Potato game upgraded. || Starfish tippy-toes. || The thrill of pond water. || I’m pretty sure I’ve done this. (h/t, Dicentra) || The pieties of our betters, a brief compilation. || Possibly related. || Police escort. || Steep. || Explorers. || A project for the weekend. (h/t, Beagle) || Modern problems that your parents didn’t have. || Distancing technology. || I don’t think cats do this. (h/t, Damian) || Don’t tell your mother. || Music machines of note. || We Will Rock You. (h/t, Open Culture) || Savings. || Cheers. || Bloopers of yesteryear. || Parisian balloons, 1914. || Boys and girls. (h/t, Dicentra) || Webslinger. || Not entirely successful wildlife photography. || And finally, somewhat alarmingly, scenes of forbidden love.

As we confront the reality of COVID-19, the idea of living self-sufficiently in the woods, far from crowds and grocery stores, doesn’t sound so bad. 

From the pages of Outside magazine, the romance of the primitive:

I’m on my way to meet Lynx Vilden, a 54-year-old British expat who, for most of her adult life, has lived wholly off the grid. The slick roads don’t help my apprehension about what lies ahead: a three-day, one-on-one experience of “living wild.” The details are hazy. I’ve been advised to prepare for bracing climes and arduous excursions. “Wear sturdy shoes,” Lynx told me. “Bring meat.”

You may want to keep those last two words in mind.

I send a text message to Lynx telling her I’ll be late. Only later do I realise how presumptive this is: she doesn’t have cell service or WiFi.

Feel free to scream quietly into your sleeves.

Until about ten years ago, Lynx also possessed no credit card, nor fixed address; her previous abodes—a tepee in Arizona, yurts in Montana and New Mexico, a snow shelter on the Lappish tundra—had neither electricity nor running water.

As an attempt to glamorise primitive living, away from all those grocery stores, we aren’t, it has to be said, off to the most promising start.

This all changed when she received a modest inheritance from her mother’s estate in Britain that allowed her to purchase a remote five-acre plot some 12 miles outside Twisp.

Primitive living, it turns out, is so much easier with an inheritance. 

When I finally arrive at the property in the early afternoon, she welcomes me to her wooded outpost wearing hand-stitched leathers. She heats her 900-square-foot log cabin—also the handiwork of the prior owners—by tending a wood-burning stove.

Again, if you’re into Stone Age role-play, then spare cash and pre-built property, complete with solar panels, power outlets and rudimentary plumbing, does seem rather handy, perhaps a prerequisite. Such that our fearless disdainer of modernity can “divide her time” flying between continents as mood suits, from Sweden to France’s Dordogne Valley and back to the mountains of Washington, USA. It’s the prehistoric way.

In the pages of Teen Vogue.

Because masked misfit sociopaths are inspirational and totes dreamy.

According to Teen Vogue, Antifa’s behaviour, a collective Cluster-B disorder, is merely “militant self-defence.” A construal that, shall we say, bears little relationship with the videos linked above, or others in the archives. It seems we’re supposed to believe that seeking out gratuitous confrontation and gleefully threatening to kill onlookers, simply for onlooking, is the height of bravery now. And harassing and physically threatening random elderly and disabled people, for trying to use a pedestrian crossing, is totally where it’s at, cat.

It’s a “woke brand,” you see.

Update, via the comments, where Liz notes this,

In one year, Teen Vogue’s readership has nearly halved. Less than 5% of their audience consists of actual teenagers.

Then adds, rather pithily,

So what kind of creeps are reading this shit then?

Well, indeed. What kind of adult searches out a magazine with lots of sexualised content – how to masturbate, use sex toys, etc – and which is supposedly aimed at teenage girls? I doubt there’s an answer that isn’t at least somewhat unsavoury. That unhinged and heavily-airbrushed far-left politics, from Marx to Antifa, should be the new connective tissue at Teen Vogue, the obvious and complementary glue, to the extent that its editors describe their readers as “activists,” is possibly something to ponder.

Also, open thread.

Hog toys. || Big Bob ahoy. || Witches’ brew. || Build your own engines. || Dog versus leaf blower, metamorphosis begins. || At all times, dignity. || Godzilla versus Mito Komon. || A gift for the mother-in-law. || Good idea. (h/t, Perry) || Day 14. (h/t, Damian) || Moon whales detected. || The sounds of cake. || Customer service. || Cat chatter. || Leader of the pack. || A project for the weekend. (h/t, Dicentra) || Her missing shoes. || I think they may be wombles. (h/t, Julia) || Today’s word is intervention. || Lively scenes. (h/t, Neontaster) || Minus 7 Celsius. || Paranormal car crashes. || The transparent jigsaw puzzle you’ve always wanted. || And finally, quite instructively, on the proprieties of video conferencing.

