Friday Ephemera

Headpool. || Cranky when peckish. || From King Kong to Fleischer’s Superman, animated scenes. || “Pull on string” and other things seen by car mechanics. || The unspanked, a possible series. || Inconvenience of note. || Biometric security using veins. || Brøndby Garden City. || Launching satellites with a giant gun. || Seating solution of note. || The spirit of innovation. || Nommy nommy nom. || Always remove the nails. || Choices have consequences. (h/t, Perry) || Kagoshima. || The creatures who teach your children. || Somewhat related. || This is one of these. || Always remember, someone’s day was worse than yours. || Six dancers, one spinning platform. || And finally, musically, some daddy-daughter time.

Comments

[pst314]

Launching satellites with a giant gun.

The fatal engineering mistake that Dr. Bull made was to offer his engineering services to Saddam: "Sure, I can build a giant gun to bombard Israel."

[pst314]

Choices have consequences.

I have been told many times that it is extremely rare for art schools to teach any business skills at all to their students--not marketing, not budgeting, not even "most artists fail, so learn something that earns money to support yourself until you can do art full time." Almost all departments in all schools are very bad at this, but the fine arts are among the worst. It's as if they never learned how the real world works and don't care if their students ever do.

[pst314]

The unspanked, a possible series.

Bolshevik Lives Don't Matter.

[WTP]

Headpool

K...take it from someone who has made a little money at this game...that's not a legal shot.

[JuliaM]

"Choices have consequences."

A response: "The problem is still the same. Being a trader is not the ultimate salvation. Being an artist should not be punished with the current spastic economic systems. Imagine a world w/o artists. We probably live like savages and eat our dirt. I wish I could be an artist."

I don't think the message is getting through, somehow...

[svh]

Seating solution of note.

Don't think I could relax on a chair like that.

[David]

Morning, all.

Being an artist should not be punished

Heh. The tweeter in question, like the “99%” lady, seems to think that the limited market for leftwing students with fine arts degrees is a form of punishment, which is a rather grandiose way of looking at it. A tad self-flattering. Sort of, “People by and large don’t see a need for what I do, didn’t ask me to do it, and don’t wish to pay for it, therefore I’m being victimised.” Or, “I feel I ought to be artistic and applauded and given lots of stuff. So where’s my stuff?”

Vanity is a powerful drug. Ditto practised narcissism.

[Jen]

And finally, musically, some daddy-daughter time.

Brilliant.

[David]

Brilliant.

Consider it a project for the weekend. Come Monday, I expect you all to be proficient.

[Felicity]

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/melbourne-artists-bizarre-project-loses-25k-taxpayer-grant/news-story/fa59a4a031e342fb6d1581bebb7f058e

Who says Australia is a cultural desert. Sandrine Schaefer et al have some competition from the Southern Hemisphere. Can’t believe the ignoramus commissars at the Australia Council have taken away her funding.

[David]

Who says Australia is a cultural desert.

Ms Casey Jenkins, and her vast talents, have of course been mentioned here before.

[Ted S, Catskill Mtns, NY, USA]

Daddy-daughter time

[Y. Knott]

Don't think I could relax on a chair like that.

I was just wondering how seriously he'll injure himself - and what the ambulance attendants will think - when the knot lets-go on the one length of string that holds the whole thing up.

[Mike]

The spirit of innovation.

*upvotes*

[Clam]

“Pull on string” and other things seen by car mechanics.

Looks like you need a cream for #23.

[David]

She was bonkers, and a drunk, but not without talent.

[Governor Squid]

...when the knot lets-go on the one length of string that holds the whole thing up.

You've just described about half of my experience with small-craft sailing.

[Adam]

The young woman (my assumption!) flipping birds and chanting may be practicing advanced debating skills. I see a lot of energy and passion for her cause. That's all that matters in debate these days - except Black Lives, of course.

"Pull this string" related: We were moving houses. I removed a decorative ceramic sun from the back patio and noticed that a wren had built a nest (with eggs) in the sun's 'mouth'. I rehung the sun and we left it behind.

[Captain Nemo]

Look at all the broken people. Where do they all come from?

https://twitter.com/CalebJHull/status/1314310530631454721

[WTP]

We probably live like savages and eat our dirt. I wish I could be an artist.

