Reheated (124)
Because some things do bear repeating, a few items from the archives:
On Calvin and Hobbes – and progressive journalists who find it “problematic.”
By which I mean, it was once possible to stumble across lengthy articles on niche pop-culture subjects, often written with an affectionate expertise. Now, however, it’s difficult to differentiate one contributor from another. The content doesn’t read as if anyone in particular wrote it. It’s flavourless, uniform in its politics and ideological assumptions – both pointedly announced – and uniform in its tone. It might as well be generated by an algorithm.
I suppose that’s what makes the Calvin and Hobbes article grimly funny, in a disappointing modernity kind of way. If you poke through Mr Shayo’s other, numerous contributions, the tone, such as it is, is much the same. There’s no obvious personality – no sense of any particular person having written it – no sense of mischief, and no discernible wit. Mr Shayo is, however, capable of making entirely contradictory claims, on the very same subject, mere days apart.
For instance, in the article quoted above, Mr Shayo worries that the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices may be “baffling for young readers,” and he bemoans how the strip “doesn’t have any modern technology.” And yet we’re told – days later – that, “the lack of technological influence makes the strip read as a timeless work.” “It always feels that it’s something that could still happen today… the absence of technology is hardly notable.”
Likewise, Mr Shayo insists that “ending Calvin and Hobbes is exactly what saved it,” and praises the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, for refusing to license spin-offs, adaptations, and potentially lucrative merchandise, thereby “living up to the ideals that the strip… championed.” “Ending the strip,” we’re told, “was a good decision” and “there is no reason to tarnish that legacy by adding more to an already concluded work.”
While, one week earlier, “Calvin and Hobbes needs to be an animated show.” Because “an adaptation or continuation is essential.”
Let’s Do It, But In A Way That’s Less Likely To Work.
In which we poke through the Parenting pages of the Guardian.
Providing the sperm. A joyous and maternal turn of phrase.
Also of note, the idea of wanting a baby, but with only a third or a quarter of the responsibility. A kind of low-commitment parenting.
Bodes well.
Readers are invited to ponder the appeal, for any gentleman with fatherhood in mind, of effectively becoming a sperm donor who is also expected to perform household chores, for many years, and to pay child maintenance. In a sexless relationship with random lesbians who may find him barely tolerable, a necessary complication.
But this, it seems, is how one “redefines the family unit completely.” It’s “the ideal parenting setup.”
Cross-dressing man issues orders to women.
On the non-random nature of who you are.
The newborn me was a result of a particular lineage, of choices made by specific individuals and the genes of those individuals – who can of course say the same thing about themselves. To imply that anyone’s birth is a random thing, as if it could have happened anywhere, at any time, as if the particulars were immaterial, is, it seems to me, a little odd. Indeed, arse-backwards.
And I doubt that many parents see the birth of their child as some random occurrence, unmoored from any context or preceding events. I’d imagine it wouldn’t seem random at all.
Unless you imagine a queue of souls waiting to spawn in some small but arbitrary body on a continent chosen by the spin of a wheel. Or cosmic bingo balls.
For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Oh, and a reminder that this rickety barge is kept afloat by the buttons below.
Fort Nonsense has been fired upon.
Retro virus?
Belated recognition.
There’s also the conceit that functional societies “just got lucky,” as several hissing leftists put it, because “everything is luck and random chance.” And so, we arrive at the implication that culture doesn’t matter. The weird conceit that values and good habits, which tend to lead to better outcomes, are somehow immaterial, or themselves a tool of some alleged oppression, a form of wickedness.
As a recipe for human flourishing, it leaves a lot to be desired.
Knowing this, who could vote against him?
Ridiculous. Everyone knows the real test is how they eat pizza. Knife and fork? Fuhgeddaboutit.
Like don’t marry your cousin.
For instance.
Let Them Fight!
The Beeb rants about dogs, for some mysterious reason.
They’re being rather coy, methinks. Which itself does rather give the game away.
To choose to migrate to a country whose culture and national symbols feature dogs quite heavily, a nation whose affection for dogs is widely known, and in which around 35% of households own dogs – and to then bitch about the fact that dogs can be seen routinely – and that this visibility constitutes “racism” – see here – does suggest both presumption and ingratitude.
And a basis for rescinding any invitation.
A desirable migrant, someone willing to assimilate, would be unlikely to complain or be indignant, or to direct effort to restricting the dog-owning of the indigenous. Those who do complain, and who do so loudly, are ungrateful and impertinent. They have forgotten their place.
As guests of the indigenous.
Not just those for whom dogs are haram, but also the “I’m afraid of dogs” twits who want everyone to conform to their dysfunction.
In much the same vein, sending your sprog to a private school to avoid the chaos of public schools will harm the chirrens in the public schools, or something like that.
Meanwhile, don’t bother to listening to this slackwit’s boilerplate tripe, but when did the smarmy face and jackass glasses become a uniform?
John Denver cover of note.
A couple of years ago, Mrs. Oik and self were in South Korea where at one point we were entertained by a band who covered said song, which when rendered phonetically went something like this:
Curry roar
Tear me whore
Tory prey
Arrow bore
“At some point it has to stop.”
