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Brrrrr…

Ohhhhh…check out this little slice of toe-curling, butt-clinching shame. Mojo posted a link in the thread below; it’s from the White House’s blog. What your government thinks of you.

Is that the target demographic for Obamacare, or is it representative of the sort of people who work in Obama’s White House?

If you can’t make it out in reproduction, the artist is named Carolyn Belefski and she gives her website as carolynbelefski.com. The link goes to a blank BlueHost holding page. The forlorn wisdom of low expectations.

Good weekend, y’all!

January 30, 2015 — 9:41 pm
Comments: 26

Free Dippy

This is Dippy the Diplodocus — though whether anyone called him that before he was embroiled in controversy is a matter of, um…controversy. He’s been in London’s Natural History Museum since 1905, a gift from Andrew Carnegie to Edward VII. He was moved into the Wal*Mart greeter spot in 1979, where he has delighted and inspired school children for 35 years.

And he’s coming down.

The Museum is having a bit of clear up and the issue with Dippy is, he ain’t real. He’s a painstaking plaster cast (or as one Independent writer put it its ‘very existence is a malicious lie’) of a diplodocus skeleton that was dug up in Wyoming in 1898. The original is in Pittsburgh.

Haha, just kidding! The real reason is, they’re replacing him with the skeleton of a blue whale because gaia and shit.

The change is part of a ‘decade of transformation’ planned at the museum by its director, Sir Michael Dixon.

Explaining the decision, Sir Michael said: ‘As the largest known animal to have ever lived on Earth, the story of the blue whale reminds us of the scale of our responsibility to the planet.

Blahblahblah…challenge the way people think…never been more urgent…under threat…species and ecosystems are being destroyed…poignant reminder…make a real difference. Boo! Phooey! Bring back the plaster dinosaur!

There’s a hashtag and shit, but it’s hard to turn an ecowarrior. Dippy is doomed.

January 29, 2015 — 10:31 pm
Comments: 15

Fresh meat

I overheard somebody say this today: “we really need more energetic, younger people to join — people in their 50s and 60s.”

Amazingly, it was not being said about me nor by my employer. But I am in that magic demographic and I’m beginning to understand why my new boss was so chuffed to find me. For I am younger and energetic.

This is a county full of ancient things. It’s a great source of both scholarship and tourism, and hence our biggest moneymaker (next to sheep, of course). And the tending of ancient things is mostly done by ancient people. The local scene is run by a sort of geriocracy, people in their seventies and eighties. For the most part retired and, for the most part, volunteers.

Vital to this lifecycle is pulling in younger people and training them to take your place before you fall off the perch. It’s like a whole ecosystem. It’s the Circle of Life, Golden Years Division.

Docents in the museums. Guides in the National Trust houses. Local history researchers and writers. You mostly have to be of a certain age to be into those things, and you mostly have to be retired to have time to do them. And you mostly have to have a decent pension to afford to do them as a volunteer.

I’m not a volunteer, but I reckon I get paid one hour in three. And I’m what passes for a kid in this world. It’s kind of nice to be in the apprentice class again.

Oh, the picture? No idea. I did a Google images search of “old ladies” and those four Victorian dames brandishing bananas was on the first page.

January 28, 2015 — 11:22 pm
Comments: 16

D’awww…

These little dudes emerged for the first time today. There are three of them, leetle baby Sumatran tigers. They were born January 2 at Chester Zoo.

I’m fobbing you off with this cuteness on account of I am doing my taxes tonight. This is relatively easy, mostly because I make next to nothing, but it does include freelance monies from several different sources.

Math, in other words. Fucking math.

January 27, 2015 — 9:31 pm
Comments: 23

A small thing, but interesting

There was a demonstration in Dover today. A group turned out to support the truck drivers who have the extremely unfun job trying to move goods from Calais to Dover without arriving covered in illegal immigrants, like a mama ‘possum.

The group protesting illegal immigrants is described as “far right” for no obvious reason except they always are described that way. The counter protesters who turned up are always described as “anti fascist” — which is the way they choose to describe themselves. If those twits get to self describe, shouldn’t the ‘far right’ people get to do the same? They’d probably rather be described as patriots or something, don’t you think?

Unite Against Fascism (UAF) are a buncha Occupy-style peripatetic thugs, by the way. It looks like they outnumbered the righties, and it looks like the cops outnumbered them both. So this was not a big deal. A little deal. An interesting little deal that shows some of the cracks forming in our multicultural society.

The report speaks blandly of “arrests”. Eyewitnesses (scroll down to the comments) said all the violence and all the arrests were from the UAF types. Also note the way the votes are going on the comments.

Anyone can vote, by the way. You don’t have to register. Go on, try it! It’s fun!

January 26, 2015 — 10:42 pm
Comments: 16

You be careful out there

Police are trying to trace a mobility scooter rider who crashed into two elderly pedestrians – and then failed to stop to help.

The victims, two women – one in her 60s and one in her 80s- were knocked to the ground and suffered injuries including a sprained ankle and cut heel.

They were left “shocked and shaken”.

The incident took place outside KFC, Sandgate Road, Folkestone, at 3.30pm on December 22.

The rider of the mobility scooter is described as a white woman in her 60s of medium or large build with a plump face.

She was wearing a bobble hat, a yellow camel coat, laced shoes and glasses and was riding a metallic burgundy mobility scooter described as ‘bigger than average’.

Officers haven’t managed to identify her despite a number of possible sightings.

I know the stereotype is a fat American shopping Wal*Mart in these scooter things, but Igottatellya, they are EVERYwhere here.

