I Question The Location Of The Toilet Roll Holder

“I’ve lost every set of keys I’ve ever owned,” she admits.

Before you say it, yes, I know. I’m veering towards the catty. But the fact that it even exists possibly tells us something: 

Laurie—who’s currently in a good place with her mental health and says she’s lucky to have found treatments that work long term—isn’t claiming that everything will be great if you could only just rearrange your house in a particular way. But she knows from experience there are alternative therapies and ideas that can help, in addition to traditional treatments. Including, but definitely not limited to, arranging your house in a certain way.

Specifically,

Laurie has heard that raw wooden surfaces and the presence of wood in the home can lift one’s mood, so she’s made sure to include wooden decor elements, from furniture to twigs, branches, and a dead tree she found on the side of the road she thought looked nice.

Perhaps she’s smashing bourgeois values via the medium of celebrity lifestyle features.

Comments

[rjmadden]

Can 'Hello' magazine be far behind?

[Jen]

Before you say it, yes, I know. I’m veering towards the catty.

So unlike you. :-)

[Rafi]

Does the dead tree have 'serious healing power'?

[Frank]

Those pictures of her apartment leave me feeling despondent for some reason.

[David]

Does the dead tree have ‘serious healing power’?

I may need to retune my amulet to answer that one. And I’m still puzzled by the location of the toilet roll. It seems both needlessly inaccessible and perilously close to the shower.

Though I may be giving this more thought than is strictly necessary.

[John Square]

The waffle about healing powers and stuff is just a psychobabble take on 'I made it look nice, and it makes me feel gooder', and is thus expected given the context (the website would have edited that in irrespective of La Pennie's input) and should be ignored.

The bit that catches my eye is that the overall message of the piece is someone asking for plaudits for living like a grown up.

"I found a place, furnished it and decorated it all by myself!"

That's really quite telling.

The drugs clearly are working.

[Xas7wcrg9e]

"Laurie found the medicine cabinet in the street and then upcycled it with decoupage."

Looks more like duct tape. Spray-painted silver.

And I rather take exception to the use of the word 'upcycled,' which Google tells me means:

[to] reuse (discarded objects or material) in such a way as to create a product of higher quality or value than the original.

And the aforementioned toilet roll ("The bathroom is so small this is the only place she could fit the toilet roll holder!"):

[Joan]

Perhaps she’s smashing bourgeois values via the medium of celebrity lifestyle features.

She's bringing down the system from the inside. :-D

[MC]

I think she's done a good job with the space. And I like the floors. Not sure about the guiding philosophy though. Or the risk of soggy loo roll.

Interesting that someone so keen to preach rebellion against work has a sign to herself saying: "Pay the bills you muppet!"

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

And I’m still puzzled by the location of the toilet roll.

Per the article, it seems most of her stuff came from IKEA which also sells this TP holder which can be put anywhere, or even moved.

The only conclusion, therefore, is that she is a booger eating moron. Oh wait, we have already seen that photo.

[Joan]

https://media.giphy.com/media/SQdWc7nUrWyys/giphy.gif

[Pogonip]

You can get better-looking stand-alone toilet paper holders by mail order. Catalogs like Miles Kimball and Walter Drake carry them.

[David]

I think she’s done a good job with the space.

I’ve no particular view on the décor, except for the aforementioned toilet roll intrigue.

Interesting that someone so keen to preach rebellion against work has a sign to herself saying: “Pay the bills you muppet!”

Well, that’s sort of what I’m getting at, the air of contradiction. In that our “riot grrl,” our self-styled “anarcho-communist,” the one who shouts, “fuck money!” and who claims to dream of living “in the rubble” of shattered capitalism… winds up doing what’s basically a lifestyle fashion shoot, which is pretty close to shorthand for the thing she claims to despise and wishes to see “on fire.”

I mean, are we supposed to admire her kitchen, or be burning it down?

[David]

[ Slides large Campari over to Joan. ]

[MC]

are we supposed to admire her kitchen, or be burning it down?

