Friday Ephemera (826)
Modern problems. || They’re behind you. || Do you want to buy a belt? || King of the combover. || Life in a one-loo village, 1970. || An archive of tangible media, from magnets and grooves to coatings and pins. (h/t, Things) || An archive of punch cards. || An archive of vintage cycling publications. || Not in fact harmless, it turns out. || Just call him Daddy. || I’m sure more drag-themed programming will fix that in no time. || Nuts. || Got milk? || Gentlemen callers. || Incoming. || Help incoming. || Answers on a postcard, please. || A three-way interspecies negotiation. || The progressive retail experience, parts 745, 746 and 747. || The thrill of physics. || At last, drag-queen rugby. || A situation is reported. || Diversity has occurred. || At those elegant snuff parties, your nostrils will be revitalised.
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Pass on the honey.
Queen!
Queen!
Castle doctrine is great: All home invaders should be shot dead without warning.
That’ll drive those viewer numbers up.
Is powdered snuff even sold any more?
Attention-seeking champ!
Does anyone actually still watch the BBC?
Morning, all.
Barring a few old episodes of Top Gear, I haven’t watched any BBC programming in years. The idea strikes me as almost quaint.
On lolly orientation.
Not often seen.
My big claim to fame is that in 1982 I took a FORTRAN77 class with punchcards.
It makes for a great story, but that was my last foray into programming.
Deportation is the kind option.
I’m told bees are attracted to warmth.
I’m inclined to wonder exactly how many scenes of that kind, all rather symbolic and occurring with increasing frequency, we’re going to observe wearily. The ongoing degradation will not stop of its own accord or somehow spontaneously reverse itself. The trajectory is obvious.
It doesn’t strike me as a situation that we’re going to just muddle through somehow.
I’m pleased to say my Kickstarted “origami spoons” (which I learned about via Ephemera Oct 21, 2016) finally arrived yesterday. I probably should have asked for a refund a few years back, but feared I would only get a credit note.
Am now rewatching the how-to-hug-men video.
Every year for the last three years I come this close to not renewing my licence fee and then relent at the last minute.
And that’s mainly for the radio, or BBC Sounds as they’ve tried to rebrand it.
But even most of that output is either stale or else no longer available.
As for the TV, well, this kind of thing speaks for itself:
Worse, on the rare occasion they do still manage to create half-watchable drama, it ends up on Netflix of Amazon, further defeating the point of the licence fee.
They’ve so lost their way that I don’t think they know what they’re for or who they’re for or why they exist.
I don’t think it’ll disappear completely but I think it will shrink to the size of a regional newspaper with a paid-for archive attached.
(The archive is a treasure trove, but for whatever reason they keep it locked up so even licence fee payers can only access a fraction of their output).
That has quite made my day.
It certainly more than made up for the despair induced by these items:
If nothing else, this blog conveys a broad sweep of human possibility.
No refunds, etc.
Nommy-nommy-nom.
Laughed, not sorry.
He’s not wrong.
And asking – very dismissively – why Mr Musk takes an interest in the politics of a country he doesn’t live in – as if this were a thing one ought not to do – is, when you think about it, a strange question coming from a journalist. Specifically, from the editor-in-chief of the Economist.
Sadly, I read this morning that the bear was electrocuted and died. As a consolation, the Wall Street Journal has an article on how bears are running amok in Lake Tahoe. I do think here in East Tennessee, the black bear population continues to grow exponentially.
If it is that severe, could it just be nature’s way of saying there should be less of people like her?
And regarding the struggles of media luminaries to comprehend their disfavour in the eyes of much of the public, this may be worth a revisit:
I can’t say the situation has improved in the four years since that was written.
Winning at marriage.
When I was a kid, my grandparents would start arguing and if they switched into Polish, we knew it was gonna be good.
You don’t need the license to listen to BBC radio stations, if that helps make the decision.
Where do you think these come from?
I don’t care if it is AI, or if it is an installation, this is still funny.
If you replace ‘decolonization‘ with ‘subjugation’ it all makes sense.
1980, COBOL, FORTRAN, RPG, 96 column cards.
I’m told men can be women and vice-versa.
Again, pass on the honey.
Back when people got more dressed up to go take a dump than they do today to go to church.
I sometimes mention that I learned programming with FORTRAN 4 on punch cards, and get an “oh wow” but if the hearer is below a certain age I just get a blank look now.
One-loo village: we so easily forget how close in time true hardship was even in the West. In Chicago, there were cold water flats –long buildings with multiple apartments but no hot water and shared bathrooms. The high-rise low-income housing in the 1950s 1960s was to replace those and were a step up. You had to be married with a job to get in. But of course being gov owned it went to shit in no time so after 50 years was considered unfixable and most are torn down now.
The one-loo film brought to mind a grim “off-season” childhood holiday at a godforsaken caravan site somewhere by the coast. Specifically, a long, silent queue to use the communal toilet very early on a cold and breezy morning. And the unspoken understanding that any protracted use would not be appreciated.
Ah, simpler times.
One loo villages…and for some reason they didn’t just shit in the middle of the street as is done today. Odd, that.
As COBOL on punchcards…something that demonstrates your persistence and determination which in any other field you would be proud to put on your resume, but removed many, many years ago. Matthew 26:69-74 comes to mind.
Not entirely unrelated.
What a juvenile murderer did with his second chance.
His second chance should have been to pray before his execution.
But look at what he did with his third, fourth, and fifth . . .
Hopes of long-term rehabilitation – of murderous teenagers somehow developing an entirely different psychology, a different personality – seem misplaced. Given rates of violent recidivism – which, last time I checked, were approaching 90% after 30 years – it strikes me as an expensive endeavour with great risk to others and little, if any, return.
Such hopes are as laughably delusional as expecting a jihad terrorist to become a Methodist, a child rapist to become a celibate saint, etc.
Those who persist in clinging to this delusion are themselves a menace to society.
In other news, my local council seems to believe that residents need even more rules and complications regarding the emptying of their bins.
They’ve decided to spend our money on colourful leaflets, mailed to every home, telling us how to remove the pump dispenser from hand soaps before tossing said item in the relevant bin, one of four we now have. Apparently, labels can be left on plastic milk cartons. Which is very generous of them, I think you’ll agree.
Does your local council show sufficient interest in the state of the infrastructure? Roads, sewers, water, etc? Or are these things showing signs of deterioration? More frequent water main breaks, sewer backups, street light outages, etc?
Paul Kersey did nothing wrong.
The roads are in the worst state of disrepair that I can recall. Some side roads resemble the surface of the Moon.
Potholes are one of the most common complaints to local councils and have risen dramatically in number over the last few years. According to the FixMyStreet website, there are almost 9,000 outstanding complaints regarding potholes across the city as I type.
But the council evidently has sufficient time and resources to lecture residents on the piety of pre-sorting food waste from plastic milk cartons before delivering the carefully categorised crap to the outside bin.
Callous bastard ignored the plight of lesbian sheep.
BBC shows us all how the BBC has declined.
“Everyone wants to save the world but no one wants to help Mom with the dishes.”
And that calls to mind the words of retired Colonel Robert Mastrion, quoted in The Few and the Proud: Marine Corps Drill Instructors in Their Own Words, by Larry Smith: