davidthompson

Friday Ephemera

A lady descending, for unladylike reasons. || He wanted a piece of that action. || An alternative to towing. || Welcome to the clown timeline. || Selective umbrage detected. || Ceaseless innovation. (h/t, pst314) || Incoming. || Not for the nervous, a very close call. || For the bespectacled, a patent of note. || Not entirely implausible. (h/t, Damian) || Alpine shelter. Wi-Fi status unknown. || The past. || The roller skates of yesteryear. || Melon migration. || All back to mine. || Hers is bigger than yours. || Street vibes. || “Without testicles, a boy will become dependent on external hormones for the rest of his life.” || When your wardrobe solution requires some reorganization of external reality. || Freethinker detected. || And finally, when the new furniture is a little confusing.

Should you wish to, you can follow me on Twitter. 

A Sudden, Quite Rapid, Relocation Of Stock

One for our ongoing series on the progressive retail experience. I believe this is part 445:

A young woman asks in a brazen voice as the destruction and theft rages behind her, “Are y’all gonna make the sandwiches or are ya’ll just gonna keep recording?” The Wawa employee responded, “Uh, it’s going to be a while.”

“No arrests were made.”

Update, via the comments:

The celebratory twerking seen in the background is, you’ll agree, a charming touch. Presumably done on grounds that trashing someone’s business and stealing their property, while exulting in mob intimidation and giving two fingers to the idea of civilisation, is all so jolly. Perhaps we can look forward to another Vice article telling us how looting is a good thing when black people do it.

After all, self-styled progressives - the people who loudly announce their supposed compassion and altruism – are famed for making weirdly contrived excuses for pathological selfishness. Say, the kind of pathological selfishness seen above and throughout the progressive retail series. Indeed, excuses for sociopathic behaviour are a staple of progressive posturing, appearing all but weekly, and with increasing moral convolution and outright perversity.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Dancing As Instructed

Both literal and ideological:

I love to dance, but I’m a bit picky about music. If Motown is playing, I’m guaranteed to have a transcendent in-my-body experience, whereas electronic dance music is hit and miss. I was, however, determined to shake and sweat and twitch, and so I did. My new friend danced beside me, trying to talk to me through the foam plugs in my ears—I nodded along with a smile, hearing nothing.

I do have one or two questions – not least regarding the use of foam earplugs – but let us hasten on. The gyrator in question is a seemingly ungendered being named Kier Adrian Gray, who “went to a queer dance party with someone I’d met online.”

We’d had a nice time chatting over sodas at the city’s catholic themed bar before we headed to a warehouse full of slippery, glittering gays, adorned in fishnet and sequin, leather and lace.

Sequins and glitter, and a companion of indeterminate sex, another ungendered being. So far, so flaming. But for a night out to be progressive and fully intersectional, it does need some more improbable complications. And so,

After a while, they [our narrator’s companion] wanted to move closer to the stage and I followed. Before we could make it to the front, though, they explained how the dance floor closest to the DJ was for black and indigenous femmes only.

There we go.

Friday Ephemera

Alarming crane-related mishap of note. (Happily, he survived.) || And some unexpected excitement in the bedroom. || His is bigger than yours. || The up-buggering of Bond continues, I see. || Two mighty combatants. || A question of mass. And yes, it will be on the test. || Methane bubbles. || Lions in the rain. || You trade them in, I think. || “A friendly reminder.” || Intrigue. || “Fake tranny privilege.” || The progressive retail experience, part 444. || Party planning. || He speaks for women. No, really, he does. || The thrill of newsstands. || Ladies at large. || A tool for every job. || When you live near the border. || At the University of Iowa, it’s the life of the mind. || Swings 2.0. || And finally, artificial intelligence finds open-access camera footage of Instagram photos being taken.  

And yes, you can follow me on Twitter. 

You Will Practise Not Noticing

Further to recent rumblings in the comments, the Globe and Mail’s Phoebe Maltz Bovy offers what I believe is called a hot take:

Most will be familiar with the following scenario: a young girl, a teen or tween, gets in trouble with her school’s administration for a dress-code violation. Her supposed crime against decency: looking provocative. It will turn out that the girl was wearing some normal teenager outfit, jeans and a T-shirt or something equally boring, but had the audacity to attend school in a body with breasts, hips and a post-pubescent-looking behind… She is not choosing to draw attention to herself simply by existing. It’s the fault of the adults around her for sexualising her.

Given what follows, do keep that last line in mind.

But in a twist to the typical narrative, this time around, a high-school teacher in Oakville, Ont., made headlines for her curvaceous classroom presence.

That would be this chap’s curvaceous classroom presence.

“The conservative press and right-wing social media” are then mentioned, complete with implied hissing, on grounds that those irredeemable right-wingers have noticed something untoward:

Milestones Of Human Advancement

Number four. The discovery of fire. 

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.   

