May Contain Drama
Or, Shakespeare For The Tremulous And Neurotic:
Readers will doubtless recall the Chichester Festival Theatre warning patrons that its production of The Sound of Music, one of the most famous and widely-seen musicals in the world, would contain references to Nazis. Which, for some, would apparently come as a surprise.
More recently, the Royal Shakespeare Company felt it necessary to forewarn visitors that its production of Hans Christian Andersen’s dark fairy tale The Red Shoes features both loud music and “haze.” Because in a tale of mind-controlling shoes and amputated feet, the haze is the thing you really want to watch out for.
And because you can never have enough of this tiresome contrivance:
Presumably, it was felt to be a shocking twist. Mind-wrenching stuff.
Ah, these fearless correctors of our history and culture. Whose weird mental twitching we’ve seen before.
And so, the modern sensibility, the approved outlook on things, is one in which we are to view cross-dressing perverts striding into schoolgirls’ toilets and changing rooms as in no way provocative or untoward, and regarding which one mustn’t bat an eye, while simultaneously trembling at the prospect of Shakespeare’s Tempest containing scenes of bad weather.
A mindset in which almost any dramatic work that predates Instagram must now come with spoilers. Which does rather appear to defeat the object.
I sometimes wonder about the teen girls I ran into in the 70’s at parties and fan events who described themselves as fag hags. What happened to them?
The group my ex was “hanging around” with were promiscuous, intravenous drug using, West Africans.
Her mother tried to blame it on a non-existent blood transfusion in Mexico. But I was in the operating room in Mexico for her surgery and there was no blood transfusion.
Not admitting for at least a decade which sexual behaviors might give you AIDS falls under the category of “better dead than rude”–with the dead in this case being mostly gay men from whom life-saving information was withheld.
During COVID, the use of medications was strongly discouraged because…wait for it…it might give people an excuse to not get vaccinated. So probably tens of thousands died because hospitals would not use ivermectin and other drugs. Why, yes, Fauci was behind this, why do you ask?
One of the local universities was named after an early European explorer, Simon Fraser* – a Scot by decent (although born in what was becoming the US, as it happens). The university wnted to play on the Scottish heritage, and so the athletic teams became the “SFU Clan,” and the players were “Clansmen.” For various resons SFU played athletics in the US, but was having increasing problems with US schools (and especially their players) objecting to playing against the Clan, with the KKK connotations. They have since changed their name to the “SFU Red Leafs” – a truly insipid moniker
In fact, the plan was just to name the university after the most notable geographic feature of the region – the Fraser River, which bears Simon’s name. For whatever reason, the government of the day decided that “Fraser University” didn’t have sufficient cachet, so ol’ Simon was dragged into the picture. At least it gave those of us who didn’t attend the opportunity to refer to them as “Some Funny University”
I believe the main reason for the use of medications being discouraged was it would violate the terms of release for the “vaccine”. It was released under “emergency” conditions and circumvented the normal approval process. It’s my understanding that if other treatments were available then the vaccine would have had to go through due process.
It’s unbelievable that Fauci will escape justice twice. I hope he has his own personal circle of Hell awaiting him.
Drama: bipedal animal screams “I can’t fuckin breathe!” as he is detailed by Macy’s security personnel.
I don’t think the trigger warnings are there to remedy ignorance. Some students don’t know and others do, but those who place the warnings would do it even if all students knew.
It’s a full-on Cordyceps infection, and the infected are no longer in control of themselves.
I heard that podcast, too. Was it Dr. Simone Gold?
I’ve heard it from multiple sources. I’ve got to start bookmarking them because google is still hiding them in the search.
Re: sharp knives
Apparently the version of “Crocodile Dundee” currently available streaming in the US has been sanitized. Including the removal of the one line everyone knows “That’s not a knife. THIS is a knife!”
