It didn’t go as planned and was a tad embarrassing. || Bee rears. || A brief history of peanut butter. || Goldfish playing football. || Formal wear, I guess. || Indoor weather detected. || When the delightful scenery attacks you. || And who here wouldn’t? (h/t, Julia) || “We hope you are as excited as we are.” || Today’s words are “angry cock energy.” || Assorted background noises. (h/t, Things) || Upmarket scented bubbles. || At last, a Rubik’s Cube movie. || Modernity is a hell of a thing. || The thrill of car park security footage. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || The joys of public transport, part 276. || Tokyo’s museum of parasites. || A brief history of the violin bow. || Noisy birds. || And finally, activate black polo-neck.

And so, as the novelty wears thin, and we once again daub our doors with lamb’s blood, let us share links and bicker. 

I’ll set the ball rolling with a woke prayer, some emotional scenes, and a reminder that size matters. 

As some of you may be shopping from home a little more than usual, please bear in mind that any Amazon UK shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

It does help to keep this place here.

For those in need of further diversion, the Reheated series is there to be poked at. 

As we gingerly lower our buttocks into the hot bath of ’21, spare a thought for the Guardian’s Afua Hirsch and her statusful associates:

A conversation I had recently with a black woman who wields enormous power in the TV industry sums it up for me. She and I were meeting from our respective bedrooms in the now familiar, strange intimacy of a one-on-one Zoom meeting. She has developed a massive rash all over her boobs.

The cause of this rash? Well, this is the Guardian. And so, 

“It’s years of bullshit – racism, micro-aggressions,” she told me in a matter-of-fact tone. “I have never had any eczema before. My doctor said it’s erupted now because I’ve finally given myself permission to acknowledge the toxic stuff I’ve been putting up with during all these decades of my career.”

Readers are invited to ponder whether a reputable GP, one fit for employment, would actually diagnose racist microaggressions as the most obvious cause of boob eczema. Rather than, say, suggesting a change of bra or detergent. It does sound both improbable and awfully specific, as if tailored to the preoccupations of a tiresome monomaniac. But clearly this is something that Ms Hirsch is quite eager to believe, or at least have us believe, and is presented as damning evidence of both “structural racism” and, simultaneously, the urgent need to pathologise “whiteness.” It’s also, apparently, a reason to denounce a government minister who dares to question whether pretentious victimhood is an optimal life goal.

For Ms Hirsch, microaggression boob rash “sums it up.”

Via the Lancastrian Oik.

In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.

The year began with a display of the Guardian’s famed sense of proportion, with the paper’s Barbara Ellen informing us, emphatically, that, “We’re nearly all vegan now” – we being the general population – before asking with equal confidence, “Who isn’t vegan in some way these days?” The Vegan Society, meanwhile, acknowledged that the demographic in question amounts to barely 1% of the British population. Hungry for more fearless and irrefutable leftwing journalism, we turned to the pages of Salon, where the chronically breathless Mr Chauncey DeVega declared that “The American people” – and not just Salon columnists – “are in a manic state because of Trump’s regime.” 300 million citizens are, we learned, living in fear of Mr Trump’s “fascism,” his allegedly annihilationist tendencies, and of course his “secret police.”

Meanwhile, Slate readers mulled the moral quandaries of progressive life, before being rewarded with somewhat peculiar and potentially disastrous advice, on subjects including sex tapes and prodigious weight gain. And via which, we learned that the best way for an insecure straight woman to find romantic and sexual satisfaction is for her to start dating polyamorists and gay people, on grounds that this will ease both her trust issues and her frequent panic attacks.

In February, we learned, via the Guardian, of the latest must-have status accessory – namely, dinner parties at which one pays $2,500 to be scolded as a racist, an upholder of “white supremacy,” based on nothing, by someone suitably brown and opportunist. Participants – “mostly Democrats” – are told to “own their racism,” however invisible, and are warned against having “unmonitored thoughts.” Elsewhere in the Guardian, we were assured by leader writer Susanna Rustin that a “reordering of society” is in order, to correct the apparently unendurable problem of some people having a standard of living not yet available to every single human being on the planet. “Lives of luxury” – defined by “weekly shopping sprees” – could be “replaced” – “painlessly” – with “artistic expression and creativity,” specifically, dance lessons.

While in Salon, Bay Area progressive Nicole Karlis wrote of the “heartache, tears and stress” brought on by the loss of one’s plastic water bottle. A sentiment echoed by fellow progressives and non-specific activists, who shared their wrenching tales of “water-bottle separation anxiety,” a phenomenon that can apparently induce fits of weeping and feelings of “falling into chaos.”

In March, readers of the Observer were invited to ponder the profound moral question, “Is it ever acceptable for a feminist to hire a cleaner?” Much fretting ensued regarding the acceptable sex and skin colour of the person doing the cleaning, with the paper’s Sally Howard deciding that the most feminist way to empower cleaning ladies – and to avoid the “structural devaluation of women’s work” – is to make said ladies unemployed. The views of Ms Howard’s former cleaners, fired in the name of feminism, were not deemed worthy of inclusion.

From the archives, one of my favourites. Alex Gorosh and Wylie Overstreet’s short film about the Moon – and what can sometimes happen when people stop to look at it. Seemed oddly appropriate. If you haven’t seen it before, enjoy.

As is the custom here, posting will be intermittent over the holidays and readers are advised to subscribe to the blog feed, which will alert you to anything new as and when it materialises. Thanks for another 1.5 million or so visits this year and thousands of comments, many of which prompted discussions that are much more interesting than the actual posts. Which is pretty much the idea. And particular thanks to all those who’ve made PayPal donations to keep this rickety barge above water. It’s much appreciated. Curious newcomers and those with nothing better to do are welcome to rummage through the reheated series in search of entertainment.

To you and yours, this year more than most, a very good one.