I admire the kitchen and also her creative hypocrisy!

Although having said that, I don't believe she really means or has thought through any of her positions. For example, she blathers on about the prison of marriage, the evils of right-wing conformity and the joys of polyamory, yet here she is on her tod in under 400 sq ft and with a genuinely tragic history of sexual abuse from the sort of predatory scum who hang around lefty groups preying on well-meaning and not quite bright enough girls like her.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

You can get better-looking stand-alone toilet paper holders by mail order.

I am sure you can, but the point is rather than having a TP holder you either have to have a prehensile tail or stand up to use (which would create a rather unhygienic problem in of itself) she was allegedly already shopping in IKEA and there her solution stood.

Of course if were unadorned with some bog roll she probably just assumed it was a some Nordic version of a wide base walking cane.

[R. Sherman]

Sixteen comments into a Laurie Penny post and no nose-picking photo. We readers are obviously falling down on the job. BTW, perhaps we should be less concerned about the TP location in order to help Laurie locate the Kleenex box.

[Jon Powers]

OMG, she suffers from ADHD? I didn't know. Is that some sort of deadly disease? I have no idea what..Oh look at that cat! It has a poofy tail! I like ice cream.

[Horace Dunn]

The bit that catches my eye is that the overall message of the piece is someone asking for plaudits for living like a grown up.

Precisely. All this stuff about having to organise the flat so that she can find things, as she used to spend hours every week looking for her belongings. The message is clear - I'm a fascinating eccentric person, but that comes with a heavy burden, but my ingenuity is helping me to lighten that load. Marvel at me!

I don't think of someone who spends hours every week looking for her belongings as a particularly fascinating person. I think of her as an idiot.

Still, that's a nice, bright, cheerful, middle class little space she's carved out for herself.

[Daniel Ream]

Still, that's a nice, bright, cheerful, middle class little space she's carved out for herself.

That she's had staged for the photoshoot, you mean. That's not her real apartment, in the sense that it doesn't look like that when it's not being photographed for a lifestyle magazine. It's been staged, the same way the living rooms in Ikea catalogs are staged. She wanks on about not being this perfectly, primly organized person but every bit of that living room was intentionally composed.

Those pictures of her apartment leave me feeling despondent for some reason.

Because it looks like a catalog. It doesn't look like a real person lives there. There are no pictures of people, friends, family; no ugly knickknacks that have sentimental value; nothing that shows any uniqueness or personality. It's sterile. (There's that copy of Coup in the bookcase, but I'm betting she only owns it because it's called "Coup" and not because she's ever played it. For one thing, it's upside down.)

I'm half convinced she didn't decorate the place at all, it was done for her by the magazine.

Also, ADHD isn't a real mental illness and she's doing people who truly struggle a disservice by appropriating it so she can present herself as tragicompetent.

[ComputerLabRat]

I call BS on the toilet roll holder too. And even if there are no other spots on the walls (don't believe it for a second), Farnsworth showed the IKEA solution. They also sell 'em at Walmart here, so I am sure the UK equivalent store has them too. What a maroon, as Bugs Bunny used to say.

[Clam]

I Question The Location Of The Toilet Roll Holder

But does she roll over or under?

*runs away*

[WTP]

I've seen worse toilet paper holder locations. The part I find most disturbing was in the very beginning:

When she moved in, the color palette was also a "shocking shade of orange and bright blue" and had to be updated.

Philistine.

[David]

I don’t think of someone who spends hours every week looking for her belongings as a particularly fascinating person. I think of her as an idiot.

[ Another large Campari slides along bar. ]

It doesn’t look like a real person lives there.

A real person doesn’t.

[Alice]

someone asking for plaudits for living like a grown up.

I had never owned furniture before,

She's 32.