Tragically, obscenely, you are correct. The vaccines were loosed on the public here by the FDA via Emergency Use Authorization which had at least two terrible corollaries: it allowed the public to access a treatment that had undergone little — if any — actual testing, and completely insulated the manufacturers from any consequences. The primary requirement for an EUA is that the illness for which the treatment is designed CANNOT have any other reasonably-available therapies. Which is precisely why both HCQ and Ivermectin were rejected across the board by medical authorities (and most practitioners, mine included.) Both drugs were demonstrably helpful, especially with early application, but if they had been accepted as allowable COVID therapies Pfizer, Moderna et al would have immediately lost their EUA.
It wasn’t just the bureaucrats, either: the research and treatment arms of the medical community itself were complicit. All you have to understand is that according to their proponents either drug should be used at the earliest possible stage of illness, and could be used as a preventative even. The researchers and hospitals, as one, designed experimental treatment protocols that applied almost toxic doses of the drugs ONLY once the patient had reached a crisis stage and was effectively dying. And then chorused, SEE, SEE, the drugs don’t work.
I saw it happen, again and again, and was indelibly ashamed.
David: Yes. That. Unless, of course, their actual Life Plan consists of a lifelong uninterrupted run of “Waiting for Godot.”
Shudder.
Dr. Simone Gold relates how utterly incurious her colleagues were. She’s an emergency doctor at the time, here comes a “novel” coronavirus, and she’s the only one reading up on it.
She finds out this SARS2 has 78% in common with SARS1, against which Ivermectin and HCQ are proven effective, but instead of going with that actual knowledge, they went by the headlines. Before Trump suggested HCQ, they were open to trying it. As soon as he mentioned it, it was verboten.
It’s utterly discouraging how easily Pharma bent everyone to their will. I guess there really are only a few pressure points — CDC, NIH, AMA — and when they are all saying the same thing, it’s over.
Here we’ve built this enormous machine — modern medicine — but those entrusted to make it run cannot be trusted to tell the truth. Of all things to lie about…
…but Pharma got something like $88bn out of it, and they behaved like mafiosos: anyone challenging the lie had to be destroyed.
I hope RFK does to those people what Elon is doing to USAID and Treasury and stuff. They all need to be exiled to a remote island and left there to survive on whatever they can catch.
Should have got a recording of Michael Fish for that one!
There are so many good lines. And despite the limitations of budget, it has a distinct atmosphere. And as I’ve said before, if anyone compiles a list of entertaining and quotable female villains, Siân Phillips’ Livia would have to be somewhere near the top.
When it first aired, I remember being sent to bed as soon as the wonderfully creepy theme music started. I first saw it properly, in full, in the ‘90s when we ended up binge-watching all 12 episodes over a weekend. We dug it out again a decade later and I’m glad we did.
Dicentra: Amen.
A deeply disturbing aspect of the whole yearslong mess was how quickly every aspect (Government, press, medical researchers/practitioners) of the COVID response metastasized to meet every threat to the vaccine therapy. HCQ was at least demonstrably helpful, per the research of the Frenchman Didier Raoult, who was immediately vilified despite promising reports from actual practitioners, quite a few in institutional settings where you would expect numerous deaths. Then, suddenly, while the Clinical Trial mafia got their act going, suddenly the press was mobilizing its Concerned Handwringers, wailing that HCQ was widely used for rheumatoid arthritis, and if it suddenly disappeared from shelves because it was saving Covid lives, what about the wretched RA patients who would then be untreated/woe is they, and so on. Sounds stupid, yes (especially since some drug manufacturer with access to an unused facility announced that he could start turning out HCQ in a matter of days/weeks from a government go-ahead) but his proposal died on the vine and the RA sufferers were saved. Too bad if you had Covid…sucked to be you.
I tried to watch I, Claudius.
In the opening scene, a woman is chatting away about various points of palace intrigue, and in the background was the sonic vacuum of a BBC soundstage.
I don’t much like intrigue, and for some reason I cannot abide the audible void that marked British dramas of that time. Couldn’t the sound guy record some warm ambient noise and loop it under the other tracks?
Apparently not.
I turned it off.
Sociopathic, is what. Maybe not everyone who went along, but there are definitely sociopaths in the high places, dictating the message. They do not give a flying rip if people died — they got their vaccine revenues, free and clear of real scrutiny.
It used to be the Left who cried out anytime Big Pharma stood to make a buck, and suddenly they’re dead silent in the face of the obvious potential for greed and abuse.
