THOMPSON, blog.
THOMPSON, blog. - Marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.

Slide THOMPSON, blog Poking the pathology since 2007
  • thompson, blog
  • Reheated
  • X
  • Email
Browsing Category
Archive
Food and Drink Politics

He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know

August 18, 2025 53 Comments

From the pages of Metro, some highly emotional news:

It was endless – and deeply unsettling. I genuinely felt shaken and that emotion caught me off guard. I picked up the phone and called my mother in Jordan…

As soon as I heard her voice, I started sobbing. She heard me sniffling and, in true tough-love fashion, said, “Ah, you must’ve caught a cold from that British weather?” “Yes, Mama,” I mumbled. “Just a cold.” I couldn’t bring myself to verbalise my shock and disgust because I didn’t yet have the words to describe it.

I do now, though. My mind couldn’t wrap itself around the idea that my culture – houmous – was being culturally appropriated. It makes me sick.

I’ll give you a moment to steady yourselves. What with the brutality of it all. Namely, a supermarket aisle with – and I quote,

An entire shelf stacked with all kinds of wild, colourful houmous.

Apparently mere proximity to such a thing – again, a shelf of houmous in a supermarket – can traumatise grown men of a progressive persuasion. Including Mr Amro Tabari, whose dip-induced agonising unfolds before you now:

I grew up in Jordan but my family is actually from Palestine. Before I was born, they were forced to flee in 1948 and we became refugees.

No, the relevance escapes me, too. Perhaps something will be made of this later, given sufficient contrivance.

Despite this, I had a happy childhood with my parents and older sister. Throughout it all, houmous was a staple. In fact, we’d have it as a family every Friday as part of a breakfast ritual. Mum would make it from scratch and we’d sit around the table sharing it.

I go for the red pepper variety, myself. Hey, I’m just sharing, too.

It wasn’t until I moved to the UK in 2013 to pursue a Master’s Degree in Renewable Energy that I began to see houmous through a different lens.

No laughing at the back. This is a tearful tale.

In supermarkets, I was stunned: all different types of houmous ‘fusions’ – many without chickpeas at all.

Stunned by houmous options. When not sobbing, I mean, or filled with a sickening outrage. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Mr Tabari’s emotions, or professed emotions, incline towards the operatic. One might say baffling.

Sure, culinary innovation is great. But sometimes what looks like fusion is actually confusion – or worse, erasure.

I suspect an explanation of a sort may be looming.

The reason I felt so shocked in that supermarket aisle was because I was lamenting what had become of my culture. My houmous. To me, houmous isn’t just a recipe; it’s an identity rooted in the Levant, long before modern political borders were drawn.

Ah, the aforementioned contrivance. Houmous as a political identity. I think this is where the credulous are meant to feel guilty, or deferential, or something.

Once I realised how far houmous had been taken from its roots, I turned to a Lebanese-Palestinian friend of mine and asked for his mother’s recipe… Now I try to share my authentic houmous with anyone and everyone I meet – and they love it. In Brighton, where I live, café baristas, flower shop owners, food critics, and even fellow amateur theatre actors have all tried it. They all listen to me when I tell them about the history of houmous, what it means to me.

I would guess that at least some of those baristas, flower shop owners and amateur theatre actors are just being polite. Not everyone needs a sermon with their dip. Even in Brighton.

I have even made huge pots of it and brought it to pro-Palestine marches with me.

You see, that’s where we’re going. Because of course we are. He’s had photos done and everything.

Whenever I offer my houmous to people, they often ask me: “What’s your secret?” “Palestinian love,” I reply with a smile.

This is starting to sound like one of those fabulist anecdotes in which the speaker is supposedly always being asked, “But how do you cope with being so slim and pretty and loved by everyone?”

Houmous… tells stories across generations. When it’s commercialised without context or origin, something sacred is lost.

One more time. Dip.

It feels that houmous is colonised, butchered, brutalised. When heritage is repackaged and resold – especially while communities tied to it are struggling – it becomes an insult. It’s not just houmous; it’s history, belonging, and pride.

And finally, inevitably, the demand:

Stop the cultural appropriation.

Or you could just, you know, dial back the pretentious, self-involved whining. Three or four notches should do it.

