It's been a relatively quiet week here at Bloody Nib Manor and the environs. There were a couple of ineffective shooting attempts by various yokel cohorts. But, as usual, they were half-hearted, not unlike the marriage vows they often make while standing before the altar next to their eight month pregnant paramour. An old time chivaree exhibits more enthusiasm among the participants than the armed settling of a territorial dispute. How the mighty have fallen.
This week President Trump announced that, acting as president, he has ordered the withdrawal of American troops from Syria. This particular action seems to have thrown the professional political crowd and ink stained wretches who call themselves journalists or opinion writers into a state of confusion among themselves. It's almost comical to watch, not unlike watching a rat being thrown into a group of dogs of different breeds; half want to tear the thing to pieces and the other hand want to make friends with it because they know that there's a YouTube video to be made. Some of the Never Trumpers find themselves p[raising the withdrawal and some of the Always Trumpers find themselves condemning the idea. And all are mightily confused because Pres. Trump is actually working toward keeping his campaign promise to get the U.S. out of foreign military entanglements.
One of the reasons that those who are opposed to the American pull-out from Syria is that it is a betrayal of the Kurds and will result in the Kurds being at the mercy of the Turkish military. And that is not good, in their lights, because they say that the U.S., sub rosa, promised to always protect the Kurds in exchange for the Kurds fighting against ISIS (or Daesh), and, in fact, help the Kurds set up a nation of Kurdistan.
This is, of course, all stuff and nonsense.
First of all, in the U.S., and for the populace of the U.S., there should be no sub rosa agreements with any government. Sub rosa agreements are the purview of the Medicis and the Tudors and Hapsburgs. The U.S., in theory at least, is supposed to be a nation with an open and above board governmental and civil servant (and note the second word, "servant" which has somehow now become to be defined as "master") class answerable to the U.S. citizen. A sub rosa agreement with any foreign entity, whether a governmental, ethnic, or religious group, should be taken no more seriously than one fourteen year old girl telling another fourteen year old girl a "secret" with the promise that it will never be told to anyone else. Of course, within five hours everyone in the school knows that Debbie has a crush on Jason.
Secondly, those who oppose the withdrawal of American troops from Northern Syria seem to be under the mistaken idea that there are thousands and thousands of Americans in the area who are all locked and load to take on Turkish bear to protect our Kurdish "friends." In fact, there are not many more than 1,000 (if that many) Americans in Northern Syria providing military aid and training to the Kurds. 1,000 men and women in the U.S. military. There are many times more Kurds and "democratic" (whatever that word means in the Arab world), and yet there seems to be an idea among some of the nattering class that 1,000 G.I. Joes can hold off an invasion into the area by Turkey as if the whole operation were a second battle of Thermopylae, or perhaps, a battle of the Alamo. In other words, American blood, treasure and honor are supposed to be sacrificed for a group of people who seem to be unable to fight for themselves, or co-operate among themselves to the extent that they can defend themselves. The problem that there are no Yanks to defend them, the problem is with themselves. Their intercine in-fighting among themselves is more a problem than the absence of U.S.Special Forces. In fact, one can argue that the most effective thing that the U.S. did to increase the effectiveness of the various Kurdish and "democratic" factions was somewhat like that of a kindergarten teacher; telling them to make up and play nice so they can get something done.
Thirdly, people opposed to the withdrawal of American troops say that the action is a "cut and run" and betrayal of our allies, and is unprecedented in American history. This is false. Those who are of an age will remember when the U.S. abandoned the War in Vietnam. Whether it was for better or worse, it was something that happened and resulted in the establishment of a Communist government in Vietnam, as well as the establishment of a lot of nail salons, pho restaurants, and funky liquor stores in the U.S. It could be argued that the U.S., with the active involvement of the South Vietnamese government at the time, could have defeated the North Vietnamese; in fact, old North Vietnamese leaders have stated that when the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were about to throw in the towel. When the last helicopter took off from Saigon and landed on an aircraft carrier only to be pushed off the vessel because there were too many helicopters much of the populace cheered because they finally saw the U.S. out of a morass that seemed never-ending.
But unlike Northern Syria, there was an established government in South Vietnam; a government recognized by the world except for the Soviets, the ChiComs, the North Koreans, and the French (then the problem child of Europe). There is no proper Kurdish government. There are Kurdish governments. Each self-declared as legitimate and each not recognizing the other. One ends up not having to work with an ethnic group. One finds oneself dealing with tribes and factions within the ethnic group. In other words, and once again, playing the kindergarten teacher for a bunch of brats with rocket launchers and AK-47s or M-16s.
Fourth, the Kurds, in U.S. media, are portrayed as cuddly Mohammedans i.e., as religiously tolerant as the average American United Methodist. According to the media, some of them drink booze and don't whip themselves afterwards as penance, they don't beat their wives or hate Jews. The fact of the matter is that they are really not all that. Saudis, once they get out of Saudi Arabia and to Spanish resorts or Beverly Hills that crowd of devout Muslims are swilling down vodka and whiskey like sixteen year old kids who managed to steal the key to the liquor cabinet, and surround themselves with large breasted Russian and European (note: this writer does not consider Russians European -- they are something else culturally) harlots while the Saudi men laze around the pool wearing Speedos over which their fat guts spill over. The only difference is that the Kurds pretend, in their public image, portray themselves as a form of the "All-American Boy" who happens to be a Muslim while installing Sharia Law in their cantons, and the Saudis pretend Sharia Law in their homeland while behaving like a bunch of Spring Break Ivy Leaguers in Fort Lauderdale. They are really both the same thing in that they both present a false face to the world for their own benefit.
Is the Turkish government bad? Of course it is. It has been so since the establishment of the Ottoman Empire. It's grasping, racist, religiously intolerant. It always has been, even under the rule of Ataturk. The serial Armenian genocides are proof of this. But, while the Turkish governments from the Ottoman Empire to Ataturk to Erdogan have been racist, religiously intolerant and grasping. And if the majority of Turks had wanted it any other way there would have been a democratic change or a popular uprising that was effective. To paraphrase a Hong Kong protester who was protesting against China, "Turkey is a**hole!" Turkey is a rotten country in the same way that China is a rotten country. Turkey wants to take over and control the Kurds, and China wants to effectively take over and control Hong Kong and Taiwan. But as much as the "stay in Syria to fight the Turks to protect the Kurds with our 1,000 troops" crowd bitch and moan, they have made no good argument about American interests in investing American blood in the region. On the other hand, they'll give lip service to the protesters on Hong Kong or the independence of Taiwan without ever saying that the U.S. should invest troops into either place despite the fact that both places are much more valuable in strategy and economics than are the Kurds. We are expected to shed our blood and spend our money for a people who do not hold our values, respect basic human rights and have no economic benefit for the U.S., while at the same time trying to ignore, or in fact, playing the "coat holder" friend ( example: "Sean! Hold my coat while I fight this bloke!") with Hong Kong and Taiwan.
On another topic: This writer has gotten pretty tried of the whole Global Warming/Climate Change panic. Those who have managed to grab a microphone and scream out their Jeremiads have attempted their best to make every person who has had the misfortune to be within earshot of them feel guilty because the unfortunate recipient of such sound waves is a person of the 20th or 21st century Western world. In other words, a person who has electrical power to his or her house or apartment, perhaps drives an automobile, cooks with natural gas, and maybe flies from one place to another via commercial airplane. Said Cassandras seem to have no problem talking into an electrically powered microphone, appearing on electrically powered television, driving or flying to an event to continue their "prophetic" mutterings. Not only to mention that said "prophets" seem to have the latest in "smart phones" and they consult the silly things constantly. They are not writing their missives with quill and ink by candle light. They are using the very things that they protest against to get their "message" out. And their excuse is that their message is more important than their sin. It's rather Pharisaical. But, we'll have Pharisees with us all and always until, well, you know.
No this bunch of of well-meaning idiots have decided to follow the panicky ravings of a 16 year old Swedish girl. For anyone with a lick of the sense that Our Lord gave him or her would ignore a 16 year old kid's advice concerning moral or deep concerns. Dear reader, be honest in asking yourself if you would trust a sixteen year old kid with your bank account, your liquor cabinet, or you Amazon account? If you came home from work and found that your sixteen year old son had gotten hold of your credit card and bought a new manifold and injector for your Lexis, a Rickenbacker guitar and Orange Crate amp, and a $2,000 donation to Greenpeace, would you be pretty happy and proud of your brat? Of course not. You might not bend said awful child over your knee and give him or her a good, and well deserved spanking with a hairbrush, belt, or your Dad's old blackjack, but if you had any sense and sense of self-preservation at all kid would have been given a mighty "time out". And by "time out" this writer means, "Forget going to USC. You're going to welding school or joining the Navy. If you don't like that, get used to living in a tent on 5th Street."
But the world had gotten silly and stupid, so a 16 year old brat is considered "wise." So wise, in fact, that the often morally confused Jane Fonda has hitched her wagon to that kid.
For Pete's sake. One finds oneself occasionally wishing for the old days of the empire, whether American or British.
Sunday, October 13, 2019
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Javert Was Not an African Black Man
Well, unfortunately, it was not a quiet week here at Bloody Nib Manor. As happens too frequently the local hoi polloi got frisky and decided to fire their pistols at one another on Thursday night. Fortunately there were no deaths, nor even injuries. The actual result of said shooting was frightened children and barking dogs. The local constabulary spent a lot of time making fools of themselves with their dark lanterns looking for shell casing that mean nothing at all. But that's live in the shire.
Having said the foregoing, this writer asks you, dear reader, what exactly is "cultural appropriation?"
You may remember a couple of incidences within the past eighteen months in which a person, usually a person of European heritage, was accused of "cultural appropriation." Said examples would be a a southern American blonde teen-age girl wearing a cheong-sam dress to her prom, women who are not of Latin American heritage wearing hoop earrings, or whitey-birds wearing their hair in some sort of dreadlock style. There are many more examples.
It is, of course, silly and stupid and the purview of the perpetually aggrieved. A person of European or English (and they are really two different things historically despite the claims of the modern European Unionist) heritage could just as well and justifiably claim that the wearing of trousers by men or women, the wearing of neckties, the playing of the valve trumpet or pipe, or the Hammond, organ, the musical chromatic scale, or even the usage of an Indo-European language by people who are not English, European or Indo-European are forms of cultural appropriation.
If a person of European heritage comes up with a new form of balut or ramen, jerk chicken or hummus, that person is called a "cultural appropriator." But if a person of African, Asian or Latin American origin comes up with a new twist on the hot dog, biscuits and gravy, or meat loaf that is considered an addition to the European culture. It's a one way street.
The same goes for television programs and moving pictures.
The BBC has recently run a a dramatization of Victor Hugo's novel Le Miserables. In the BBC version the detective Javert is played by a black man. The BBC has also produced a series in which the Greek hero Achilles is a black man, as well as an animated series about Roman Britain in which there are black African centurions and prefects, as well as black African Anglo-Saxon warriors and priests in 100 A.D.
These things are all silly and stupid and just plain not historical. Hugo did not see Javert as a black man. Hugo portrayed Javert as a European Frenchman. Achilles was not a black African man and any black actor who portrayed Achilles as a black African man should be ashamed of himself, as should any Chinese or Vietnamese man should have been so ashamed. Achilles was a Greek sporting blonde hair. The likelihood of a Sub-Saharan African being a Roman soldier on Britain is about as likely as a Mayan being involved in the American Revolutionary War. There were more Chinese involved in the Revolution than there were sons of Aztlan, and there were no Africans, Asians or Latinos at the Battle of Hastings. The legend of Robin Hood had no Moors (even wise ones) and was, in fact, an anti-Norman legend because those Frenchies are really a pretty awful bunch. But all these things have been portrayed in popular media; Robin Hood has an all-wise Moor adviser, Mexicans fought against the British in 1776, Achilles was the son of an African demi-goddess, and Javert somehow became a French policeman despite escaping from Haiti or the Congo.
But if a writer decides to write a story or moving picture, perhaps a fantasy story, based on the stories of Shaka Zulu, Ching Shih or Antapualpah (sp?) with a third or quarter or the cast, and perhaps even the stars or main characters, as whitey-birds the politically correct crowd would pitch a bitch that would throw the earth off it's axis with claims of cultural appropriation while the Anglo-European crowd would, except for film critics (and that bunch is really pretty awful because they realize that film criticism is not a real job but a gag), would pretty much shrug its shoulders and say, "Who cares? This isn't my story. I have my story ans know my story. That's another culture's story and I really don't give a damn about their story."
