THOMPSON, blog.
THOMPSON, blog. - Marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.

Slide THOMPSON, blog Poking the pathology since 2007
  • thompson, blog
  • Reheated
  • X
  • Email
Browsing Category
Archive
Anthropology Classic Sentences Music

Feeling The Season

December 4, 2017 66 Comments

Christmas music is emotionally damaging and a hazard to our health.

Yes, the Guardian’s signature inversion of the festive spirit has once again started to blossom:

‘Tis the season when you can recite every single word of It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year because you’ve heard it 25,671 times this morning already and, let me tell you, there is nothing remotely wonderful about the kids jingle belling and everyone telling you to be of good cheer. It’s extremely annoying.

So writes columnist Arwa Mahdawi, who, it seems, and unlike most grown women, has yet to master the controls of a music player or radio.  

To bolster those eye-catching claims of musical health hazards, Ms Mahdawi cites a report sharing the hitherto unguessed-at news that round-the-clock exposure to in-store Christmas songs can irritate a significant minority of retail staff. Yes, I know. I’ll pause while you steady yourselves. However, these anhedonic tidings extend beyond mere in-store playlist repetition:   

The report [notes] that 43% of people who hate holiday music think it’s too repetitive and 26%, who I imagine all read the Guardian, said they the dislike the materialism of Christmas music.

Yes, people are buying their loved ones things that they might like. How ghastly.

It’s true that a lot of festive music is extremely materialistic.

It’s a “futile materialism,” apparently.

But, worse still, a lot of it is just deeply weird if not outright disturbing. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, for example, a classic of the genre… can be read as an early warning about the powers of the surveillance state and the pervasiveness of sexual predation.

This, remember, is written by a grown woman. 

Continue reading
Reading time: 2 min
Written by: David
Academia Anthropology Psychodrama

Because The Comments Are Worth Reading

December 3, 2017 56 Comments

Yet again, we find that the victim group du jour’s distress is not predicated on any overt act of exclusion or discrimination, but upon the group’s own internal emotional hang-ups.

So writes R Sherman in the comments, regarding this latest fit of identitarian psychodrama, shared by Atempdog, in which implausibly delicate students and administrators rail against the “homonormative whiteness” of a campus LGBTQ centre. As commenter Farnsworth M Muldoon notes in reply, the students are, inevitably, also aggrieved, or pretending to be aggrieved, by a great many other things, including gay pride flags, which apparently perpetuate “a white gay ideal”; notions of fraternity and sorority, which are “problematic” and a cause of discomfort, albeit for reasons not entirely clear; and the campus gym, which, we’re told, reinforces “expectations of manliness” while simultaneously creating a crushing and intolerable “pressure to be fit.”

Being, as these things are, the result of pretension and personal dysfunction rather than anything approaching actual injustice, the umbrage on display is of course insatiable. There’s no way to please the compulsively, competitively, neurotically indignant, whose in-group status and sense of importance depend on disaffection and imaginary woe, and any effort to appease such creatures is likely to encourage further scolding and demands.

As illustrated, for instance, here and here.

Continue reading
Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Anthropology Psychodrama

Petting Zoo

December 1, 2017 102 Comments

Some Nth-level virtue-signalling:

“Come, look at the negroes, Martha.”

Via Farnsworth M Muldoon in the comments.

Continue reading
Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemeraren’t

49 Comments

Yes, I know, you’re getting another glorious opportunity to throw together your own pile of links and oddities in the comments. Oh, don’t pull that face. Besides, you’re getting pretty good at it. I’ll set the ball rolling with an assortment of home maintenance horrors, an improbable heist, a lesson in the importance of tilting your head, a second-language difficulty ranking, a burly chap in search of jewellery, and an endeavour that starts with jumping off a mountain and only then gets tricky. 

Oh, and how to turn a cat into a black hole. 

Continue reading
Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Basking

Nag, Bloody Nag, Bloody Nag

November 30, 2017 32 Comments

With the season of bonhomie fast approaching, patrons are reminded that any festive shopping done via the following Amazon links – here for the UK and here for the US – results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

That is all. 

Continue reading
Reading time: 1 min
Written by: David
Page 261 of 696« First...102030«260261262263»270280290...Last »

Blog Preservation Fund




Subscribestar Amazon UK
Support this Blog
Donate via QR Code

RECENT POSTS

  • Explaining Civilisation
  • The Sound Inside Their Heads
  • Friday Ephemera (773)
  • Striving For Diversity
  • Reheated (108)

Recent Comments

  • David on Explaining Civilisation Jul 1, 06:45
  • David on Explaining Civilisation Jul 1, 06:39
  • David on Explaining Civilisation Jul 1, 06:09
  • dicentra on The Sound Inside Their Heads Jul 1, 04:48
  • dicentra on The Sound Inside Their Heads Jul 1, 04:47
  • Fred the Fourth on Explaining Civilisation Jul 1, 04:40
  • aelfheld on Explaining Civilisation Jul 1, 04:33
  • dicentra on Explaining Civilisation Jul 1, 04:25
  • dicentra on Explaining Civilisation Jul 1, 04:22
  • aelfheld on Explaining Civilisation Jul 1, 03:53