Continue reading
Reading time: 4 min
Written by: David
Hair Problematic Pallor

Inadmissible Hair

August 16, 2025 96 Comments

Or, Not Neurotic Enough.

From Vancouver, via Alex Zoltan, an attempt to attend a “2SLGBTIAQ+-friendly” outdoor theatre is derailed by some cultural-sensitivity complications:

A woman in Vancouver was denied access to a “2SLGBTIAQ+-friendly” outdoor theatre because her hair violated the venue’s “Code of Conduct Cultural Appropriation policy.” pic.twitter.com/reB5DbDtL1

— Alex Zoltan (@AmazingZoltan) August 15, 2025

You see, madam’s hair – or rather, her woollen hair extension – violates the venue’s “Code of Conduct Cultural Appropriation Policy.”

Which is a thing, apparently.

Readers may not be entirely surprised to learn that the list of terms and conditions is somewhat extensive and includes both pre-emptive scolding that is nebulous and therefore open to interpretation by those so inclined:

We ask that guests take responsibility for understanding their own privileges… be mindful of how you take up space.

And pre-emptive scolding that is more particular:

Use inclusive and respectful language. Avoid making assumptions about other people’s genders and pronouns.

Because pronoun policing is the basis of every good night out. And with regard to madam’s supposedly scandalous hair:

We do not tolerate cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation refers to the non-consensual wearing or utilising of culturally significant and/or sacred elements of a culture that you do not have ancestry or genuine, meaningful relationships within.

That’s the non-consensual wearing of your own clothes and hair.

You see,

People who are not Black do not experience daily anti-Blackness that can come in the form of microaggressions, erasure, racial slurs, physical violence, police brutality and murder.

We’re talking, you’ll recall, about a trip to a “2SLGBTIAQ+-friendly” outdoor theatre. In the hope of a jolly time.

We’re also informed, sternly, that people of pallor do not experience,

intergenerational trauma as descendants of enslaved and colonised peoples

And that,

Blackness is not a costume that can be tried on.

Again, at a venue where luridly cross-dressing men can pretend to be women and must always be addressed with their fabulist pronouns.

In short, attendees must, 

uplift, celebrate and hold sacred those most marginalised among us.

Those forever downtrodden magic brown people.

And transvestites. 

I feel I should point out that the interaction filmed above goes on for nine minutes. You may wish to have a fortifying beverage to hand.

Or something to bite down on.

The complications of progressive fun times – specifically, what can only be referred to as ideological dancing – have been mentioned here before.

Update, via the comments:

Liz adds,

The wokescolds don’t even know the history of braids.

There is that. But if we start listing the things our Enforcers Of Purity don’t know, and the things they choose not to know, and the things they think they know but which are wildly incorrect, I suspect we’ll be here all day. And any interest in history, or in reality in general, seems likely to be subordinate to the neurotic, wearying drama that they wish to inflict on others.

Not unreasonably, Chow Bag asks,

How do they propose to check if someone has “genuine, meaningful relationships” with their hair and clothes?

Well, indeed. And likewise, if you’re obliged to continually “uplift, celebrate and hold sacred those most marginalised among us,” while fretting about pronouns and privilege and “how you take up space,” and while fretting about police brutality and “intergenerational trauma” and the sacredness of other people’s hairstyles… well, that may leave little time for watching the actual show. Which, I seem to recall, was the purpose of the visit.

But poking at the implications of their rules of admission almost certainly makes you a white supremacist and so you’re not allowed in.

Lest you contaminate The Purity.

Continue reading
Reading time: 3 min
Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (780)

August 15, 2025 91 Comments

All the fun of the fair. || A ride to remember. || Batman in a jam. || Her eyelash curler broke and her underwear keeps going missing. || “Mom, guess what?” || He wants to talk about greed. || Game over. || Incoming. || Nommy-nommy-nom. || The engineering of Mount Rushmore. || Just checking what you are. || Variation on a theme. || Very modern moral problems. || Novelty evaporates. || I remember seeing this one here well into the 80s. || Bag athleticism. || When you have a bedlamite infestation. || Because her big day was all about him. || I renounce the devil and all his works. || Yes, but how hard? || She doesn’t want the rubber room. || She’s not going to take it any more. || Tree house. || Truck life. || Replacing lost fingers with grafted toes. || And for seekers of challenge, I bring sex-toy news.

