David Thompson, Author at THOMPSON, blog.

Politics Pronouns Or Else

The Crosswalk Will Be Mined To Protect It From Dirty Shoes

June 10, 2024 81 Comments

Lime, a popular electric scooter and bike rental service, has announced it will be implementing a “no-go zone” around a crosswalk painted with a large Pride flag mural in Spokane, Washington. The crosswalk has become the centre of much discussion after the arrest of multiple teens for making skid marks on the painted pavement…

The release continued: “Officers observed widespread damage as black scuff marks consistent with scooter wheels were observed across the entirety of the mural… Attached to the release were two photos demonstrating the extent of the damage, both of which showed faint black marks on the street painting consistent with thin tire marks.

Sensitive readers may wish to look away now:

Traumatic scenes of the desecration taking place can be found below:

A group of five to six kids just starting doing donuts and creating skid marks on the Pride Mural. Right in front of me as we’re reporting on three people getting arrested for doing the same thing last night.@KHQLocalNews pic.twitter.com/FMXGAg77fx

— Adam Schwager (@schwagerTV) June 6, 2024

The situation is of course terribly fraught and further complications have been uncovered by our tireless media professionals:

After allegedly causing “widespread damage” – again, see photo, above – three suspects have been arrested and charged with first-degree malicious mischief, a class-B felony:

This comes after the crosswalk had been set fire to in May.

Clearly, feelings run high.

Lime’s Director of Government Relations Hayden Harvey told The National Desk that he and everyone at the company “condemn these vile acts in no uncertain terms.”

“At a time when our teams at Lime are beginning pride celebrations around the globe, it is disturbing to see the hate taking place in Spokane,” he added. “We will not let the hateful few spoil the joy of Pride Month in Spokane, and are grateful for those working to make Spokane more welcoming for all.”

Though it occurs to me that the pretentious weeping currently underway could have been avoided by not painting one’s weird religious symbols on the chuffing road at a busy intersection. As if that were a perfectly normal thing to do, and in no way a potential irritant or an invitation to mischief.

And then, inevitably, the sly conflation:

The alleged vandalism, which was claimed by many to be motivated by homophobia, resulted in an outpouring of condemnation from Spokane’s LGBT community and those purporting to be LGBT allies.

At which point, readers may wonder whether the children’s scootering, and the wider disaffection for the increasingly cluttered and kaleidoscopic Pride flag, may have less to do with “homophobia,” as claimed, and rather more to do with a symbol that is now associated with creepy, compelled unrealism, fantasy pronouns, and the steering of children towards experimental drugging and surgical mutilation. The kinds of things that many people, including many gay people, might find a little contentious, or alienating, or morally repugnant.

That the repeatedly ‘enhanced’ Pride flag now represents a range of things to which a great many people, including gay people, might conceivably take exception – or find obnoxious, indeed degenerate – is apparently unthinkable. Or at least unsayable. And so, with the deploying of the word “homophobia,” gay people are being used as a rhetorical shield against objections to, for instance, pornography in schools, the ideological grooming and sexualisation of children, and cross-dressing men in women’s intimate spaces.

Among other things.

However, pretentious howling is very much in fashion, and so,

The scooter rental company at the centre of the alleged “acts of vandalism” has now… implemented a “no-go zone” over the crosswalk, meaning scooters driven over the mural will be remotely shut down. According to the company’s website, entering a “no-go zone” will cause a Lime vehicle to “gradually come to a stop,” forcing a rider to walk their scooter until it is outside the zone.

I’m guessing the wear and tear caused by normal foot traffic will be monitored closely. Dog walkers will doubtless be urged to avoid the sacred space at all costs, lest the unthinkable occur.

Reading time: 3 min

Written by: David

Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (724)

June 7, 2024 158 Comments

Thin blue line. || At last, a third thumb. || Hollywood magic. || Sandals of note. || Just resting his eyes. || Prehistoric Women, 1950. || The progressive retail experience, parts 554, 555, and 556. || A miracle has occurred. || Arachnoid encounter. || Quality credentials. || A life of necessary extravagance, 1968. || Not yet, you bastards. || Niche entertainment. || Go with what works. || Meet the Glaswegians. || A G.I., his wife, and Hitler’s cloak. || Bureaucratic drag. || Long-nosed goblins befuddle Japanese, 1543. || The genre of Christian ska was previously unknown to me. || The thrill of calculation. || The thrill of thrust. || Not sure who’s winning. || Falkirk scenes. || A family night in. || And finally, “The infant should be tested for telekinetic ability at the earliest possible opportunity.”

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Reading time: 1 min

Written by: David

Arse-Chafing Tedium Pronouns Or Else Science

She Has Queer Temporality

June 6, 2024 92 Comments

And is therefore much more special than you:

That’s it, I’m joining Westboro pic.twitter.com/3CFGnrKDyJ

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) June 5, 2024

In this hour-long podcast, Hannah McElhinney, above, and her equally self-preoccupied associate Rudy Jean Rigg – “teacher and creative” – can be heard blathering at length – and sometimes seemingly at random – about “queer temporality” and “how LGBTQ+ people experience time differently to straight and/or cisgender people.”

Though conscience compels me to warn you, it’s an hour you won’t get back. Indeed, the sheer arse-chafing tedium of it is difficult to put into words.

Among the deep wisdom on offer, this:

I think we’re both going through a significant, um, period in our lives, but I think they are different. Like, you’re talking about babies and, like, moving away and kind of, um, solidifying their family units and things like that. What I’m going through is… I’m kind of here, like, having my own sucky path, but, like, for the most part, like, I’m kind of just chilling, so it’s odd for me cuz it’s, like, I am at the stage where I’m kind of, like, do I want to get married, do I want to, like, you know, like, you know, solidify my family unit in a different way. Like, do I want to get another cat?