Yes. Because if it weren't for 'artists' no one else would ever, never, ever develop an imagination. It simply MUST come from a government supported institution that 'helps' determine who is an artist. I mean really. Where else could new and novel ideas, ever, ever come from? I know I can't think of any place. Sigh. But alas, I am not an artist either.

[asiaseen]

all the broken people

It would be interesting (or, maybe, not) to know what flavour of gender each claims.

[David]

I’ve decided to be nonchalant.

[Captain Nemo]

I’ve decided to be nonchalant.

He says, modestly.

[David]

He says, modestly.

[ Drapes VIP rope around self, shoos away riff-raff. ]

[PiperPaul]

While licking his eyebrows.

[Captain Nemo]

Drapes VIP rope around self, shoos away riff-raff.

Heh.

[Steve E]

I'm always getting shooed away.

[Uma Thurmond's Feet]

Brøndby

Beautiful from the air. I wonder what it would be like to live there. How rigorous are their zoning codes? Are tall trees allowed? Do the neighbors in your circle know each other? Unless you cut a hole in the back hedge, moving groceries from car to house seems arduous. What is the density of this area compared to my neighborhood of traditional small houses facing the streets (about a third of an acre for each house).

So many questions.

[Uma Thurmond's Feet]

She was bonkers, and a drunk, but not without talent.

Thank you! The trailer led me down a musical rathole. A fascinating electronic music pioneer, and it led me to update the Delia Derbyshire and Caroline Catz wikipedia pages. I really, really want to see this documentary!

[David]

The trailer led me down a musical rathole.

See also this, via here.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Today in the world of woke art, #metoo Medusa, when turning someone to stone just isn't enough, but I am guessing the artist never read Bullfinch.

[Steve E]

...when turning someone to stone just isn't enough...

This Medusa could definitely make a man hard as stone.

[ Reports for re-grooving ]

[pst314]

This Medusa could definitely make a man hard as stone.

Put a bag over her head.

[Sam Duncan]

“The trailer led me down a musical rathole.”

35 years ago, when my friends were all into... whatever the hell kids were into in the '80s, I used to say my favourite band was the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. And wondered why I got picked on.

[Uma Thurmond's Feet]

Sam, you were just ahead of your time. Wear it proudly!

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

With any luck, like my cat and dog did, they are wearing these because they got spayed and neutered.

[Alex DeWynter]

With any luck, like my cat and dog did, they are wearing these because they got spayed and neutered.

Pretty sure the guy is blinking H E L P M E in Morse Code.

[Fay]

daddy-daughter time.

[Squires]

Today in the world of woke art...

So, why not Athena’s head?

And I guess Andromeda is chum in the artist’s alternate universe.

[John]

Novelist Bernardine Evaristo, well known to this blog, has been awarded an OBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list.

Empire.
British Empire.
Just let that sink in.

[John]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/02/bernardine-evaristo-slams-english-academic-for-bias-to-whiteness-and-maleness?CMP=twt_books_b-gdnbooks

The newest Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

So stunning and brave. So principled.

[[+]]

Washington Post Blames "Systemic Racism" for George Floyd Robbing a Latino Woman at Gunpoint

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/10/washington-post-blames-systemic-racism-george-daniel-greenfield/

[Nikw211]

So stunning and brave

Marketing and publicity at its finest.

In an era when public trust in the media runs at something in the region of 25% or so, it must be comforting for a privately educated and Oxbridge graduate dominated British media industry to know that they can still successfully - and apparently with ease - foist the latest author du jour onto a naive public.

Which brings me round to this 2019 review of Bernardine Evaristo by Will Gomperz, Arts Editor of the BBC.

Just read Gomperz's summary of the first chapter of Evaristo's novel, Girl, Woman, Other (original italics):

So, chapter one starts with Amma, a middle-aged, politically engaged lesbian theatre-maker whose latest play is about to be staged at the National Theatre. Next is her daughter Yazz, a precocious undergraduate who hangs with a group of similarly assertive female pals who agree that:

"…the older generation has RUINED EVERYTHING and her generation is doomed

unless they wrest intellectual control from their elders

sooner rather than later"

And then there's Dominique, Amma's great friend and long-time collaborator, who falls for a controlling radical feminist and moves to America.