To enable extra commenting options – including @username mentions, comment editing, upvotes, custom avatars, and live notifications – scroll down to the black ‘Meta’ box at the very bottom of the page and click register. It’s free and quite painless.

For further rambling, and to be notified of new posts, I’m also me on X.

Continue reading
Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Reheated

Reheated (112)

August 12, 2025 160 Comments

For newcomers, some items from the archives:

The Wellbeing Of Burglars.

Because burglars are special and deserving, unlike you.

The bill’s sponsor, Rick Chavez Zbur, claims, “The bill’s goal is to prevent wannabe vigilantes… from provoking violence and then claiming self-defense after the fact.” Which suggests that finding intruders in your home, or breaking into your home, intent on thievery and God knows what else, is somehow not in itself an obvious provocation. Or a basis for vigorous self-defence.

Instead, the bill would oblige homeowners to “retreat” wherever possible, thereby reducing the risk of “force likely to cause death or great bodily injury” to the burglar or burglars, whose wellbeing is apparently a matter of great importance, if only to progressive lawmakers. This restriction is framed as a “safety” measure, albeit one that prioritises the safety of the criminal, who will presumably be enabled to continue his trajectory of repeated home invasion, but with reduced resistance and ever greater boldness.

But remember, wokeness is just about being compassionate.

To assume that a home invader is anything less than an existential threat is, as seen in the links below, foolish in the extreme – and morally perverse. It may be unkind – but it would not, I think, be unfair – to wish upon Mr Zbur and his fellow progressives some first-hand experience of the home-invasion scenarios that they would happily see others endure, passively and impotently, and sometimes not survive, supposedly in the name of “progress.” And fairness to burglars.

Only Suckers Pay Their Way.

Or, my activist lifestyle should be subsidised by others, the less important.

Readers may recall our previous visits to the world of glamorised fare-dodging – for instance, in Washington DC, where progressive commuters, including lecturers, lawyers and screenwriters, aired their “exhausted rage,” not at the rapidly growing number of freeloaders eroding social trust and bankrupting the transport network, but at those careless enough to notice such things.

Because noticing routine and shameless thievery is apparently much worse than indulging in it. And certainly more likely to result in opprobrium.

Peer-Reviewed, You Say.

Poking through the wreckage of academic literature.

Such is the radical heft of the Journal of Lesbian Studies. Where other topics of deep pondering include “lesbian-dog relationalities and becomings,” and “lesbian, non-binary, and trans-dog intimacies.” Empowered feminist ladies and their erotic entanglements with pets is, you’ll recall, a subject we’ve touched on before.

Scenes From The Zombie Apocalypse.

There is, it turns out, a time and a place for running people over.

There’s an implied dare. The game being, “You won’t do what’s needed, despite our alarming and menacing behaviour, because you’re nicer than us, less vain, and not unhinged, and so we can dominate you and terrorise you, and break your stuff, for as long as we want, for shits and giggles.”

Well. I would suggest that the activists’ own actions render their wellbeing of very low importance.

Again, people who behave in this way cannot be relied on to observe normal moral boundaries. Are their victims, their chosen targets, those alarmed drivers and passengers, the ones just going about their business – are they supposed to assume that the mob of unhinged aggressors exulting in their capture and harassment will not press their advantage and do something worse?

“The masked, screaming people are only blocking our path and surrounding us.”

“Now they’re only smashing the windscreen and pulling at the door handles.”

“And now they’re only…”

At what point, precisely, would one’s alarm be considered sufficient?

For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Continue reading
Reading time: 3 min
Written by: David
Free-For-All Pronouns Or Else

His Fabulist Pronouns Were Nonetheless Observed

August 10, 2025 95 Comments

And in don’t-mention-the-mental-illness news:

A “diaper fetishist” who repeatedly dumped soiled nappies outside nurseries and was caught raking through bins semi-naked has been given a suspended prison sentence.

I should perhaps point out that it doesn’t get better as we go on.

