It turns out that when you try to pretend away fundamental realities, any reminder of those realities has to be repressed or erased, or at least shouted at quite loudly.
Can Anyone Else Hear Ticking?
In celebrity news:
Emma Watson, 35, says the pressure to get married is “a violence” against young people.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including crunchy ant cheese; shower scenes; recording an intimate moment; and Australia’s uranium rush, circa 1964.
For All Your Cross-Dressing Needs
You see, Mr Alme feels “very uncomfortable” if he doesn’t have “an outlet” for his “need to sit in a wheelchair.” That’s sitting in a wheelchair while dressed as a woman, adorned with make-up and painted nails, and while feigning disability. Just so we’re clear on this.
When asked by his wife whether this behaviour is a fetish, he replied, somewhat coyly, “Maybe so.” Our facilitator of sensitivity also tells us that he feels “a lot of excitement” when buying himself ladies’ shoes, particularly “shoes with high heels.” Indeed, Mr Alme boasts an extensive collection.
Because wheelchair and heels, obviously.
The idea that one’s bizarre and rather elaborate sexual kinks – including wheelchairs and cross-dressing – probably shouldn’t be inflicted on random strangers, on work colleagues, and on one’s own children, of which he is the father of two, appears to have escaped him.
Oh, there’s more. Better bring a stiff drink.
But We Can All Feel Pious While Freezing In The Dark
For those who find the UK’s energy policy a weird and bewildering thing, a sobering interview with the energy analyst Kathryn Porter.
How Dare You Notice Reality
It turns out that noticing the obvious – that sexual dysmorphia is a mental health issue, that the skeletons of men and women are quite distinct, and that some members of the so-called “LGBTQI community” are quite extreme in their ambitions, as illustrated by the case itself – has now been deemed taboo, and indeed punishable.
In which we learn that cross-dressing men are women, with magic woman bones.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a launderette drama; a brief history of prison breaks; some unrequested motion; and the “dynamic authenticity” of Mr William Shatner.
How Dare You Get Your Life Together
On perversity as a marker of progressive status:
The meaning of the term “marriage fundamentalism” – a term used repeatedly – isn’t made entirely clear, and its allegedly racist and life-crushing particulars are, inevitably, “hidden,” “invisible,” and conveniently vague – despite the loudly announced use of “an intersectional lens.” But it seems to mean something like the tendency of many adults to see marriage as of mutual benefit and an optimal way to raise children.
Stripped of contrivance, I’m assuming the above is a roundabout admission that, on average, people who find marriage an alien concept and much too demanding, and who opt instead for transient partners, fatherless children, and unstable relationship trash fires, tend to do less well in life, along with their offspring. Though I’m not sure why the response should be to blame those who get their shit together, marry, and raise children more successfully.
If little Don’t-Know-Who-My-Dad-Is is starting fires at school and looks destined for a life of delinquency and crime, this is not obviously the fault of the happily married Mr and Mrs Jefferson and their two non-fire-starting children. And no amount of chest-puffing about “heteropatriarchy,” “unequal power relations” and “white supremacy” seems likely to alter that fact.
Recurring Urges
In short, before ending up in prison, the vast majority of the perpetrators, the supposedly downtrodden and marginalised, have at least five prior arrests, with almost half having 10 or more, and one in seven, 20 or more. At which point, the phrase that comes to mind is the nature of the beast.
Other phrases may conceivably occur to readers.
Those with a taste for grim humour are steered towards this quite strong indication of how a crime rate can improve when just three burglars – with over 200 convictions between them – flee the police in a stolen car before colliding with something solid and ceasing to be.
An illustration, one of many, of how a very large fraction of crime could be prevented by dealing decisively with a surprisingly small number of persistent offenders.
Oh, there’s more.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a tape-bowing ensemble; scenes of heavy breathing; the World Diddling Championship of 1974; some wisdom hard won; and the proverbial bringing of a knife to a gunfight.
All this and more.
Validation, You Say
From Australia, more thing-that-never-happens news.
Not Entirely Similar
A brief history of Cancel Culture:
Readers may wish to ponder whether the sins mentioned above – expressing doubts about rioting, or teaching Chinese pronunciation to students of Chinese – exist on the same level of inaptness as, say, a public-school teacher showing ten-year-olds shockingly graphic video of a man being shot in the neck, and killed, in front of his family, and showing that footage repeatedly, “numerous times,” while hectoring those same ten-year-olds on the merits of so-called “anti-fascism.”
Answers on a postcard, please.
There Was An Attempt To Buy Instant Coffee
Oddments For The Weekend
Including unhappy bathroom accessorising; signage issues; deterring wolves; and Captain James ‘Big Hair’ Kirk and the Milk-Stealing Klingons.
It’s Protest, You Hear
Some Squinting Required
On incongruous period-drama casting; “decolonised” singing; and adventures in the world of niche pornography:
To summarise: Opportunist female porn models who pretended to be men pretending to be women, to thereby rake in lots of cash, have annoyed actual men who pretend to be women, including men who pretend to be women while making pornography.
See, I bring you the wonders of the world.
The ladies’ act of presenting themselves as the opposite sex, albeit with extra steps, was not, it seems, deemed affirming by those who like to present themselves as the opposite sex.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including arse bubbles; a magic bucket; unhappy hoovering; and, inevitably, toilet-paper mushrooms.
Third-Party Shagging
On “non-hierarchical” relationships and other innovations of the progressive world:
The above, I should add, was one of several attempts by New York magazine to portray unfaithfulness and cuckoldry, and the consequent anxieties, as the very zenith of a progressive lifestyle.
As when a betrayed husband, Michael Sonmore, boasted, unconvincingly, that he “finally became a feminist” via his wife’s nocturnal sexual adventures with a chap named Paulo. A wife who was “embracing herself” and becoming empowered, we were told, while her children, aged six and three, wondered where their Mommy was.
What could possibly go wrong?
The Modern World
Her Teacher Took Great Interest
“I’m a gay woman living in a conservative city in the south and, let me be honest with you, the only people who have had problems with me being a gay woman in a conservative city in the south are the liberals.”
On tomboys, pronouns, and trans-enabling teachers.