It’s been a while since we had one. Though I doubt it’s going to flare up like the Giant Vaginas did and out of which we got a surprising amount of mileage.
So here's a thing that occurred at work at lunch yesterday...I'm the old guy at 57. Most everyone else is Gen X and Millennial. The talk about movies rarely goes back before 1990, so the discussion is usually limited to comic book hero stuff and a lot of other stuff I don't have much interest or much to say about. But I'm good with Batman or Tarantino stuff so I kinda stay in the conversation. But yesterday the topic got somewhat close to westerns (I think someone accidentally mentioned John Wayne) and I mentioned some that I liked. Crickets. Some limited "Oh, yeahs" from the X-ers but mostly just to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and Magnificent Seven (with the obligatory hipster "you know that was ripped from The Seven Samuri"). But even mention of other (formerly) well known ones like True Grit or Once Upon A Time In The West or John Ford/John Wayne stuff, crickets. One seemed rather proud that she had never seen a John Wayne movie. So then I segued to WWII movies like The Great Escape or, searching for something a little more wry, Kelly's Heroes. Nuttin'. OK, some oh yeah's with TGE and of course the modern-ish tongue-in-cheek thing Brad Pitt did (forget the name right now). But good strong male hero movies with some sort of realistic-ish narrative to it? Blank stares.
So guys getting their fingernails done? Yeah. That's some high-T stuff for today's world. Because MAN-icure. Bro. But I don't blame the X-ers or the Millennials as much as us Boomers. We're the ones who denigrated the male hero. There's a sub-set of boomers who encouraged this, nurtured this. I fear it is going to take a very existential threat on a broad front to turn our culture (which is upstream from politics) around.
Kyle has obviously never taken a punch to the face. When that day arrives, I'm really hoping somebody gets it on camera (though I'm hoping the blood doesn't obscure his amazing nail art!).
The only compliment I want to hear from ladies is, "well, I wouldn't mind sitting on that.
Paint the first and middle finger of your left hand pink and the little finger brown, and reverse the colors on the right. On your left thumb paint a small bean.
Use which ever hand said "ladies" pick as an indication of:
1. how much they've had to drink, and
2. How likely you are to regret ever getting yourself into this mess to begin with.
But I don't blame the X-ers or the Millennials as much as us Boomers.
I'm not completely unsympathetic to your point, but there's plenty of blame to go around. As a young boomer who was what we must laughingly call 'educated' by 68-ers and older boomers, I can't say I've ever felt myself to be in a position of privilege, either financial, political or cultural. (In a perverse way I'm almost glad that my teachers were so incompetent: they weren't even up to indoctrinating us, so we emerged uneducated rather than miseducated.) The thing I find hard to excuse in people of any age is an absence of intellectual (or cultural) curiosity. My sense is that this has increased: obviously this hasn't been helped by the stultifying nature of education, but individuals do have to bear some responsibility too.
I'm the old gal at 65 (yea! I'm retired!) and I love the old movies of my parents' era. The 1930s screwball comedies, the 1940s dramas.
And as I remember, there was always that scene in some of the gangster films where the gangster boss took a meeting with the detective while the boss was getting a manicure. It signaled to the audience extreme vanity and immodesty in flaunting wealth. Like large diamond cuff-links.
Do men even wear cuff links anymore?
And I don't see why this is such a big deal. Goth kids of the 1980s all wore black finger nail polish - girls and boys. Live long enough and everything comes back into fashion.
Goth kids of the 1980s all wore black finger nail polish - girls and boys.
I’m sure I must’ve mentioned a visit to Whitby on a searingly hot day, and where, while searching for shade and ice-cream, we saw a platoon of Goths striding about in full regalia – heavy black overcoats, eyeliner, prodigiously lacquered hair, etc. One hardcore chappie was wearing a full metal breastplate.
Indeed, I clearly remember Solzhenitsyn writing in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" about spending his living wage for vodka and caviar during his conjugal visits. I also remember clear as day the West German de-nazification concentration camps.
