects become clear. Expect the same statist freaks we see here today mandating this and that to suddenly turn on dimes and start mandating “babies uber alles”, without even the slightest apology.
You’re going to have the example of countries like the Russian Federation going down to demographic dissolution as encouragements. I don’t know when they’re going to start doing the “mandated birth” thing, but I’ll be surprised if it hasn’t started happening most places by about 2080 or so…
@Kirk,
There are plenty of babies being born . . . in the
Third Worlddeveloping nationsglobal South. There’s not a Western nation with a native birth rate at or above replacement level and there’s not a Western nation with the intestinal fortitude to maintain its borders. The babies will be those of people with no attachment to the nation and culture to which they’ve migrated.This was the flaw with the generally prophetic movie Idiocracy. The assumption was that the morons who would inherit the modern world would be the morons of western civilization. Can’t blame Judge for that miscalculation however. A third world based Idiocracy would feel much further beyond our capacity to control. Much less amusing and thus a much harder concept to sell.
@aelfheld,
Have a look at the birth rates in that “Global South”: They’re dropping, as well.
The elites in the “Global North” are going to learn the hard way, in coming years, that a Sudanese or Afghani peasant does not substitute very well for a German factory technician. Once the impact of this sinks in, then the whole thing is going to go up in flames, because those “refugee” types aren’t going to want to give up that sweet, sweet lucre from the state that they’ve been parasitizing. Likewise, said state won’t be able to afford them… You’re seeing the beginning of this realization in Sweden; it will follow elsewhere.
End state of all this is going to be a bunch of people who thought they were oh-so-smart gradually realizing that they f*cked up, big-time. How they react to that is going to be just fascinating…
My personal take on all this is that there’s really only one thing you can take for a certainty: Whatever the “expert” tells you? It likely ain’t so, and will almost certainly eventuate in entirely different directions than the ones in their oh-so-solemn pronouncements.
Unexpected and unforeseen is the way to bet… Tomorrow is not “White Swan Land”, it is instead more like “Black Swan World”.
Stop and think about it: Just over the course of the last fifty years, what the hell have any of these arseholes gotten right? Were you to go back to, say… 1978, or so, with a full precis of what was going to happen over the next fifty years, and then try to convince all and sundry that you had the real deal, that you were Nostradamus come back from the future to warn and prophesize… What, do you suppose, would be the result?
My friend, you’d still be in a very thoroughly padded room, heavily drugged. They wouldn’t have believed you, at all… The very idea that the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact would just quietly fold its tents and steal away in the night? That most of the former Pact would be clamoring to join NATO, then actually do so? LOL… You’d have been laughed out of the briefing rooms, across the West. Hell, the Soviets would have laughed at you…
Class photo prank
Pure sadism, David, pure sadism. You limey bastards tempt us innocent ‘Muricans with your beautiful countryside, beer, centuries of history and culture, you cruelly allow us to rent cars, and then you confront us with monstrosities like this. You bastards!
Are you a lesbian?
More sadism:
Also inhabited by a barkeep handing out bowls of chili-flavored toenail clippings.
I was hoping the Subaru would fool her.
A suggestion is made.
‘s a good one.
You would really and truly be shocked at the actual members of the “Furry Community”. I know I was.
Full-spectrum weirdness, on display there. I was trying to get to a science fiction/comic convention, once upon a time, and was given erroneous directions which put me at the venue for what I think was a regional “FurryCon”.
Weirdest 45 minutes I ever experienced. Took that long to figure out that it wasn’t your usual “con” with cosplayers, too. The cross-section of society wearing fur is a lot broader and weirder than you might think… Ran into cops, active-duty military, doctors, lawyers… The active-duty military guys were from places you absolutely would not expect, either–Special Forces, Rangers, Air Force Para-Rescue. Hard-core macho-man types, in other words. And, probably more importantly, their hot-chick wives and girlfriends.
Truly a surreal experience. If I hadn’t known a couple of the SF guys from working with them, I’d have never believed it.
I try to keep an open mind when it comes to the people exhibiting weird behavior; sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, and a costume is just someone having fun.
That said, there are some truly strange people to be found among the Furries, and not in a good, wholesome way, either…
Pfizer for both shots.
First shot, May 2021: left arm. The injection caused a bit of soreness immediately, and this increased slightly over the rest of the day. When I went to bed, the injection site was sore enough to keep from me sleeping on that side. I fell asleep normally on my right side. The next day the soreness was gone.
Second shot: right arm (to avoid the left arm soreness). Almost no discomfort at the injection site. Later, soreness began developing on the left arm injection site. After a while, that soreness peaked, and then it faded by bedtime. At the same time my right arm developed increasing soreness. However, it wasn’t too sore, and sleeping on either side was no problem. By morning both arms were fine.
I didn’t get another shot. No unusual illnesses or other lingering effects.
A few months later I saw my doctor on an unrelated matter and told him about my second shot. He said that was supposed to be a sign both shots worked.
Re covid, what really convinced me it wasn’t as bad as the govt. was saying were 3 things:
“…my attempt to return a set of crutches to the local NHS hospital – and how an ostensibly simple task became a 45-minute ordeal with farcical overtones.“
I had exactly the same issue when my mum was given a walker shortly before she fell and was taken to hospital with a broken hip (because no-one had bothered to show her how to USE it).
She was discharged straight to a care home, and I rang the hospital to find out how to return the useless walker for the next victim of their ‘care’.
You’d think I’d offered to take in a basket full of live cobras.
Luckily, a family friend helps out at a charity shop to keep busy in retirement, and she was delighted to have it donated.
Wonder just what that teacher would think of this.
I’ve had several people recount similar stories. The degree of complication and disorganisation is almost funny. You’d think a simple drop-off point, preferably somewhere near the main entrance, would be an idea worth investigating.
And so many other instances of politicians and public figures violating the mask and isolation policies they imposed upon the proles.
1) The Diamond Princess study (the Japanese cruise ship mentioned above)
2) I wasn’t going to get that mRNA BS even if they put a gun to my head. Though after my wife’s 32 yo nephew died (supposedly…ver fishy info) from it and the NovaVax that I was anticipating kept failing…for some reason…and after assessing the relative risks of the J&J vaccine vs. getting sick with damn near anything and having to seek medical care from the fascists in the medical business, especially my pathetic, brainwashed doctor, I decided that the risk of the J&J one was worth taking.
3) The Diamond Princess study.
I have felt zero effects from the J&J vax but I did finally get Covid about 7 months later. Just a bad cold. Then a second time about a month ago…probably…I did an old test but everyone I was shooting pool with a weekend before all tested positive at their doctors’ offices. My second case was incredibly mild but the symptoms lingered for about 10 days. My wife occasionally says her arm hurts until I remind her the shot was in the other arm.