Abbi Taylor also smeared faeces on children’s bottles and was filmed with her [sic] trousers down in a bin at a South Shields block of flats, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

As I was saying.

Taylor, who identifies as female, had a history of similar offending in the Nottingham area before moving to the North East, the court heard. Taylor, who admitted depositing controlled waste and breaching a court order that had banned the 46-year-old from attending nurseries or climbing into bins, was jailed for two years suspended for two years.

I suppose we could take a moment to ponder the fact that there are creatures, cross-dressing middle-aged men, for whom it is necessary to conjure court orders to deter them from attending nurseries, as if they were children, and from climbing into wheelie bins. While wearing soiled nappies.

I’ll give you a minute.

Staff at nurseries in Jarrow, Cleadon, and South Shields frequently arrived at work to find bags of soiled adult nappies dumped on their doorsteps… Initially it was believed the waste was left accidentally by nursery workers or even dumped as part of a campaign by a childcare rival, the court heard.

Cut-throat business, childcare.

Investigations revealed the nappies were larger than those used by the children and on one occasion sections of carpet smeared with faeces were found in the dumped bags.

Hey, I’m just reading what it says here.

Taylor had 90 offences on her [sic] criminal record, many committed under the previous name of Martin Tarling,

That’s 90. Nine zero.

and in November 2014, Taylor was found partially clothed in a bin of nappies, the court heard. A Facebook account search found a post Taylor had made depicting herself [sic] in cartoon form wearing a nappy, with a caption declaring she [sic] was an “adult baby diaper lover”…

No, we’ve come this far. We must push on.

In mitigation, Nick Lane… said psychiatric reports confirmed [Taylor’s motivations] were “not simply linked to sexual arousal” but could symbolise a more “carefree” time in a person’s life with a “return to childhood innocence” providing “psychological comfort” and a “unique form of self expression.”

Mr Taylor, since you ask, “was also ordered to do 100 hours’ unpaid work and will have to wear a GPS tag for a year.” So that’s everything taken care of. I’m sure we’ll hear no more of Mr Taylor’s excremental self-expression.

A resident at a flat block in South Shields caught Taylor naked from the waist down inside a bin bag in a wheelie bin in the communal waste store… The man filmed Taylor pulling up her [sic] trousers and fleeing, the court heard.

Said video of the gentleman in question, doing his lady business, in a wheelie bin, in a totally ladylike manner, can be found at the link above.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Continue reading
Reading time: 2 min
Written by: David
Page 1 of 231234»1020...Last »

Blog Preservation Fund




Subscribestar Amazon UK
Support this Blog
Donate via QR Code

RECENT POSTS

  • He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know
  • Inadmissible Hair
  • Friday Ephemera (780)
  • Reheated (112)
  • His Fabulist Pronouns Were Nonetheless Observed

Recent Comments

  • Steve across the Pond on He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know Aug 18, 21:01
  • DiscoveredJoys on He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know Aug 18, 20:22
  • ComputerLabRat on He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know Aug 18, 20:00
  • F Muldoon on He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know Aug 18, 19:28
  • Jeff Guinn on He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know Aug 18, 19:28
  • David on He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know Aug 18, 19:20
  • aelfheld on He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know Aug 18, 19:19
  • David on He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know Aug 18, 19:06
  • pst314 on He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know Aug 18, 18:55
  • JuliaM on He Saw It Through A Different Lens, You Know Aug 18, 18:52