You would be forgiven for thinking this had been written by Titania McGrath.

But no.

Instead, it is in deadly earnest and socialist realist twaddle of the worst kind (which makes me wonder - Does Evaristo even know that she's writing in a genre of fiction developed by long dead white European males of the late nineteenth-century, ones who fiercely upheld distinctly European, and therefore to someone like Evaristo presumably distinctly "white", values?).

Naturally, Gomperz gives it 4 out of 5 stars.

Although that doesn't mean very much given that the possibility of him giving anything less than 4 stars to any BAME woman author would, entirely predictably, have been close to or even actually zero.

But without even having seen that review much less picked up a copy of Evaristo's book and read it, it is evident from that summary alone that the novel will be completely unreadable shit.

It is further quite plain to see that Evaristo is a novelist that white, privileged, socially connected elites, such as Gomperz want and even need to manufacture a success for.

They want to hold her work up and say "You see! We told you this is what {BAME / LGBT / Trans} folk really think about the oppression we assured you that they suffer! You have it from the horse's mouth that everything we told you about their lives is true!".

And that makes Evaristo about as radical, authentic, and liberated as a bear, numbed and glassy eyed with copious amounts of vodka and squeezed into an ill-fitting red satin waistcoat, dancing a jig at a freezing outdoor market in the Urals.

[John]

We should have a Golgafrinchin Ark B style of honours for the likes of Evaristo, Marcus Rashford, “Sir” Geldof, Stormzy, Baroness Lawrence, Baroness Chakrabati (pattern developing? No sirree!), Sam Cameron’s hairdresser, some LibDem MP’s election agent etc etc.

[Joan]

Cranky when peckish.

Shouldn't she be added to the 'unspanked' list?

[Sam Duncan]

“whose latest play is about to be staged at the National Theatre”

Damn that oppressive patriarchy!

[David]

It is further quite plain to see that Evaristo is a novelist that white, privileged, socially connected elites, such as Gomperz want and even need to manufacture a success for.

Somewhat related.

[Captain Nemo]

Today's word is friendship:

https://twitter.com/dodo/status/1314913824559030275

[Jeff Wood]

My dear Nemo, thank you muchly. Earlier this evening I read an incredibly depressing animal story - no details offered: I don't have the heart. However, though I will remember the earlier story in bed, I will sleep, remembering yours.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

More female empowerment woke art, this time, a portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg masde of 20,000 tampons.

The idea to create the Ruth Bader Ginsburg portrait using tampons came to Sheehan in a dream. "I woke up in the middle of the night, and it was all about tampons," she told Insider.

TBF, a nightmare is a dream.

Read more about this and other stunning and brave artwork made by people of all genders !

[Baceseras]

animal story

I was over forty years old before I even heard of "Rab and His Friends" by the Scottish doctor John Brown: the story was first printed around 1850 or '60, and for many years it was nursery fare, like Gulliver and Robinson Crusoe. It's surely one of the best dog stories ever written, encompassing the virtues together with violent death and human pathos, but beautiful to stir the soul. They don't give such books to children much nowadays, more's the pity.

I only happened to discover it when I was reading some old talks given to first-year medical students by Dr. William Osler -- and here I wish a Happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian friends. Osler was a great champion of John Brown's writings, and urged them on his listeners every chance he had. I'm glad I took his advice.

There are variant versions of "Rab" online; this is the best I've found:

https://www.studentuk.com/2016/07/31/rab-and-his-friends/

[Lady Cutekitten]

Re Evaristo:

I have actually read Their Eyes Were Watching God. As far as as I know, it is the only novel in the English language featuring a hero who (a) is named Tea Cake and (b) dies of rabies after heroically interposing himself between his girlfriend, Janey, and a rabid dog. Zora Hurston wasn’t a good enough fiction writer to pull this off, her forte was non-fiction.

[Steve E]

...a portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg masde of 20,000 tampons.

Ms. Casey Jenkins performs vaginal knitting...

...Andrea Sheehan...

Hold my beer!