This is the rhetorical pattern for much of what follows. There’s no shortage of self-reference, and paying attention to one’s queerness, and much airing of niche woes – the endless agonies of being a “creator,” a “creative,” and an “influencer.” And of course the terrible burden of being so much more complicated and interesting than all those other people. The ones who experience time in a humdrum, heteronormative way.

The whole thing – which I endured, heroically – calls to mind some kind of therapy session for the terminally tedious and inadequate.

We also learn,

There is such a thing as heterochronology.

Is that the chronological experience of heteronormativity through time?

Yeah. It’s like time is heteronormative.

Yeah, well, yeah, well, yeah.

This can all be reduced back to quantum physics.

Yes, and the Patriarchy.

Yeah.

So. Much to chew on.

Or choke on, should you happen to be a physicist.

When not experiencing time differently – and showering the credulous with tales to “validate” and “inspire” – Ms McElhinney and her fellow Bringers Of Arcane Knowledge feel a need to,

pay our respects to the traditional owners and Elders – Past, Present and Emerging – of the lands on which we produce Rainbow History Class. Further to this, we acknowledge the Indigenous peoples, including those who are Two Spirit, Third Gender, Non-binary, or Transgender, around the world whose culture and land was stolen by colonisation.

So, clearly, the rumblings on offer are entirely free of conformity or modish pretension of any kind.

Via Katie Herzog.

The subject of pretentious timekeeping has cropped up here before.

Reading time: 2 min

Written by: David

Reheated

Reheated (93)

June 3, 2024 122 Comments

For newcomers, more items from the archives. Come, let us spend time with weirdly neurotic progressive men.

Daddy’s Baggage.

Two-year-old boy likes footballs, tractors. Father “spirals into darkness.”

It turns out that nothing says blurring gender lines – and being totally cool with whatever your child chooses – like pre-emptively hiding away anything with footballs on it. It’s curious how the author’s professed openness – all this free-and-easy blurring of gender lines – seems to require quite a lot of nudging and censorship, and the anxious hiding away of objects deemed too manly.

At which point, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that readers’ comments are not welcome at the Today site, and Yahoo News, where the item above is also published, is “temporarily suspending article commenting.” This, we’re told, is in order to “create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions.” Yes, we will engage and connect by not talking about things.

It does often seem that people writing on certain topics, and with certain political leanings, are to be spared the indignity of discussion or disagreement. Say, people who use their own small children as a political experiment. Or whose list of things deemed “too masculine” includes a shirt with a tractor on it, owning a Ford car, and, obviously, manual labour.

An Alien Presence.

Senior editor of leftist publication encounters a tradesman. Panic ensues.

Mr Resnikoff doubtless imagines himself as the one who’s enlightened, sophisticated, and not at all prejudiced. And yet he veers towards hysteria based on nothing whatsoever beyond the race and presumed social class of a polite, visiting plumber. And note that the plumber’s reticence on political matters – i.e., his professionalism and good manners – is viewed by Mr Resnikoff as suspect.

Please Stop Objecting To The Assault Of Your Person.

White educator denounces “white supremacist violence” of complaining about actual violence. Say, after being punched in the face.

“In… schools,” we’re told, “the desire to punish is racialised,” and “white people’s feelings often have outsized consequences on People of Colour.” The example given to illustrate this alleged phenomenon is of a white, female art teacher – Dr Stabler’s immediate predecessor – who “was said to have wept at the end of every school day” and who pursued assault charges against a black student who forcibly cut said teacher’s hair.

This assault, presumably intended to humiliate the woman and assert dominance over her, is passed over with remarkable ease by Dr Stabler, as if the “white feelings” of the teacher, and the implications of such behaviour – and its accommodation by leftist educators – were unworthy of exploration.

Apparently, hearing that your immediate predecessor was harassed and assaulted, and reduced to tears on a daily basis – by the same teenagers you’re hoping to teach about art – couldn’t possibly be a warning sign, or have any informational content, beyond a belief that those indulging in the disruption, harassment and assault must be steeped in “cultural knowledge,” and obviously oppressed, and therefore deserving of further latitude.

“As the new teacher hired to replace her, I also dealt with feelings of frustration, humiliation, guilt, and anger,” says Dr Stabler. “On the occasions when I reported infractions to parents or administrators, I too played a regrettable role in the consequences my students received at school and at home.” He’s so sorry for having dared to complain about classroom misbehaviour and vandalism, and for being targeted for humiliation. All those “white emotions” we shouldn’t care about.

Other examples of students displaying their “cultural knowledge” – and “kinetic” creativity – include the punching of a white male teacher, who subsequently agonised over whether to press charges, and which prompts Dr Stabler to deploy the euphemism “interpersonal conflict.”

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

I expect to be busy for a couple of days, so you may have to amuse each other.

Reading time: 3 min

Written by: David

Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (723)

May 31, 2024 154 Comments

She would make love to them, selflessly. || Solemn oath, precious memories. || Cower in FEAR – the LASER is here, 1962. || Incoming. || She makes it work. || Incriminating stains. || Suspense. || Secret revealed. || Dating in Sardinia, 1964. || Blushing bride not blushing enough. || Some clenching of the buttocks. || Hey, it’s better than your cheap-ass robot horse. || Heroic rescue attempted. || Tidy is good. Alternatively. || “Yeet the mammary meat,” they cheered. || It’s his lemon dress. || Locals displeased by nude cyclists, altercation ensues. || Terry’s Chocolate Apple. || The thrill of pigeons. || The progressive retail experience, parts 551, 552, and 553. || “I’m parking right now.” || Parenting test, level 10. || Guatemalan action figure. || Retro-futurism. || And finally, no, after you.