When not aching with her own humanity, Ms Luby likes to tell other people about how she aches with her own humanity.
Guardian contributor “feels life more intensely” than other people and is prone to “ecstatic rapture.”
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a discussion about wrinkles; a lively simulator; how to slice bread; and some pondering of bottoms.
All this and more.
Merriment Detected, Fretting Ensues
White people strum banjos, have fun. Fretting ensues at University of Sheffield:
Obviously, activities that are chiefly indulged in by white people – in this case, folk singing – must be deemed suspect and found problematic with great urgency, and then probed for hidden wrongness. At taxpayer expense. And all this scholarly rigour ain’t cheap, you know…
Behind this mannered waffle is the weird implication that devotees of folk music are somehow, simply by existing, excluding racial minorities. Shooing them away. Though, as so often, details on this point are neither obvious nor forthcoming.
Still, perhaps we can look forward to an academic interrogation of classic car shows in Nottinghamshire as some heinous bastion of “white-centricity.” Another item on the list of Things That Must Be Decolonised And Morally Corrected.
“Our aim,” say our tearful academics, “is to break down the barriers for people to get involved in folk music. Opening up the genre to different audiences.”
Different audiences. Not the audience that folk music actually has, mind, the one it attracts and which is arrived at via choice and musical inclination. And again, no actual barriers to participation are specified. But the audience is nonetheless all wrong, apparently.
Fishing Without Bait
Or, The Difficulties of Satisfying Progressive Women:
It occurs to me that there’s something a little dissonant about the framing of affection and basic consideration – say, remembering your partner’s birthday – as “unpaid.” As “emotional labour.” As if being in a relationship or having any concern for those you supposedly care about were some onerous, crushing chore. As if you should be applauded – and financially compensated – for the thirty-second task of adding a birthday to the calendar on your phone.
The attitude implied by the above would, I think, explain many failures on the progressive partner-finding front and the consequent “stepping away from dating altogether.” Though possibly not in ways the author intended.
As if the concept of wanting to care, to help, to remember those birthdays, were somehow alien or offensive.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including the fondling of mummified feet; the beer coat of your dreams; an air-conditioner crisis; and two and a half minutes of Hitchcock.
Yet It Keeps On Happening
Subordination, Baby
On allyship, so-called, and assuming the position:
The word ally is typically used, by the people who rush to use it, to mean something like advocate, or mouthpiece, or supplicant, or puppet. There’s no discernible interest in, or expectation of, reciprocation; no obvious shared goal or mutual benefit. Indeed, the role, once assumed, appears to entail saying dumb and vividly untrue things, thereby becoming unreliable and absurd.
Say, by insisting that odd, cross-dressing men are somehow, magically, women. Or that a reluctance to mouth fabulist pronouns, to affirm a person’s imaginary themness, is some life-threatening moral oversight.
And then there are the not infrequent detours into outright struggle sessions – as seen, for instance, here, where a disobedient woman finds herself being scolded by a man in an unconvincing wig for not doing the “work” expected of an ally – essentially cowed deference and dishonesty on demand. This, then, is a world in which allyship – “listening to the community” – requires prostration, a suspension of cognitive faculties, and a surrendering of basic probity.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including inadvisable activities; the definition of high-maintenance; an eye-catching detail that isn’t mentioned; and a scoreboard of failed apocalyptic predictions.
All this and more.
Little Things, Like Sanitation
On cross-dressing shoe-robbers; “lesbian-dog relationalities”; and a nightmare eco-holiday:
Dish magazine hailed the project as “Seasonal, sustainable, organic, artisanal, waste-free, foraged.” While readers of EasyJet Traveller were told that the resort is “A new way of living that’s as sustainable as it is delicious.” For Ms Helbæk and Mr Hansen, the name of the resort, which is Danish for “sense of place,” reflects “which direction we need to go as a society.”
Readers will doubtless be intrigued by the “foraged” food – i.e., carrots and leaves, served repeatedly – plus the unheated rooms, the lack of running water, and the whole shitting-in-a-barrel thing. For a mere £900 a night, one can’t expect luxuries like plumbing, protein, or the prospect of heat.
Question Asked
“Why does having a boyfriend feel Republican?”
Oddments For The Weekend
Including some unfortunate flaccidity; a guide to elephant’s toenails; sign language translation gloves; and a camera for the monitoring of your toilet bowl contents.
All this and more.
The Progressive Anxiety
On crime, conflictedness, and weird excuses:
Regarding the consequent conflictedness and anxiety, all that progressive wrongness, these three posts include suitably vivid illustrations of the phenomenon.
Among which, a claim that more theatre for schoolchildren would somehow deter the kinds of creatures who repeatedly sucker-punch elderly ladies for being the wrong race, and a chap who insists that women should allow themselves to be mugged lest their mugger, out on probation, come to harm.
Oh, and the belief, expressed by a Guardian columnist, that when you find your home being burgled in the middle of the night, the real victims, the people deserving of sympathy and indulgence, are the ones breaking into your home while brandishing carving knives and then driving off with your valuables in your car.
Our betters, you know. They say so themselves.
Mutual Admiration Society
Yes, an “always Labour” politics teacher clashes with a GP who votes “Labour every general election.”
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a disobedient dentist; a switched-on bishop; a coffee cup made of coffee; and a project requiring patience and one jumping spider.
All this and more.
Are You Feeling The Vibrations?
When your on-campus Indigenous Healer is armed, indigenously, with a totally indigenous tuning fork:
Those touched by Ms Schenandoah’s uncanny powers will learn that the forest is “a relative, not a resource,” and that birds “sing in the morning because they’re happy.” Quality stuff.
Armed with such arcane skills, Ms Schenandoah – whose job description is curiously vague – will provide “a safe space where Indigenous students can cope with stress and trauma.”
Yes, the trauma of attending one of the more expensive and statusful colleges in America, with its annual fees of $70,000, its 920 acres of rolling lawns, its 20 tennis courts, and a capacious ice-skating pavilion.
He Big Mad
A grumpy cross-dressing man. A snapshot of our times.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including scenes of cleavage; Big Derek and the haunted nightclub, circa 1970; the 10 drunkest countries; and a report on lesbian houseboating and other dubious PhDs.
The Small Matter Of The Bar Tab
Yes, 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.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including ejaculation statistics; the ancient sport of road bowling; rap but with breathing difficulties; and hooves, crossbow bolts and other vulture treasure.
All this and more.
Not Reading The Room
From the pages of the Guardian, a reminder of which concerns – and by extension which citizens – simply don’t matter:
Readers are welcome to marvel at the conceit that objections to current policy – an effectively borderless nation – can only be the result of ignorance. No other possibilities being conceivable, it seems. And so, the flow of information, of views to be considered, and any expectations of listening, seem likely to travel in one direction only.
Readers will also note the assumption that the indigenous proletariat – those low-status citizens daring to be angry at the downgrading of their home – merely need to have their objections corrected. By drama of a very particular kind. As if concerns regarding rapid demographic transformation and a loss of cultural common ground could only ever be wrong.
Oh there’s more.