If COVID had happened in 1980, I don’t think it would have played out nearly the same as it did in 2020. I think there would have been a lot more skepticism at all levels, and the dissenters would have gotten more traction.
Or at least I hope that would have happened. There was no internet. How many times have scientists tried to speak out against bad a consensus but we never heard about it?
Granted, it’s stagey and slow-paced, at least by modern standards. And the first episode is probably the toughest to digest. But once you get into it, and overlook the limitations of a 1970s BBC budget, there are rewards to be had. There are scenes that will linger.
And oh, what intrigue.
Speaking of corruption, Elizabeth Warren is having her little fiefdom torn away from her.
I used to cringe at the petty insults, but the woman is a sociopath. She doesn’t deserve respect.
Speaking of sociopaths, listen to Elon say that Sam Altman is a sociopath without using the word “sociopath.”
As Marc Andreessen explained, vividly, not too long ago.
Well, it’s difficult to convey the scale of the dishonesty and corruption, the sheer hubris and malice of those involved. Say, by making illegal use of taxpayer dollars to de-bank and abuse political opponents and those deemed an obstruction to the acquisition of further power. As Mr Andreessen revealed.
I recently had a discussion with someone who simply could not, would not, process the possibility that one might regard senior Democrats as participants in a vindictive criminal organisation. As if their being Democrats were some default shield of piety. And it was made quite clear that offers of evidence to the contrary were futile and entirely unwelcome.
An attitude that in no small part enables the above.
And so, we have a situation in which the assumption that it couldn’t possibly happen – in part, because of what that might imply about the person doing the assuming – is precisely why it can.
I recently wondered how the person I was speaking with, the one who emphatically refused offers of evidence, is processing the corruption now being revealed.
My belief: he/she is frantically rallying at the behest of some cog in the machine of Lefty financing not yet on the block and desperately seeking to fund all the lawfare efforts ongoing in the federal courts dedicated to stopping and destroying the Orange Peril. There will be not a second of thought given to the revelations belching out because these people can’t/won’t allow themselves to work through them to the notion that they themselves, for sponsoring this sewer, are actually not very nice people at all. And not very bright with it.
The ones in charge, now, they know and are perfectly comfortable with their awfulness. The ones way down the decision tree, though, will never admit to anyone what it is they’ve been supporting all this time. Adherents of the worst regimes in history nevertheless staunchly decline the stigma of their knowing collaboration because they simply can’t live with the truth of what they are.
Well, in terms of British onlookers – people who aren’t enmeshed in US politics, but who regard themselves as being One Of The Good Guys – it’s more, I think, a matter of surface-level thinking. They may find Mr Trump uncouth and have been told, by the BBC and Channel 4, that he is dangerous, unfit, some kind of monster. They may have preferred the US president to be That Nice Black Woman, whose policies they aren’t clear on, and whose obvious incompetence has not been reported to them by the BBC, Channel 4, etc.
In much the same way, they may recycle diligently and regard a low-carbon economy as a Thing One Ought To Want, and so they endorse Net Zero, a policy whose obvious dangers they haven’t ever considered.
The details and particulars – all those second-order effects – are not, I would guess, part of their thinking. They just want to be nice.
And hey, what harm could being nice do?
Bookmark: a rough gang I met while in the Florida Keys
Back to those being drama adverse . . how many of these same people voluntarily went to see the movie “Titanic” more for the special effects than the love story? I never saw the film because I knew how it ended.
Just one thing – “haze” may actually be of some real use to warn about. Smoke machines and asthmatics do not mix well, and your ordinary playgoer might be very surprised when smoke effects happen. So a warning that you’re going to use those machines can reduce actual audience risk.
Which is how much of medical “science” is done. Usually in the opposite direction but either way, they have their conclusions they are convinced are correct. A lot of brainwork goes into tweeking the data and/or subject populations. I saw recently that only 11% of medical studies have been reproduced even once. Though tbf it might have been some subset of medicine. Though everything is a subset…whatever. In the interest of scrolling bookmarks, here’s a picture of a squirrel….