[Lancastrian Oik]

I call BS on the toilet roll holder too

It’s the guitar that does it for me. It’s way too high up on the wall for a munchkin like Laurie to access easily and it looks exactly like the kind of artefact that the Lefty acquaintances of my student days used to have lying around in their digs, which when picked up by any reasonably adept plank-spanker (*blushes modestly*) were manifestly unplayable, having not seen a new set of strings in five years, tuners that had seized solid and a neck which was bowed and warped, all out of sheer neglect and laziness.

[David]

She’s 32.

And earning over £3,000 a month from Patreon, plus writing fees, etc. Younger people earning much less, and from much more humble backgrounds, tend to own some furniture. It may often be crappy furniture, but still. If you’re in your thirties and don’t own your own bed, for instance, something sounds awry. Maybe it’s part of Laurie’s “precarious living” role-play and the theatrical disdain for bourgeois norms as “small, ugly ambitions.” Because being insufficiently together to own your own bed is keeping it real, baby.

[David]

plank-spanker

I see I’m going to have to dilute this Campari to make it stretch.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Sixteen comments into a Laurie Penny post and no nose-picking photo.

I was hoping only to have to allude to it.

I think of her as an idiot.

My motto is, "A place for everything, and everything all over the place", yet I can find stuff, so not an idiot, as I said before, a booger eating moron.

It never gets old, though.

[Lancastrian Oik]

What do you mean “going to have to”?

[Russtovich]

"And I’m still puzzled by the location of the toilet roll. It seems both needlessly inaccessible and perilously close to the shower."

Speaking of which...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/UXph6GxDEV4wffju9

Needless to say I soon learned to take my own toilet paper with me to the loo.

[Darleen]

Is this an apartment she rents, leases or owns? Because that place has some serious money in it prior to her "budget furnishings". And that place was professionally staged prior to the photoshoot.

[[+]]

She rents.

[Darleen]

She rents

Well, she's got some very nice digs where the landlord has clearly put it upscale, contemporary designer touches and probably charges a healthy monthly rent for it.

Ah...the advantages of capitalism. Heh.

[David]

Needless to say I soon learned to take my own toilet paper with me

I see it’s one of those powder rooms you can just hose down afterwards.

[Boatswain's Mate]

If she's raking in that much bank per month just via Patreon, plus her speaking fees, writing, etc., but is only just now getting 'round to owning furniture at her age, i.e., only just now play-acting as a grown-up, I can only presume that either her parents or her manager or someone is putting all that cabbage in a trust for her (like a spendthrift trust in which she ain't the trustee).

Either that or her entire nebbish, mentally ill, can't be bothered with bourgeois things such as money shtick is a put on. And shirley that can't be so.

[Trevor]

Those pictures of her apartment leave me feeling despondent for some reason.

This needed to be done.

[Trevor]

And I’m still puzzled by the location of the toilet roll.

There are those of us who hold toilet roll holders to be irredeemably naff, and quite unnecessary.

[David]

There are those of us who hold toilet roll holders to be irredeemably naff, and quite unnecessary.

And potentially hazardous.

[Geezer]

It's very small, has low ceilings, is strangely shaped, and is in a dark basement. "I basically live in a cellar," she admits.

Dark Basement:

[Daniel Ream]

And that place was professionally staged prior to the photoshoot.

The books in the bookcases are the giveaway. People who actually read and use their books put them vertically in a bookshelf, for easy access to each one. Stacked in random horizontal piles makes it impossible to grab just the one book you need, because now nearly all your books are underneath other books. Designers do that to break up the rigid rectangular visual of a shelf full of books and make the space look more organic.

[Sam Duncan]

“Either that or her entire nebbish, mentally ill, can't be bothered with bourgeois things such as money shtick is a put on. And shirley that can't be so.

Indeed. Sure, the place has been tidied up, but it would take a gang of tradesmen about a month and a hefty five-figure sum to get mine looking even close to that. And honestly, I've been in flats round this way that aren't far off it. People do live in rooms “like Lewis's window”, as my gran used to say. But they're not downtrodden revolutionary enemies of capitalism.

