Friday Ephemera

An interesting choice was made. || It’s mine now. || Nommy-nommy-nom. || Always restrain your dinner. || Obstruction detected. || Duet. || Damian’s diary. || “Our ideology has led us to not making money.” || The machine uprising, day two. || Body positivity. || A parenting breakthrough. || The owl and the pussycat. || Pool time. || The progressive retail experience, parts 429, 430, 431, 432, and 433. || The perils of trying to scare people. || You know, I’m not entirely sure what the plan was. || Wooden cushion. || These woollen animals are smaller than yours. || Greenery. || You can’t say that in here. || You can’t say that in here 2. || Heavy ice cube. || A point illustrated. || And finally, a tool for every job.

Comments

[David]

“Drawer”? I’ve inherited my parents’ house. My dad bought it in 1968. The whole place is like that.

I remember finding a single screw - a large one, the kind that looks like it may be an important structural component of something - and spending several minutes wondering where it should have been, er, screwed.

[Dal]

"Power" in a scar*, good lord these people are idiots.

The advisory board for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue consisted of founder and CEO of the parenting brand Frida Mom, Chelsea Hirschhorn, to help put forth this genuine image of what birth and motherhood can look like — especially for those who haven’t given birth in the “traditional” way.

A swimsuit photoshoot has an advisory board.

pulling her bikini down – just the slightest – to show the beautiful scar on her abdomen.

Weird, inappropriate, insincere.

There's more than one kind of beauty. We get it.

There's an aesthetic of flaws and of wear and tear. We get it. We can go on tours of ruins too, or on countryside rambles to ponder the crookedness of trees.

Your fat friend is beautiful. Doesn't mean we want to look at her in a swimsuit, but we get that she has other admirable features. We also get that you don't want to be fat like your friend, that you don't want the kind of unspontaneous condescending attention your friend gets. We get the whole picture.

A husband can find his wife beautiful because her physical flaws come from the birth of their children and the worries of their shared life. We get it, but we don't want to look at the wife in a swimsuit. Among other things, it would be disrespectful both to the wife and the husband.

And swimsuit models have their own kind of beauty. A beauty of flawlessness, of youth, of signalling fertility but not being mothers yet.

They're pretending that the last form of beauty doesn't exist or shouldn't be entertained because it's discredited or on the wrong side of history. They're pretending that they're broadening the concept of beauty, but they're narrowing it by shoving every other kind of beauty into a venue that shows it at its greatest possible disadvantage.

And they've got this weird relationship with the dudes they imagine buying the swimsuit issue (as if those dudes haven't already departed from the occupied territory of Sports Illustrated). The "brave and stunning"/"territory marking" tendency requires the dudes to find the scars and bellyflab ugly. The "social construction of beauty" tendency requires the dudes to find it beautiful (if it's in the swimsuit issue, it must be beautiful), and indeed to respond to it in the way they responded to the discredited out-of-date fatphobic Eurocentric socially-constructed beauty of Elle Macpherson. The synthesis being they might not like it now but if we force it on them they'll get to like it. Sounds admirable.

[sonny wayz]

I've inherited my parents' house. My dad bought it in 1968...

Some time ago, my parents went on vacation and I house-sat. I found my Dad's tobacco tin of bent nails which he was presumably going to straighten and reuse. The trash bag was a bit heavier that week, for some reason.

[WTP]

TL;DR version, the kind of people who have beauty inside them don't aspire to be swimsuit models.

[WTP]

Some time ago, my parents went on vacation and I house-sat. I found my Dad's tobacco tin of bent nails

After my father-in-law passed I would occasionally need to fix stuff for my mother-in-law. He was probably as organized as I am, which isn't much but isn't messy either. Sometimes it would be a mind reading exercise when I knew a man like him would likely have a certain tool but how/where it was logically stored wasn't always clear. Sometimes I would say a little prayer and find it. Sometimes not.

[ccscientist]

c-sections: There is good evidence that a natural birth gives the baby a sample of good bacteria as they pass through the birth canal and vagina. Natural birth also has fewer complications. Just because you choose it does not make it better or noble. This "no one should feel bad about their decisions" shit is destroying the ability to reason.

SI models: the things we find beautiful in women are youth, fitness, shiny hair, facial symmetry, lack of deformities. All of these are programmed into our genes because they are signs that a woman can have lots of children. Remember children? These people don't. They also think we are empty vessels that they can pour their ideology into. Try watching Jordan Peterson or read "The Blank Slate" by Pinker. We DO have a human nature and lots of what they want to shove at us violates it. Incidentally, it is my unscientific unprovable intuition/observation that chunky/obese women are not hot sexually. They are lumpen.

[Captain Nemo]

Rammle

"Things that you think’ll come in handy, but they just never do
It’s the third drawer down from the top
And it’s full of shit
And there’s tons of it."

