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But is there a Plan C?

Plan B expired today. That’s an end to England’s requirement to mask up or work from home. I almost said legal requirement, but it was never law. Every time a fine was challenged in court, it was dropped.

That means take off your masks and go to work, people.

Of course, there’s a significant chunk of the population who won’t take off the masks today and may never. I was about to make unflattering assertions why that might be, but I won’t. The past two years have been rough on people; I won’t judge.

I bumped into a shady character of my acquaintance today. I mean, I don’t know he’s ever done anything criminal, but if asked, he could play one on TV. I was surprised to see him sitting outdoors in the sunshine all by himself, fully masked. I was like, “dude – you don’t seem the type!” And he said, “it’s the cameras, mate. Used to be illegal to go inside anywhere with a mask, now nobody blinks an eye. I’m going to wear this mask forever.”

Unintended consequences. Thinking out loud. Say they do succeed in imposing restrictive biometric ID on us to control every aspect of our lives. Isn’t that – theoretically – the end of illegal immigration?

I knicked the illustration from an older Telegraph article on masks. It’s in a loathsome style of editorial illustration I’ve come to think of as ‘blob people.’

First of all, you have to include minimum four up to infinity people, to make sure you get in enough ethnics. A few exotic wardrobe signifiers, like turbans or headscarves. AT LEAST an equal number of women to men. Skin colors like Skittles – purple, green. Maybe shades of brown, if you’re aiming for realism.

The worst have featureless faces, wavey lines for arms and blobs for hands and feet. Women without breasts, men without broad shoulders. Monsters. This kind of thing.

In order to avoid offense, we have dehumanized humans.

Comments


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 27, 2022, 8:06 pm

The guy top middle isn’t wearing a turban, he’s wearing a bicycle helmet. His hair is blonde and his skin is the color of Pepto-Bismol.

I tried to find an especially ugly example, but I couldn’t find the exact thing. The Mailchimp dashboard used really egregious human illustrations for a while, but seemingly not now.


Comment from Uncle Al
Time: January 28, 2022, 12:17 am

Humaaans sure are unattractiiiive and offputttttttting.

IMO, they’re too insignificant to be blob people. I think of a blob as something large.

How about blib people? That’s pronounced B-Lib natch.


Comment from durnedyankee
Time: January 28, 2022, 1:48 am

Clearly it’s racist to use biometric ids for voting.

Just roll with me here for a sec…

because some people are too poor or are unable to get time off from work or are physically unable to get a biometric id so it can’t be used for voting.

But you’ll have to have it to check your vaccine status when you go out to eat, or try to buy food, or work.

Yeah.

And the Orwellian aspects are, well, Orwellian. But then some people have been quite happy to have the 1984 instruction manual available, so they didn’t have to think too hard for themselves on how to create our New World order.

Lastly, I’m offended by this dehumanization of humans.
But they’ll use my biometric info to see that I’m part of a class that is targeted to have a diminishing number of rights, one of which is objecting to all this bullshit.

though I did find humor in the idea that “Dope” is a cool thing according to the “human” design page.
Yes, you dopes go ahead and tell yourselves that.


Comment from Tom
Time: January 28, 2022, 1:49 pm

“That means take off your masks and go to work, people.”

Oh my, I’d love to, but over here on the island of Saints and Scholars we still have to wear them under penalty of law. There’s some poor grandma in Donegal who’s been arrested at least 8 times and spent Christmas in the clink over her refusal to wear one in shops.

Evidence that they don’t work? Oh that just rolls off the backs of the government apparatchiks who make policy. The Irish government never likes to let reality intrude on legislation.

“Isn’t that – theoretically – the end of illegal immigration?”

You would think, but I imagine that what the ruling class wants, the ruling class will get, whether the public likes it or not. It’ll give an excuse for a new type of NGO to crop up, partly supported by tax money of course, to provide for the ‘digitally underprivileged’.