“There are those of us who hold toilet roll holders to be irredeemably naff, and quite unnecessary.”

Bung it on the cistern and move on to more important concerns.

[David]

Bung it on the cistern

Outlaw! I bet Sam has a motor bike.

[Tim Newman]

There's that copy of Coup in the bookcase, but I'm betting she only owns it because it's called "Coup" and not because she's ever played it. For one thing, it's upside down.

I bet that guitar is an ornament as well.

[Tim Newman]

Ah, Lancastrian Oik beat me to it.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

I couldn't help but notice in the photo Geezer posted that Miss Penny hasn't been able to figure out which end of a chair seat cushion goes to the back, what with her being our intellectual superior and all.

[Pogonip]

Our toilet paper holder is the only one of its kind—my woodworking father made it. It’s got some kind of special varnish on it to keep the bathroom humidity from warping it. Seems to work.

[Francis H]

Long time lurker just doing a drive by comment, is 370 sq feet really plausible for that? That’s around 34 sq metres. A friend lives in 28 sq metres in Paris and it’s basically one room, able to fit a single bed and some small items of furniture and a tiny kitchen that fits two people with difficulty. For that extra 6 square metres of space Laurie seems to get two decent separate sitting spaces, a reasonable size kitchen, an entrance hall and a separate bedroom.

I know sizes are hard to judge from the photos but it looks more like 50 square metres or a bit more.

Back to lurking. Love the blog btw. Consider your change bowl tinkled.

[Chester Draws]

It looks like a lot of AirBnBs I've stayed in. International hotel chic, with forced touches of "personal style".

I suspect Francis is right. A separate bedroom requires at least 45 sq m, and that leaves a much smaller living space than we are seeing.

Horizontal books say one of three things. Posed to look good, posed so you can read the spines and know how awesome they are, or too tall for the shelf. We have some horizontal books at home for the last reason.

[Pogonip]

So do we.

[Hopp Singg]

I wonder if she'll lodge a few homeless people with her, gratis. Cuz principles, right?

[Pst314]

Fourth reason for horizontal books: not enough bookends.

[Megaera]

When she talks about "low ceilings" I picture something like an Elizabethan cottage where you leave serious amounts of scalp on the beams if you don't navigate the space with caution. My first house, built in 1927, had 7' ceilings throughout and I could actually brush them with my fingertips standing flat-footed -- I know from low ceilings. And that's not what I'm seeing in Laurie's digs. Of course, maybe in her friends/family circles, with 12' ceilings and all, what she has may seem like Bag End to HER. Poser.

[David]

Long time lurker just doing a drive by comment,

I do like it when people de-lurk.

Consider your change bowl tinkled.

Bless you, sir. May you never feel the icy horror of realising that you’ve just put your keys in the same pocket as your phone.

[Zionist Overlord #73]

To be perfectly honest, I don't think the nose-picking image ought to be brought up each time we talk about Laurie Penny.

There's plenty to criticize about her - the folly of her ideas, the vast gulf between her ideas and the manner in which she lives, the hypocrisy which that gap implies, etc. Being caught by a camera in a moment of indecorum is not one of these, and we ought not to dilute well-justified scorn with puerile mockery.

[David]

we ought not to dilute well-justified scorn with puerile mockery.

Oh, I don’t mind. It’s pretty much inevitable. Though I do wonder how Laurie reconciles her breathless rhetoric about riots and political violence, and “war,” and things being “smashed” and “crashing down,” and a post-revolution Britain in which capitalism and the family unit have been rendered unto dust… with her obvious delight in hair dye and lifestyle fashion shoots.

I mean, will she still be admiring her artful bookcase arrangements when bourgeois proprieties are a distant memory, when cars burn in the streets on a nightly basis, and when large parts of the country look like Mogadishu?

[Theophrastus]

...we ought not to dilute well-justified scorn with puerile mockery.

Leftists like Laurie take themselves very seriously, and "puerile mockery" helps to deflate them, while adding to the gaiety of nations.