A handy guide to the runners and riders in the concurrent and highly entertaining races for the leadership and deputy leadership of our beloved Labour Party.
On the one hand, we have over ten million war casualties, the near-total destruction of a continent and the extermination of six million "undesirables." On the other hand, we have a couple of dozen guys with tiki torches, a plague of Twitter frogs, and a bunch of cranky old farts who insist that no matter how mixed-up, muddled-up and shook-up this world may be, Lola is still a man.
I can totally see how equal treatment of the two groups is appropriate. Who could argue with logic like that?
A handy guide to the runners and riders in the concurrent and highly entertaining races for the leadership and deputy leadership of our beloved Labour Party.
It gives examples of what it means by microaggression - such as:
"Why are you searching for things to be offended about?"
Sometimes irony can be pretty ironic.
2) Meanwhile in the US&A, an antediluvian folksinger tries her hand at a comeback with Orange Man Bad Nasty Man, sure to reach number one at the top of the charts in Turloc.
I've lost track of the number of leftists who have tried to persuade me over the years that the Labour Party is not at all Stalinist in its tendencies.
Intersectionality’s intellectual flaws translate into moral shortcomings. Importantly, it is blind to forms of harm that occur within identity groups… It does not recognise instances in which the arrow of harm runs in the “wrong” direction—a black man committing an anti-Semitic hate crime, for instance… Intersectionality... operates as a master formula by which social status is doled out. Being black and queer is better than just being black or queer, being Muslim and gender non-binary is better than being either one on its own, and so forth. By “better,” I mean that people are more excited to meet you, you’re spoken of more highly behind your back, and your friends enjoy an elevated social status for being associated with you.
I highly recommend John Bew’s Citizen Clem for an insight into the Labour party (I speak as someone who thinks the post-war consensus was one of the worst things ever to befall this country).
Laski’s views don’t seem to have been that uncommon in the Labour Party of his era; at one point even Clem the gem shared them. We hear very little about it though, or Labour’s support for the Soviet Union. Neither are Labour much criticised for singing their bloody Red Flag song all the time.
In the seventies the policies of the Labour Party, sometimes carried on by Blue Labour brought this country to its knees. Double digit inflation, rubbish in the streets, endless power cuts, a trip to the IMF. What do people remember? That Thatcher “stole” the milk.
"And if your speech is calling for the elimination of people based on race or gender or religious - like, for whatever reason, things that people can't change [...]"
Heh. Was at a barbeque party attended by a couple of Brits. He was a physicist and a beer brewing expert, she was...kinda annoying. So for whatever reason, and I generally avoid such things but someone else brought it up...the 2016 election was looming and I do remember now that Marco Rubio had somehow slipped into the discussion. Anyway, as certain aspects of British politics intrigue me, specifically how some very rational and I might even say 'conservative' Brits whom I have known or met were Labor (and tangentially Lib-Dem also often befuddles me) or at the least anti-Tory (which I somewhat understand), I engaged in the discussion. In the opposite manner that familiarity breeds contempt, my two favorite politicians anywhere ever are Sir Winston and Saint Maggie T. I even have a tea tin of Sir Winston on display atop my kitchen cabinets. No way in hell I'd even have Saint Ronnie or Mr. Donnie T up there, but Sir Winston...well...but I digress. I happen to mention how much I admired "the problem with socialism is running out of other people's money" Thatcher and I got blind-sided by the milk thing. To hear this woman rant, you'd think Maggie was running around pissing in every kid's morning cheerios. The huge damage that socialism/flirting with socialism had done to pre-Thatcher UK she seemed to consider irrelevant or even oblivious to. I was the 'ignorant' one for not knowing (much) about the silly milk thing.
U of Sheffield is paying £9.34/hr for their own student Stasi...
From the article:
"A report last autumn from the Equality and Human Rights Commission warned that racism was a "common occurrence" for some students, with incidents of name-calling, physical attacks and racist material on campus. The equality watchdog said that universities did not want to face up to the scale of the problem because of fears it could harm their reputations."
