From the pages of Metro, some highly emotional news:

I’ll give you a moment to steady yourselves. What with the brutality of it all. Namely, a supermarket aisle with – and I quote,

Apparently mere proximity to such a thing – again, a shelf of houmous in a supermarket – can traumatise grown men of a progressive persuasion. Including Mr Amro Tabari, whose dip-induced agonising unfolds before you now:

No, the relevance escapes me, too. Perhaps something will be made of this later, given sufficient contrivance.

I go for the red pepper variety, myself. Hey, I’m just sharing, too.

No laughing at the back. This is a tearful tale.

Stunned by houmous options. When not sobbing, I mean, or filled with a sickening outrage. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Mr Tabari’s emotions, or professed emotions, incline towards the operatic. One might say baffling.

I suspect an explanation of a sort may be looming.

Ah, the aforementioned contrivance. Houmous as a political identity. I think this is where the credulous are meant to feel guilty, or deferential, or something.

I would guess that at least some of those baristas, flower shop owners and amateur theatre actors are just being polite. Not everyone needs a sermon with their dip. Even in Brighton.

You see, that’s where we’re going. Because of course we are. He’s had photos done and everything.

This is starting to sound like one of those fabulist anecdotes in which the speaker is supposedly always being asked, “But how do you cope with being so slim and pretty and loved by everyone?”

One more time. Dip.

And finally, inevitably, the demand:

Or you could just, you know, dial back the pretentious, self-involved whining. Three or four notches should do it.

Update, via the comments:

John D quotes this bold claim,

And adds, drily,

Liz asks,

It does seem to involve a lot of needless drama. Such that one can be traumatised and outraged, reduced to sobbing, by the availability of a savoury dip. It all sounds exhausting. And I think we’re expected to admire this emotional self-indulgence and the cack-handed attempt to manipulate.

And ComputerLabRat speaks for many with this:

I suppose we might, in theory, feel sorry for Mr Tabari, whose time in leftist circles has led him to believe that his self-involved dramas are a basis for being taken seriously. As someone for whom houmous is an identity and a basis for attention and deference. Someone who invokes the alleged injury of “cultural appropriation” and consequently bursting into tears, as if this would be a good look. A basis for status and applause.

I mean, to imagine that this is the look to go for, in a national newspaper, where people can see, does suggest a level of loserdom.

From the realm of the tightly-wound and twitchy, how to eat out while being a needy, neurotic, self-dramatising pinhead:

You can go into any restaurant and ask to be served by an ally or trans positive person.

And you can leave if the restaurant is playing Fox News. Most importantly, you can smugly eat chips while you make a video. pic.twitter.com/lq3lcmy5LS

— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) February 11, 2025

So far as I can make out, the rules are as follows.

First, you should expect the restaurant’s serving staff to be conveniently categorised by their sexual inclinations or some other “ally” attribute, as if that weren’t presumptuous and intrusive – and, you know, weird. And should a pleasingly downtrodden identity be available – and said person dragged into your luminous presence – then you can bestow upon them your glorious and not-at-all-self-serving affirmation.

Naturally, you should make sure everyone sees. And hey, who wouldn’t want to be wheeled out as a prop, an accessory, for someone else’s attention-seeking project?

Oh, and then – but of course – you video yourself talking, with a mouth full of food, about how morally superior you are, before uploading this proof of your own magnificence to social media. Where applause will surely follow.

Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Also, open thread.

Mr Destiny, who is, I gather, some kind of deep thinker, a moral colossus of the left, is apparently unable to make a mug of hot chocolate:

My Uber driver brought me my hot chocolate today on bike. It took 45 minutes to get here, and this is what happens as soon as I pick up the bag to bring it inside.

This is Trump’s America. pic.twitter.com/g4iBNXsQjt

— Destiny (@TheOmniLiberal) November 12, 2024

Needless to say, mockery ensues. 

Update, via the comments: 

Mr Destiny – aka Steven Kenneth Bonnell II – evidently felt that the moment above had some symbolic meaning, some charged political relevance. Which, I suppose, it does, in a way. Though not, I think, of the kind he imagines. In that, it merely tells us something about him.

Mags adds,

Quite. And it’s a world in which your cup of hot chocolate has its own driver.

I did briefly wonder if Mr Bonnell might be trying to make some ironic point about modernity and decadence, but that doesn’t appear to be his style at all. And even if the objective were to say, “Look at how decadent we are,” that doesn’t really work, since the more obvious message is “Look at how decadent I am…” The we being rather presumptuous.

And I suspect that many of us here manage to make it through the day, most days, without being overly decadent. Say, by not having single cups of hot chocolate needlessly delivered to our doors, seemingly on a daily basis. Or by not finding loudly announced amusement in the death of a random stranger who was trying to shield his family from gunfire during an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate.

As Mr Bonnell did.

By all means, consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

And other modern dramas.

First, from the comments, where Clam warns,

Regarding this:

What grates, I think, is the routine overstepping of boundaries, the casual insult. Judging by the transgressive sandwiches, to which the note is attached, it seems the child was prevented from eating and, presumably, publicly embarrassed.

A while ago, one of my nieces received a snotty note scolding her for sending her son to school with a packed lunch consisting of a banana and a peanut butter sandwich, an occasional treat. Apparently, peanut butter, like jam, is a verboten foodstuff. And so, as a result, someone is employed to poke through children’s lunch boxes and to then write snotty notes to parents. A function doubtless enjoyed.

But here’s the thing. If you aren’t paying for something directly, even if you’re still paying indirectly, via taxes, you won’t by default be regarded as a customer, for whom some minimal regard might be shown, and whose boundaries should be respected. Instead, it’s quite likely you’ll be treated as an inconvenience, an irritation, someone who can be insulted and subjected to condescension.

See also, our glorious NHS.

The item linked above recounts, in abbreviated form, my attempt to return a set of crutches to the local NHS hospital – and how an ostensibly simple task became a 45-minute ordeal with farcical overtones. Entailing a trek of a half a mile or so, down endless corridors on multiple floors, from one department to another, then another, then another. An odyssey enlivened by encounters with bizarrely rude and unhelpful staff, and while walking past posters stressing the moral imperative of patients returning their crutches. An undertaking made as impractical, as maddening, and as absurdly complicated, as would seem humanly possible.

And it’s not entirely heartening to realise, as you trek down yet another corridor, that you’re entrusting your wellbeing, perhaps even your life, to an institution that can’t organise a practical system for the returning of crutches.

Oh, and while I have your attention, I bring dating instructions from the land of the badly tattooed and terminally self-involved:

Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

Also, open thread.

And in woke dining news:

Setting aside the small matter of, er, assault and strangulation, readers may wish to ponder the notion, advanced by Mr Rivera and his numerous supporters, that white people, especially white people with blonde hair, shouldn’t be allowed to serve Japanese food.

At which point, I suppose I should mention this:

A shocking twist, I know. I do hope you were sitting down.

When not harassing people for having the wrong colour skin, and when not strangling women, Mr Rivera spends quite a lot of time blocking those who dare to quote his own social media statements.