[Steve E]

Read more about this and other stunning and brave artwork made by people of all genders !

Not to put to fine a point on it but,

All of the 60 art pieces on-site were painted, photographed, sculpted, or stitched by “feminists of both genders around the globe fighting for human rights,” the release says.

And I thought there were something like 137 genders.

[Steve E]

...a hero who (a) is named Tea Cake...

No doubt inspired by Joe Biden's anti-hero Corn Pop.

[Steve E]

...talks given to first-year medical students by Dr. William Osler -- and here I wish a Happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian friends.

Thank you Baceseras. Here's some interesting history on Osler.

Osler grew up in the town of Dundas which is about a 10 minute drive from where I live. The house he grew up in is operated as a bed and breakfast today. He was born in Bond Head, but his family wanted to relocate to Dundas. He came down with the croup so the family couldn't travel and had to cancel their train tickets.

The train they were originally scheduled to travel on collapsed on the Canal Bridge (I live 5 minutes from its location) in what became known as the Desjardins Canal Train Disaster. 59 people were killed in the accident.

So, ironically, the "father of modern medicine" might never have come to be had it not been for a childhood illness.

[asiaseen]

Hotel Zena celebrating tampons

Plato a champion of women's rights? The things you learn here!

[David]

Young woke intellectual of the year.

[Captain Nemo]

My dear Nemo, thank you muchly.

You're welcome.

[Sam Duncan]

“Osler grew up in the town of Dundas which is about a 10 minute drive from where I live.”

Interesting. Its founders must have come from my neck of the woods. The the Dundas Burn flows into the River Kelvin about ten minute's walk from where I live (or rather the remains of it do; you could easily mistake it for a drainpipe), and Port Dundas is the district of Glasgow which grew around a canal wharf near its source.

“Young woke intellectual of the year.”

Totally not a racist at all. I mean, how could anyone possibly imagine that this is a similar thought process to that which led to the slaughter of the 20th Century? It's a mystery, right enough.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

All of the 60 art pieces on-site were painted, photographed, sculpted, or stitched by “feminists of both genders around the globe fighting for human rights,” the release says.

And I thought there were something like 137 genders.

You would be correct, the writer at your link to the DC Eater* is just manifesting internalized colonial yte phallocentricity by saying "both genders", the writer at Hot Lifestyle News displays proper wokeosity goodthought when zher writes;

Created by artists of all genders from around the world, the installations range from paintings to photography, sculptures, and textiles.

The DC Eater writer clearly needs reeducation.

*In this context, the jokes, they write themselves.

[pst314]

awarded an OBE...just let that sink in.

Well, Kentucky Fried Chicken officially changed its name to KFC and declares that KFC now stands for...KFC. So maybe an increasingly woke Parliament can decree that OBE no longer stands for Order of the British Empire. (Similarly, the A&M in Texas A&M originally meant Agriculture and Mechanical, but now officially means nothing.)

[Microbillionaire]

The NYT would like us to know about The Tragedy of Heterosexuality and other nonsense. Two excerpts:

> a somber, urgent academic examination of the many ways in which opposite-sex coupling can hurt the very individuals who cling to it most.

> In examining the pressure to partner with the opposite gender we find the extortions of capitalism

Come the Restoration, I pray for the NYT and all its journalists to be thoroughly lustrated.

[Steve E]

Interesting. Its founders must have come from my neck of the woods.

Dundas was named after Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville — an 18th-century politician from Edinburgh Scotland. Dundas was Home Secretary and Secretary at War in William Pitt's government. He never lived in Canada. The town was originally called Coote's Paradise as it sits at the end of a marsh that had been the preferred hunting ground of British Naval Captain Thomas Coote. Coote was born in Ireland.

There is some pressure being brought to change the name of the town. It is claimed that Dundas delayed the abolition of slavery by 15 years.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Young woke intellectual of the year.

Possibly related...

[WTP]

Possibly related...

Now come on...years ago, before 2015 even, I was assured by very, very smart people that such things were simply never going to happen. If you think something like this is possibly likely, well perhaps you need to speak to a psychiatrist. You wait right here and as soon as the good doctor is done fucking his parakeet, he will see you.