And that's the thing that the elites don't really realize.
Having said the foregoing, this writer asks you, dear reader, what exactly is "cultural appropriation?"
You may remember a couple of incidences within the past eighteen months in which a person, usually a person of European heritage, was accused of "cultural appropriation." Said examples would be a a southern American blonde teen-age girl wearing a cheong-sam dress to her prom, women who are not of Latin American heritage wearing hoop earrings, or whitey-birds wearing their hair in some sort of dreadlock style. There are many more examples.
It is, of course, silly and stupid and the purview of the perpetually aggrieved. A person of European or English (and they are really two different things historically despite the claims of the modern European Unionist) heritage could just as well and justifiably claim that the wearing of trousers by men or women, the wearing of neckties, the playing of the valve trumpet or pipe, or the Hammond, organ, the musical chromatic scale, or even the usage of an Indo-European language by people who are not English, European or Indo-European are forms of cultural appropriation.
If a person of European heritage comes up with a new form of balut or ramen, jerk chicken or hummus, that person is called a "cultural appropriator." But if a person of African, Asian or Latin American origin comes up with a new twist on the hot dog, biscuits and gravy, or meat loaf that is considered an addition to the European culture. It's a one way street.
The same goes for television programs and moving pictures.
The BBC has recently run a a dramatization of Victor Hugo's novel Le Miserables. In the BBC version the detective Javert is played by a black man. The BBC has also produced a series in which the Greek hero Achilles is a black man, as well as an animated series about Roman Britain in which there are black African centurions and prefects, as well as black African Anglo-Saxon warriors and priests in 100 A.D.
These things are all silly and stupid and just plain not historical. Hugo did not see Javert as a black man. Hugo portrayed Javert as a European Frenchman. Achilles was not a black African man and any black actor who portrayed Achilles as a black African man should be ashamed of himself, as should any Chinese or Vietnamese man should have been so ashamed. Achilles was a Greek sporting blonde hair. The likelihood of a Sub-Saharan African being a Roman soldier on Britain is about as likely as a Mayan being involved in the American Revolutionary War. There were more Chinese involved in the Revolution than there were sons of Aztlan, and there were no Africans, Asians or Latinos at the Battle of Hastings. The legend of Robin Hood had no Moors (even wise ones) and was, in fact, an anti-Norman legend because those Frenchies are really a pretty awful bunch. But all these things have been portrayed in popular media; Robin Hood has an all-wise Moor adviser, Mexicans fought against the British in 1776, Achilles was the son of an African demi-goddess, and Javert somehow became a French policeman despite escaping from Haiti or the Congo.
But if a writer decides to write a story or moving picture, perhaps a fantasy story, based on the stories of Shaka Zulu, Ching Shih or Antapualpah (sp?) with a third or quarter or the cast, and perhaps even the stars or main characters, as whitey-birds the politically correct crowd would pitch a bitch that would throw the earth off it's axis with claims of cultural appropriation while the Anglo-European crowd would, except for film critics (and that bunch is really pretty awful because they realize that film criticism is not a real job but a gag), would pretty much shrug its shoulders and say, "Who cares? This isn't my story. I have my story ans know my story. That's another culture's story and I really don't give a damn about their story."
And that's the thing that the elites don't really realize.
Saturday, September 28, 2019
A Bit of Support For a Controversial Post
Your faithful writer, a few weeks ago, wrote a post stating that many Jews seem to have a suicide complex. This from American Thinker:
Jews Fight Back!
Jews Fight Back!
Sunday, September 22, 2019
When The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good
It's been a fairly quiet week here at Bloody Nib Manor. Despite the arrival of Autumn the other day the weather is still Summer-like, and, as usual for the shire in which the Manor is located, will stay so until the middle of October. The locals, as usual, make themselves and everyone else miserable by their night-time antics of running hither and thither while yelling, screaming, getting drunk, and fighting. Some cultures deal well with hot weather. Others don't. Among those who cannot handle hot days are the denizens of the shire. It will be only a few weeks before they start setting hayricks afire because, well, because that's what they do.
But, of course, this, as usual for the first paragraph of any entry written by yours truly, has nothing to do with the matter about which he wishes to write and, hopefully, have the reader to think upon and consider.
So let us get down to brass tacks starting with a bit of history to give some background to the matter.
In 1843 there was a man in England named Robert Clarke. Mr. Clarke at the time was a farm labourer. He was also inventive. At the time there was a musical instrument referred to as a musical whistle. Said instrument was made of wood, was of a long cylindrical shape with a fipple and six holes along the length of the barrel. It was used to play what is now called "folk" music among the poor and working class. But they were, while not expensive, not cheap. And the quality of the whistles varied from whistle to whistle depending on the skill of the maker. Mr. Clarke, being a man who was on the look out for a way to improve his lot in life, realized that the fairly new material of tin-plated steel might make a good and inexpensive substitute for the wooden whistle that would have a more consistent quality of sound and tuning than the hand made wooden whistle. Working with a blacksmith Mr. Clarke developed the tooling for what was to be later called the "tin whistle" or the "penny whistle."
As soon as Mr. Clarke got his tooling and methods to his satisfaction he and his son pushed a cart with tin whistles and the tooling to Manchester, England. On the way to Manchester they sold tin whistles and made tin whistles, and once they reached their destination they set up a small factory. Mr. Clarke called his first tin whistle from the Manchester factory The Meg. "Meg" was a slang word for a half-penny. A Clarke tin whistle was sold at the cost of a Meg or a half-penny. Below is an image of the descendant of the Meg being played by a sweeper boy.
The whistles were so cheap that they could be bought by the poor for entertainment or to make money. They were cheaper than the wooden musical whistles and more consistent in sound and tuning. One famous whistler during the early days of the Clarke company was a man called Whistling Billy. Billy made basic living playing the Clarke tin whistle on street corners during the winter and spring and entertaining farm laborers during the Summer and Fall. It is said that his repertoire consisted of about 50 tunes. He was probably the first, and perhaps only, tin whistle super star.
For some reason or another, the Irish living in England took to the Clarke tin whistle. They took the whistles back to Ireland with them and there developed a musical tradition based on the tin whistle, and for near 100 years the Clarke tin whistle was the tin whistle used for Irish music. For better or worse the English forgot their own traditional music and the tin whistle came to be a thing shoved into a restless child's mouth with the order, "Go out and play." To the English the tin whistle had become a toy for children. They preferred to take on the trappings of American popular music or have their traditional music taken over by art composers such as Percy Granger and turned into something "noble" instead of on the ground. Any tin whistle music in the English media meant rural and unsophisticated much like a Jew's harp means "hillbilly" in the U.S.
The Irish, being Irish, decided that a Clarke tin whistle was a bit of an English toy. It was made, and had been made for many years, over one hundred, the same way that cheap 1950s tin plate toys were made. They were cheap and they wore out (usually the wooden fipple plug, after about eight months would fall out of the tin plate body because of the glue used to hold the fipple in the body just wore out). Never mind that a Clarke tin whistle could be purchased for less money than a couple of saxophone reeds. So the Irish decided that they would make a "better" tin whistle; a tine whistle that was more suited to Irish music. The result was an instrument made from a brass or tin plate tube with a plastic fipple and straight bore that was more shrill than the Clarke tin whistle. And it was an instrument that was more expensive than the Clarke tin whistle. Below is a photo of a Feodog tine whistle made of brass and made in Ireland.
And by the time the 1960s came along the Irish form of tin whistle was considered THE tin whistle because, well, the Irish. They seem to own the instrument these days despite the fact that in timbre the Irish form of the tin whistle is not suited for all music. And the modern Irish tin whistle costs more than the original Clarke. In fact, nowadays, many times more than the Clarke whistle. A lot of tin whistle players (mostly those playing Irish music) like the Irish form of the instrument and consider the original Clarke form as obsolete and crude despite the fact that a Clarke, by an fuss budget, can be customized and tuned in ways that Generation, Oak or Feodog whistle cannot.. And since the 1990s there have been attempts by various manufacture more and more "perfect" tin whistles. In fact, it seems that some tin whistle makers are attempting to make tine whistles that are of the same quality and tone as expensive recorders made of pear wood. But the fact of the matter is that a tin whistle, whether it is made of tin plate, brass, or even wood, is not a recorder. It is a "folk" or "traditional English/Irish" instrument. It is an instrument that was originally made for the farming and working class with a bit of bleeding over into the middle and upper classes. The Clarke was, and is, a good product. It is not perfect. But it is good, which means that the search for the perfect form of tin whistle is an exercise for the fussy and, well, really unbearable sort. To try to make a more perfect of the Clarke form of penny whistle is akin to trying to come up with a better can opener from the old cheap thing that we here at the Manor started using back in the 1950s. There's always a new and more "perfect" can opener, but despite this new wonder can opener there is always that cheap and old can opener that one goes to when one really wants to open a can and not show how modern or proper or with it one is.
The Clarke penny whistle/tin whistle is a good thing and has been good for years. It's not perfect. Nothing, even this writer, is perfect. But since the Clarke penny whistle was first manufactured during a time when there was a tradition of English "folk" music and Irish "traditional" music not infected by eggheads, it reflects, by it's manufacture and sound something that was and is and will be for a fairly cheap price compared to the modern Irish penny whistle. It is the sound of the original product. It's imperfect, And thus reflects us.
And here's a short video about the Clarke penny whistle:
The Clarke Tinwhistle Story DVD Trailer - YouTube
But, of course, this, as usual for the first paragraph of any entry written by yours truly, has nothing to do with the matter about which he wishes to write and, hopefully, have the reader to think upon and consider.
So let us get down to brass tacks starting with a bit of history to give some background to the matter.
In 1843 there was a man in England named Robert Clarke. Mr. Clarke at the time was a farm labourer. He was also inventive. At the time there was a musical instrument referred to as a musical whistle. Said instrument was made of wood, was of a long cylindrical shape with a fipple and six holes along the length of the barrel. It was used to play what is now called "folk" music among the poor and working class. But they were, while not expensive, not cheap. And the quality of the whistles varied from whistle to whistle depending on the skill of the maker. Mr. Clarke, being a man who was on the look out for a way to improve his lot in life, realized that the fairly new material of tin-plated steel might make a good and inexpensive substitute for the wooden whistle that would have a more consistent quality of sound and tuning than the hand made wooden whistle. Working with a blacksmith Mr. Clarke developed the tooling for what was to be later called the "tin whistle" or the "penny whistle."
As soon as Mr. Clarke got his tooling and methods to his satisfaction he and his son pushed a cart with tin whistles and the tooling to Manchester, England. On the way to Manchester they sold tin whistles and made tin whistles, and once they reached their destination they set up a small factory. Mr. Clarke called his first tin whistle from the Manchester factory The Meg. "Meg" was a slang word for a half-penny. A Clarke tin whistle was sold at the cost of a Meg or a half-penny. Below is an image of the descendant of the Meg being played by a sweeper boy.
For some reason or another, the Irish living in England took to the Clarke tin whistle. They took the whistles back to Ireland with them and there developed a musical tradition based on the tin whistle, and for near 100 years the Clarke tin whistle was the tin whistle used for Irish music. For better or worse the English forgot their own traditional music and the tin whistle came to be a thing shoved into a restless child's mouth with the order, "Go out and play." To the English the tin whistle had become a toy for children. They preferred to take on the trappings of American popular music or have their traditional music taken over by art composers such as Percy Granger and turned into something "noble" instead of on the ground. Any tin whistle music in the English media meant rural and unsophisticated much like a Jew's harp means "hillbilly" in the U.S.
The Irish, being Irish, decided that a Clarke tin whistle was a bit of an English toy. It was made, and had been made for many years, over one hundred, the same way that cheap 1950s tin plate toys were made. They were cheap and they wore out (usually the wooden fipple plug, after about eight months would fall out of the tin plate body because of the glue used to hold the fipple in the body just wore out). Never mind that a Clarke tin whistle could be purchased for less money than a couple of saxophone reeds. So the Irish decided that they would make a "better" tin whistle; a tine whistle that was more suited to Irish music. The result was an instrument made from a brass or tin plate tube with a plastic fipple and straight bore that was more shrill than the Clarke tin whistle. And it was an instrument that was more expensive than the Clarke tin whistle. Below is a photo of a Feodog tine whistle made of brass and made in Ireland.