If I might inquire -- is there any risk of reputational harm in broadcasting the university's employment of professional scold/informants? Perhaps the university administration would be better served by releasing a quick press release along the lines of, "Universities said the equality watchdog did not want to face up to the infinitesimal scale of the problem because of fears it could interrupt their paychecks."
Heh. Maggie was before my time. I don't believe my parents had even met when she left office. The first PM I was aware of was Blair. And I'm perfectly happy to blame him.
Maggie was sort of before my time, too. That is, I was only starting to learn about the UK (nothing in the newspapers and mainstream news magazines was very helpful.) So I can only say that I retrospectively admired her.
Hey, Maggie's attempt to cut a milk program started during WW2 was EVIL.
Programs like that are SUPPOSED to live forever.
Remember the (US) excise tax on telecom imposed to help pay for the Spanish-American war? That lived ALMOST forever - it was (ha, ha) originally slated to expire in 1915, but lives on today, though maimed and weakened somewhat.
I even have a whole bunch of shirts that are unwearable without cuff links (“french cuffs”). When my packing has been less than exemplary, I have had to improvise cuff links from paper clips.
Hard pass.
Posted by: Jen | January 14, 2020 at 07:49
Hard pass.
Does it not inflame your womanliness?
Posted by: David | January 14, 2020 at 07:55
I'm sure that'll be the talk of the lumber jack convention.
Posted by: Frank Black | January 14, 2020 at 07:56
LOL. No.
Posted by: Jen | January 14, 2020 at 07:58
I call BS on these millennials with the body adornments, they are only playing at it until they get one of these jobs done.
Posted by: Frank | January 14, 2020 at 08:13
It would go well with all the craft beer.
Posted by: Frank | January 14, 2020 at 08:17
His Pretty Nails
New tag! Also band name.
Posted by: Mags | January 14, 2020 at 08:43
New tag!
It’s been a while since we had one. Though I doubt it’s going to flare up like the Giant Vaginas did and out of which we got a surprising amount of mileage.
As it were.
Posted by: David | January 14, 2020 at 08:57
...I doubt it’s going to flare up like the Giant Vaginas did...
Let us pray that Brexit hasn't disrupted the supply of ointment, just in case.
Posted by: Trevor | January 14, 2020 at 09:31
Now I’m wondering how high on the list of desirable male attributes painted nails are.
I think we need a reader survey.
Posted by: David | January 14, 2020 at 09:39
The only compliment I want to hear from ladies is, "well, I wouldn't mind sitting on that.
Posted by: Ray | January 14, 2020 at 10:31
Now I’m wondering how high on the list of desirable male attributes painted nails are.
Not on the list at all.
Posted by: Joan | January 14, 2020 at 11:15
Remember what they used to say about guys with tongue piercings back in the 90s.
Posted by: Squires | January 14, 2020 at 11:54
I'm more rotund than burly. Regardless, it's a no from me.
Posted by: Captain Nemo | January 14, 2020 at 12:27
Now I’m wondering how high on the list of desirable male attributes painted nails are.
Very low down, I assume, but still above severely plucked and shaped eyebrows.
Posted by: Trevor | January 14, 2020 at 12:40
Now I’m wondering how high on the list of desirable male attributes painted nails are.
Clean and tidy will do fine thanks.
