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.
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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.
Update, via the comments:
Liz directs us to a Guardian article, adding, not unreasonably,
Indeed, the article in question, by Ms Sangeeta Pillai, “a writer, podcaster and feminist activist” who “grew up in a Mumbai slum,” is, one might say, an example of concentrated Guardian. By which I mean, contrived to the point of being perverse. As readers may deduce from the headline:
In what follows, Ms Pillai informs us of how she is “exhausted by the pointless stream of politeness” – say, when buying coffee. “I now find myself saying thank you at least 10 times a day and sometimes many more,” says she.
And so, we arrive at 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 others in a tiny but agreeable way – is just too much effort, apparently. Exhausting, to be precise.
Says Ms Pillai, mockingly,
Well, 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. That the young woman was being paid by an employer was, in context, immaterial.
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.
Commenter Ccscientist adds,
While Fred the Fourth quotes Robert Heinlein:
And that’s before we get to the wearyingly common phenomenon – not least in the Guardian – of tone-deaf columnists 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. Those allegedly fatiguing customs of civility.
As if that in itself weren’t obnoxious.
And at a time when the coarsening of social interaction, a swell in casual rudeness, due in large part to the behaviour of new arrivals, is very much on the minds of a great many people.
Ooh, lookee. Buttons.
Cry for the tragedy that has befallen the poor twentysomethings and their 2.75% mortgage. Will nothing be done about this? Cry also for the media that can’t find anything more relevant to write about, business-wise. Or even otherwise.
In a shocking, shocking twist, it turns out that fare-dodgers also engage in other antisocial behaviour.
Please gasp into the bags provided.
What fraction of the tip jar goes to crockery replacement?
Corpsman! Corpsman! I need a restorative tot of rum.
Cry for the tragedy that has befallen the poor twentysomethings and their 2.75% mortgage.
Aside from that is not something you will hear often, or ever, it does say a lot, nothing good, mind you, about their judgement.
You do have to marvel at how these fairly obvious aspects of reality seem entirely mysterious and opaque to some people. As when a Canadian podcaster named Nora Loreto struggled to comprehend that people who keep stealing cars are likely to be doing other unsavoury things.
Onwards, comrades.
Two curious observations:
My sincerest sympathies. I’ve been “enjoying” a massive flare up of gout since January 6th. It has been touring my body like a Brit in Spain since that time. Right ankle to right knee. Left foot to left ankle. I’m hoping it decides to quit before it hits the left knee. I’m on medication which is supposed to prevent flareups but so far it hasn’t. Gout makes it particularly difficult to sleep. So, like you, I’m often up at 3 or 4 in the morning, but too tired and in pain to work the keyboard.
Before, you ask, yes, it’s like living in Dickens’ Pickwick Papers.
The most frustrating part is I was scheduled for a knee replacement on January 8th and it has been postponed. So fun times all around.
[ Rummages in lost property box, blows dust off jar of unspecified ointment. ]
There you go.
When I bought my first house in 1986, I had a first mortgage at 11.25% and a second mortgage at 16.5%. I’m not familiar with the US market, but aren’t mortgages portable there? In other words, you transfer your mortgage to a new purchase. If you buy a higher priced home the lender offers a blended rate for the increased mortgage amount. Failing that, are they not assumable? It would seem to add value to the selling price if the buyer could assume the mortgage at such a low rate.
Now wait a goddamn min…
[ Remembers Beloved Sister-In-Law recently came back from a holiday in Spain, having seemingly visited every wine bar in the country. ]
[ Straightens coasters. ]
Hmmm, Hollaway’s Ointment circa 1837. Is it supposed to be this colour?
“Hitlerite,” he says.
[ Points to word ointment. ]
[ Positions thumb over expiry date, other fine print. ]
Not anywhere to my knowledge. Might be possible in some highly regulated markets like NY or CA but I doubt it. The inflexibility of mortgage structures has been something that seems rather odd to me. Though it does seem to be loosening up a bit with options that weren’t available when I last applied for them. Though it could be that there’s new regulations that forcibly unregulate the previously ridiculous regulations, while adding other regulations in the process. Gives the politicians that much more opportunity for grift.
Schrödinger’s baby?
And yet, these are the same people who have issues with too many white people in [checks notes], camping, hiking, yoga, rural communities yadda yadda yadda.
Cue The Princess Bride quotation.
It’s not bad when they do it.
Malevolent black racism is common and socially accepted.