And by the time the 1960s came along the Irish form of tin whistle was considered THE tin whistle because, well, the Irish. They seem to own the instrument these days despite the fact that in timbre the Irish form of the tin whistle is not suited for all music. And the modern Irish tin whistle costs more than the original Clarke. In fact, nowadays, many times more than the Clarke whistle. A lot of tin whistle players (mostly those playing Irish music) like the Irish form of the instrument and consider the original Clarke form as obsolete and crude despite the fact that a Clarke, by an fuss budget, can be customized and tuned in ways that Generation, Oak or Feodog whistle cannot.. And since the 1990s there have been attempts by various manufacture more and more "perfect" tin whistles. In fact, it seems that some tin whistle makers are attempting to make tine whistles that are of the same quality and tone as expensive recorders made of pear wood. But the fact of the matter is that a tin whistle, whether it is made of tin plate, brass, or even wood, is not a recorder. It is a "folk" or "traditional English/Irish" instrument. It is an instrument that was originally made for the farming and working class with a bit of bleeding over into the middle and upper classes. The Clarke was, and is, a good product. It is not perfect. But it is good, which means that the search for the perfect form of tin whistle is an exercise for the fussy and, well, really unbearable sort. To try to make a more perfect of the Clarke form of penny whistle is akin to trying to come up with a better can opener from the old cheap thing that we here at the Manor started using back in the 1950s. There's always a new and more "perfect" can opener, but despite this new wonder can opener there is always that cheap and old can opener that one goes to when one really wants to open a can and not show how modern or proper or with it one is.
The Clarke penny whistle/tin whistle is a good thing and has been good for years. It's not perfect. Nothing, even this writer, is perfect. But since the Clarke penny whistle was first manufactured during a time when there was a tradition of English "folk" music and Irish "traditional" music not infected by eggheads, it reflects, by it's manufacture and sound something that was and is and will be for a fairly cheap price compared to the modern Irish penny whistle. It is the sound of the original product. It's imperfect, And thus reflects us.
And here's a short video about the Clarke penny whistle:
The Clarke Tinwhistle Story DVD Trailer - YouTube
Saturday, September 14, 2019
A Bit of This and a Bit of That
It's been an uneventful week here at Bloody Nib Manor.
Of course, the hot weather has been bothersome. The Lovely Lady Nib, being at the same time both sturdy and delicate, has found the heat to be wilting and spends the daylight hours reclined on her rattan chaise while drinking G & Ts with more T than G. Your friend is afraid that it may remind her of her youth in the North West territories before the Partition. One can not but feel pity for her since she still insists on wearing wool next to the skin even in the hottest weather. It is not a matter of fashion versus practicality, but more a matter of habit.
And, of course, yours truly has been affected by the rays of Ol' Sol in no good way. The Harris tweed jacket, gray flannels, Wellington boots and tweed cheese-cutter cap have been put into the wardrobe and replaced by a linen jacket, white flannel trousers, Greek sandals and a Panama hat. One feels ridiculous and silly walking about the grounds in such gear, but life is often ridiculous. Our Good Lord has a sense of humor and seems to enjoy laughing at our attempts to be comfortable. He always has the last laugh and one day we'll get the joke. But at the moment not feeling comfortable loading one's Dunhill or Peterson with a bowlful of Rattray's No. 3 Old Noggin because of the heat and having to make due with Three Nuns in a Falcon pipe is no joke.
The heat always brings out the best and the worst in people. The best is that they get lethargic and the worst is that they become angry. Actually, the worst situation is that during the heat of the day they are lethargic and during the cooling of the evening they use their restored energy to commit mischief. Fortunately for the lovely Lady Nib and your correspondent the harvest is in and the granaries are full. But the heat has made the harvesters from the shire angry and resentful. But the good thing that the heat has resulted in is that, for at least this year, the workers, instead of gathering the dried straw to make torches and protest whatever ills they feel they have suffered have, instead used the straw to make straw hats for themselves and have taken to tapping their supplies of ale and cider to get some sort of relief from the heat. At least this year they are not blaming the denizens of Bloody Nib Manor for their misfortunes. Instead they yell at the Sun.
But to get on to other things:
The Swedish child, Greta Thunberg, is on a Global Warming campaign. Her talent, as it is, is to drive people, especially young people, into a panic about what she and her handlers claim is man-made global warming. Yours truly is agnostic on the issue of man-made global warming, but to be truthful, he is more a skeptic of the concept than a champion of it. Miss Thunberg wants the world, or at least the developed world to panic about man-made global warming. She has said so publicly several times. She, as young people often do, wants something done now. She claims to be autistic (or at least her parents claim so), so, in a sense one can ignore whatever she says simply because the modern definition includes several indicators; mental retardation (have you, dear reader, ever noticed that their are no mentally retarded people any more?), emotional retardation (it's now called Asperger's Syndrome), clinical narcissism or obsessive compulsive syndrome. Who knows what this poor child who at her age should be following pop groups and waiting for boys to approach her moon face is suffering from? But her parents and the lick-spittle press have made her, despite her robotic manner and repetitions, a modern day Joan of Arc sailing on a three million dollar yacht who has risked nothing. She, or her handlers, are attempting to lead a Children's Crusade against the evil man-made global warming. But, like the original Children's Crusade of the 13th century. Miss Thunberg, like the leaders of the Children's, expect that because they are innocent children they are in the right and because they see themselves in the right the world will bow before them. But once it comes down to getting the rubber on the road they are lost about what to do. She, and they, had a slogan or two, but nothing else. A slogan and a dollar will not get one a beer on a hot day.
And Miss Thunberg and her cohorts have no answers about what the average person is supposed to do to "cool" the Earth. Electric cars use as more energy in manufacture and operation than do gasoline or diesel cars. Solar panels for the powering of one house's needs are not reliable, especially in places in the Northern Hemisphere such as Sweden. Windmills break and interrupt the migration of protected birds, not to say kill more eagles and hawks than hunters do. And does she really expect Bloody Nib Manor to trade in it's Rolls Royce and Land Rover in favor of a Smart Car or a horse wagon? Does she expect China. India and Japan to go back to rickshaws, howdahs and overloaded bicycles. Does she expect, once her dream comes true, that she'll have to cross the street while stepping on horse apples and fouling her super nice and too expensive Nike shoes.
The girl is 16. She's not smart and she's not wise. She's a silly puppet who repeats what she is told. And anybody who follows the advice of a 16 year old girl or boy is really not very smart. But there are a lot of not very smart people in the world, and the talkeratti class seems to contain most of them.
While we here at Bloody Nib Manor don't spend much time paying attention to popular culture i.e. there's no novel written within the last one hundred years that is really worth reading except mysteries, popular culture, like a termite or a rat occasionally burrows itself into the baseboards of the Manor. And whenever your friend, the Lovely Lady Nib or one of the staff finds the head of the thing poking out of the wood we find ourselves rather polluted by it's appearance.
Such a pollution came to the Manor a week or so ago when it came to light that the awful Miley Cyrus was served by her husband, Liam Hemsworth with papers for a divorce. Mr. Hemsworth seems to be a rather nice young fellow with a sense of right and wrong, while Ms. Cyrus has, for many years, has shown herself as mad as an outhouse rat. Who knows what drove Mr. Hemsworth to marry such a crazy tart? Let's face it, the woman cannot even be referred to as a lively jeune fille when he married her. But tastes and hormones differ; some men like women with faint mustaches, and others like women who have been prostitutes or wantons. There is no accounting for taste.
A few weeks ago Mr. Hemsworth, after less that one year of marriage, told Miss Cyrus that he was finished with the marriage. Not coincidentally the singer formerly known as Hannah Montana told a popular magazine that she really was not a heterosexual but instead was a sort of bi-sexual (perhaps even a tri-sexual) and that she had no interest in bearing children because the world is so screwed up and on its last legs that she didn't want to add to the pain of Mother Gaia by bearing brats. Fortunately for us, she'll keep her promise and we, as a civilization, will not have to bear the burden of a third generation of bad singers singing bad songs.
And then there were several photographs published on the popular Internet of Miss Cyrus behaving with another woman in a way that no person with any common sense at all would liked to have been photographed doing. But, of course, common sense is in short supply these days, and a sense of public propriety is even more rare . But, apparently unknown to Miss Cyrus did in allowing these photographs to be taken (in fact, she posed for them) is that she told the world that her husband was not really her husband physically and that "tipping the velvet" was just as satisfying for her as marital relations with her husband. And Mr. Hemsworth finally woke up and pretty much said, "I can get better action a lot cheaper from some fishnet stockinged whore without all the craziness. At least that chick will pretend."
And despite the fact that it was Mr. Hemsworth who threw over Miley/Hannah the feminist press has reported that it was she who found her lesbian liberation by telling him to grab his hat and get out.
The Western world has gone mad because of guilt for which there is no evidence for. But we here at the Manor hold the walls up as best we can.
Of course, the hot weather has been bothersome. The Lovely Lady Nib, being at the same time both sturdy and delicate, has found the heat to be wilting and spends the daylight hours reclined on her rattan chaise while drinking G & Ts with more T than G. Your friend is afraid that it may remind her of her youth in the North West territories before the Partition. One can not but feel pity for her since she still insists on wearing wool next to the skin even in the hottest weather. It is not a matter of fashion versus practicality, but more a matter of habit.
And, of course, yours truly has been affected by the rays of Ol' Sol in no good way. The Harris tweed jacket, gray flannels, Wellington boots and tweed cheese-cutter cap have been put into the wardrobe and replaced by a linen jacket, white flannel trousers, Greek sandals and a Panama hat. One feels ridiculous and silly walking about the grounds in such gear, but life is often ridiculous. Our Good Lord has a sense of humor and seems to enjoy laughing at our attempts to be comfortable. He always has the last laugh and one day we'll get the joke. But at the moment not feeling comfortable loading one's Dunhill or Peterson with a bowlful of Rattray's No. 3 Old Noggin because of the heat and having to make due with Three Nuns in a Falcon pipe is no joke.
The heat always brings out the best and the worst in people. The best is that they get lethargic and the worst is that they become angry. Actually, the worst situation is that during the heat of the day they are lethargic and during the cooling of the evening they use their restored energy to commit mischief. Fortunately for the lovely Lady Nib and your correspondent the harvest is in and the granaries are full. But the heat has made the harvesters from the shire angry and resentful. But the good thing that the heat has resulted in is that, for at least this year, the workers, instead of gathering the dried straw to make torches and protest whatever ills they feel they have suffered have, instead used the straw to make straw hats for themselves and have taken to tapping their supplies of ale and cider to get some sort of relief from the heat. At least this year they are not blaming the denizens of Bloody Nib Manor for their misfortunes. Instead they yell at the Sun.
But to get on to other things:
The Swedish child, Greta Thunberg, is on a Global Warming campaign. Her talent, as it is, is to drive people, especially young people, into a panic about what she and her handlers claim is man-made global warming. Yours truly is agnostic on the issue of man-made global warming, but to be truthful, he is more a skeptic of the concept than a champion of it. Miss Thunberg wants the world, or at least the developed world to panic about man-made global warming. She has said so publicly several times. She, as young people often do, wants something done now. She claims to be autistic (or at least her parents claim so), so, in a sense one can ignore whatever she says simply because the modern definition includes several indicators; mental retardation (have you, dear reader, ever noticed that their are no mentally retarded people any more?), emotional retardation (it's now called Asperger's Syndrome), clinical narcissism or obsessive compulsive syndrome. Who knows what this poor child who at her age should be following pop groups and waiting for boys to approach her moon face is suffering from? But her parents and the lick-spittle press have made her, despite her robotic manner and repetitions, a modern day Joan of Arc sailing on a three million dollar yacht who has risked nothing. She, or her handlers, are attempting to lead a Children's Crusade against the evil man-made global warming. But, like the original Children's Crusade of the 13th century. Miss Thunberg, like the leaders of the Children's, expect that because they are innocent children they are in the right and because they see themselves in the right the world will bow before them. But once it comes down to getting the rubber on the road they are lost about what to do. She, and they, had a slogan or two, but nothing else. A slogan and a dollar will not get one a beer on a hot day.
And Miss Thunberg and her cohorts have no answers about what the average person is supposed to do to "cool" the Earth. Electric cars use as more energy in manufacture and operation than do gasoline or diesel cars. Solar panels for the powering of one house's needs are not reliable, especially in places in the Northern Hemisphere such as Sweden. Windmills break and interrupt the migration of protected birds, not to say kill more eagles and hawks than hunters do. And does she really expect Bloody Nib Manor to trade in it's Rolls Royce and Land Rover in favor of a Smart Car or a horse wagon? Does she expect China. India and Japan to go back to rickshaws, howdahs and overloaded bicycles. Does she expect, once her dream comes true, that she'll have to cross the street while stepping on horse apples and fouling her super nice and too expensive Nike shoes.
