Oddments For The Weekend
Including Agatha’s poisons; an art centre with its own protest toilet; an actual rollercoaster of emotion; and the world of wonder under your fingernails.
Explaining Civilisation
To those seemingly unfamiliar with the concept:
The uninvited newcomers – chiefly, it seems, men of fighting age and all mysteriously unencumbered by identifying documents – are given helpful pointers on the customary use of pavements and pedestrian crossings, and are warned about the hazards of randomly strolling through moving traffic on busy roads. They are also introduced to the novel concepts of avoiding foul language in public and not abusing animals for amusement purposes.
Other teething problems have, it seems, arisen:
“The initiative by Northamptonshire Police followed community and parental complaints over young male asylum seekers loitering near a primary school in the county, including claims of filming.”
Not loitering at the gates of primary schools in order to film small children being another cultural subtlety requiring clarification.
Oh, there’s more. Much more.
The Sound Inside Their Heads
From happy-clappy Portland – on Day 21 of the ongoing intifada.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including 53,000 photographs of airline meals; a man with a level-10 wizard staff; full-on scenes of mentalist bintery; and the rise and fall of alien abduction.
Not That Kind Of Diversity
It must be quite strange to inhabit a milieu in which the normal meanings of words are either ignored or inverted. By people who aspire to be professional writers. Communicators of ideas.
They’re striving for diversity. Indeed, celebrating it. And so you must be excluded.
Careful What You Wish For
Readers will doubtless recall the Chichester Festival Theatre warning patrons that its production of The Sound of Music, one of the most famous and widely-seen musicals in the world, would contain references to Nazis. Which, for some, would apparently come as a surprise.
On culture for the implausibly delicate; when cleverness is deemed unfair and something to be corrected by progressive educators; and the fretting that ensues when your anti-police non-profit gets robbed, quite brazenly.
The Fretting Is Statusful, You Know
From the world of cinema and pretentious agonising:
The implications of Mr Boyle’s modish piety, presumably unintended yet implied nonetheless, are explored quite pithily in the replies.
Among which, the implication that white writers and directors should only concern themselves with suitably pale-skinned characters, carefully excluding non-white characters, and non-white actors, lest they appropriate or colonise something or other.
Needless to say, other implications come to mind.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including alarming gardening; men with long hair circa 1967; and when you’re being arrested but you still feel a need to self-narrate for likes.
Drag Queen Incongruity 2
Scenes From The Zombie Apocalypse
There’s an implied, sociopathic dare. The game being “You won’t do what’s needed, despite our alarming and menacing behaviour, because you’re nicer than us, less vain, and not unhinged, and so we can dominate you and terrorise you, and break your stuff, for as long as we want, for shits and giggles.”
Well. I would suggest that the activists’ own actions render their wellbeing of very low importance.
A terribly modern moral problem. Answers on a postcard, please.
Drag Queen Incongruity
Curiously, the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service survey form, inviting the public to express their views on Pride attendance and matters of transvestite outreach, has, with seeming briskness, now been shut down.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including a lawn-mowing mishap; a posture-optimised toilet; typing with light; your empathetic betters; and a skatepark for the blind.
Improbable Agonising
A Guardian writer tells us that women are being mentally injured by small baked goods; another is oppressed by the failure to gender balance suburban barbecues; and a third is psychologically crushed by spellcheck software and disposable paper cups.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including random-ass cheese umbrage; some inapt gripping; automated wok tossing; the advantages of having your own vacuum chamber; and another visit to the Ogmios School of Zen Motoring.
Incompatible Pretending
Or, Witchcraft And Transgenderism, Together At Last:
As these are terribly modern, immensely caring witches, Ms Howard was banned from the organisation’s Facebook page and from the website of the British Druid Order on grounds of being “unequivocally transphobic.” Thereby denying Ms Howard access to the arcane knowledge of “seers and healers,” along with the opportunity to purchase oracle cards, audio recordings of spells and invocations, and “hymns to the divine feminine.” Oh, and guides to coping with stress by wrapping a thick blanket around your head.
Oh, there’s more.
The Bullet Holes Were A Clue
“Do you get off by, like, picking up people?” asks the woman who gets off on shooting random people’s cars. “Some people,” she adds, “probably think I’m a hero.” Oh, and madam only attempted to flee because she “had to go to the bathroom.”
The Bar Tab Cometh
It’s fundraising week over at my place. If you’d like to help keep a blog afloat, by all means do.
Have You Tried Storing Them Upright?
Readers will note the odd implication that the level of serious criminal behaviour at any given time should somehow conform to the amount of prison space you have at that time. As if the moral gravity of a criminal act, and likelihood of recidivism and danger to the public, should be determined by whether or not you can be bothered to build another dungeon.
Oddments For The Weekend
Including some fairly unambiguous hippo displeasure; a planet-wide guide to what people are doing right now; artefacts of the FBI; and a vigorously athletic use of the buttocks.