Laurie artfully arranges her apartment, paints her nails, applies her lipstick and dyes her hair. So I imagine that the photograph of her looking unwashed and excavating her nostril cuts deep.

[Another Lurker]

Though I do wonder how Laurie reconciles her breathless rhetoric about riots and political violence, and “war,” and things being “smashed” and “crashing down,” and a post-revolution Britain in which capitalism and the family unit have been rendered unto dust… with her obvious delight in hair dye and lifestyle fashion shoots.

I mean, will she still be admiring her artful bookcase arrangements when bourgeois proprieties are a distant memory, when cars burn in the streets on a nightly basis, and when large parts of the country look like Mogadishu?

This. :-)

[Adam]

I blame Thomas Szasz for Ms Penny. He may be single-handedly responsible for the normalization of insanity and the rise of an increasingly Neo Red Guard left.

[David]

This. :-)

As I’ve said before, following this ludicrous but typical outpouring,

Laurie is following the standard trajectory of her type. Her status and career would have been much less likely without the very same bourgeois values she claims to despise and urges others to reject. If instead of a stable, rather comfortable middle-class upbringing she’d been raised in keeping with her own professed values – say, by a welfare-dependent single parent with multiple transient partners and no stability or commitment - I somehow doubt she’d have been able to spend time at Wadham College finding herself politically and playing “riot girl.” And I doubt she’d now be able to flit around the world while tweeting about how oppressed she is.

Likewise, her self-imagined role as a wordsmith revolutionary would be much harder to sustain without a great many other people cultivating those same bourgeois values and keeping things ticking over. A fact that Laurie counts on, despite her pretence. In effect, we, the bourgeois rubes whose values she rails against, are her safety net. The fact that few of us are credulous enough to take her at her words and follow her advice is what allows her to mouth it in relative comfort and security, knowing that the destruction of capitalism, marriage and the family unit (and all that would go with it), which she claims to want, won’t happen just yet.

But this is who she is. It’s who all of the Lauries are.

[PiperPaul]

Lauries = NPCs?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...we ought not to dilute well-justified scorn with puerile mockery

Lighten up, Francis.

Alinsky's Rule 5, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” The left cannot stand it, hence the recent flap over NPC memes, and when they do stupid (not indecorous) stuff like mining for nose gold and eating it (the full clip of which I have spared those with delicate sensibilities) in front of a packed auditorium, or doing absolutely inane things like fondling dead fish wile naked to protest fishing, they deserve all the ridicule, high, low, puerile, and gutter, they can have heaped upon them.

[David]

Lauries = NPCs?

I think she’s more articulate, and rhetorically florid, than the typical ‘NPC’. But she has used similar tactics and is titillated by mob coercion, and her conclusions are every bit as predetermined and unearned.

[Pst314]

Farmsworth M Muldoon: I emphatically.

[Pst314]

To underline David’s comment about the nose-picking Penny Red, there is no point in being nice to viciously unprincipled enemies who are trying to destroy us.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...there is no point in being nice to viciously unprincipled enemies who are trying to destroy us.

Exactly, the "Gentlemen don't use spies", "Submarines are unsportsmanlike", mindset didn't work at the start of WWI, and the "If we act like them, we become them", sort of nonsense is the best way to get steamrolled by your adversaries.

[R. Sherman]

...there is no point in being nice to viciously unprincipled enemies who are trying to destroy us.

Yes. The fact of the matter is, the Laurie Pennys of the world are more than happy to engage in "puerile mockery" when in suits their purpose. We did not start this war of incivility. It was thrust upon us by people for whom concepts like "civility," "decorum" and "tradition" can be easily ignored when necessary in order to attain and maintain power. The examples are legion.

There are no rules anymore. We didn't destroy them. Laurie Penny and her fellow travelers did.

(BTW, the line, "Lighten up, Francis" is one of the most glorious in cinematic history.)

[David]

We didn’t destroy them. Laurie Penny and her fellow travelers did.