The girl is 16. She's not smart and she's not wise. She's a silly puppet who repeats what she is told. And anybody who follows the advice of a 16 year old girl or boy is really not very smart. But there are a lot of not very smart people in the world, and the talkeratti class seems to contain most of them.
While we here at Bloody Nib Manor don't spend much time paying attention to popular culture i.e. there's no novel written within the last one hundred years that is really worth reading except mysteries, popular culture, like a termite or a rat occasionally burrows itself into the baseboards of the Manor. And whenever your friend, the Lovely Lady Nib or one of the staff finds the head of the thing poking out of the wood we find ourselves rather polluted by it's appearance.
Such a pollution came to the Manor a week or so ago when it came to light that the awful Miley Cyrus was served by her husband, Liam Hemsworth with papers for a divorce. Mr. Hemsworth seems to be a rather nice young fellow with a sense of right and wrong, while Ms. Cyrus has, for many years, has shown herself as mad as an outhouse rat. Who knows what drove Mr. Hemsworth to marry such a crazy tart? Let's face it, the woman cannot even be referred to as a lively jeune fille when he married her. But tastes and hormones differ; some men like women with faint mustaches, and others like women who have been prostitutes or wantons. There is no accounting for taste.
A few weeks ago Mr. Hemsworth, after less that one year of marriage, told Miss Cyrus that he was finished with the marriage. Not coincidentally the singer formerly known as Hannah Montana told a popular magazine that she really was not a heterosexual but instead was a sort of bi-sexual (perhaps even a tri-sexual) and that she had no interest in bearing children because the world is so screwed up and on its last legs that she didn't want to add to the pain of Mother Gaia by bearing brats. Fortunately for us, she'll keep her promise and we, as a civilization, will not have to bear the burden of a third generation of bad singers singing bad songs.
And then there were several photographs published on the popular Internet of Miss Cyrus behaving with another woman in a way that no person with any common sense at all would liked to have been photographed doing. But, of course, common sense is in short supply these days, and a sense of public propriety is even more rare . But, apparently unknown to Miss Cyrus did in allowing these photographs to be taken (in fact, she posed for them) is that she told the world that her husband was not really her husband physically and that "tipping the velvet" was just as satisfying for her as marital relations with her husband. And Mr. Hemsworth finally woke up and pretty much said, "I can get better action a lot cheaper from some fishnet stockinged whore without all the craziness. At least that chick will pretend."
And despite the fact that it was Mr. Hemsworth who threw over Miley/Hannah the feminist press has reported that it was she who found her lesbian liberation by telling him to grab his hat and get out.
The Western world has gone mad because of guilt for which there is no evidence for. But we here at the Manor hold the walls up as best we can.
Sunday, September 08, 2019
Leading From Behind, Plus Bonus Topic: Mammy! (Or Is It Manny?)
Have you, dear reader, ever come across the writings or the mutterings on television or the wireless or a person who does not hate himself (and please know that for the sake of convenience and to respect the common usage that has been used for the past 600* years of English writing the words "he", "him", "his" etc. will be used instead of "he/she" or "them.") but who hates and holds disdain for the ethnic/racial group of which said writer has been so benighted to have found himself to be born into? And have you ever read or heard from such writer or speaker that the ethnic/racial group of which this person is involuntarily a part by an accident of birth say that the particular ethnic/racial is a cancer on the face of the Earth and really should be done away with for the benefit of Earth, all the peoples of the Earth, and all the animals of the Earth.
And, gentle reader, have you noticed that almost all the people who utter these noble ideas of self-sacrifice of an ethnic/racial group are, without exception, are white Europeans, or of white European descent in the U.S.? According to these Solons the culture that originated in Europe has done nothing since the age of Classical Greece done nothing but oppress, exploit and pollute with bad ideas and philosophies the peoples of the world, and has done nothing but just ruin the world and not letting native cultures flourish to their full glory and maturity. In other words, whites are just a world wide buzzkill and really should just step offstage in order let the world become a paradise without the influence of European culture at all.
In other words, what these products of higher learning are suggesting without stating it explicitly is that white Europeans, especially males, should exercise self-genocide for the good of humanity and the good of mother Gaia. According to this group of thinkers Europeans and European thinking have an out-sized influence on the world to the detriment or everyone else and everything else. For some reason there are no known writers from other ethnic/racial groups that suggest that their particular cohort is so problematic that it should engage in self-genocide. Only white Europeans do this. And later in this essay a more interesting observation will be brought up.
Have you, dear friend, read or heard about the Swedish "economist" who stated this past week that it may have come time for people to consider cannibalism for the good of the planet? Your faithful writer would provide a link to several articles, but why bother? It's a fact and an easily found fact. Said professor/egghead/economist was no joking and really not quite speculating. He was, in fact, proposing without explicitly proposing. It was "nod, nod, wink, wink." A sort of, "we in the know and the awfully wise know that in a few years we won't even bother to call the meat we eat Soylent Green. We'll just call it thigh of Debbie or loin of Chad. And it'll be as tasty as can be, and will save the Earth a the same time."
Needless to say, this Squarehead brainiac never said where this human flesh made for the barbecue is supposed to come from. From those who died naturally? Old age? From cancer or heart attack? Victims of murder? Or is the long pig supposed to come from suicides? Perhaps farm raised in Third World nations to feed the appetites of a bunch of Nordic herring chokers?
When this Sven/Eric/Henryck was asked by the unthinking press if he would be willing to have a lunch of Maria Parmigiana or a Pepe-roni pizza he said that he would be reluctant, but would be willing. It really was a bit of a cheap cop out on Swede's part. Academics are good at that sort of thing.
But, and here is were we come into relationship with the first part of this all-too long nattering (self-genocide). The scribes, who really are now a bunch of idiots because they are "journalists" and not cigar chomping bullshit detecting reporters, did not ask the correct question from this sorry descendent of the Vikings. They did not ask him if he was willing to take himself to the local abattoir, have a rod gun fired into his thick skull and have himself butchered for the good of the world. He expects other people to do it for his benefit and for his idea of what is good for the planet. In other words, he wants you, gentle reader, to have yourself made into Spam (one could call it Stan Spam or Pam Spam) so he can feel good about himself for being such an enlightened person. He's willing to perform the forbidden and disgusting as long as he doesn't have to do more than go to the local Aldi and pick up a package of bratwurst made of real brats. And the self-hating white crowd are the same as our enlightened Johann. The people suggesting the self-genocide of a race/ethnicity, despite belonging to that race/ethnicity are not willing to lead the way to peace on Earth by taking one for Team Earth. They want everyone else to. In other words, they see themselves so enlightened and so wise that despite their race/ethnicity (which is just Original Sin bad) that they don't have to follow their own advice. In fact, they are the people who will lead the World because they are "enlightened" whites and know what is best.
Now to get to Mammy. Those above the age of forty (and actually few under the age of fifty) may remember, or have heard about minstral shows or blackface comedy. Minstral shows originated in the 19th century and consisted of musicians and singers portraying black people. Some of the shows were made up of white people wearing blackface make-up, and other groups were actual Negroes (this writer is going to use that word because that was the word used at the time) who wore blackface make-up. Often the songs were racist (stuff about watermelons and catfish and such), and often the songs were just portrayals of an imagined South where Negroes were just a happy lot spending their spare time fishing or just singing and playing the banjo. A lot of Stephan Foster's songs were of the minstral type, sand because of that a five year old kid is prevented from singing Swanee River at the talent show. And once the movies came in there were a lot of blackface roles in the movies. One can start with Birth of a Nation in which no non-white person appeared but in which Negroes were portrayed, go through to the Jazz Singer in which Al Jolson sang Mammy while in blackface, and through the years up until about the 1970s in which blackface was played for a joke. Was the more recent blackface stuff racist? Who in the hell knows? It was funny because it was a white guy pretending to be something that he was not. And when the same guy pretended to be Chinese or Japanese it was funny because it was a white guy playing on the stereotype of the race. Nobody took it serious. Nobody though that Bob Hope in blackface or Benny Hill in "yellowface" were meant to accurately represent those groups. It was, in a sense, akin to the old visual joke about a fat girl (and this writer is well aware that there is no such thing as a "fat girl" and that nowadays fat-shaming is just not done, but your friend in an old crank) wearing a negligee, black stockings and garters and fur mules for the man who had answered the "friends wanted" column placed by a woman who claims that she was the twin of Brigitte Bardot.
Time and "enlightenment" have done away with all that blackface stuff even as jokes or parody for better or worse while white face comedy is accepted (see the previous part of this nonsense above). But have you, dear friend, noticed that there is are forms of blackface that are accepted and celebrated by the "enlightened", the liberal, the feminist and just about anyone else with less sense than God gave a goose?
What are these things? To put it simply and shortly, they are drag shows and drag queens. Drag shows and drag queens are to women what blackface was to black people. Drag shows and drag queens are parodies of women and they show women in the worst light imaginable. They are things that are based on an imagined and fantasized version of what women are in the same way that black face and minstral shows imagined what black people were like.
Nobodies complains about drag shows or drag queens. In fact, many feminists celebrate the things despite the fact that such shows and individuals concentrate on the most stereotypical and unattractive aspects of women. In the old days, before 1980, drag was done as a joke of desperation i.e. Milton Berle and Jewish retirement homes in Florida, or POW camps or submarines full of men who would appreciate anything in a skirt and stockings. Women then thought it funny or disgusting. But now they are expected to enjoy, in fact, model themselves after some swinging dick who has managed to squeeze himself into a corset and is cosmetic savvy. It's not a joke anymore, and because of political correctness it is not an insult and a dismissal of women. It is, in a since, the expression of an ultra-woman or an Ur-woman. But, in reality, it is no better or worse than black face. But the "intelligent" women and the "leading" women are so either so damn stupid or so damn "empathetic" to realize that the drag culture is making a joke of them.
But that's enough from this idiot.
* This writer considers 1400 as the tail end of Middle English and the very beginning of what is now called Modern English. Like it or not, and despite the bone-headedness of most people today, the King James Bible is considered modern English. The reader may find it a bit difficult to read, but that doesn't mean that it is not modern.
And, gentle reader, have you noticed that almost all the people who utter these noble ideas of self-sacrifice of an ethnic/racial group are, without exception, are white Europeans, or of white European descent in the U.S.? According to these Solons the culture that originated in Europe has done nothing since the age of Classical Greece done nothing but oppress, exploit and pollute with bad ideas and philosophies the peoples of the world, and has done nothing but just ruin the world and not letting native cultures flourish to their full glory and maturity. In other words, whites are just a world wide buzzkill and really should just step offstage in order let the world become a paradise without the influence of European culture at all.
In other words, what these products of higher learning are suggesting without stating it explicitly is that white Europeans, especially males, should exercise self-genocide for the good of humanity and the good of mother Gaia. According to this group of thinkers Europeans and European thinking have an out-sized influence on the world to the detriment or everyone else and everything else. For some reason there are no known writers from other ethnic/racial groups that suggest that their particular cohort is so problematic that it should engage in self-genocide. Only white Europeans do this. And later in this essay a more interesting observation will be brought up.
Have you, dear friend, read or heard about the Swedish "economist" who stated this past week that it may have come time for people to consider cannibalism for the good of the planet? Your faithful writer would provide a link to several articles, but why bother? It's a fact and an easily found fact. Said professor/egghead/economist was no joking and really not quite speculating. He was, in fact, proposing without explicitly proposing. It was "nod, nod, wink, wink." A sort of, "we in the know and the awfully wise know that in a few years we won't even bother to call the meat we eat Soylent Green. We'll just call it thigh of Debbie or loin of Chad. And it'll be as tasty as can be, and will save the Earth a the same time."
Needless to say, this Squarehead brainiac never said where this human flesh made for the barbecue is supposed to come from. From those who died naturally? Old age? From cancer or heart attack? Victims of murder? Or is the long pig supposed to come from suicides? Perhaps farm raised in Third World nations to feed the appetites of a bunch of Nordic herring chokers?
When this Sven/Eric/Henryck was asked by the unthinking press if he would be willing to have a lunch of Maria Parmigiana or a Pepe-roni pizza he said that he would be reluctant, but would be willing. It really was a bit of a cheap cop out on Swede's part. Academics are good at that sort of thing.