Can you access a broader intelligence and gain quick information without having to use your logical mind?

From the pages of Everyday Feminism, an offer you can’t refuse.

Sharpen your sense of self-awareness.

Just $35.

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

For Mother’s Day I asked for one thing: a house cleaning service.

In the pages of Harper’s Bazaar, Gemma Hartley bemoans the chore of getting her multiple bathrooms cleaned by someone else. Actually, the clean bathrooms are, it turns out, a secondary concern:

The real gift I wanted was to be relieved of the emotional labour of a single task that had been nagging at the back of my mind. The clean house would simply be a bonus.

It’s been said, here at least, that when someone uses the term “emotional labour” unironically, the person doing the mouthing is most likely a bit of a nightmare. Say, the kind of woman who complains about the “emotional labour” of hiring a domestic cleaner. Or the kind who bitches about her husband and his shortcomings in the pages of a national magazine, where friends and colleagues of said husband, and perhaps his own children, can read on with amusement.

My husband waited for me to change my mind to an “easier” gift than housecleaning, something he could one-click order on Amazon. Disappointed by my unwavering desire, the day before Mother’s Day he called a single service, decided they were too expensive, and vowed to clean the bathrooms himself. He still gave me the choice, of course. He told me the high dollar amount of completing the cleaning services I requested (since I control the budget) and asked incredulously if I still wanted him to book it.

Details ensue.

What I wanted was for him to ask friends on Facebook for a recommendation, call four or five more services, do the emotional labour I would have done if the job had fallen to me.

Many details.

I had wanted to hire out deep cleaning for a while, especially since my freelance work had picked up considerably. The reason I hadn’t done it yet was part guilt over not doing my housework, and an even larger part of not wanting to deal with the work of hiring a service. I knew exactly how exhausting it was going to be. That’s why I asked my husband to do it as a gift.

This, it seems, was unknown to said husband and so, alas, ‘twas not to be.

Because I’m generous, an open thread, in which to share links and bicker.

I’ll set the ball rolling with scenes of lockdown enforcement in what appears to be North Yorkshire. 

Oh, and this. 

And 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 helps to keep this place here.

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

High stakes game. || Hardcore buffet. || You think you’ve had a bad day? || A brief history of Supermarionation. || Insert tab ‘a’ into slot ‘b’. || Whatever this is, he’s doing it better than you. || Hot mountain. || Handsome devil. || In my day, we had to make our own entertainment. || Nommy nommy nom. || San Francisco, March 22. || You want one and you know it. || The Antarctic Winter Film Festival. || Wash your potatoes thoroughly. || Under pressure. || Build your own paper jukebox. (h/t, Coudal) || A guide to the giraffe. Includes chest-butts and achieving longness. || Isolated showers. || Look sharp, your date’s arrived. || Unintended consequences. || And finally, amphibiously, one tab or two?

Dan Butler, 29, a radio journalist, and his husband, Hugh O’Connor, 31, a theatre production designer, are also in a relationship with Charles Davis, 28, another theatre production designer.

Heh. Sorry, mustn’t laugh. I denounce myself. And in case you’re wondering, yes, the above is from the Guardian’s ‘Lifestyle’ section, where polyamory – or glorified slutting by emotional inadequates – is still the latest thing and breathlessly endorsed. It starts off quite romantically: 

[Dan and Hugh] met as students at a party… And then the night was over, and Dan was one of the last people there. He said: ‘Goodbye, Hugh.’ And I thought: ‘Oh my God. I have no idea what this guy’s name is. I really like him.’”

Ah, bless.

They moved in with each other after about two months, and held an unofficial wedding in 2014, before same-sex marriage in Australia was legal. They legalised their marriage in 2018… “I remember feeling the happiest I’d ever felt with Dan,” says Hugh.  

So far, so rosy. Readers should note, however, that, despite all this professed happiness, Dan and Hugh’s marriage was an “open” one “from the start,” which is to say, not really a marriage at all. The misuse of terms, in attempts to repackage dissatisfaction, inadequacy and commonplace grubbiness, may crop up again.

“And then when we met Charlie. It was like this extension of a really positive energy.”

For instance.

Charles also had a boyfriend, but that, too, was an open relationship,

Why, it’s almost as if there were a pattern, a trajectory. 

I remember one morning, the three of us had just gone to the beach and Hugh had a meeting, so Dan and I drove Hugh back to the studio. And then Dan drove me back to my suburb and dropped me off. I think he leaned in and kissed me. We were parked outside my apartment block and I looked across the street and saw my boyfriend.

Those golden romantic moments, to treasure forever.

Time for an open thread, in which to share links and bicker. I’ll set the ball rolling with three topical items.

Via Damian, tensions mount. 

Via Julia, a lockdown mystery. 

And via the Beagle, today’s word is improvisation. 

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