Sometimes that stuff really does come in handy:

https://twitter.com/DeaconBlues0/status/1528095766966718465

[pst314]

And swimsuit models have their own kind of beauty. A beauty of flawlessness, of youth, of signalling fertility but not being mothers yet.

The Greeks stuck almost entirely to art which depicted ideals of beauty. Aphrodite and Apollo were ideals of youthful beauty. Zeus and Hera were ideals of mature beauty. No time was wasted carving sculptures of obese men and women who had "inner beauty" of personality; the Greeks would have laughed. Even Hephaestus, who was supposed to be lame or even ugly (if I recall correctly Aphrodite's reasons for spurning him) looks handsome in the very few sculptures and red-figure paintings that I've seen.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

There is good evidence that a natural birth gives the baby a sample of good bacteria as they pass through the birth canal and vagina.

The main normal vaginal flora are Lactobacillus sp. and the kid passing through isn't going to get any immunologic benefit from the brief external exposure particularly as among the first steps after initial assessment is to clean the thing off.

Just because you choose it does not make it better or noble.

Although it does happen, convenience Cesareans (e.g., picking a date for whatever reason) are rare compared to medically indicated procedures.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

"Political branding strategist, Adslinger, & polling/targeting expert. Undesirable #1." is puzzled.

"Undesirable #1" - got that right at least.

[pst314]

"Undesirable #1" - got that right at least.

If we were to compile a simple list of the behavior defects, psychological problems, delusions, and lies that have characterized the left of the last 50 years, I wonder how long the book would be.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...I wonder how long the book would be.

It would be to "War and Peace" as "War and Peace" is to a Jack Chick tract, I believe.

[Sam Duncan]

“I remember finding a single screw”

There's been an oversized key lying around this place for as long as I remember, and nobody's ever known what it's for. My folks had all the windows replaced in 1980; the fittings for the Edwardian originals are still in a box somewhere. So are the original light switches.* A cast-iron fire surround that must have been removed long before my dad moved in is leaning against the wall in one of the bedrooms.

“Undesirable #1.” is puzzled.

...by people enjoying each other's company. Says a lot.

Oh, and the “Political branding strategist” thing: While it might be an exaggeration to say that this explains everything that's wrong with the world today, it's not much of one.

*In fairness, we kept them because they're rather distinctive. I've never seen anything like them except on TV shows set in New York brownstones. (Jerry Seinfeld's apartment had one.) I imagine they were the very latest thing imported from America back in 1902 but for some reason never caught on over here.

[Rich Rostrom]

Re: junk collections

Some years ago, I took on the mass of debris in the basement of my 6-unit co=op apartment building. Among the stuff I got rid of was a pair of skis tagged with the name of a couple who had moved out in 1958.

OTOH, there is cultch: the box or drawer or shelf of loose nuts, washers, diodes, coils, plugs, cables, gaskets, pipes, handles, fuses, clamps, and of course bolts and screws that accumulates in the workspace of every craftsman
And which is, over time, invaluable.

[sonny wayz]

cultch: the box or drawer or shelf of loose nuts, washers, diodes, coils, plugs, cables, gaskets, pipes, handles...

There's a running joke in the gearhead community which goes something like: By the time you've tried everything in your tin of random nuts, you'll have buggered the threads on the bolt so badly, even the correct nut won't fit.

[ftumch]

normal vaginal flora

Band name.

[asiaseen]

Band name.

First track; "Where have all the flora gone?"

[WTP]

By the time you've tried everything in your tin of random nuts, you'll have buggered the threads on the bolt so badly, even the correct nut won't fit.

My father advised me such a tin could "save you a trip to the hardware store, son". By the time I try every nut I generally could have been to the hardware store and back. After retiring, I took the time to organize, as much as possible, that tin into a dozen clear plastic boxes which are arranged in some general order on the walls next to my work benches. This seems to have helped considerably. Took a couple hours and some reconsideration of categories though.

[pst314]

My father advised me such a tin could "save you a trip to the hardware store, son".

By the time he passed away, my Dad had accumulated many dozens of tins and jars filled with all sorts of hardware. I don't think he ever had to go to the hardware store after reaching sixty years of age.

[Megaera]

On Rammle, cultch, and the Room/Drawer of Requirements: there is a Universal Truth regarding those things which so far no one has mentioned. You may keep that stuff around for forever (and I've about managed that, given my own age and the, er, retentive qualities of various predecessors) and never need the least fragment of it -- but burned into steel in letters of fire is your doom. Throw it away, throw ANY of it away, and within a week it is a lip-lock certainty that you will find a need for it, and most likely be unable to find a substitute anywhere.

[pst314]

Throw it away, throw ANY of it away, and within a week it is a lip-lock certainty that you will find a need for it

It might be a year not a week, but nonetheless yes, yes indeed. One of my coping mechanisms was to find ways to efficiently store large amounts of stuff in a smaller home, but so well organized that anything could be quickly found.