But, and here is were we come into relationship with the first part of this all-too long nattering (self-genocide). The scribes, who really are now a bunch of idiots because they are "journalists" and not cigar chomping bullshit detecting reporters, did not ask the correct question from this sorry descendent of the Vikings. They did not ask him if he was willing to take himself to the local abattoir, have a rod gun fired into his thick skull and have himself butchered for the good of the world. He expects other people to do it for his benefit and for his idea of what is good for the planet. In other words, he wants you, gentle reader, to have yourself made into Spam (one could call it Stan Spam or Pam Spam) so he can feel good about himself for being such an enlightened person. He's willing to perform the forbidden and disgusting as long as he doesn't have to do more than go to the local Aldi and pick up a package of bratwurst made of real brats. And the self-hating white crowd are the same as our enlightened Johann. The people suggesting the self-genocide of a race/ethnicity, despite belonging to that race/ethnicity are not willing to lead the way to peace on Earth by taking one for Team Earth. They want everyone else to. In other words, they see themselves so enlightened and so wise that despite their race/ethnicity (which is just Original Sin bad) that they don't have to follow their own advice. In fact, they are the people who will lead the World because they are "enlightened" whites and know what is best.
Now to get to Mammy. Those above the age of forty (and actually few under the age of fifty) may remember, or have heard about minstral shows or blackface comedy. Minstral shows originated in the 19th century and consisted of musicians and singers portraying black people. Some of the shows were made up of white people wearing blackface make-up, and other groups were actual Negroes (this writer is going to use that word because that was the word used at the time) who wore blackface make-up. Often the songs were racist (stuff about watermelons and catfish and such), and often the songs were just portrayals of an imagined South where Negroes were just a happy lot spending their spare time fishing or just singing and playing the banjo. A lot of Stephan Foster's songs were of the minstral type, sand because of that a five year old kid is prevented from singing Swanee River at the talent show. And once the movies came in there were a lot of blackface roles in the movies. One can start with Birth of a Nation in which no non-white person appeared but in which Negroes were portrayed, go through to the Jazz Singer in which Al Jolson sang Mammy while in blackface, and through the years up until about the 1970s in which blackface was played for a joke. Was the more recent blackface stuff racist? Who in the hell knows? It was funny because it was a white guy pretending to be something that he was not. And when the same guy pretended to be Chinese or Japanese it was funny because it was a white guy playing on the stereotype of the race. Nobody took it serious. Nobody though that Bob Hope in blackface or Benny Hill in "yellowface" were meant to accurately represent those groups. It was, in a sense, akin to the old visual joke about a fat girl (and this writer is well aware that there is no such thing as a "fat girl" and that nowadays fat-shaming is just not done, but your friend in an old crank) wearing a negligee, black stockings and garters and fur mules for the man who had answered the "friends wanted" column placed by a woman who claims that she was the twin of Brigitte Bardot.
Time and "enlightenment" have done away with all that blackface stuff even as jokes or parody for better or worse while white face comedy is accepted (see the previous part of this nonsense above). But have you, dear friend, noticed that there is are forms of blackface that are accepted and celebrated by the "enlightened", the liberal, the feminist and just about anyone else with less sense than God gave a goose?
What are these things? To put it simply and shortly, they are drag shows and drag queens. Drag shows and drag queens are to women what blackface was to black people. Drag shows and drag queens are parodies of women and they show women in the worst light imaginable. They are things that are based on an imagined and fantasized version of what women are in the same way that black face and minstral shows imagined what black people were like.
Nobodies complains about drag shows or drag queens. In fact, many feminists celebrate the things despite the fact that such shows and individuals concentrate on the most stereotypical and unattractive aspects of women. In the old days, before 1980, drag was done as a joke of desperation i.e. Milton Berle and Jewish retirement homes in Florida, or POW camps or submarines full of men who would appreciate anything in a skirt and stockings. Women then thought it funny or disgusting. But now they are expected to enjoy, in fact, model themselves after some swinging dick who has managed to squeeze himself into a corset and is cosmetic savvy. It's not a joke anymore, and because of political correctness it is not an insult and a dismissal of women. It is, in a since, the expression of an ultra-woman or an Ur-woman. But, in reality, it is no better or worse than black face. But the "intelligent" women and the "leading" women are so either so damn stupid or so damn "empathetic" to realize that the drag culture is making a joke of them.
But that's enough from this idiot.
* This writer considers 1400 as the tail end of Middle English and the very beginning of what is now called Modern English. Like it or not, and despite the bone-headedness of most people today, the King James Bible is considered modern English. The reader may find it a bit difficult to read, but that doesn't mean that it is not modern.
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Why Not Eat a Gun?
One of the things that we at Bloody Nib Manor find themselves wondering is how some people hate themselves so much, or, if not themselves, those of their cohort that they insist that they, and their type are just not much more than a cancer of some sort killing the earth or every "other."
Examples are parts of the climate change crowd who insist that humans, modern humans, are a combination of cyanide and plutonium to the life and survival of all the Earth and all the creatures, other than human, and thus should be done away with. It's kind of a variation of the old Animal Farm gag of two legs bad, four legs good. But, of course, most, if not all these prophets of doom mean is that those who shop at Wal-Mart and Target for their groceries and lawn furniture and drive Toyota pickup trucks instead of going to Whole Foods and Bristol Farms to buy "organic" chard, buying their lawn furniture from Restoration Hardware or Vermont Country Store, and drive Teslas or 5 Series BMWs, are really a mote in God's eye. A trip on a budget airline from L.A. to Las Vegas is considered killing the planet and denying the opportunity of some God benighted New Guinea headhunter the opportunity to live to the age of 100 because of global warming and lack of oxygen while the climate screaming mee mees are not loath to jump on a Lear Jet with a couple of other Richie Rich types to fly from L.A. to Davos, Switzerland to wring their hands about how the hoi polloi are destroying the planet because all the civilized world, except them, are just selfish people who will kill a polar bear by using air conditioning on a hot summer's day. They have no problem with electricity generating windmills killing thousands of protected birds by the blades of the windmills every year, or thousands of birds in migration frying in flight over mirrored solar powered electrical installations. It's all green to them because there's no oil and no coal involved.
One comes across the same madness when one reads of some college professor, and it usually is a college professor (once these idiots get tenure they'll say any stupid thing that rattles around in their sad and empty noggins), says that white people are just awful termites. People of European descent, to them, are just a worthless bunch who have brought nothing to the world except suffering and sadness, cruelty and oppression. That can be argued, but with that bunch it's akin to trying to teach a coyote to fetch. It ain't going to happen. And, invariably, these people are white and of European descent. In fact, if one sees their photographs they are usually as white and European as a 19th century Swede or or yokel from Shropshire. They are really, really white and really, really European. They make a Welshman look like an East Indian or a Latino. But they think that white people are a sort of AIDS that can't be cured and they say that white European culture should be done away with and that the world should follow the cultures of the Hmong, the Bantu and the Aztec.
What both of these group of "thinkers' have in common is that they they hate themselves (or their species or ethno-culture), and want to do away with themselves without doing away with themselves. They want to do away with those who are like them. But they do not want to do away with themselves or suffer the results of their ideas. They except other people, the two legged to do so while they pretend to walk on four legs until it is convenient for them to get up on two feet.
And while they bitch and moan about how humans are ruining the planet or about how Europeans are bad they except themselves from their equation. After all, they are educated and enlightened and will lead the New Age.
If they meant what they said and believed what they say they believe they would do a simple thing in a small way to make a "better world." They'd eat a gun. But they don't. They expect everyone else to.
Examples are parts of the climate change crowd who insist that humans, modern humans, are a combination of cyanide and plutonium to the life and survival of all the Earth and all the creatures, other than human, and thus should be done away with. It's kind of a variation of the old Animal Farm gag of two legs bad, four legs good. But, of course, most, if not all these prophets of doom mean is that those who shop at Wal-Mart and Target for their groceries and lawn furniture and drive Toyota pickup trucks instead of going to Whole Foods and Bristol Farms to buy "organic" chard, buying their lawn furniture from Restoration Hardware or Vermont Country Store, and drive Teslas or 5 Series BMWs, are really a mote in God's eye. A trip on a budget airline from L.A. to Las Vegas is considered killing the planet and denying the opportunity of some God benighted New Guinea headhunter the opportunity to live to the age of 100 because of global warming and lack of oxygen while the climate screaming mee mees are not loath to jump on a Lear Jet with a couple of other Richie Rich types to fly from L.A. to Davos, Switzerland to wring their hands about how the hoi polloi are destroying the planet because all the civilized world, except them, are just selfish people who will kill a polar bear by using air conditioning on a hot summer's day. They have no problem with electricity generating windmills killing thousands of protected birds by the blades of the windmills every year, or thousands of birds in migration frying in flight over mirrored solar powered electrical installations. It's all green to them because there's no oil and no coal involved.
One comes across the same madness when one reads of some college professor, and it usually is a college professor (once these idiots get tenure they'll say any stupid thing that rattles around in their sad and empty noggins), says that white people are just awful termites. People of European descent, to them, are just a worthless bunch who have brought nothing to the world except suffering and sadness, cruelty and oppression. That can be argued, but with that bunch it's akin to trying to teach a coyote to fetch. It ain't going to happen. And, invariably, these people are white and of European descent. In fact, if one sees their photographs they are usually as white and European as a 19th century Swede or or yokel from Shropshire. They are really, really white and really, really European. They make a Welshman look like an East Indian or a Latino. But they think that white people are a sort of AIDS that can't be cured and they say that white European culture should be done away with and that the world should follow the cultures of the Hmong, the Bantu and the Aztec.
What both of these group of "thinkers' have in common is that they they hate themselves (or their species or ethno-culture), and want to do away with themselves without doing away with themselves. They want to do away with those who are like them. But they do not want to do away with themselves or suffer the results of their ideas. They except other people, the two legged to do so while they pretend to walk on four legs until it is convenient for them to get up on two feet.
And while they bitch and moan about how humans are ruining the planet or about how Europeans are bad they except themselves from their equation. After all, they are educated and enlightened and will lead the New Age.
If they meant what they said and believed what they say they believe they would do a simple thing in a small way to make a "better world." They'd eat a gun. But they don't. They expect everyone else to.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
One Wonders Why
Between 1938 and 1945 the government of Nazi Germany killed approximately 6 million Jews. This, despite Holocaust deniers, is a fact. The Nazis, and much of the German population, wanted to rid itself, and the world, of Jews because they saw the Jews as a threat to Germany and "Aryan" Europe. The Jews were the ultimate "Other" in Germany and were seen as a threat and also an easy scapegoat for the Germans. This is, or was, all grade school stuff and was part of the education of anyone who had gone to school in the 1960s to the 1980s.
As readers of this awful blog are aware, this writer is a Christian and may have no business writing about Jewish matters. But since there is nobody standing behind him with a gun to his head to make him stop he will write something.
One finds one's self wondering if the Nazis had been a bit patient whether modern Jews would not have performed a sort of Holocaust on themselves.
Consider the fact that much of modern Judaism seems bound and determined to make themselves and their religion a fossil. To much of the Jewish world being a Jew is not to practice religious Judaism. It is not to wear a prayer shawl, a kippa, pray "Hear O' Israel.." in the morning, attend a synagogue weekly, or observe the holy days in any other way or sense of belief that the average Japanese attends a Shinto shrine on a festival day. There is no belief. There is a tradition or habit.
For many people who call themselves Jews being a Jew is a sense of ethnic identity that, in reality, is little stronger than an American who is one quarter Irish. The Jewish person may have a Passover meal, the 1/4 Mick will drink a lot on St. Patrick's Day. And when one asks both parties why they bother celebrating those days the answer will be something like, "Well, my grandfather did it, and it's good to carry on a tradition even if I don't believe what I'm celebrating", or in the case of the pretend leprechaun, wants an excuse to get drunk like his Granddad did while singing The Wild Colonial Boy.
Many contemporary American and European Jews are, by abandoning the practises and beliefs of their religion, eliminating themselves as Jews except in the sense of DNA. And that DNA does not make a Jew despite what the Nazis insisted in the days before DNA was known. That DNA only identifies, at the best, a Middle Eastern origin, and often shows instead of a pure line of Semitic genes, but Indo-European genes.
To be a Jew is to be a person who practises Judaism even in a casual way, and believes in the teachings of the Torah and Tanach. Judaism is a religion. It is not a race. Even in ancient days there were Jewish missionaries to traveled outside of Israel to make converts to Judaism among the Gentiles. It has been speculated that the ancestors of the Polish Jews were converts and not ethnic Jews.