I suppose now’s a good time to revisit Laurie’s infamous and rather telling exchange with the historian David Starkey. She interrupts his answer to a question with a gratuitous personal smear - an immensely self-satisfied claim about racism and tax avoidance. He responds and points out how nasty and dishonest she’s being, which makes her illusion of piety rather difficult to sustain in front of the audience. Laurie is then reduced to a mix of fury, humiliation and pretentious, rambling victimhood.

Inevitably, the debate, supposedly about national character, becomes all about her: “I really don’t appreciate being stood on stage to be personally attacked,” says she in a comically whiny voice. The fact that she started the personal attacks, needlessly, thinking it would be clever, and then lied, repeatedly, and was promptly repaid in the manner she initiated, is somehow proof of her victimhood. And it’s all because she’s a woman, of course, and so terribly, terribly brave.

[Watcher In The Dark]

Are we sitting comfortably? Yes.

Are we going to sit and write snide articles for the lefty media slagging off people who work hard and save to sit comfortably but don't want it taken from them by 'socialist values'? Oh yes we are!

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...there is no point in being nice to viciously unprincipled enemies who are trying to destroy us.

Case in point. Reason, appeasement, playing nice, all have failed with this lot. Unfortunately, they really don't know what they are asking for.

[R. Sherman]

And another thing ...

Puerile as our enjoyment of Penny nose-picking in public may be, make no mistake. Had the same write up been done with a young NKIP voter in a "Better Homes & Gardens" type mag, such would send Penny and her acolytes into fits of indignation the likes of which we could not imagine. Of course, it's not bourgeois when she does it, that bint.

She can bugger off.

[wiggiatlarge]

"While the end result is a beautiful, well-designed home"

Not quite how I see it and the toilet roll placement, confirms my belief that it is all a Woman and Home editorial..

[Sam Duncan]

“I bet Sam has a motor bike.”

You take that back! Motorbicycles, indeed. They don't have enough wheels. It ain't natural.

“...there is no point in being nice to viciously unprincipled enemies who are trying to destroy us.”

Precisely. They demand civility from us, but refuse to return the favour.

[WTP]

Precisely. They demand civility from us, but refuse to return the favour.

It's not just the left themselves but the "grown-ups in the room". I blame them more that the (mostly unthinking) leftists. Especially the street level ones. It's what's behind the bullying "problem". Were it not for those who go extralegal, dilettantes would have to deal with evil themselves. Fortunately for them it hardly ever comes to that. Until one day it does. Then when there's no one else left standing between them and evil they change their tune. Or succumb. But they are quite comfortable remaining "above it all" until their asses are on the line. In many ways they contribute to the problem by heaping scorn upon the real innocent parties for fighting back. Only when the innocent party fights back and wins decisively does a new social and/or legal order prevail.

[WTP]

Also....this has been bugging me more than the toilet paper thing. I feel somewhat stupid here (somewhat, heh) but wth is that thing mounted on the wall between the two windows that appears to be holding an arranged collection of crafted, notched slats? Does it/they serve some function or is it some sort of "art"?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Does it/they serve some function or is it some sort of "art"?

It is for holding breadsticks taken from Olive Garden for handy snacking.

[David]

wth is that thing mounted on the wall between the two windows...?

Um, some kind of flimsy holder for (dried) flowers? A collection of oversized emery boards? It’s hard to care. Unlike the aberrant toilet roll positioning.

[Pogonip]

If it’s a basement apartment, how does it have 2 windows level with the floor?

[WTP]

It’s hard to care.

But some of them are not in their supposedly designated slots. True, most of them are, but a couple are all helter-skelter. And sticking up above the others. It's quite disturbing. I can deal with order and I can deal with chaos but this halfsies stuff, especially the more than halfsies but not quite right stuff, is just plain wrong. Maybe she's trying to tell us something?

[David]

But some of them are not in their supposedly designated slots.