SEARCH

Archives

Archive by year

Interesting Sites

Blogroll

Categories

  • Academia
  • Agonies of the Left
  • AI
  • And Then It Caught Fire
  • Anthropology
  • Architecture
  • Armed Forces
  • Arse-Chafing Tedium
  • Art
  • ASMR
  • Auto-Erotic Radicalism
  • Basking
  • Bees
  • Behold My Anus
  • Behold My Massive Breasts
  • Behold My Massive Lobes
  • Beware the Brown Rain
  • Big Hooped Earrings
  • Bionic Lingerie
  • Blogs
  • Books
  • Bra Drama
  • Bra Hygiene
  • Cannabis
  • Classic Sentences
  • Collective Toilet Management
  • Comics
  • Culture
  • Current Affairs
  • Dating Decisions
  • Dental Hygiene's Racial Subtext
  • Department of Irony
  • Dickensian Woes
  • Did You Not See My Earrings?
  • Emotional Support Guinea Pigs
  • Emotional Support Water Bottles
  • Engineering
  • Ephemera
  • Erotic Pottery
  • Farmyard Erotica
  • Feats
  • Feminist Comedy
  • Feminist Dating
  • Feminist Fun Times
  • Feminist Poetry Slam
  • Feminist Pornography
  • Feminist Snow Ploughing
  • Feminist Witchcraft
  • Film
  • Food and Drink
  • Free-For-All
  • Games
  • Gardening's Racial Subtext
  • Gentrification
  • Giant Vaginas
  • Great Hustles of Our Time
  • Greatest Hits
  • Hair
  • His Pretty Nails
  • History
  • Housekeeping
  • Hubris Meets Nemesis
  • Ideas
  • If You Build It
  • Imagination Must Be Punished
  • Inadequate Towels
  • Indignant Replies
  • Interviews
  • Intimate Waxing
  • Juxtapositions
  • Media
  • Mischief
  • Modern Savagery
  • Music
  • Niche Pornography
  • Not Often Seen
  • Oppressive Towels
  • Parenting
  • Policing
  • Political Nipples
  • Politics
  • Postmodernism
  • Pregnancy
  • Presidential Genitals
  • Problematic Acceptance
  • Problematic Baby Bouncing
  • Problematic Bookshelves
  • Problematic Bra Marketing
  • Problematic Checkout Assistants
  • Problematic Civility
  • Problematic Cleaning
  • Problematic Competence
  • Problematic Crosswords
  • Problematic Cycling
  • Problematic Drama
  • Problematic Fairness
  • Problematic Fitness
  • Problematic Furniture
  • Problematic Height
  • Problematic Monkeys
  • Problematic Motion
  • Problematic Neighbourliness
  • Problematic Ownership
  • Problematic Pallor
  • Problematic Parties
  • Problematic Pasta
  • Problematic Plumbers
  • Problematic Punctuality
  • Problematic Questions
  • Problematic Reproduction
  • Problematic Shoes
  • Problematic Taxidermy
  • Problematic Toilets
  • Problematic Walking
  • Problematic Wedding Photos
  • Pronouns Or Else
  • Psychodrama
  • Radical Bowel Movements
  • Radical Bra Abandonment
  • Radical Ceramics
  • Radical Dirt Relocation
  • Reheated
  • Religion
  • Reversed GIFs
  • Science
  • Shakedowns
  • Some Fraction Of A Sausage
  • Sports
  • Stalking Mishaps
  • Student Narcolepsy
  • Suburban Polygamist Ninjas
  • Suburbia
  • Technology
  • Television
  • The Deep Wisdom of Celebrities
  • The Genitals Of Tomorrow
  • The Gods, They Mock Us
  • The Great Outdoors
  • The Politics of Buttocks
  • The Thrill of Décor
  • The Thrill Of Endless Noise
  • The Thrill of Friction
  • The Thrill of Garbage
  • The Thrill Of Glitter
  • The Thrill of Hand Dryers
  • The Thrill of Medicine
  • The Thrill Of Powdered Cheese
  • The Thrill Of Seating
  • The Thrill Of Shopping
  • The Thrill Of Toes
  • The Thrill Of Unemployment
  • The Thrill of Wind
  • The Thrill Of Woke Retailing
  • The Thrill Of Women's Shoes
  • The Thrill of Yarn
  • The Year That Was
  • Those Lying Bastards
  • Those Poor Darling Armed Robbers
  • Those Poor Darling Burglars
  • Those Poor Darling Carjackers
  • Those Poor Darling Fare Dodgers
  • Those Poor Darling Looters
  • Those Poor Darling Muggers
  • Those Poor Darling Paedophiles
  • Those Poor Darling Sex Offenders
  • Those Poor Darling Shoplifters
  • Those Poor Darling Stabby Types
  • Those Poor Darling Thieves
  • Tomorrow’s Products Today
  • Toys
  • Travel
  • Tree Licking
  • TV
  • Uncategorized
  • Unreturnable Crutches
  • Wigs
  • You Can't Afford My Radical Life

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.