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I love bacon SO much…!

I love bacon so much, I get lardons! (They used to be called bacon bits before people starting vacationing abroad, apparently).

So! Not much to do but sit around, eat lardons and wait to see if London goes up in flames again tonight. I have to be up early in the morning, so it had better get a move on.

Mono the elderish just wrote to send me some video links of the rioting and ask what I thought was going to happen. I’ll steal tonight’s post from the answer I gave him.

Errr…I don’t know. I’ve been coming to the UK for almost fifteen years, and the whole time I’ve wondered what it would take to get the Brits riled up enough to push back. They have plenty of provocation — a rampant nanny state, swingeing taxes, out of control immigration, Islamist terrorism, now riots in the streets — and I keep thinking now they will boil over, surely.

I keep thinking wrong. I’m too American to read the vibe right.

See, the Brits make a positive virtue of putting up with shit. I don’t know if it has its roots in WWII or if the Blitz just tamped the attitude down into their DNA, but “Keep Calm and Carry On” is not mere ironic kitsch. It’s deep in their self-image. We are the unflappable people. Let lesser people flap.

It’s not cowardice — far from it! — we’re talking people who faced down nightly bombing raids with a shrug and a cup of tea. It may be that not ‘overreacting’ to the riots is the way they will choose to distinguish themselves from the rioters. See: tea served on a riot shield.

On the other hand…well. Sooner or later, all this world-going-to-hell stuff will surely be too much even for the Unflappable People.

Comments


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: August 9, 2011, 10:09 pm

I agree, Bacon bits and scraps are good, especially when cooking a pot of beans in the slow cooker and the store is out of hamhocks…

Hell, I throw them in anyway because they have more flavor.

Question for UB. Would Brit law prohibit pepperball guns? They can be pricey in the U.S., but given the shit that”s currently hitting the fan, I’m thinking of buying the setup for my home. You might consider matching his and hers for the Weaselhole….


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 9, 2011, 10:13 pm

Funny, I’m cooking green beans as we speak. With lardons!


Comment from DJMoore
Time: August 9, 2011, 11:01 pm

Thing is, WWII Brits were actually fighting the Nazis everywhere they could make contact.

Current Brits aren’t fighting anywhere; they’ve disarmed themselves.

If you don’t fight ’em abroad or at home, the bastards win, every time.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: August 10, 2011, 12:05 am

Well yes… other than in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

It’s impossibly complicated to get to grips with in a blog comment but the shorthand is obvious: what is happening in the UK is the end-result of 50 years of rampant liberalism.

The USA is a massively larger, far more diverse, country. My impression is that parts of it have suffered much as we have, while other parts haven’t.

Where things go from here will be interesting.


Comment from beasn
Time: August 10, 2011, 12:28 am

Well, some ‘immigrants’ weren’t going to take it lying down.

http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com/2011/08/heroes-of-london-it-was-like-being-in.html

ht – DiT


Comment from steve
Time: August 10, 2011, 12:36 am

Maggies Farm pulled this out and dusted it off.

Now you Brits (and transplants) need to give it a good reading (or something).

http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/uploads/Riotact.jpg


Comment from steve
Time: August 10, 2011, 12:45 am

Also, Instapundit posted this today….

Timeless is what it is…

http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htm


Comment from Mono The Elderish
Time: August 10, 2011, 1:03 am

Those kurdish guys have the right idea. There’s no way in hell a person has to watch as thier shop is looted and wrecked and not do anything.


Comment from Sporadic Small Arms Fire
Time: August 10, 2011, 1:41 am

Your Stoatship,

it is not unflappability. It is dicklessness. The nation of Nelson and Wellington and Duke of York withered away. They are now just a bunch of strangely accented weirdoes ambling around faded stage props that increasingly are devoid of meaning.

ARCHIE LEACH:
Wanda, do you have any idea what it’s like being English?

Being so correct all the time? Being so…
stifled by this dread of doing the wrong thing?

Of saying to someone “Are you married?”
and hearing “My wife left me today”?

Or saying…”Do you have children?”

and being told they all burned to death on Wednesday?

You see, Wanda, we’re all… terrified of embarrassment.

That’s why we’re so… dead.
Most of my friends are dead. You know, we have these piles of corpses to dinner.

But you’re alive, God bless you.
And I wanna be. I’m so fed up with all this!

I wanna make love with you, Wanda.

I’m a good lover. At least… used to be, back in the early XXth century.

Can we go to bed?

WANDA:
Yeah.


Comment from Sporadic Small Arms Fire
Time: August 10, 2011, 2:02 am

Let the Brits slurp the milky tea from the riot shield. This unrepentant Colonial relies on high octane Kentuck bourbon as a perfect accessory to the smell of burnt tires and… other burnt objects.

Kipling is aging well indeed.

http://s2.hubimg.com/u/1445885_f520.jpg

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools”


Comment from DJMoore
Time: August 10, 2011, 2:23 am

Uncle Badger: “Well yes… other than in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.”

Fair cop, that. Apologies. I’ve tried a clearer statement of what I had in mind, but couldn’t manage, so it must have been a badly muddled thought to begin with.

“…what is happening in the UK is the end-result of 50 years of rampant liberalism.” That I agree with, absolutely.


Comment from Armybrat
Time: August 10, 2011, 2:39 am

Did I mention I got the hubby a bacon of the month club membership for his birthday (www.thepignextdoor.com).


Comment from Scubafreak
Time: August 10, 2011, 3:19 am

Now THIS is just WRONG!!!

http://www.tonyrogers.com/humor/images/squeeze_bacon.jpg

http://www.geekologie.com/2009/04/dangerously_delicious_the_bak4.php


Comment from Nina from GCP
Time: August 10, 2011, 3:28 am

I’m still jealous at the bacon of the month club, AB.

Scary stuff goin’ on over in England, though. Not so sure I want to send my kid over there, but at least she’ll be far from London.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 10, 2011, 9:43 am

The big cities are all multiculti shitholes, Nina. Everywhere else is gorgeous. Just the way Mr Kipling left it.

There’s a huge urban/rural divide here. Bigger than in the States.


Comment from generika
Time: August 10, 2011, 10:51 am

I agree, Bacon bits and scraps are good… )


Comment from Mitchell
Time: August 10, 2011, 2:01 pm

This verse from Keats keeps running through my mind:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 10, 2011, 2:08 pm

Heh. I almost titled yesterday’s post “the center cannot hold.”


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: August 10, 2011, 5:43 pm

Rather good article here:

http://takimag.com/article/the_tournaments_of_tottenham#axzz1USTb5NjJ

It is not about bacon.


Comment from John from CA
Time: August 10, 2011, 5:51 pm

I’ve been following the news and wondered what you might say — great post and you’re quite right. If this happened in the US, the police would shoot them on sight with rubber bullets, tear gas them, and then club them into paddy wagons.

I’m more than a bit surprised the UK Police just stand there with shields and don’t realize molotov cocktails and bricks are lethal weapons.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: August 10, 2011, 6:09 pm

PEDANT ALERT!

It was Yeats, not Keats 😉

OK… I’ll go quietly.


Comment from Mitchell
Time: August 10, 2011, 6:41 pm

D’oh! Clean up on aisle 5 there.

To make up I give you this looter lol.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: August 10, 2011, 7:55 pm

That’s okay, I only know the Joni Mitchell version 😛

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