Because elderly people retire to the seaside and because, I think, the NHS will pay for them. They’re dangerous as hell, and not just when old ladies run down other old ladies. People ride them in the street or run up onto the sidewalk and regularly tip over into the path of traffic.

Hm. Now I see why the NHS will pay for them.

Good weekend, folks!

January 23, 2015 — 10:37 pm
Comments: 17

A masterful troll

Oh, well played, Rupert Murdoch’s Sun. Well played.

To be fair, they didn’t actually say they were shutting down Page 3, but they strongly suggested such. Then they went all modest (if underthings and bikinis can be called modest) for a couple of days. And now, the titties are back! (Link does not go to titties. Link goes to a Telegraph sister getting her knickers in a twist. I told you the Telegraph had gone downhill).

It’s been dee-lightful to watch this play out all day.

First the howling shrews of the Perpetually Offended Brigade were all like WE WON! And then they were all like, we won, I guess, but it doesn’t feel that satisfying, really. And now they’re all like WTF! WE DIDN’T WIN!?

The sweetest part? Today’s titties ran under the headline CLARIFICATIONS AND CORRECTIONS. I wouldn’t have realized this if Uncle B hadn’t told me: that’s the header from the ultra-lefty Guardian‘s correction column.

Sweet troll.

January 22, 2015 — 9:45 pm
Comments: 21

There they are!

The picture that ran with the news article I read about the SotU showed and over-the-shoulder shot of Obama apparently reading his speech from a notebook. In a panic, I flipped through news photos until I found one showing his teleprompters, safe and sound. Whew!

I wonder if he has names for them. Gumby and Pokey. Mulder and Scully. Lefty and Other Lefty.

No, I didn’t watch. I couldn’t. And not just because I can’t bear the sound of Obama’s droning mediocrity.

The State of the Union speech has been a humiliating spectacle for decades. I held my breath for Poppy Bush (he used to trip over his words a bit, remember?). Bill Clinton was the biggest gasbag in history. Gee, that guy could go on. Remember his farewell speech? Hours and hours. He was still talking when they bundled him into a car. W wasn’t as awful as he might have been, but I still held my breath for flubs.

But that’s not it. It’s the whole spectacle of the thing. I actually hate the SotU more when ‘our’ guys are in power, because their behavior reflects on me even a little tiny bit. All that jumping up every twenty seconds, every time your guy says anything at all, barking and clapping like a troupe of trained seals. And the other guys sit and sulk unless The Guy says something so patriotic they kinda have to join in.

Awful. Just awful.

The speech is a big useless pile of applause lines and huge laundry list of junk that is never, ever going to happen and everybody knows it. Nobody even pretends to take it seriously. It has long since outlived its grownup purpose.

Can we kill it, please?

January 21, 2015 — 9:13 pm
Comments: 14

Look at these three tits.

Feminist politicians in the UK think it’s terribly important to prevent heterosexual men from enjoying titty pictures in the newspaper. Or something.

Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper (it’s never mentioned in print without the Rupert Murdoch part) has featured a Page 3 girl for more than 40 years. That is, on the third page of the newspaper, there’s a girl baring her tits. It’s tacky, it’s embarrassing, I’m not the target audience, so what the hell business is it of mine? Working class men liked it (I guess), many of the models went on to lucrative careers in…being pretty girls with huge tits, so it had to be stopped. And it has.

It took three years of concerted bitching and moaning, but the Perpetually Outraged Brigade finally hounded it out.

I don’t even know where to start with this one. The internet is full of free porn of the vilest kind. The world is full of genuine and horrible repression of women. And this — this — seemed to somebody worth fighting for. A lot of somebodies. A lot of stupid, shallow, deeply unserious somebodies.

Oh, Page 3 is still there, in (Rupert Murdoch’s PBUH) Sun. It’s now pretty girls with big tits wearing bras and bikinis, so…way to win one for the sisterhood, ladies!

Y’all probably don’t remember, but this blog used to feature Page 3 Weasels. No, really:

January 20, 2015 — 8:37 pm
Comments: 19

Two things that are dangerous

Two dangerous things about the Guardian article circulating today: the one that says 50% of all property is owned by the richest 1% of the world’s population.

The first dangerous thing is, it’s just a press release from Oxfam. I mean, literally, there was no reportage going on here. They basically ran with a shorter and slightly reworded press release, quotes and bullet points and all.

If you think I’m shitting you, here’s the press release. Also note, the chairman of a thing called the Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism is a woman named Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild. Say, did you just hear the theme to the X-Files?

It’s shocking how much journalism is that and only that these days. How valuable a service is a press release aggregator, really?

The second thing is, they’re playing with fire. How very fucking easy it is to whip up class envy. Almost no-one on this earth — including some incredibly wealthy bastards — doesn’t look at some other wealthy bastard who has a few kgilliion more and think it’s not fair. The guys in first class you walk past to get to your miserable seat? They’re all thinking to themselves, “public transportation sucks. Why don’t I have a private jet?”

As conservatives, we are naturally disinclined to steal from our neighbor even if we do think he’s got nice stuff and more of it than he deserves. Plus, we know well the inviolable rule of wealth distribution — those that do the distributing get the wealth. And even so, it’s not too hard to get us hating on the rich folks.

But heed this statistic from the article: the world’s poorest 80% own 5.5% of the wealth. You know what that means? If you live in the West and have a basic middle-class existence, you’re almost certainly in that top 20%. And if you think the great sucking black hole of socialism will hit that top 1% and leave you and me — the rich bastards in the following 19% — alone, you haven’t been watching how it works.

January 19, 2015 — 11:10 pm
Comments: 17