Posted by: Alice | January 14, 2020 at 12:51
So here's a thing that occurred at work at lunch yesterday...I'm the old guy at 57. Most everyone else is Gen X and Millennial. The talk about movies rarely goes back before 1990, so the discussion is usually limited to comic book hero stuff and a lot of other stuff I don't have much interest or much to say about. But I'm good with Batman or Tarantino stuff so I kinda stay in the conversation. But yesterday the topic got somewhat close to westerns (I think someone accidentally mentioned John Wayne) and I mentioned some that I liked. Crickets. Some limited "Oh, yeahs" from the X-ers but mostly just to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and Magnificent Seven (with the obligatory hipster "you know that was ripped from The Seven Samuri"). But even mention of other (formerly) well known ones like True Grit or Once Upon A Time In The West or John Ford/John Wayne stuff, crickets. One seemed rather proud that she had never seen a John Wayne movie. So then I segued to WWII movies like The Great Escape or, searching for something a little more wry, Kelly's Heroes. Nuttin'. OK, some oh yeah's with TGE and of course the modern-ish tongue-in-cheek thing Brad Pitt did (forget the name right now). But good strong male hero movies with some sort of realistic-ish narrative to it? Blank stares.
So guys getting their fingernails done? Yeah. That's some high-T stuff for today's world. Because MAN-icure. Bro. But I don't blame the X-ers or the Millennials as much as us Boomers. We're the ones who denigrated the male hero. There's a sub-set of boomers who encouraged this, nurtured this. I fear it is going to take a very existential threat on a broad front to turn our culture (which is upstream from politics) around.
Posted by: WTP | January 14, 2020 at 14:33
Our betters opine.
Posted by: David | January 14, 2020 at 15:25
Now I’m wondering how high on the list of desirable male attributes painted nails are.
Not on my list anywhere.
Posted by: ComputerLabRat | January 14, 2020 at 15:28
“Actually, gulags were a lot better than, like, what the CIA has told us that they were
Ackchyually...
Posted by: [+] | January 14, 2020 at 15:33
Kyle has obviously never taken a punch to the face. When that day arrives, I'm really hoping somebody gets it on camera (though I'm hoping the blood doesn't obscure his amazing nail art!).
Posted by: Governor Squid | January 14, 2020 at 15:35
The only compliment I want to hear from ladies is, "well, I wouldn't mind sitting on that.
Paint the first and middle finger of your left hand pink and the little finger brown, and reverse the colors on the right. On your left thumb paint a small bean.
Use which ever hand said "ladies" pick as an indication of:
1. how much they've had to drink, and
2. How likely you are to regret ever getting yourself into this mess to begin with.
Posted by: SumDumGuy | January 14, 2020 at 15:59
But I don't blame the X-ers or the Millennials as much as us Boomers.
I'm not completely unsympathetic to your point, but there's plenty of blame to go around. As a young boomer who was what we must laughingly call 'educated' by 68-ers and older boomers, I can't say I've ever felt myself to be in a position of privilege, either financial, political or cultural. (In a perverse way I'm almost glad that my teachers were so incompetent: they weren't even up to indoctrinating us, so we emerged uneducated rather than miseducated.) The thing I find hard to excuse in people of any age is an absence of intellectual (or cultural) curiosity. My sense is that this has increased: obviously this hasn't been helped by the stultifying nature of education, but individuals do have to bear some responsibility too.
Posted by: Trevor | January 14, 2020 at 16:06
.I'm the old guy at 57.
I'm the old gal at 65 (yea! I'm retired!) and I love the old movies of my parents' era. The 1930s screwball comedies, the 1940s dramas.
And as I remember, there was always that scene in some of the gangster films where the gangster boss took a meeting with the detective while the boss was getting a manicure. It signaled to the audience extreme vanity and immodesty in flaunting wealth. Like large diamond cuff-links.
Do men even wear cuff links anymore?
And I don't see why this is such a big deal. Goth kids of the 1980s all wore black finger nail polish - girls and boys. Live long enough and everything comes back into fashion.
Posted by: Darleen | January 14, 2020 at 16:11
I’m the old gal at 65 (yea! I’m retired!)
[ Fetches Darleen’s comfy chair and footstool. Also a large gin and tonic. ]
Posted by: David | January 14, 2020 at 16:23
Goth kids of the 1980s all wore black finger nail polish - girls and boys.
I’m sure I must’ve mentioned a visit to Whitby on a searingly hot day, and where, while searching for shade and ice-cream, we saw a platoon of Goths striding about in full regalia – heavy black overcoats, eyeliner, prodigiously lacquered hair, etc. One hardcore chappie was wearing a full metal breastplate.