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: January 28, 2022, 3:35 pm

I blame the Germans, although the truth is probably that, as usual, the French are at the root of the problem. La Belle France: they have the arts, and the food, and indeed, “the art of living well”. It is an attitude: even when reduced to eating snails (and desperately trying to kill the taste of them with garlic) a Frenchman knows he is superior (“Je plains le fou qui n’est pas Français). The German is by nature a jealous type- an attitude born of thousands of years of eating vinegar-soaked cabbage, turnips, and sausage made of one of dozens of types of “just-don’t-ask, trust-me” pig parts – and an societal “ant type” if there ever was one – and secretly (oh Hell, not so secretly) envies the grasshopper life style of the Franzoen. Almost every German has a beret hidden in his bedroom dresser which he wears only for himself in his mirror while muttering “if only I lived in Paris, baby, look out!” It is a certainty to him that Paris is wasted on the French. So let’s take it from them.

Naturally the Englishman laughs at the pettiness of these Frogs and Krauts, or would laugh if Englishmen were not so stuffy. Things are not perhaps what they were but every man-jack knows that the sun never sets on British superiority, even when the empire (small ‘e’ empire these days) is a bit tattered. Right, Guv? After all, who but the British can establish the proper norms and methodology for a proper government? I mean their success with the Irish speaks for itself. So let’s rule the world of its own good.

I need not bore you with tales of American boorishness – the loud-mouthiness, gun-shooting, poor-taste in food, clothes, music Oh, Hell damn near everything is self-evident to everyone except the Yankee who is wearing his baseball cap backwards. He thinks he knows all the answers and will cheerfully push them on everyone else, for mere price of a Coca-Cola™️

Now, having set the stage, finally to the point: it is apparently this pattern of nationalistic pride that has caused most wars since the middle ages. Sure, religion gets its nose in, but that is actually just a variation on the theme.

So, somewhere in the 1920’s colleges started teaching the evils of nationalism and the German push for “Lebensraum” only reinforced how evil it could be. Additionally, Communism, the fad of the times, loved the idea of an International state.

And so we have now two or three generations of Western political leaders who have been steeped in the idea which John Lennon put to song.

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace,

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

So in order to do this we must, of needs, destroy borders, cultures, ethnic identities, and any pride in any distinguishing characteristics. Becoming fungible also eases administration: one size fits all, and shut-yer-yap if it don’t, racist. Now, the methodology is as always to nibble away at the edges, both top and bottom: we praise the virtues of the lessers, and denigrate the virtues of the betters.

Vonnegut, as he so often did, pushed the pattern to its absurdist conclusion in
his short story “Harrison Bergeron”

In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General’s agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear “handicaps”: masks for those who are too beautiful, loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic.”

NOTE: Jesus, I really have to quit day-drinking….


Comment from BullDawgGuy
Time: January 28, 2022, 6:09 pm

No deadpool yet today. Guess we are back on Track for next Friday


Comment from LesterIII
Time: January 28, 2022, 7:44 pm

When she was still in high school, while she was parroting one of her teachers espousing this dreck, I pissed off my daughter by making her listen to Freedom of Choice by DEVO ( https://youtu.be/dVGINIsLnqU ) and state that they were singing about her and her like-minded peers.

Thus began our war of ideology.

Some Veg, please don’t stop day drinking if it produces missives such as that!


Comment from BJM
Time: January 30, 2022, 9:06 pm

I’m baaack…Bora Bora was wonderful..well except for that big bang thing. Not really, been sicker than the proverbial dog..not wuflu just the garden variety.

Of course, people must be dehumanized…that is the first step in eliminating them en mass. Unfortunately, it’s usually those at either side of the age spectrum that goes first; the unborn, the old, and the infirm.


Comment from BJM
Time: January 30, 2022, 9:34 pm

Dr. Johnny Fever, Howard Hessman has signed off. I remember seeing Hesseman in the early 60s’ as a member of The Committe” and he was briefly a flaky local DJ.

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