But today many Jews have ditched their religion and the sense and teachings of their religion and have become secularists. One could say that they have become Sadducees. And in doing so they have abandoned, and even become contemptible of, the religion that they claim to adhere to. It's akin to a person who claims to be a Roman Catholic saying that the bread and wine are not the Body and Blood and that it's more religious and enlightened to sit in bed on a Sunday morn reading the L.A. Times.
The modern secular Jew, while identifying himself or herself as a Jew, works to eliminate Judaism in the name of being enlightened. He or her will say that the idea a Jewish homeland is stupid and silly and should be Muslim. And the modern secular Jew does not reproduce to the point of replacing his or her self in the name of planetary salvation. In other words, the modern secular Jew, who like Hitler and his minions hoped, is eliminating himself in a way that the Nazis could not foresee.
When a woman Reconstructionist rabbi is given more approval and attention by the mainstream press and the popular Jewish press than a Hasidic rebbe you know that it is all over for mainstream and orthodox Judaism. And the Nazis didn't do it. The mainstream secular Jews decided for some reason to commit the suicide that Hitler and company had hoped for.
As readers of this awful blog are aware, this writer is a Christian and may have no business writing about Jewish matters. But since there is nobody standing behind him with a gun to his head to make him stop he will write something.
One finds one's self wondering if the Nazis had been a bit patient whether modern Jews would not have performed a sort of Holocaust on themselves.
Consider the fact that much of modern Judaism seems bound and determined to make themselves and their religion a fossil. To much of the Jewish world being a Jew is not to practice religious Judaism. It is not to wear a prayer shawl, a kippa, pray "Hear O' Israel.." in the morning, attend a synagogue weekly, or observe the holy days in any other way or sense of belief that the average Japanese attends a Shinto shrine on a festival day. There is no belief. There is a tradition or habit.
For many people who call themselves Jews being a Jew is a sense of ethnic identity that, in reality, is little stronger than an American who is one quarter Irish. The Jewish person may have a Passover meal, the 1/4 Mick will drink a lot on St. Patrick's Day. And when one asks both parties why they bother celebrating those days the answer will be something like, "Well, my grandfather did it, and it's good to carry on a tradition even if I don't believe what I'm celebrating", or in the case of the pretend leprechaun, wants an excuse to get drunk like his Granddad did while singing The Wild Colonial Boy.
Many contemporary American and European Jews are, by abandoning the practises and beliefs of their religion, eliminating themselves as Jews except in the sense of DNA. And that DNA does not make a Jew despite what the Nazis insisted in the days before DNA was known. That DNA only identifies, at the best, a Middle Eastern origin, and often shows instead of a pure line of Semitic genes, but Indo-European genes.
To be a Jew is to be a person who practises Judaism even in a casual way, and believes in the teachings of the Torah and Tanach. Judaism is a religion. It is not a race. Even in ancient days there were Jewish missionaries to traveled outside of Israel to make converts to Judaism among the Gentiles. It has been speculated that the ancestors of the Polish Jews were converts and not ethnic Jews.
But today many Jews have ditched their religion and the sense and teachings of their religion and have become secularists. One could say that they have become Sadducees. And in doing so they have abandoned, and even become contemptible of, the religion that they claim to adhere to. It's akin to a person who claims to be a Roman Catholic saying that the bread and wine are not the Body and Blood and that it's more religious and enlightened to sit in bed on a Sunday morn reading the L.A. Times.
The modern secular Jew, while identifying himself or herself as a Jew, works to eliminate Judaism in the name of being enlightened. He or her will say that the idea a Jewish homeland is stupid and silly and should be Muslim. And the modern secular Jew does not reproduce to the point of replacing his or her self in the name of planetary salvation. In other words, the modern secular Jew, who like Hitler and his minions hoped, is eliminating himself in a way that the Nazis could not foresee.
When a woman Reconstructionist rabbi is given more approval and attention by the mainstream press and the popular Jewish press than a Hasidic rebbe you know that it is all over for mainstream and orthodox Judaism. And the Nazis didn't do it. The mainstream secular Jews decided for some reason to commit the suicide that Hitler and company had hoped for.
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Shotgunning
Your faithful friend has decided to stop posting long pieces on Facebook.
The reason it twofold. The first is that Facebook is not a proper platform for posts of more than four sentences. It is forum more suited for short, pithy entries, and photographs and jokes. Facebook is not a serious platform. It is, in a sense, a back fence over which exchanges gossip and Polaroids with neighbors who are far away. The second reason that the people running Facebook are both intrusive and grabby. If what one posts on Facebook something that the Facebook "team" does not like, or has been complained about by some sensitive soul, the said post will be deleted. Facebook owns the platform and is not loathe to kick and entry off it. And Facebook seems to think (or to be more accurate, the corporation that runs Facebook) that anything published on the Facebook platform belongs to the corporation. It does not belong to the person posting or the creator. It is as if one wrote a novel and had it published by a book publisher only to find out that one did not own the copyright to one's own novel, but, instead, the publisher now owns the copyright and takes all the profits without paying royalties. Facebook reserves the right to do this. And it does so without even paying an advance or giving a notification to the creator/poster. One becomes an almost eternal "intern" for Facebook i.e, working without being paid or considered. And the reward is, well, nothing. Facebook controls and steals. Who needs that?
Now, to get down to cases:
The reader is, one hopes, aware of the unrest in Hong Kong.
Basically it comes down to the fact that when Great Britain handed the colony of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China there was a promise by the PRC that Hong Kong would be allowed to operate in the same way it had under British rule for fifty years before the PRC installed its form of governance upon Hong Kong. The hand-over took place in 1997. That means that Hong Kong should have been expected to remain under its pre-transfer condition until 2047. In other words, another 28 years.
The PRC, being the PRC under the rule of Xi JInping, aka Winnie the Pooh, has decided to slowly violate the agreement by increments, and the Hong Kongers have noticed. It started with a decision by Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong, to allow the extradition to the PRC or citizens of Hong Kong despite the fact that the people who were to be extradited to the PRC had never committed a crime in the PRC. That was the catalyst of the protests.
Ms. Lam backed down, but the PRC did not. Instead the PRC increased pressure on the government of Hong Kong for extraditions and then began a campaign to sub rosa violate the 1997 treaty. The PRC and Xi Jinping got hungry and wanted what it wanted now. And the result was more protests and protests that have become more violent in reaction to the increased heavy-handed tactics by the Hong Kong police who seem to be directed by the PRC.
For some reason the protesters are appealing to United States for help and support. They have taken to carrying and waving American flags during their protests. One finds one's self wondering what the protesters expect the United States to do? Send in the Seventh Fleet along with a division of Marines to protect them from the PRC's People's Army? File a complaint in the useless and termite ridden United Nations? Send a "Good Luck" card with a million signatures? The best that the U.S. can do without setting off an out and out war with the PRC is to tariff goods from mainland China and have no tariffs on goods from Hong Kong until it becomes apparent that the PRC has taken over Hong Kong. And when that happens the tariffs on goods from Hong Kong become doubled of those in mainland China.
One question that arises for this writer is way are the protesters in Hong Kong appealing to the United States and not to Great Britain? It was Great Britain that handed Hong Kong over to the PRC. The only thing that the U.S. had to do with Hong Kong was as a port of call for the Navy's Pacific Fleet. It was Great Britain that sold out Hong Kong at the insistence of the the leaders and intelligentsia of Hong Kong. And those leaders actually expected the PRC to keep its word and expected Great Britain to intervene if the PRC did not keep its word. The PRC has not held to its promise and Great Britain protect the Channel Islands, let alone demand that the PRC operate according to the agreement of 1997. So the protesters, seeing that their former colonizer has become a weak and silly self-hating nation has turned to the U.S. for hope. And this despite the fact that many in the U.S. and outside the U.S. see the nation as an outlaw nation of oppression i.e., Antifa, universities, entertainers, much of the media. Or as unwanted invaders and regime in countries that don't want regime change. The Hong Kong protesters are going against the liberal narrative and there is nothing that the U.S. can do.
And please know that this writer has no ill feelings toward the Chinese. His ill feelings are directed toward the People's Republic of China. Your friend has too many Chinese friends to dislike the Chinese. But he has too many Taiwanese,Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai and Filipino friends to have any love, or even like for the PRC and its leaders.
The PRC and its leaders are a sort of Sauron demanding the loyalty and conformity of all those with the borders of the PRC using the tools of the old Maoist regime, the old East German model, and modern technology. At the same time it reaches out to grab and take and effectively colonize to build an Empire: the ruining of the Mekong River by dams, the taking of islands from the Philippines and Vietnam, and the constant threatening of Taiwan. One also must remember that the PRC is not loathe to drive African nations into debt to get its own way in Africa. The PRC is an awful colonizer. Unlike the UK or the U.S. the PRC does nothing but take from a country. It contributes nothing to a country. As bad as the U.S and the UK may seem as colonizers, at least they contributed to their colonies; the making of India as a nation from a group of principalities and the modernization of the Philippines. The PRC model seems to be based on the Spanish and French models i.e., colonize and take plunder and invest nothing for the populace.
But that's enough of that corn pone opinionating. On to another topic. And the last for this all too long post.
This writer has really gotten tired of the glorification of gays (or as he refers to them, homosexuals, both of the male and female variety) and "transgenders" (included in this bunch are included cross-dressers who make a life of their fetish and have brought their "thing" into the public square, and those who have undergone surgery or hormone treatments to make a him a "shim" and a her a "sher" of various types, not to mention adults who claim that they are six years old, adults who claim that they are ponies or doggies or demons or sparrows).
Let us face the facts. According to the media gays and trannies have become America's (and perhaps Western Europe's Chai pets, Furbies, fashion dictators and style influencers despite the fact that homosexuals make up about 3 percent of the U.S. population and trannies make up about .2 percent of the population. Homosexuals have been in modern times part of the performing arts, and have had an out sized influence on the population for some reason. But the fact of the matter is that whether homosexuals are born the way they are or are influenced by various factors to be what they are, they are a vast minority representing fewer people than the number of Scandinavian-Americans (about 4%). But for some reason women (and it is almost always women) find this bunch cute or stylish or endearing as long as the homosexuals are not threatening, meaning that said homosexual is not trying to take the woman's breadwinner husband or boyfriend. Most men, as freaky and as primitive as they can be, seem to hold to an almost Biblical attitude towards homosexuals and trannies. They believe that there is something not quite right about the whole deal. And while most men will put up with homosexual men (though not so much trannies because most trannies are rather clownish in their presentation), they see homosexuals as a sort of chihuahua that one won't kick but which one really doesn't want to take hunting.
Here is the most disturbing thing that your friend finds about the contemporary attitude towards homosexuality.
All too often one will read an article about a man (and it almost always a man) who in early middle age decides/realizes that despite the fact that he's been married to a woman for 15-20 years and has fathered two or more children decides one day, or over a period of time, that he is a homosexual or is a woman in a man's body. Said man then announces to his wife, and every other damn body who is willing to listen, that he has found himself and that he's a homosexual or a woman or a six year-old girl and then abandons his wife and kids to "be himself." Much of the media and idiots will yak about how brave he is that he's decided to live as "who he is" and be honest while at the same time ignoring the ramifications of his either previous lying about or his "realization" of his true self on his wife and kids. The abandoned woman and children are nothing. It's all about this "brave" man/tranny being true to himself. A family has been destroyed by the man's hedonism and yet the man is a hero and the family is forgotten.
Now imagine for a moment, a case that probably takes place more often than the sudden revelation homo-erotic or sexual dysphoria or a married man. A man between the ages of 35 and 45 who is married with children suddenly decides that he's going to ditch his 34 to 45 year old wife and the fruit of his loins in order to take up with some 19 year old woman because he still feels young and his wife is "old." He sees himself as young and vital and sees the woman that he is married to as old, haggard, perhaps fat, and with sagging breasts. He married, years ago, what he thought of as a Barbie who has turned into Ma Kettle and he sees himself as Ken. His kids? They'll get over it. They learn to love the new Barbie and appreciate that Dad is a "cool" guy. And in any world that makes any damn sense the man would be condemned as an awful creep, and, in fact, in most of the U.S. the guy is seen as a a selfish and irresponsible bastard except by his close male friends who hope to get a shot of leg from the new Barbie behind the Ken's back.
Now, what's the difference between the guy who dumps his family to live with a Bruce or become a Jasmine and the guy who dumped his family to take up with some young blood? The answer is nothing. Nothing at all. Both are based on the worst and deadliest sin---pride.
But that's enough of this writer.