Friday Ephemera

Nommy nommy nom. || New rap sensation. || The rest of the rainbow. || “White people are the reason I can’t lose weight.” || Instant woman. || Karate Girl, 1973. || A rethinking of priorities. || A detailed, two-part analysis of the self-destructing tape recorders in the Mission: Impossible TV series. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || They’re just making sure your children are “porn-literate.” || I can explain everything. || Can I stay here for a while? || Free toy or side? || Team mascot of note. || 100 million degrees Celsius for 30 seconds. || Romantic long shot. || She was digging in her tail. || A dog’s dinner was made of it. || Boat horn detected. || Incoming. || Incoming 2. || There may be a lesson of some kind here. (h/t, Dr W) || And finally, and not at all perilously, just think of the savings. 

Update: 

Thanks to ComputerLabRat, the comments are now enhanced with enormous rubber boobs.

And yes, by all means, follow me on Twitter. 

Reheated (72)

Some items from the archives:

No Black Lights Were Available.

New York Times contributor is oppressed by pedestrian-crossing traffic lights.

Mr Kaufman - who can doubtless detect racism in the motions of subatomic particles - would have us believe that his friend was using the word white as a racial descriptor, rather than, as seems more likely, an unremarkable acknowledgement of a traffic light’s colour when talking to a child. In light of which, Mr Kaufman’s claims of being “bombarded” with racism – daily, everywhere – become at least explicable, if not convincing. 

The pedestrian crossing signal that so distresses Mr Kaufman – a rudimentary humanoid figure, made of white lights on a black background – can be seen here, from a safe distance. You may want to steady yourselves. It’s all very upsetting, at least for the exquisitely sensitive. Mr Kaufman then goes on an investigative journey, in which he learns why, in a society with lots of non-English speakers, crossing signals with words are being replaced by simple, universal graphics, calibrated to capture attention – say, by using lights of a certain hue. Which all sounds quite sensible. Rather than, say, a nefarious racial conspiracy intended to break the will of the negro.

You May Clap When Moved.  

Mr Reed Altemus rubs his trousers, awaits applause.

Marking Their Territory

And in totally-radical-toilet news: 

Female students at one of Latin America’s top Universities say trans activists staged a coup of a single-sex washroom on their campus, 

It started, you see, with feminist students painting a lesbian pride symbol on a wall near a campus library. As one does. This act of fearless self-involvement apparently inflicted nerve-shredding trauma on the trans activist contingent, who promptly denounced the lesbians as “TERFs, colonial fascists, and transphobes,” before announcing that lesbians are only permitted to use symbols of lesbianism that they, the trans activists, find congenial.

Shortly after, as a result of the lesbian symbol that had been painted, the trans students reportedly declared that they “did not feel safe” on the campus and went to administrators to demand a gender-neutral washroom be established in that area. While administrators agreed to create one, the students did not wait for it to be designated. Less than 24 hours later, the activists took over the largest female restroom, which was on the second floor of the Faculty of Philosophy.

Ah, the life of the mind.

Naturally, the first task was to give the toilets a makeover via the uplifting medium of graffiti, thereby communicating the life-enhancing qualities of prostitution:

Friday Ephemera

“Equitable Vaseline.” || Lost and found (or, Your Mother Must Never Hear Of This). || She’s explaining who she is, you see. || Nipping of note. || Oddly, it didn’t catch on. || And this beast from the 80s also failed to find a market. || Hell’s kitchen. || Conflict resolution. || I laughed and I’m not sorry. || Hers is bigger than yours. || Getting rid of the body is always the tricky part. || I’ll need a keyboard and some mashed potato. || A project for the weekend. || Shopping mall scenes. || The jeans of Joan Collins, 1981. || Jupiter rotating in real time. || And it ain’t a reward either. || How to tie a scarf. || Question asked. || Neighbours not welcome. || What ‘activists’ do. || Crime-fighting crisis. || And finally, how to impress your friends with interacting vortices.

And yes, by all means follow me on Twitter. 

Vote For The One With The Mental Health Problems

Canada’s interim Green Party leader, a dysmorphic woman who expects everyone else to refer to her as “he” and “they,” but also sometimes “she,” apparently at random, was recently rendered tearful and distraught by an electronic caption:

On Saturday, September 3, at a public media event kicking off the Green Party of Canada’s leadership contest, the wrong pronouns were presented beside my name in a way that I could not change myself. I acknowledge that mistakes can happen and the need to learn from them. What happened here impacted me much more than a slip of the tongue. It made me feel hurt and isolated at a moment that should have been filled with inspiration and anticipation.

You see, a captioning oversight – or if you prefer, an accidental acknowledgment of reality – is part of a “system of oppression” and therefore a basis for a grand project of social correction. One that must address the seemingly bottomless sorrows of “Black, Indigenous and racialised people and 2SLGBTQIA+ people,” and thereby prevent a fearless politician from feeling “hurt and isolated.” “I am assumed male nearly always by strangers,” says Ms Kuttner, which, frankly, seems a tad implausible. We’re also told that perceiving her as a man, not a woman, requires “effort,” an effort that is expected by Ms Kuttner - which would appear closer to the truth, if not entirely consonant with the previous claim.

An Attempt To Dry A Tablecloth

Attention, lowly peasants. I bring you art:

The vast creative talent behind the above, quite literally, is of course Ms Sandrine Schaefer, whose contributions to human flourishing have been noted here on occasion.