Friday Ephemera (832)
It’s his surfboard now, baby. || Big shaking booty. || Boof. || On buying a computer, 1980s. || Mr Reubens has 600 banjos, 1979. || On Columbo and creating intrigue without mystery. || Rotation detected. || What do drugs do? (1971) || So how was your day, dear? || Colour counter. Less than 50 is unacceptable. || Tastes like chicken. || Incoming. || Detection detected. || We’ve all done it. || Sci-fi franchise convergence. || Diverging values. || Divert auxiliary power to the filter. || Tony Hancock in The Impersonator, 1959. || More than a hanging flap, you know. || Grip strength confirmed. || Passing piglings. || The progressive retail experience, parts 755, 756, 757, 758, 759 and 760. || Place in food chain negotiation. || Scenes of shouting, tugging and bodily fluid. || And finally, a project for the weekend.
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Oh, and hitting the tip jar is what keeps this place here.
Doesn’t make sense even for a very primitive society.
I thought this show was going to be a woke clusterfuck of the highest order when I started hearing about it. However…. it’s far worse.
If only they’d do us the courtesy of getting over themselves.
A pervasive problem:
“Don’t make me tap the sign.”
“mobs of teenagers”
They’re not teens, they’re chimps. The solution is to put them down like the rabid animals that they are.
Every day my longing increases for a world without chimps.
That was good. Thanks, barkeep.
Charles DIckens, talking as it happens about the American habit in his time of chewing tobacco and spitting it all over the floors of respectable establishments; the enduring takeaway point being that reality might be more sensational than sensationalist content, and more gross than gross-out content.
It’s nicely done.
For animals cosplaying as human?
I do indeed.
And to some no doubt it might seem rather petty of me to complain about what, in the scheme of things, to others might be written off as barely an event, let alone a minor inconvenience.
But I don’t think it’s a matter of bourgeois priggishness.
I think it may be analogous to the broken windows principle.
A significant proportion of the British public may not be able to name the Home Secretary or barely any MPs beyond party leaders and one or two in hot water over some scandal or other.
They may not have the slightest clue about who said what at which party conference or what it means.
But they are going to notice the hundred small ways in which things have changed, and noticeably for the worse, every time they leave the house of a morning.
‘Let the meek ache’ might seem like sound government policy when there are no obvious signs of disorder.
That is until more aggressively authoritarian parties pop up all over the place and start winning support at which point there’s much hand-wringing about ‘How is this happening?’.
It would also be very, very British to see a government overthrown as a result of complaints about queuing behaviour.
How could a species, from another planet yet, ever establish communication with a different species that shares none of its biology, environment, history, or culture?
Hells, human metaphors are culture-bound & have to be explained to those of different human cultures.
Last night we went to Murphy, NC because that’s where the closest decent sized shoe store, where we have shopped for a dozen years or so off and on, is to purchase a new pair of hiking boots. Every box I initially opened had only one boot in it. I express WTF-ish frustration and an older lady tells me they will give you the second boot “when you check out”. I’m like….uh…yeah…they’re BOOTS. If I want to just take a random shot at whatever, I would buy online. So she tells me she will go get the other boot “in the back”. I’m sitting there thinking will we have to do this for every boot I want to try? Meanwhile my wife did find several other kinds where both boots were in the box. The lady never came back so I ended up with a pair that wasn’t necessarily what I wanted but…? This is rural NC. Though I have heard there has been a problem or two at the Walmart next door. Still. Rural NC.
Speaking as someone who really loves that particular episode, in its defence I have to say that if you find “pseudo-intellectual silliness” off-putting then not only most of Star Trek but a good portion of science fiction / science fantasy is just not really going to be your bag either.
For me personally, I didn’t find that to be an issue at all (at least within the context of a dramatic science fiction/science fantasy script).
Like, for instance, the Chinese character for English helicopter is 直升机.
I’ve just checked with Co-pilot and if it’s accurate and not hallucinating, it should be a combination of 直 (direct) + 升 (ascend) + 机 (machine).
So if someone did a word-for-character matching it would sound faintly absurd to an English ear if it came out as ‘direct ascension machine’.
But that’s probably no more absurd sounding than if a Chinese person took the English word’s etymology and decided the ‘real’ English word was ‘spiral wing’.