I don’t have time for this nonsense. I’m busy checking my toilet roll holder is optimally positioned and correctly orientated. Does anyone have a spirit level?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

If it’s a basement apartment, how does it have 2 windows level with the floor?

Perhaps it is one of those English vs. American things things like boot=trunk, bonnet=hood, lift=elevator, basement=ground floor, low and dark=photos taken with copious natural light when 6 foot high plantation shutters are open.

[Chester Draws]

WTP: sticks in vases is a modern designer thing. It shows you are in touch with nature, without all the hassle of actually having to deal with anything actually alive. Ikea even will sell you the sticks, so you can be hip for zero effort.

I'm guessing the object is a glass vase surrounded by sticks. The sticks against the wall aren't leaning, so stand higher than the others, despite all being cut to the same length.

[WTP]

CD: Now you're trying to gaslight me. What glass vase? You see a glass vase? This isn't funny, you guys. I think Laurie is trying to tell us something. It's a cry for help. Lives could be at stake...no pun intended...ooh, maybe that's the clue. They're stakes. Now we put that with the reversed cushion...hmm....

[Jeff Mauney]

She calls that "teeny tiny"? I lived in an efficiency on Oahu in the 1980s that made her apartment look like Trump Tower by comparison. And I was paying almost a thousand dollars a month for the privilege.

[Governor Squid]

But they are quite comfortable remaining "above it all" until their asses are on the line.

I believe Matt and Trey had an entire monologue on this subject in Team America: World Police. A rather extended metaphor involving bits of genitalia, as I recall.

[Darleen]

Re Farnsworth's Case in point.

Wonder what that sounded like in the original Russian discussing the Kulaks?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Wonder what that sounded like in the original Russian discussing the Kulaks?

вы заставляете меня смеяться, теперь отправляйтесь в гулаг

[Daniel Ream]

You're all slowly coming around to the notion of helicopters. I told you.

I blame Thomas Szasz for Ms Penny. He may be single-handedly responsible for the normalization of insanity

Can you elaborate on that? I consider myself a Szaszian, in that I don't believe in "mental illness" absent an underlying organic cause. Although our understanding of what those underlying organic causes can be, such as with complex PTSD, is much more sophisticated than in Szasz' day.

[Col. Milquetoast]

Have you considered that perhaps she sits at the toilet facing the tank? That way she can lay her head down and take a nap.

[Pst314]

I don’t have time for this nonsense. I’m busy checking my toilet roll holder is optimally positioned and correctly orientated.

Feng shui?

[Pst314]

If it’s a basement apartment, how does it have 2 windows level with the floor?

There could perhaps be very large window wells, but I doubt it.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

There could perhaps be very large window wells, but I doubt it.

If they are, they are the first containing rolling fields of wildflowers...

[Pst314]

Guess I should have gone through all the photos!

[Tim Newman]

We have some horizontal books at home for the last reason.

My one book which has to go horizontal is a pictorial history of the Waffen SS.

[Surreptitious Evil]

You lot don’t own enough books.

[Captain Nemo]

Indeed, Surreptitious. Most of my books are horizontal, but that's because I don't have enough bookcases for them. Which is driven by the fact that I don't have enough space for said bookcases...

[Pst314]

One can never own enough books.

[Captain Nemo]

I quite agree. My parents, however, think otherwise.

[WTP]

In the 21st century, I don’t understand the continued fetishization of books. I hold the Library of Infinity in my hands right this very minute. Additionally I can interact in real or near real time with (English speaking) people from all over the world. Two way conversation with people who stand on the sholders of giants who had no such advantage/privilege. Additionally many, many more of those long dead giants are available to me, indexed in the most efficient manner possible at a moment’s notice via the same device. Far more readily available to me than before I had to downsize back when I had stacks of books. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy reading hard, physical pieces of paper and such. But even those are readily available via a vast system of libraries. In my current location they will even deliver the books to your door. No dusty, musty storage in my home.

[Hal]

In the 21st century, I don’t understand the continued fetishization of books.

Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books.