SEARCH

Archives

Archive by year

Interesting Sites

Blogroll

Categories

  • Academia
  • Agonies of the Left
  • AI
  • And Then It Caught Fire
  • Anthropology
  • Architecture
  • Armed Forces
  • Arse-Chafing Tedium
  • Art
  • ASMR
  • Auto-Erotic Radicalism
  • Basking
  • Bees
  • Behold My Massive Breasts
  • Behold My Massive Lobes
  • Beware the Brown Rain
  • Big Hooped Earrings
  • Bionic Lingerie
  • Blogs
  • Books
  • Bra Drama
  • Bra Hygiene
  • Cannabis
  • Classic Sentences
  • Collective Toilet Management
  • Comics
  • Culture
  • Current Affairs
  • Dating Decisions
  • Dental Hygiene's Racial Subtext
  • Department of Irony
  • Dickensian Woes
  • Did You Not See My Earrings?
  • Emotional Support Guinea Pigs
  • Emotional Support Water Bottles
  • Engineering
  • Ephemera
  • Erotic Pottery
  • Farmyard Erotica
  • Feats
  • Feminist Comedy
  • Feminist Dating
  • Feminist Fun Times
  • Feminist Poetry Slam
  • Feminist Pornography
  • Feminist Snow Ploughing
  • Feminist Witchcraft
  • Film
  • Food and Drink
  • Free-For-All
  • Games
  • Gardening's Racial Subtext
  • Gentrification
  • Giant Vaginas
  • Great Hustles of Our Time
  • Greatest Hits
  • Hair
  • His Pretty Nails
  • History
  • Housekeeping
  • Hubris Meets Nemesis
  • Ideas
  • If You Build It
  • Imagination Must Be Punished
  • Inadequate Towels
  • Indignant Replies
  • Interviews
  • Intimate Waxing
  • Juxtapositions
  • Media
  • Mischief
  • Modern Savagery
  • Music
  • Niche Pornography
  • Not Often Seen
  • Oppressive Towels
  • Parenting
  • Policing
  • Political Nipples
  • Politics
  • Postmodernism
  • Pregnancy
  • Presidential Genitals
  • Problematic Acceptance
  • Problematic Baby Bouncing
  • Problematic Bookshelves
  • Problematic Bra Marketing
  • Problematic Checkout Assistants
  • Problematic Civility
  • Problematic Cleaning
  • Problematic Competence
  • Problematic Crosswords
  • Problematic Cycling
  • Problematic Drama
  • Problematic Fairness
  • Problematic Fitness
  • Problematic Furniture
  • Problematic Height
  • Problematic Monkeys
  • Problematic Motion
  • Problematic Neighbourliness
  • Problematic Ownership
  • Problematic Parties
  • Problematic Pasta
  • Problematic Plumbers
  • Problematic Punctuality
  • Problematic Questions
  • Problematic Reproduction
  • Problematic Shoes
  • Problematic Taxidermy
  • Problematic Toilets
  • Problematic Walking
  • Problematic Wedding Photos
  • Pronouns Or Else
  • Psychodrama
  • Radical Bowel Movements
  • Radical Bra Abandonment
  • Radical Ceramics
  • Radical Dirt Relocation
  • Reheated
  • Religion
  • Reversed GIFs
  • Science
  • Shakedowns
  • Some Fraction Of A Sausage
  • Sports
  • Stalking Mishaps
  • Student Narcolepsy
  • Suburban Polygamist Ninjas
  • Suburbia
  • Technology
  • Television
  • The Deep Wisdom of Celebrities
  • The Genitals Of Tomorrow
  • The Gods, They Mock Us
  • The Great Outdoors
  • The Politics of Buttocks
  • The Thrill of Décor
  • The Thrill Of Endless Noise
  • The Thrill of Friction
  • The Thrill of Garbage
  • The Thrill Of Glitter
  • The Thrill of Hand Dryers
  • The Thrill of Medicine
  • The Thrill Of Powdered Cheese
  • The Thrill Of Seating
  • The Thrill Of Shopping
  • The Thrill Of Toes
  • The Thrill Of Unemployment
  • The Thrill of Wind
  • The Thrill Of Woke Retailing
  • The Thrill Of Women's Shoes
  • The Thrill of Yarn
  • The Year That Was
  • Those Lying Bastards
  • Those Poor Darling Armed Robbers
  • Those Poor Darling Burglars
  • Those Poor Darling Carjackers
  • Those Poor Darling Fare Dodgers
  • Those Poor Darling Looters
  • Those Poor Darling Muggers
  • Those Poor Darling Paedophiles
  • Those Poor Darling Sex Offenders
  • Those Poor Darling Shoplifters
  • Those Poor Darling Stabby Types
  • Those Poor Darling Thieves
  • Tomorrow’s Products Today
  • Toys
  • Travel
  • Tree Licking
  • TV
  • Uncategorized
  • Unreturnable Crutches
  • Wigs
  • You Can't Afford My Radical Life

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

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