So in the Darmok episode, when the crew might hear ‘Shaka when the walls fell’ what one Tamarians understand when saying when saying it to each other, amongst themselves and in the right circumstances, might be ‘He’s made a proper fucking mess o’ that, ‘hasn’t he?’
As a species, I don’t think they’d have any more issues developing advanced mathematics and technologies than the Chinese have with their direct ascension machines or English speakers with our spiral wings.
The cat’s reaction…🤣😅😂😄. This is why we shouldn’t let intellectuals run anything, drunk or sober.
OK, is anyone else in here currently imagining Stephanie dressed something like Alexis Carrington, reclining on a sofa and slowly swirling an olive around a full martini glass while cackling diabolically?
No?
Just me then?
I find your ideas compelling and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
reclining on a sofa and slowly swirling an olive around a full martini glass while cackling diabolically?
Seems like a sensible idea on a Friday afternoon
I should add that the Sainsbury’s Local I mentioned in my reply, the one with the customer-hostile security measures, isn’t in a rough part of town. It’s in a reasonably respectable area. Bit student-y, but not sketchy. And ditto the branch of Boots I mentioned, the one with the stern recorded warnings about pilfering booming out every two minutes.
It’s more that the animals have escaped containment. They found a relatively high-trust area and exploited it repeatedly, thereby turning it into a much lower-trust area, at least in specific shops.
It needs to be said. Nothing is going to change until people start stating the bloody obvious out loud. Things won’t improve immediately and there are a few more stages down the road before any of this has a chance of turning around.
I assumed everyone was doing it.
[ Adjusts wig. ]
Asian provincial capital. Not saying which Asian.
While we’re on the topic:
Like this?
It’s quite noticeable, the change in atmosphere, the vibe shift, as they say. In under two years. And again, this is not in a rough part of town. Two hundred metres or so down the road there’s a big Waitrose, which, as you’d expect, is perfectly civilised. But in Boots, in the same area, things are much chillier, rather joyless.
‘Twasn’t always thus.
These guys…
So, are we pronouncing this nipp-lij, or nipp-laahhge?
Just think we ought to be clear. Don’t want to sound silly or anything.
You’ve got me. I find most Star Trek Original Series episodes tiresome, and got tired of its successors after a couple seasons. Most written SF doesn’t interest me and the fan culture is off-putting and intellectually “limited”. Much of the written SF in my library seems unworthy of a second reading and some was not even worth a first reading.
[ Eyebrows narrow. ]
Are you allowing Frenchmen in this establishment?
Woman in towel deters thief.
Question asked.
But would you have been able to find or appreciate that which you deem worthy of revisiting had you not read that which no longer interests you?
Not every author is going to produce a masterpiece, and those who do also turn out lesser work.
Has she been arrested yet?
If anyone’s getting aroused by this thread, I’m upping the price of the drinks.
If I get … whatever the opposite of aroused is … will the drinks price come down?
Question asked 2.
Interesting theory.
Well that’s nobody’s business but the Nips. I’ll burn my own coat, tyvm.
A bear, a bucket, and some burly chaps.
Now we’re getting into Sturgeon’s Law territory. (“Ninety percent of SF is crap? So what? Ninety percent of everything is crap.”)
I tend to think that with SF it’s more than 90 percent, but that’s not a fruitful topic to argue.
My wife and I were in Blighty in late ’24 and had a wonderful time. Two weeks wandering London and a train to Torquay and back for the Christie festival. Walking the streets of Kensington, we heard a lot of foreign speech, and women wearing everything from head coverings to full Hefty bags. Otherwise, it was a wonderful time, especially to this anglophile.
We’d love to go back, but it looks like we can’t without encountering diversity. When even the Lake District appears overrun with orcs, never mind Notting Hill.
Weird to think that our visit was like visiting Berlin in the fall of ’32.
[ Writes shopping list, adds gin. ]
[ Underlines. ]
Beware Dorothy Parker’s warning.
I’m not familiar with the kind of thing I’m seeing.
drinks prices…
So I’ve done some counting and a few additions. My calculator just came back with the digital equivalent of What the fuck?
I bet Worstall doesn’t gouge his patrons like this.
Three olives, if you please, you Philistine.
Frankly, I’d like to know his name so I can buy him a drink.
I want to give her a piece of cheese.
[ Ups price of drinks. ]