Draw the logical conclusions and conduct your life accordingly.
I’m just going to leave this here.
Oh, and this.
No links? Did you Me that?
I was distracted by the offer of a gin and tonic.
Truly an imponderable conundrum that would baffle even the Sphinx.
And I’ll thank you not to judge me.
Interesting way way to say “the Link-O-Matic 9000 was FUBARed again”, but OK…
I’m multitasking.
[ Slurps gin and tonic. ]
In my case, it’s half “insufficient coffee” and half “too much wine”.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Not sure about Muldoon….
I wonder what he has in mind that would lead him to say this.
Yes, a real doctor at George Washington University.
I was at a conservative scientific meeting questioning climate change 10 yrs ago. There were protesters on the street below. A few of them dressed as things like penguins tried to break in to the meeting. The chairman and a few others talked to these young people, mostly women, and asked them what did they think we were doing. They had no idea.
Boot on head guy was in the crowd on the street. Probably had not thought of using a dildo.
Happy
BlackChimp History Month.also speaks to Ms Pillai’s character, the kind of person she is
Brahmin or wannabe Brahmin, angry she can’t lord it over the lower castes in Britain because the damned natives don’t see themselves that way, and refuse to acknowledge her innate superiority?
Speaking as someone who spent years in the food service and hospitality trenches, yes, we know it’s our job to serve you, and do it politely, regardless of whether you are a screaming bitch or not. But as others have said, that little extra bit of social lubricant just makes the day easier, especially if you happen to be in a thankless job. I personally never did, nor thought to, but I have worked with some who did spit in or otherwise do some small, sly, gross thing to extremely unpleasant diners’ food. Sometimes, the lesser beings fight back.
Statistics show we are not incarcerating enough people. Roughly 3 percent of the population is utterly incorrigible and another 7 percent is nearly as bad. But at 2.5 million or fewer we are incarcerating less than 1 percent of the population.
I’m surprised that Wanye didn’t make this obvious point.
One regret: I didn’t explicitly thank my grade school cafeteria cooks enough.
Insufficiently grounded polyester pants, we’ve been over this, do try to keep up.
I wonder what his neck tattoo means–aside from “I am a psychopath”.
The left:
Please, God, let this not come to pass.
Some thoughts about Blakes 7
Is this accurate? I never watched, although I knew people who loved it.
Young scholar has an opinion.
Is it true what they say about your grandad?
What should the President of Austria wear?
The notion does have a certain Proverbs 26:11 vibe.
Twisted hemp.
Random opinion: We went and saw “Melania” today. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I found it very engaging, “20 days up through the inauguration” and I got a real taste of what a FLOTUS faces … and hot damn … there’s a certain surrealism that, no thanks, I’m glad it’s not me (and there’s no way I could survive 22 hours in heels ala inauguration day).
And I have even a greater appreciation of Melania as a real person. And I “get” where she is coming from. She is culturally very east European (her composure is amazing) and her pride in being an American is very deep. What a difference from Michele Obama who is constantly disappointed by America and loud about it.
There are a few shots of Barron and he is his mother’s son — a very calm and collected young man.
Who’s this ‘we’?
There’s also the possibility that instinctively thanking people, acknowledging their help, not only makes the other person’s day a little bit better, but may also make your day a little bit better. It may even – and I’m just putting this out there – make you a slightly better person. Better than the kind of person who doesn’t acknowledge such things and who needlessly propagates rudeness and low-level alienation.
As if that rudeness and alienation couldn’t possibly escalate, perhaps quite rapidly.
I would imagine that most of us have at some point encountered someone whose civility is lacking. Say, a grumpy taxi driver or a supermarket checkout assistant who barely acknowledges you, as if your presence were some mild aggravation, a distraction from staring into the middle distance. It’s a small thing, all things considered, but a mild downer. Slightly alienating.
I’m not sure why anyone would want to emulate that as a lifestyle choice, a role model. A way to be.
A virtual card is supposed to work the same as a physical card, unless the issuer has put weird restrictions on it.
I assume by “virtual card” you mean a card you can put in your mobile wallet, but there’s no physical counterpart. Those kinds of cards can have exactly the same properties as a physical card except the tangibility.
They’re not being insane. They’re being malicious.
When most women wear hijab, the ones who don’t are harassed and attacked and violated.
It sounds like they’re actually gunning for such a reality, because certain wealthy people insist on moving things that way, and the European leadership thinks they can rule alongside the Muslims.