Added: heh though I now see Stephanie beat me to it. Meh…gives the dogs something to chase.
Re the debanking mentioned in the Marc Andreeson post, I have been checking in with Grok concerning the exchange between Dimon and Starbucks. The silence is deafening.
Heh. Ask them if Trump told people to drink bleach. Have the receipts handy. Stick to the clear, objective facts. Then watch how nice they get. Especially Canadians.
Fair point.
Apropos:
There was a certain peevishness when I offered to provide supporting evidence. As if being able to back up my statements was somehow unfair or out of bounds.
In terms of my own discussions with UK onlookers who, unprompted, raise the subject of Trump or whatever, I think it’s as much as anything a need to be seen as nice, and an aversion to anything perceived as hard-nosed. Because approaching an issue pragmatically – doing what is necessary – is somehow by default beastly and mean.
Which is why, in my case, describing Net Zero as irrational and a recipe for disaster resulted in scandalised looks of “Why do want the planet to burn? We thought you were one of us, a nice person!”
The idea that scaling up our dependence on wind and solar – that famously reliable British weather – from 4% in 2020 to around 40% now – might not be a thing to cheer and feel good about had simply never occurred to them. Or that the fundamental problem with such energy sources, for us – their intermittent, unreliable nature – is now ten times bigger, and any sudden shortfall much more difficult to deal with. And consequently, the risk of power grid failure and blackouts is much more likely, merely a matter of time.
But by not wanting to see little old ladies freezing in the dark, I’m somehow the villain of the drama.
Titus Andronicus has entered the chat.
Every year they continue to try and get money from me, despite my increasingly ruder responses. I’ve started responding to their emails with a link to a YouTube clip from Slings & Arrows (a CBC production which satirizes the Stratford Festival as a tedious corporate behemoth pandering to the wealthy middle class who don’t watch the plays).
Dr. Barry Marshall has entered the chat.
“Now, Brian. Now you can be Emperor.”
I bet they still complain about their electricity bills though.
Heh. Oh yes, absolutely. Which strikes me as a bit rich, really.
A Democrat was in the White House in 1980.
1981 would have been a different ball-game. While there was no internet amplification available, the intent and desire to cripple a Republican administration – especially a conservative Republican administration – was present & active.
Altman, to me at least, has the same affect as Adam Neumann.
It’s for the greater good don’t you know.
The purveyors of ‘nice’ are a vile and vicious lot.
It’s entirely possible they’re not aware of the evidence. They’re not following Elon’s X feed. The left wing speaks about DOGE only as an interloper that illegitimately accesses the payment systems — obviously to route more $$$ his way — and who is wrecking needed institutions.
They probably think USAID is a humanitarian org rather than a CIA front to meddle in the affairs of other countries.
Does this mean WikiLeaks is no longer the darling of the Left?
And in the case upthread, they showed, to put it mildly, little interest in finding out. Which makes the gasps of indignation all the more absurd. As if my motives could only be contrarian.
They’ve inadvertently handed you their kryptonite. They want to be seen as a good person. Pointing out that placing an idealized, anthropomorphic view of “the Earth” ahead of the lives of actual living people, in fact, makes them anti-human and a bad person. Heads explode. You just want people to die.
And it’s difficult to convey to such a person, a person who values that appearance above pretty much everything else, just how corrosive and ruinous, how morally perverting, it can be. You can wreck a civilisation with that shit.
Or perhaps I’m just bad at it.
No, wait, that can’t be right.
No worries, Stürmer & Co won’t let them freeze.
But by not wanting to see little old ladies freezing in the dark, I’m somehow the villain of the drama.
I wonder how these nice people feel about the wonderful Vibrancy that is incoming from warmer climes freezing in the dark…
I watched I, Claudius, for the first time last year. I was more familiar with Derek Jacobi as Alan Buttershaw in Last Tango in Halifax. While watching Claudius, I often imagined him stuttering “p p p pp put kettle on.”
Certain things you can’t get on the NHS. Sanity, for instance.
Dicentra,
A bit back you were wondering about DataRepublican possibly being on the spectrum. Close.
[ Stretching, grunting, demands gin and tonic. ]