The reason it twofold. The first is that Facebook is not a proper platform for posts of more than four sentences. It is forum more suited for short, pithy entries, and photographs and jokes. Facebook is not a serious platform. It is, in a sense, a back fence over which exchanges gossip and Polaroids with neighbors who are far away. The second reason that the people running Facebook are both intrusive and grabby. If what one posts on Facebook something that the Facebook "team" does not like, or has been complained about by some sensitive soul, the said post will be deleted. Facebook owns the platform and is not loathe to kick and entry off it. And Facebook seems to think (or to be more accurate, the corporation that runs Facebook) that anything published on the Facebook platform belongs to the corporation. It does not belong to the person posting or the creator. It is as if one wrote a novel and had it published by a book publisher only to find out that one did not own the copyright to one's own novel, but, instead, the publisher now owns the copyright and takes all the profits without paying royalties. Facebook reserves the right to do this. And it does so without even paying an advance or giving a notification to the creator/poster. One becomes an almost eternal "intern" for Facebook i.e, working without being paid or considered. And the reward is, well, nothing. Facebook controls and steals. Who needs that?
Now, to get down to cases:
The reader is, one hopes, aware of the unrest in Hong Kong.
Basically it comes down to the fact that when Great Britain handed the colony of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China there was a promise by the PRC that Hong Kong would be allowed to operate in the same way it had under British rule for fifty years before the PRC installed its form of governance upon Hong Kong. The hand-over took place in 1997. That means that Hong Kong should have been expected to remain under its pre-transfer condition until 2047. In other words, another 28 years.
The PRC, being the PRC under the rule of Xi JInping, aka Winnie the Pooh, has decided to slowly violate the agreement by increments, and the Hong Kongers have noticed. It started with a decision by Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong, to allow the extradition to the PRC or citizens of Hong Kong despite the fact that the people who were to be extradited to the PRC had never committed a crime in the PRC. That was the catalyst of the protests.
Ms. Lam backed down, but the PRC did not. Instead the PRC increased pressure on the government of Hong Kong for extraditions and then began a campaign to sub rosa violate the 1997 treaty. The PRC and Xi Jinping got hungry and wanted what it wanted now. And the result was more protests and protests that have become more violent in reaction to the increased heavy-handed tactics by the Hong Kong police who seem to be directed by the PRC.
For some reason the protesters are appealing to United States for help and support. They have taken to carrying and waving American flags during their protests. One finds one's self wondering what the protesters expect the United States to do? Send in the Seventh Fleet along with a division of Marines to protect them from the PRC's People's Army? File a complaint in the useless and termite ridden United Nations? Send a "Good Luck" card with a million signatures? The best that the U.S. can do without setting off an out and out war with the PRC is to tariff goods from mainland China and have no tariffs on goods from Hong Kong until it becomes apparent that the PRC has taken over Hong Kong. And when that happens the tariffs on goods from Hong Kong become doubled of those in mainland China.
One question that arises for this writer is way are the protesters in Hong Kong appealing to the United States and not to Great Britain? It was Great Britain that handed Hong Kong over to the PRC. The only thing that the U.S. had to do with Hong Kong was as a port of call for the Navy's Pacific Fleet. It was Great Britain that sold out Hong Kong at the insistence of the the leaders and intelligentsia of Hong Kong. And those leaders actually expected the PRC to keep its word and expected Great Britain to intervene if the PRC did not keep its word. The PRC has not held to its promise and Great Britain protect the Channel Islands, let alone demand that the PRC operate according to the agreement of 1997. So the protesters, seeing that their former colonizer has become a weak and silly self-hating nation has turned to the U.S. for hope. And this despite the fact that many in the U.S. and outside the U.S. see the nation as an outlaw nation of oppression i.e., Antifa, universities, entertainers, much of the media. Or as unwanted invaders and regime in countries that don't want regime change. The Hong Kong protesters are going against the liberal narrative and there is nothing that the U.S. can do.
And please know that this writer has no ill feelings toward the Chinese. His ill feelings are directed toward the People's Republic of China. Your friend has too many Chinese friends to dislike the Chinese. But he has too many Taiwanese,Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai and Filipino friends to have any love, or even like for the PRC and its leaders.
The PRC and its leaders are a sort of Sauron demanding the loyalty and conformity of all those with the borders of the PRC using the tools of the old Maoist regime, the old East German model, and modern technology. At the same time it reaches out to grab and take and effectively colonize to build an Empire: the ruining of the Mekong River by dams, the taking of islands from the Philippines and Vietnam, and the constant threatening of Taiwan. One also must remember that the PRC is not loathe to drive African nations into debt to get its own way in Africa. The PRC is an awful colonizer. Unlike the UK or the U.S. the PRC does nothing but take from a country. It contributes nothing to a country. As bad as the U.S and the UK may seem as colonizers, at least they contributed to their colonies; the making of India as a nation from a group of principalities and the modernization of the Philippines. The PRC model seems to be based on the Spanish and French models i.e., colonize and take plunder and invest nothing for the populace.
But that's enough of that corn pone opinionating. On to another topic. And the last for this all too long post.
This writer has really gotten tired of the glorification of gays (or as he refers to them, homosexuals, both of the male and female variety) and "transgenders" (included in this bunch are included cross-dressers who make a life of their fetish and have brought their "thing" into the public square, and those who have undergone surgery or hormone treatments to make a him a "shim" and a her a "sher" of various types, not to mention adults who claim that they are six years old, adults who claim that they are ponies or doggies or demons or sparrows).
Let us face the facts. According to the media gays and trannies have become America's (and perhaps Western Europe's Chai pets, Furbies, fashion dictators and style influencers despite the fact that homosexuals make up about 3 percent of the U.S. population and trannies make up about .2 percent of the population. Homosexuals have been in modern times part of the performing arts, and have had an out sized influence on the population for some reason. But the fact of the matter is that whether homosexuals are born the way they are or are influenced by various factors to be what they are, they are a vast minority representing fewer people than the number of Scandinavian-Americans (about 4%). But for some reason women (and it is almost always women) find this bunch cute or stylish or endearing as long as the homosexuals are not threatening, meaning that said homosexual is not trying to take the woman's breadwinner husband or boyfriend. Most men, as freaky and as primitive as they can be, seem to hold to an almost Biblical attitude towards homosexuals and trannies. They believe that there is something not quite right about the whole deal. And while most men will put up with homosexual men (though not so much trannies because most trannies are rather clownish in their presentation), they see homosexuals as a sort of chihuahua that one won't kick but which one really doesn't want to take hunting.
Here is the most disturbing thing that your friend finds about the contemporary attitude towards homosexuality.
All too often one will read an article about a man (and it almost always a man) who in early middle age decides/realizes that despite the fact that he's been married to a woman for 15-20 years and has fathered two or more children decides one day, or over a period of time, that he is a homosexual or is a woman in a man's body. Said man then announces to his wife, and every other damn body who is willing to listen, that he has found himself and that he's a homosexual or a woman or a six year-old girl and then abandons his wife and kids to "be himself." Much of the media and idiots will yak about how brave he is that he's decided to live as "who he is" and be honest while at the same time ignoring the ramifications of his either previous lying about or his "realization" of his true self on his wife and kids. The abandoned woman and children are nothing. It's all about this "brave" man/tranny being true to himself. A family has been destroyed by the man's hedonism and yet the man is a hero and the family is forgotten.
Now imagine for a moment, a case that probably takes place more often than the sudden revelation homo-erotic or sexual dysphoria or a married man. A man between the ages of 35 and 45 who is married with children suddenly decides that he's going to ditch his 34 to 45 year old wife and the fruit of his loins in order to take up with some 19 year old woman because he still feels young and his wife is "old." He sees himself as young and vital and sees the woman that he is married to as old, haggard, perhaps fat, and with sagging breasts. He married, years ago, what he thought of as a Barbie who has turned into Ma Kettle and he sees himself as Ken. His kids? They'll get over it. They learn to love the new Barbie and appreciate that Dad is a "cool" guy. And in any world that makes any damn sense the man would be condemned as an awful creep, and, in fact, in most of the U.S. the guy is seen as a a selfish and irresponsible bastard except by his close male friends who hope to get a shot of leg from the new Barbie behind the Ken's back.
Now, what's the difference between the guy who dumps his family to live with a Bruce or become a Jasmine and the guy who dumped his family to take up with some young blood? The answer is nothing. Nothing at all. Both are based on the worst and deadliest sin---pride.
But that's enough of this writer.
Sunday, December 23, 2018
The War On Christmas
Your faithful correspondent has been, once again and for another year, hearing about "The War On Christmas." And to tell the truth, he's getting pretty darn tired of it. Not because there is not a "war on Christmas", but because every year for the past thirty years there has been a bit of screaming and robe tearing about a "war on Christmas." with the thought that if Christians protest enough about it there will be a "Christmas peace" in which a Christian can wish a Merry Christmas to a Sikh at the local 7-11 and not get the hairy eyeball. A "Christmas peace", if there will ever come one, will be like the Christmas truces during the war in Vietnam; an tacit agreement will be made and then one side will break the truce because that side realizes that a state of comfort on the other side makes a soft target and is thus easy to attack. A sleeping man is easier to attack than an armed man on watch.
But what is more troublesome to this writer is the implication put forth by the "War on Christmas" worriers is that Christianity is the default state of the nations in the West. For sure, it could be that most people in Europe and the Americas were believing Christians, or cultural Christians. Believing Christians means those who actually believe the tenants and teachings of the New Testament, and who attend church and read the Bible. A cultural Christian is a person who holds to Christian morality without really believing in Christianity. The village atheist was an oddball. The person who claimed he or she was a Buddhist or Hindu was considered a person who was pretty much akin to a spiritualist; a person who had fallen victim to exoticism. The person who identified as a Muslim was considered as a bit of a savage who had neither the discipline to be an Orthodox Jew or the sense of gratefulness to be a Christian.
Times have changed a lot since those days. For whatever reason the atheistic and the Islamic has come into the ascendancy, with atheism leading the way. And the reason for the rise of the latter in the West is the result of the call for tolerance by the former. Atheists, for some reason, despise Christianity more than they do other religions. The reason maybe simply a matter of contempt for the familiar; one tends to dislike one's shifty cousin more than the one dislikes the unknown man who robbed a bank.
Via college professors who were, and are, always looking for the "different" to make their academic chops the secular became the plus non ultra, The result was that the secular, or more specifically, the humanist secular point of view was taught in colleges and universities. And who comes out of colleges and universities? Journalists and teachers. The very people who pass on information to the youth and the public. Let's face it, most college students are unrooted philosophically and religiously. They've just come out of puberty, and if they haven't had a good grounding, and a very good grounding in either believing Christianity or moral Christianity they'll find themselves at sea and sometimes grab onto a world outlook that is diametrically opposed to with what they were raised.
The whole point of this awfully too long post is that we, in the West, including the U.S., no longer live in a Christian world. Much of the U.S. clings to Christmas as a generic holiday; almost like New Year's Day in Asia. Just a day to get time off work and exchange gifts. It's more Santa Claus than Christ. It's become a secular holiday, and the grumpy atheists really don't mind the secular aspects. They hate the specifically Christian aspects. They don't file lawsuits against a city putting illuminated snowflakes or stars on lamp poles during the Christmas season, But a manger on the grounds of the city hall demands a lawsuit or threatening letter.
But that's the way it is and that is the way it will be unless there is a religious revival. And we should get used to it. And we'll have to get used to it because there is worse to come. Our job as Christians is to believe and live our Faith and express our Faith in public. But we cannot expect the public accept our Faith or respect our Faith. The history of human nature tells us so. We are pariahs of the good and of the Faith, and the sooner we realize it the better for us.
But what is more troublesome to this writer is the implication put forth by the "War on Christmas" worriers is that Christianity is the default state of the nations in the West. For sure, it could be that most people in Europe and the Americas were believing Christians, or cultural Christians. Believing Christians means those who actually believe the tenants and teachings of the New Testament, and who attend church and read the Bible. A cultural Christian is a person who holds to Christian morality without really believing in Christianity. The village atheist was an oddball. The person who claimed he or she was a Buddhist or Hindu was considered a person who was pretty much akin to a spiritualist; a person who had fallen victim to exoticism. The person who identified as a Muslim was considered as a bit of a savage who had neither the discipline to be an Orthodox Jew or the sense of gratefulness to be a Christian.
