Including a misstep to remember; why pigeons don’t rule the Earth; a revealing of nipples; and A Trip to the Planets, circa 1963.
All this and more.
Boutique Suffering
Because, hey, cooking is hard:
An exchange of views ensues. In which, Ms Taylor Lorenz, an “online culture journalist,” struggles with causality. Including the seemingly difficult concept that a heavy reliance on delivered takeaway, and the mindset that implies, may have some bearing on how little cash one has left at the end of the month.
You see, preparing a simple meal, even a packed lunch, is a physical impossibility for those deemed downtrodden.
Bathroom Rumblings
The author of the quoted piece, Mr Sophie Molly, aka Sophie Sparkles, aka Euan Weddell, is, you’ll be shocked to hear, one of those weird, cross-dressing men. The ones that women and girls should welcome into their toilets and changing rooms. His activities include boasting of demanding needless bra fittings from lingerie department shop assistants, and sharing photos of himself wearing only a ball gag and improvised nipple-clamps.
So, hey, nothing to worry about, ladies.
On changing rooms, cross-dressing, and the marking of territory.
Forbidden Context
You see, caring about your family, your ancestors, your lineage, your children, is “actually absurd,” apparently. And by implication, some kinds of context – where you came from, say – are to be scorned as worthless.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including the sound of relief; an exercise in truck alignment; a taxi ride to remember; and some artefacts from the era of nut and gum vending.
All this and more.
Like Cleverness, But Less So
In the nightmare, I’m held at gunpoint and for 24 hours am forced to read aloud works of “queer theory.” I begin with W. Benjamin Myers’ thoughts on “straight and white teeth as a metaphor for a straight and White identity” – and which allegedly reveal the “uninterrogated Whiteness” of routine dental hygiene and its role in maintaining “arrogant and ignorant straight and White identities.”
While you marvel at the naff, strained metaphor – teeth-brushing as an expression of “Whiteness,” an allegedly pathological state – and the irrelevant, space-filling anecdotal rambling, and the unearned, predetermined conclusion, and the invocation of Judith Butler – this Judith Butler – do spare a thought for your gracious host. As I poke at the smouldering wreckage of academia.
Oddments For The Weekend
I Paraphrase, But Not By Much
I’m In Charge Of What You Can Say Because I’m So Humble.
Progressive humility, a wonder of the age.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including how to glue Styrofoam to fabric and other glue-related matters; and circa 1584, how to burn down your enemy’s castle with incendiary cats.
All this and more.
Woes Of The Modern Intellectual
I’m now poking at the implication that the All Powerful State should have an army of po-faced minions patrolling the nation’s coffee shops, correcting the price of oat milk and other disgusting boutique substances. Regardless of the actual cost to the owner of the coffee shop.
What Your Children Are Being Taught
And why you mustn’t find out:
On the subject of parents being shocked to discover, belatedly, what their children are actually being taught, these three incidents came to mind. Among many others. Note, in the third link, the casual invention of a fake curriculum – yes, a fake curriculum – so as to deceive any curious parents. And all while insisting, “This is not being deceitful.”
In light of which, the “anti-fascist” snuff-video session mentioned above – the one for other people’s ten-year-olds – doesn’t exactly scream anomaly or aberration, or some unfortunate misreading of the room, so much as a ratcheting upwards.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a Rear Window timelapse; toilet lasers; and a map of cheese – from semi-hard buffalo cheese to Mongolian horse cheese.
All this and more.
A Chance To Express Encouragement
It’s fundraising week over at my place.
If you’d like to help keep a blog afloat, and ad-free, by all means do.
Titillated By The Primitive
And yet, none of these post-colonial theorists want to “decolonize” electricity, antibiotics, and other oppressive constructs of the Western world, in order to return to the authentic indigenous ways of the darkened teepee and dying from a small scratch on the leg.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including scenes from the machine uprising; scenes of driver irritation; triplets, Sellotape and scientific parenting; and the deadliest stairs in soap opera.
All this and more.
But What If I Catch Their Whiteness?
On efforts to “decolonise” folk singing; on claims of being oppressed by a rapidly shrinking minority; and on rap, the ‘N’ word, and dumb academia:
Having covered quite a few of these “decolonisation” efforts, which generally rely on a fig-leaf of widening access and removing barriers, it’s remarkable just how rarely any meaningful obstacle to access is actually mentioned. Typically, the humdrum is depicted as gruelling and somehow agonising, and motes are inflated to the size of boulders.
We were told, for instance, that racial minorities are being “deterred” from visiting the British countryside “due to deep-rooted, complex barriers.” Barriers such as the fact that rock-climbing instructors are usually white. And apparently this unremarkable state of affairs, in a white-majority country, is something that needs fixing.
Though it occurs to me that if a person with brown skin were being deterred from trying rock climbing by the fact that the instructor is likely to be white, then it seems somewhat unlikely that said person is interested in rock climbing to any significant extent. And a person deterred by such things may also want to reflect on their own racial assumptions. But we’re not supposed to mention those, at least not in an unflattering light.
Transgender Toe Dysphoria
Oddments For The Weekend
Including scenes of toilet plunging; regurgitating bats; when ankle-breaking is in order; and the world’s most expensive substance.
Being Real, She Says
Readers will note Mrs Newsom’s assumptions of accidental criminality – among occupants of San Quentin, a maximum-security prison – and her obliviousness regarding how much effort is required – how many accidents – to actually end up in a prison of any kind.
On progressives and crime, and the boggling wrongness of Mrs Gavin Newsom.