[Jay Guevara]

The tweeter in question, like the “99%” lady, seems to think that the limited market for leftwing students with fine arts degrees is a form of punishment, which is a rather grandiose way of looking at it.

The easy way to deflate someone who says this sort of thing: "Whom would you hire to do what you do? And how much would you pay?"

[David]

Modern romance.

[Mike]

Modern romance.

Bullet dodged.

[Uma Thurmond's Feet]

Breaking News: World Health Organizations declare lockdowns "unnecessary."

So much for science.

[Captain Nemo]

Before I turn in for the night, here's that steampunk propeller car you've always wanted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/j8lygj/this_1921_helica_de_leyat_also_known_as_the_plane/

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Modern romance.

"Let's take this outside" - the proper answer should have been "Feck Off".

[LW]

From Biden's website

Federal law prevents hunters from hunting migratory game birds with more than three shells in their shotgun. That means our federal law does more to protect ducks than children.

I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure it's illegal to hunt children with even one shell in your shotgun.

[Pooklord]

Bridesmaids kind of cute. Can you marry them?

[Megaera]

Farnsworth: re the RBG portrait, so would it be fair to say that the medium really IS the message?

Well, somebody HAD to say it...

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

"Dancing".

If only those kids had these, they could have gotten close to their dates instead of someone else's.

Meanwhile, as if air travel didn't suck enough, I bet these work great in an emergency.

[David]

I bet these work great in an emergency.

It does rather suggest a gameshow challenge, in which contestants have to wobble down a narrow aisle, fully besuited in the, um, apparatus, as around them smoke thickens and screaming intensifies.

[Governor Squid]

The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

Oh, she saved this little gem for the end: "...just the thing to rescue heterosexuality from its unearned hegemony in our shared cultural imagination."

Given that we're talking about the foundational social unit of thousands of species for thousands of generations, I'm not really sure "unearned hegemony" is the right label. I mean, if that level of achievement isn't enough to "earn" dominance, what is?

[David]

The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

I struggled through the review and felt I’d lost a leg-full of blood.

[Lady Cutekitten]

Well, as tampon portraits go, that one’s a pretty good likeness.

Going from the ridiculous to the not-sublime, I am just barely old enough to remember Shirley Chisholm, a Congresscritter who was also the first black something-or-other. I remember what she looked like, and that’s a terrible picture of her.

[David]

Always respect the media.

[ComputerLabRat]

...just the thing to rescue heterosexuality from its unearned hegemony in our shared cultural imagination.

Just where do these people think new non-heterosexual humans come from? Gametes from each sex (hetero!) combine, resultant human gestates in the mature female human until birth or at least to some level of development where tech can keep it alive. And this is the party of Science!(tm)? It doesn't matter what you think you are or are attracted to - you didn't get on this planet in the first place without heterosexual reproduction!

Governor Squid said it much better. I'm just fed up to here with being beat about the head with Science!(tm) when it's about masks or global warming, and told to shut up when it's about basic biology.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...to rescue heterosexuality from its unearned hegemony in our shared cultural imagination...

From Orwell, someone is trying just that.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

A tragic lament...

[Captain Nemo]

A tragic lament...

One would need a heart of stone not to laugh.

[WTP]

Just read this in a discussion on using cognitive ability tests in hiring practices. Based on previous comments, this person was serious...

NameRedacted based on our systemic racism, we dont deserve the fruits of a meritocracy, "the best". We only deserve "good enough", random chance from a pool of qualified candidates.

[asiaseen]

One would need a heart of stone not to laugh.

Or be infected with the Woke virus.

[pst314]

NameRedacted based on our systemic racism, we dont deserve the fruits of a meritocracy, "the best". We only deserve "good enough", random chance from a pool of qualified candidates.

I have no problem with "woke" idiots getting medical care only from physicians who graduated in the bottom of their classes and barely passed their board exams. It's what they deserve.

[pst314]

just the thing to rescue heterosexuality from its unearned hegemony in our shared cultural imagination

It's as if the idiot has a woke cliche generator. Pull the string and hear the blather. But it does relieve the person of the burden of actual thought.

[Daniel Ream]

This is one of these.

Note how many of these involve the poster describing their mental health breakdowns as context.