If you listen carefully you can hear the rustling of thawbs.
Meanwhile, Canada bids fair to outdo Finland.
Some will no doubt be scandalised by the phrasing above, but I do think it’s how migration works, at least hereabouts, on a small, damp island. There’s a workable ideal, a genial indulgence of newcomers, but the psychology required is very much conditional and depends to a very large extent on the numbers and behaviour of new arrivals.
To quote at length from this:
There are, needless to say, illustrative links in the original post.
A little off topic, but the Dems in US have done everything in their power to make life more expensive: restrict construction, raise taxes, make energy expensive, increase regulations, increase the welfare rolls. And guess what? Their current platform emphasizes “affordability”. FFS it is all just slogans to them.
Oh, and the “not kings” protests are openly marching with communist flags. Communism: a tried and true method to race to poverty and filled jails.
Leftists have been saying that for generations. And it’s even less true and more pernicious now than it was in, say, 1940.
A Japanese take on the “No Kings” dickweedery.
The offending pamphlet, which the court ruled must be made publicly unavailable, can be found farther down in the comments.
It is impossible to excessively hate the left.
How about graciously deporting them?
Yet Einstein was cool with it. This cousin thing keeps popping up recently and I now see a somewhat concerted effort to “ban” it in the 20 or so states that haven’t previously wasted their time doing so. It was really rather common amongst tribal people or people who lived in small subcultures where they were outcasts from the larger society up until the mid/late 20th century even in western civilization. Though I agree it’s rather stupid in the modern world we live in. This cousin thing is a distraction from the Ilhan Omar marrying her brother issue and a weak passive aggressive attempt to address the real issue which should be getting these third world freaks out of our countries. Perhaps we should get that problem addressed before wasting legislation cycles on BS that really doesn’t matter.
As someone said on X in reply to yet another mob looting video featuring overwhelmingly brown-skinned thieves: “Living in London is to spend one’s life in a state of homesickness despite being at home.”
I quote from memory, but it was something very much like that.
See also, asymmetrical multiculturalism.
Yet Einstein was cool with it.
Yes, and Charles Darwin, who might have been thought to know something about the risks.
It was really rather common amongst tribal people or people who lived in small subcultures…
Before modern transport, most people within courting distance in rural communities were some kind of cousin, and known to be cousins because people kept the genealogies in their head for everyone in the valley.
a weak passive aggressive attempt to address the real issue which should be getting these third world freaks out of our countries
Appeals to racial differences – they’re not us, they’ll never be us, they don’t want to be us and we don’t want to be them – are disallowed. What conservatives are allowed is liberal arguments based on cultural differences which usually turn out to be sexual roles, relations, or modesty where the West has liberalized since 1965: matters where our grandparents didn’t think all that differently from these unwanted aliens, but we do now. In trying to distance ourselves from the aliens, we disavow our own ancestors and come across as ignorant of our own history. It hardly strengthens our resolve, or supports our claims to be protectors of heritage or cultural continuity.
Water is wet, Mehdi Hasan tells porkies.
Agree, however re
“Conservatives are allowed” only these things because conservatives accept, tolerate, and allow liberals …so called…to define us in this manner. There is some Chicago Bulls basketball player (I stopped following the NBA even before I stopped following the NFL and MLB) who has been let go because on his religious basis he objected to the Pride Month nonsense and having LGBT issues entwined with his job as a basketball player. This is being accepted, as similar left wing idiocy has been accepted, because “conservative” people not only tolerate it but object to other truly conservative people objecting to it. If “conservatives” are uncomfortable in their own conservatism, even when moderately expressed, why is anyone surprised by the decline of our society? Only conservatives are expected to either accept throwing out the baby with the bathwater or letting the bathwater infect the baby. There is no acceptable position except the extremes.
Another example of the problem.
Something very much like that.
There’s a moderately interesting community note on that 27 yo “ex-con” who is now a magisterial district judge (interesting convoluted term itself) in PA.
Thank you.
Not sure if this is real or satire.
The Other Half was being entertained by that early this morning.
Britain must “make the countryside less white” to please Muslims.
(Those inconvenient dogs. Via EBL.)
We need Stephanie to bring photos. There’s never been a better time.
I have decided to stop beating my wife.
I quite like the idea of Delusion Visibility Day.
And nearly always such promises prove to be false.
I’m sure I left my Shocked Face here somewhere.
Not unrelated.
Ooh, Pome Dei Moro tomatoes.
It’s easy to forget that tomatoes have – or are supposed to have – flavour.
And nice to be reminded.
Speaking of subhuman scum:
Yes, Georgetown University.
[…] the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization […]
Says it all, really.
This one was also amusing.
This incredible ability to make everything worse.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240301-can-skiing-solve-its-diversity-problem
As if air travel wasn’t trying enough.
On Pod Speak.
I’ll be taking a few days off, at least in a posting capacity. Though I will be poking about in the comments, being judgemental about HTML up-buggering and such. Should emerge, hopefully reinvigorated, early next week.
You may now howl with sorrow at the looming emptiness of your days.
Did someone call for dogs?
Maybe more dogs?