As one does.
Posted by: David | January 14, 2020 at 16:28
... what the CIA has told us that they were...
Indeed, I clearly remember Solzhenitsyn writing in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" about spending his living wage for vodka and caviar during his conjugal visits. I also remember clear as day the West German de-nazification concentration camps.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 14, 2020 at 17:07
A handy guide to the runners and riders in the concurrent and highly entertaining races for the leadership and deputy leadership of our beloved Labour Party.
Posted by: Lancastrian Oik | January 14, 2020 at 17:20
"de-nazification"
On the one hand, we have over ten million war casualties, the near-total destruction of a continent and the extermination of six million "undesirables." On the other hand, we have a couple of dozen guys with tiki torches, a plague of Twitter frogs, and a bunch of cranky old farts who insist that no matter how mixed-up, muddled-up and shook-up this world may be, Lola is still a man.
I can totally see how equal treatment of the two groups is appropriate. Who could argue with logic like that?
Posted by: Governor Squid | January 14, 2020 at 17:22
A handy guide to the runners and riders in the concurrent and highly entertaining races for the leadership and deputy leadership of our beloved Labour Party.
Heh. Not unfair.
Posted by: David | January 14, 2020 at 17:40
That just screams masculinity.
Posted by: aelfheld | January 14, 2020 at 18:23
Heh. Not unfair.
Heh^2.
See also, quite in parallel, Nazi Literature in the Americas.
Posted by: Hal | January 14, 2020 at 20:33
Another handy guide to the Labour Party:
https://www.cobdencen tre.org/2020/01/labour-and-the-gulag-the-labour-partys-record-of-support-for-totalitarian-socialism/
Also explains the Stalinist stylings of young Kyle, waxing eloquent on the halcyon days of the soviet gulag.
Posted by: Pacificus | January 14, 2020 at 23:51
Pacificus' link.
In other commie news:
1) U of Sheffield is paying £9.34/hr for their own student Stasi, "...to tackle so-called "microaggressions" - which it describes as "subtle but offensive comments".
Sometimes irony can be pretty ironic.
2) Meanwhile in the US&A, an antediluvian folksinger tries her hand at a comeback with
Orange Man BadNasty Man, sure to reach number one at the top of the charts in Turloc.Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon | January 15, 2020 at 00:20
Another handy guide to the Labour Party
I've lost track of the number of leftists who have tried to persuade me over the years that the Labour Party is not at all Stalinist in its tendencies.
Posted by: pst314 | January 15, 2020 at 01:56
In further news following I’m no structural engineer, but I question the choice of material here., there is apparently another instance of not the best of construction choices . . .
Posted by: Hal | January 15, 2020 at 02:41
Coleman Hughes, here.
Posted by: David | January 15, 2020 at 07:15
I highly recommend John Bew’s Citizen Clem for an insight into the Labour party (I speak as someone who thinks the post-war consensus was one of the worst things ever to befall this country).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Laski#Declining_role
Laski’s views don’t seem to have been that uncommon in the Labour Party of his era; at one point even Clem the gem shared them. We hear very little about it though, or Labour’s support for the Soviet Union. Neither are Labour much criticised for singing their bloody Red Flag song all the time.
In the seventies the policies of the Labour Party, sometimes carried on by Blue Labour brought this country to its knees. Double digit inflation, rubbish in the streets, endless power cuts, a trip to the IMF. What do people remember? That Thatcher “stole” the milk.
Posted by: Charlie Suet | January 15, 2020 at 07:34
"And if your speech is calling for the elimination of people based on race or gender or religious - like, for whatever reason, things that people can't change [...]"
Heresy detected. Cancellation imminent.
Posted by: Novus | January 15, 2020 at 08:53
there is apparently another instance of not the best of construction choice
Similar problem in Pittsburgh last Christmas. No one was killed however, so they made it into a Christmas ornament.
