David Thompson, Author at THOMPSON, blog.

Free-For-All

Eighteen Years

February 9, 2025 48 Comments

And this place is still here.

Do help yourself to cake. For newcomers, here’s a pretty good introduction to what goes on here. If you like… that, well, there’s plenty more.

Oh, and open thread.

Reading time: 1 min

Written by: David

Ephemera

Toilet-related suspense. || The slightest of smiles. || Surprisingly upright. || Dinner and a show. || Abundant condiments. || Place your bets. || Cops and robbers. || A beginner’s guide to nuclear physics, explained with Fuzzy Felt. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || A brief history of Super Glue. || I think this makes him King of the Dogs. || Big and flexible. || Social gaffe. || Heavyweight altercation with bonus faeces. || Lifestyle influencers. || Helping hand. || Hairy food. || Monastery. || Incoming. || Incoming 2. || More joys of public transport. || Answers on a postcard, please. || On apotemnophilia, a parable for our times. || Just the one portion, thanks. || Man makes poor decision. || Chopstick stuck. || Snake watch. || A situation had arisen. || And finally, niche kink meets product demonstration.

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Reading time: 1 min

Written by: David

Free-For-All His Pretty Nails

Scenes From Current Year

February 5, 2025 143 Comments

A possible series on a theme of belated pushback. I’ll set the ball rolling with this, lifted from the comments.

Fat Man With Far Side Glasses Takes Down Flag:

Queer, trans teacher with they/fae/she pronouns films himself removing the progress pride flag from his classroom following President Trump’s EO.

SO👏MUCH👏WINNING👏pic.twitter.com/Kh5Q5Xy4gM

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 3, 2025

When not mournfully taking down flags, the chap above, named Emerald, our shaper of young minds, imagines himself as Barbie, and likes to stipulate his fabulist pronouns, which are numerous, and which vary according to location, mood, and medication:

They/Fae/She for friends and family.

She/They to co-workers.

She/Her to strangers.

And,

He/Him to strangers when I don’t feel safe.

Whether children should feel safe when left in a subordinate position with a mentally unstable cross-dressing man whose forearms bear what appear to be self-harm cutting scars, I leave to the reader.

Emerald would have us believe,

My presence doesn’t indoctrinate kids. I am just here to teach them English.

Which raises the question of why flags affirming serious mental illness, compelled unrealism, and surgical mutilation were felt to be necessary props in a classroom where children learn English.

Or, as commenter EmC put it,

Kids having to learn his made-up pronouns is indoctrination.

Kids having to pretend he’s a woman is indoctrination.

Yes, that.

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

Reading time: 1 min

Written by: David

Academia Behold My Massive Breasts

What, These Knockers Here?

February 3, 2025 130 Comments

In academic news, Yasmin Benoit, “model and award-winning asexual activist,” announces her new position and wants you to notice her cleavage:

I’m honoured to announce that I’ve been given a visiting position at @KingsCollegeLon! We’re going to be conducting research into asexuality together & our first academic paper will be coming out this month! I’m in my academic era. 🎓#ThisIsWhatAsexualLooksLike pic.twitter.com/cam5uhAvvt

— Yasmin Benoit, MSc (@theyasminbenoit) January 3, 2025

Because she’s so asexual, you know.

Via Ophelia, who asks a not unreasonable question.

Readers are welcome to speculate as to what, exactly, “asexual rights” might entail, and how being asexual, or, more coyly, aromantic, differs in any meaningful way from having a low sex drive. Other than the statusful, rather pretentious labelling, I mean.

Update, via the comments:

Clam quips,

So she’s going to write an academic paper in… three weeks?

*tries not to look at tits*

Truly, we live in an age of wonders.

At which point, I should add that Ms Benoit’s insights, aired via Instagram, include a revelation that SpongeBob Squarepants is also asexual. Which may hint at the dizzying levels of scholarship to be anticipated.

Inevitably, Ms Benoit shoehorns in a racial victimhood angle. Because… well, one can’t be seen without one, I suppose. Not in academia. And so, we’re told that asexual people who are also black “just aren’t perceived as the ideal type of asexual representation, nor are we as amplified or included within the asexual community nearly as much.”

Yes, it’s tears and contrivance all the way down.

And I have to say, Visiting Research Fellows aren’t generally so keen to show off their bras in their social media avatars, or to foreground their breasts in every single photo, or indeed to do interviews with Playboy magazine. Complete with breast-heavy – but, like, totally asexual – photoshoots.

Above, one of many such items. For research purposes only.

Reading time: 1 min

Written by: David

Reheated

Reheated (101)

January 29, 2025 299 Comments

For newcomers, some items from the archives:

Hard To Tell If It’s Going Well.

The thrill of atomised dairy products.

Here, let me bring you artistic sustenance, with some “performance documentation” from Manhattan’s Grace Exhibition Space. The mighty talent featured in the following video is artist, educator and “community organiser” Alex Romania, whose work teeters on the edge of profundity, as will doubtless become clear, via juddering and convulsion, and the strategic deployment of twenty-five pounds of powdered cheese.

New Niche Indignation.

On transgender dinner parties, where competitive upset is the sweetest dish.

Readers are invited to ponder the prospect of a dinner party at which, in order to be polite and suitably affirming, you’re obliged to insinuate that the host is rapist material. And to do it convincingly. Rather than, say, compliment the cooking or the décor.

Sudden-Onset Womanhood.

On gender-bending Bond and other modern wonders.

We’re also told, “A gendered spin on the character can open up more potential for exploring Bond’s individuality.” And this exploration of the character’s individuality will apparently be achieved by erasing a rather fundamental aspect of the character – his maleness – and replacing him with an entirely different person of a different sex.

Readers are invited to ponder whether similar transitions might enrich the character of, say, Miss Marple, who, via similar logic, could be depicted as male, and as always having been male. Thereby exploring her individuality.

Answers on a postcard, please.

The recent, sex-swapped iteration of Doctor Who is invoked as a “positive example” on this front, as if Jodie Whittaker’s brief, unloved manifestation had been a rip-roaring success – despite the terrible writing and wildly unpopular retconning, both loudly derided by fans, and despite the subsequent, rapid death-spiral of viewing figures. Because boring and alienating much of your audience, and shrinking it dramatically, is a political triumph. A breath of “new life.”

Big City Dreams.

On London’s struggling artists. Terms I use loosely.

At which point, readers may suspect that the imperative is not so much being creative, but being creative in London, a notoriously expensive city, but in which one can draw attention to the fact that one lives and works in London, a notoriously expensive city. Thereby glowing with a kind of location status.

Readers may also note the article’s, shall we say, coyness regarding the art on offer – all that cruelly underfunded creativity. None of which is displayed to sway readers of the Observer. The nearest we get is a photo of Ms Kwan standing next to a creation that we cannot actually see, and a photo of Grayson Perry in a hideous frock.

Our Betters Stroke Their Pets.

The hounds of love.

Other questions generated by means of Queer Theorising include, “Do I think I’m having sex with my dogs when they kiss my face?” Apparently, for Dr Kathy Rudy, a Professor of Women’s Studies, being licked by a dog is difficult to distinguish from kissing grandma on the cheek or being lost in a full-on erotic fever. And thus, we’re told, “The line between ‘animal lover’ and zoophile is not only thin, it is non-existent.”

For those craving more, The Year Reheated is a pretty good place to start.

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

Reading time: 2 min

Written by: David