Nineteen Years
And yet, bewilderingly, this place is still here.
Which is a half-decent excuse to remind patrons that this luminous establishment is made possible by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to ensure this place exists a while longer and remains 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 camera, and my PayPal.Me page can be found here. There are also SubscribeStar and Ko-Fi accounts, via which love may be monetised, whether as one-off donations or monthly subscriptions. Should you be gripped by an urge to express encouragement via currency, by all means succumb.
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.
Sordid business, I grant you, but it’s what keeps this place here.
For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for nineteen chuffing years, in over 3,500 posts and hundreds of thousands of 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.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Ooh, lookee. Buttons.
Gratulations & felicitations.
Finally old enough to drink. Barkeep, a Moosehead for the lad.
Thank you, David. Button deployed.
They grow up so fast…
Thought this was satire. (It’s real.)
Ping.
Bless you, sirs, and bless you, madam. May you never be presented with a half-arsed breakfast.
It’s concentrated Guardian. By which, I mean it’s perverse, obnoxious and littered with glaring factual errors.
For instance,
Some people may say sorry when they bump into someone, or almost do, or when someone almost bumps into them. They do not, in my experience, say thank you.
And then there’s the framing of routine courtesy – thanking a shop assistant for being helpful, or a waiter for bringing your meal, drinks, etc – as “incessant ‘thank you’ culture.” Something to be dispensed with – banned, even. Because that normal social lubricant – acknowledging obliging people in a tiny but agreeable way – is just too much effort, apparently.
And that’s before we get to the wearyingly common phenomenon – not least in the Guardian – of tone-deaf immigrants who boast of their immigrant status as if it were a credential, a basis for deference, while lecturing the indigenous on the supposedly profound inadequacies of the country to which they have migrated, and in which they choose to remain. As if that in itself weren’t obnoxious.
This, then, is journalism.
Sometimes you just feel like shouting into a towel.
Happy blogiversary!
But diversity is our strength!
P.S. A little something for your trouble, barkeep.
Bless you, sir. May your electric toothbrush head not bounce off the sink, fly through the air, and fall into the toilet.
#TrueLifeDrama
Says Ms Pillai, mockingly,
A few months ago, I was wafting around a department store, searching for some new shirts, but with only a vague idea of what it is I wanted. A young woman took maybe fifteen minutes of her time to help me find exactly what I was looking for, with several pleasing surprises. The idea of not thanking her for her help, her eye, and her ability to decode my half-arsed attempts to describe what I had in mind, strikes me as rude, gratingly so.
Yet this is what’s being proposed. Adding specks of grit to normal social interactions.
Because everyone wants a working day that’s just that little bit shittier.
Ping!
Bless you, madam. May you not have to learn, in a far from ideal way, just how sharp your new cheese grater is.
“Sangeeta Pillai is a writer, podcaster & feminist activist. She grew up in a Mumbai slum.”
She’s free to go back anytime.
Actress Olivia Colman finds some simple things, things frequently explained at length, “hard to understand.”
As if there couldn’t possibly be seriously conflicting interests. As if being nice, as she imagines it, could never be contentious, or costly to someone else, or dangerous.
The Groan is 50% rage bait at this point.
Timing is everything.
The thing I fear, though, is someone will dox her.
Living down to the epithet.
Discourse was attempted.
Always relevant.
Because it bears repeating, that’s why.
She thinks saying thank you is killing the planet.
I’m now wondering whether other countries have uppity immigrants writing articles in national newspapers about how the country to which they’ve moved is too polite and civil and should become much less so.
And at a time when the coarsening of social interaction, a swell in casual rudeness, due in large part to new arrivals, is very much in many people’s minds.
No! Bullwinkle is mine!
Wish this was satire.
David, are the “higher maths” questions in the login dialog to keep away trolls from the Guardian?
She didn’t come to the UK because she loves its culture–quite the opposite.
[ Grates cheese, shapes meatballs. ]
Question asked:
Answers on a postcard, please.
Cultural appropriation. (Language)
Someone in Canada thought this was a good idea.
Doesn’t ‘cultural appropriation’ presuppose culture?
Ratchet is a culture.
Token, etc. Keep up the good work, sir.
Bless you, sir. On Sunday morning, may you know the simple satisfaction of bacon-enhanced French toast.
Question asked.
He looks like that weird “hip” art style you see in placards and pamphlets and online everywhere, with the ginormous limbs and bodies and teeny tiny heads.
Did someone say fetish?
How very dare you.
I’m just trying to imagine the actual women I know behaving in this way.
If you notice, after any financial transaction both people say thank you. Why? because both are benefiting. One gets $ and the other gets coffee (or whatever). To bemoan “thank you” is dredging the bottom of the sea of grievances and ingratitude. FFS these people are insufferable.
I’m assuming he was going for the big-legs-enormous-feet-you-can-almost-see-my-scrotum look.
As ladies do.
I found a belter on this theme, but I may save it for Friday.
“Troons!” coming this Friday on “Thompson’s House of Suspense Theater!™”
Mystery Thompson Theater 3000
[ Fetches velour jacket. ]
Old, but a mystery why the Washington Post has to fire “journalists”.
Don’t forget the headgear.
Thanks, o gracious host. Ping!
Bless you, sir. May your kitchen sponge never look tired and of dubious colour.
[ Adds lights and festoonery to tip jar. ]
There was an incident.
As you can imagine, I have questions.
Well, of course.
Although, while my mother always told me I should cross my legs when sitting whilst wearing a skirt, I’m not entirely sure it was because my scrotum might be showing…
Also, throughout history hasn’t it usually been the fashion (and expectation) for ladies to have smaller feet?