Apparently a six inch water line was never capped decades ago. Perhaps a dish best served cold?
Posted by: WTP | January 15, 2020 at 12:57
That Thatcher “stole” the milk.
Heh. Was at a barbeque party attended by a couple of Brits. He was a physicist and a beer brewing expert, she was...kinda annoying. So for whatever reason, and I generally avoid such things but someone else brought it up...the 2016 election was looming and I do remember now that Marco Rubio had somehow slipped into the discussion. Anyway, as certain aspects of British politics intrigue me, specifically how some very rational and I might even say 'conservative' Brits whom I have known or met were Labor (and tangentially Lib-Dem also often befuddles me) or at the least anti-Tory (which I somewhat understand), I engaged in the discussion. In the opposite manner that familiarity breeds contempt, my two favorite politicians anywhere ever are Sir Winston and Saint Maggie T. I even have a tea tin of Sir Winston on display atop my kitchen cabinets. No way in hell I'd even have Saint Ronnie or Mr. Donnie T up there, but Sir Winston...well...but I digress. I happen to mention how much I admired "the problem with socialism is running out of other people's money" Thatcher and I got blind-sided by the milk thing. To hear this woman rant, you'd think Maggie was running around pissing in every kid's morning cheerios. The huge damage that socialism/flirting with socialism had done to pre-Thatcher UK she seemed to consider irrelevant or even oblivious to. I was the 'ignorant' one for not knowing (much) about the silly milk thing.
Posted by: WTP | January 15, 2020 at 13:22
U of Sheffield is paying £9.34/hr for their own student Stasi...
From the article:
If I might inquire -- is there any risk of reputational harm in broadcasting the university's employment of professional scold/informants? Perhaps the university administration would be better served by releasing a quick press release along the lines of, "Universities said the equality watchdog did not want to face up to the infinitesimal scale of the problem because of fears it could interrupt their paychecks."Posted by: Governor Squid | January 15, 2020 at 19:30
Do men even wear cuff links anymore?
Yes, but in their ears.
Posted by: Deborah | January 15, 2020 at 20:55
There. That should fix the broken italic tag.
Posted by: Captain Nemo | January 15, 2020 at 21:04
No, try this.
Posted by: WTP | January 15, 2020 at 21:14
That works. I wonder why my closing tag didn't?
Posted by: Captain Nemo | January 15, 2020 at 22:01
I wonder why my closing tag didn't?
Because Trump. Or, if you're in the UK, Boris.
Posted by: pst314 | January 15, 2020 at 23:05
Or, if you can really hold a grudge, Maggie. (to be said with a snarl)
Posted by: pst314 | January 15, 2020 at 23:07
Heh. Maggie was before my time. I don't believe my parents had even met when she left office. The first PM I was aware of was Blair. And I'm perfectly happy to blame him.
Posted by: Captain Nemo | January 15, 2020 at 23:12
Maggie was sort of before my time, too. That is, I was only starting to learn about the UK (nothing in the newspapers and mainstream news magazines was very helpful.) So I can only say that I retrospectively admired her.
Posted by: pst314 | January 16, 2020 at 00:11
One For The Burly Menfolk
Swabullah Nabukeera.
Posted by: Hal | January 16, 2020 at 01:56
Hey, Maggie's attempt to cut a milk program started during WW2 was EVIL.
Programs like that are SUPPOSED to live forever.
Remember the (US) excise tax on telecom imposed to help pay for the Spanish-American war? That lived ALMOST forever - it was (ha, ha) originally slated to expire in 1915, but lives on today, though maimed and weakened somewhat.
Posted by: Fred the Fourth | January 16, 2020 at 22:16
Do men even wear cuff links anymore?
I even have a whole bunch of shirts that are unwearable without cuff links (“french cuffs”). When my packing has been less than exemplary, I have had to improvise cuff links from paper clips.
Posted by: Surreptitious Evil | January 18, 2020 at 15:59