Times have changed a lot since those days. For whatever reason the atheistic and the Islamic has come into the ascendancy, with atheism leading the way. And the reason for the rise of the latter in the West is the result of the call for tolerance by the former. Atheists, for some reason, despise Christianity more than they do other religions. The reason maybe simply a matter of contempt for the familiar; one tends to dislike one's shifty cousin more than the one dislikes the unknown man who robbed a bank.
Via college professors who were, and are, always looking for the "different" to make their academic chops the secular became the plus non ultra, The result was that the secular, or more specifically, the humanist secular point of view was taught in colleges and universities. And who comes out of colleges and universities? Journalists and teachers. The very people who pass on information to the youth and the public. Let's face it, most college students are unrooted philosophically and religiously. They've just come out of puberty, and if they haven't had a good grounding, and a very good grounding in either believing Christianity or moral Christianity they'll find themselves at sea and sometimes grab onto a world outlook that is diametrically opposed to with what they were raised.
The whole point of this awfully too long post is that we, in the West, including the U.S., no longer live in a Christian world. Much of the U.S. clings to Christmas as a generic holiday; almost like New Year's Day in Asia. Just a day to get time off work and exchange gifts. It's more Santa Claus than Christ. It's become a secular holiday, and the grumpy atheists really don't mind the secular aspects. They hate the specifically Christian aspects. They don't file lawsuits against a city putting illuminated snowflakes or stars on lamp poles during the Christmas season, But a manger on the grounds of the city hall demands a lawsuit or threatening letter.
But that's the way it is and that is the way it will be unless there is a religious revival. And we should get used to it. And we'll have to get used to it because there is worse to come. Our job as Christians is to believe and live our Faith and express our Faith in public. But we cannot expect the public accept our Faith or respect our Faith. The history of human nature tells us so. We are pariahs of the good and of the Faith, and the sooner we realize it the better for us.
Sunday, August 05, 2018
Well, Women Are All
Your faithful correspondent is very reluctant to get into this topic because he really doesn't like controversy outside of whether Dickens or Trollope was the better writer, or whether the Brontes were foolish in dismissing Jane Austen.
But, here's the deal. Ireland and Argentina have both been campaigning for abortion on demand. In Ireland the law has been passed and in Argentina the matter is undergoing public argument. And there are women who seem to think that having an abortion is a good thing. They almost make is a sacrament i.e., if a woman has not had an abortion she is not a real woman. And they often make the silly argument that if men became pregnant abortion would be smiled upon by society because men are in power and blah, blah, blah, when, in fact, if men became pregnant there would probably be fewer abortions because men see their kids as the fruit of their loins while a lot of women see their kids as weights holding them back. We could go on with the argument forever and a day. But there is an argument.
A lot of pro-abortion women (and it's always women and men who want a bit of leg without the responsibility of putting on a rubber) often bitch a bitch about the Catholic Church or the Old Puritans or the Evangelicals using anti-abortion laws to keep the women back from realizing their dreams of becoming breath-taking architects, full professors of Women's Studies at Yale or the next Myrna Loy. It's all stuff and nonsense intended to mask the fact that the women who "need" abortions were irresponsible when they decided to bed down with the "greatest guy in the world" while the woman was off her birth control pills or her lover refused to wear a condom. And then, once she finds out that her guy likes straight coffee and not a mocha-loca-caramel do-dad and she's pregnant and decides that he's not the guy for her she heads to the local Planned Parenthood and pretty much flushes the kid away.
But what is never mentioned is that the man, the father, of the aborted child has no legal right to prevent the abortion. If the woman decides to give birth the "father" is legally obligated to pay child support for the child until the child is eighteen. If he wants the woman to have the child and makes a promise to raise the child himself he really has no say in the matter. A father has no rights in the case of abortion despite the fact that he is half of the equation.
Women will argue that they have to carry the child for nine months. So what? It was not all that long ago when young men of many nations were regularly drafted into the military for a period of two years and they got nothing out of it besides rotten pay and being held back for two years in a trade or a college.
Why is it all about the women regarding abortion and not the potential fathers? Your friend hates to say it, but it might be all about stretch marks.
But, here's the deal. Ireland and Argentina have both been campaigning for abortion on demand. In Ireland the law has been passed and in Argentina the matter is undergoing public argument. And there are women who seem to think that having an abortion is a good thing. They almost make is a sacrament i.e., if a woman has not had an abortion she is not a real woman. And they often make the silly argument that if men became pregnant abortion would be smiled upon by society because men are in power and blah, blah, blah, when, in fact, if men became pregnant there would probably be fewer abortions because men see their kids as the fruit of their loins while a lot of women see their kids as weights holding them back. We could go on with the argument forever and a day. But there is an argument.
A lot of pro-abortion women (and it's always women and men who want a bit of leg without the responsibility of putting on a rubber) often bitch a bitch about the Catholic Church or the Old Puritans or the Evangelicals using anti-abortion laws to keep the women back from realizing their dreams of becoming breath-taking architects, full professors of Women's Studies at Yale or the next Myrna Loy. It's all stuff and nonsense intended to mask the fact that the women who "need" abortions were irresponsible when they decided to bed down with the "greatest guy in the world" while the woman was off her birth control pills or her lover refused to wear a condom. And then, once she finds out that her guy likes straight coffee and not a mocha-loca-caramel do-dad and she's pregnant and decides that he's not the guy for her she heads to the local Planned Parenthood and pretty much flushes the kid away.
But what is never mentioned is that the man, the father, of the aborted child has no legal right to prevent the abortion. If the woman decides to give birth the "father" is legally obligated to pay child support for the child until the child is eighteen. If he wants the woman to have the child and makes a promise to raise the child himself he really has no say in the matter. A father has no rights in the case of abortion despite the fact that he is half of the equation.
Women will argue that they have to carry the child for nine months. So what? It was not all that long ago when young men of many nations were regularly drafted into the military for a period of two years and they got nothing out of it besides rotten pay and being held back for two years in a trade or a college.
Why is it all about the women regarding abortion and not the potential fathers? Your friend hates to say it, but it might be all about stretch marks.
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Your faithful correspondent is no example of sartorial splendor. In other words, this writer is no Beau Brummel spending an hour or so in front of a mirror to make sure that the folds in his cravat are placed "just so." In other words, we at Bloody Nib Manor consider ourselves as rather slobby in the proper sense, but we are not so slobby was to walk out in public wearing dungarees and a t-shirt. We always wear , daily, something like khaki trousers and a buttoned up shirt of either the Hawaiian or Western style. And always a hat or cap of some sort. And not a baseball cap. Baseball caps are for baseball players or tail gunners in B-17s.
But fashions change for some reason, and we no longer wear detachable collars or shirt fronts or waistcoats. And the, well, lower classes no longer emulate us (meaning middle and upper classes), but for some reason we seem to emulate them. Everybody wants to be a thug these days It's almost a sans culottes movement without the guillotine casting it's shadow. Just public opinion. And stupid public opinion. But let us face the fact. Most of the public is unthinking. They are reactive. If one tells the great unwashed that it dresses like thugs, hooches, white trash or just plain skanky one will get slammed with labels such as racist or classist. The insults are never-ending. But that's life in modern America in which the opinion of a drunk screaming at pigeons on a telephone wire are deemed as valid as that as a man who has spent forty years studying Burke and the Bible.
But to get back the point of this mess:
How do you know that a man (and it's always a man) of a proper type and of the conservative, and perhaps populist type, is the man that he presents himself as? The answer is simple: He ties his neck tie in either a coachman's knot or a four-in-hand knot. Those are the tie knots that men who have other things to worry about than looking good on the television. Windsor knots are for toffs and gangsters. In other words, for news readers and politicians. The normal tie for a working stiff is tied in a coachman's knot or a four in hand. That means that the guy (or gal) is just too damn busy.It doesn't mean that that person is a liberal or a conservative (leftists seem to prefer the t-shirt/hoodie look). It means that that person has other concerns than looking good for a camera. And the only people who worry about looking good for a camera are actors. And, from ancient times, we all know that actors are pretty much idiots and degenerates.
But fashions change for some reason, and we no longer wear detachable collars or shirt fronts or waistcoats. And the, well, lower classes no longer emulate us (meaning middle and upper classes), but for some reason we seem to emulate them. Everybody wants to be a thug these days It's almost a sans culottes movement without the guillotine casting it's shadow. Just public opinion. And stupid public opinion. But let us face the fact. Most of the public is unthinking. They are reactive. If one tells the great unwashed that it dresses like thugs, hooches, white trash or just plain skanky one will get slammed with labels such as racist or classist. The insults are never-ending. But that's life in modern America in which the opinion of a drunk screaming at pigeons on a telephone wire are deemed as valid as that as a man who has spent forty years studying Burke and the Bible.
But to get back the point of this mess:
How do you know that a man (and it's always a man) of a proper type and of the conservative, and perhaps populist type, is the man that he presents himself as? The answer is simple: He ties his neck tie in either a coachman's knot or a four-in-hand knot. Those are the tie knots that men who have other things to worry about than looking good on the television. Windsor knots are for toffs and gangsters. In other words, for news readers and politicians. The normal tie for a working stiff is tied in a coachman's knot or a four in hand. That means that the guy (or gal) is just too damn busy.It doesn't mean that that person is a liberal or a conservative (leftists seem to prefer the t-shirt/hoodie look). It means that that person has other concerns than looking good for a camera. And the only people who worry about looking good for a camera are actors. And, from ancient times, we all know that actors are pretty much idiots and degenerates.
Sunday, February 18, 2018
Unfortunately, Back Again
Today at church your faithful correspondent was reminded that he actually has a blog and that no new posts have been made for a very long time. In other words, this blog has been pretty moribund for a long time and perhaps too long.
This writer is the first to admit that he really has nothing insightful to say or write and does not have the talent to write common thought in an interesting and creative way. But some people do seem to enjoy the natterings of an old fool. Not many people enjoy them, but a few do. One can only suppose that they are the type of people who would enjoy watching an 1890s Ozark hillbilly trying to figure out what to do with a Smartphone. But the joke goes both ways. Clem can make music with a broomstick, a wash tub and a piece of rope while the Smartphone guy has to go to The Guitar Center and buy an electric bass guitar and amplifier to do the same thing.
But to get back to cases. For those who have enjoyed reading these exhibitions of mental deficiency this writer apologizes for the lack of current material. The only excuse is laziness and Facebook. Mostly Facebook.
To put it succinctly, Facebook is evil for bloggers. Actually, to be more to the point, Facebook is evil.
Facebook is evil for bloggers because it is a form of micro-blog that is really under the control of unseen forces and limits the free expression of bloggers. There is always the danger for an opinionated person being suspended from Facebook for a period of time for saying something that violates the Facebook terms of service. And these terms of service are mercurial depending upon the current liberal climate. One is left trying to anticipate the censors at Facebook and thereby censors oneself.
In a community, as was, self-censorship was not unusual. One had to live a a community in which there were various types and flavors of people, and to get through the day one had to prevent oneself from offending the man who delivered the milk despite the fact that it was known that he was a Mason and everyone knew (as far as your were concerned) that Masons were anti-democratic and perhaps anti-American. You wanted milk and if you ticked off the milk man you wouldn't be getting milk. And your doctor would probably use a dull needle to give you a shot.
The Internet, in a way, opened up the possibility for everyone to express his or her jerk opinions. One could be the biggest jerk in the world without worrying about not having milk for the Cheerios. After all, it was pretty unlikely that your milkman or doctor would read your blog.
But writing a blog is more troublesome than doing a Facebook entry. One cannot make a blog entry of one or two sentences. But one can do it on Facebook. And Facebook is controlled by a lot of people who have no knowledge or your life or life experiences. Consider this: You're a veteran of the Vietnam War. You spent your time in country fighting the Viet Cong and the NVA. You got into the habit of referring to the enemy as "gooks." Later, as an old fellow, you join a Facebook group of Viet vets. You write a post about the Viet Cong and use the word "gooks." All of a sudden the Facebook hammer comes down on you for "hate speech" and you're suspended despite the fact that you wife is Vietnamese and your kids are Eurasian. You're not racist. But you used the "wrong" word and therefore, according to Facebook you are a hater. And know for sure that the "wrong" word will change and become more numerous as time goes on.
Secondly, Facebook is evil because it pretend to be a "town square" where people of similar likes can get together and discuss and that all the people are friends of some sort. That is, in a sense, admirable. But there is a wagon attached to the thing. Whatever one writes, whatever one posts, becomes part of Facebook. It's not yours anymore. And whatever you write or post will result your name being sold to advertisers and groups that you may want nothing to do with. You become a commodity. You are no longer a person.
But that's modern life. People are willing to have their privacy taken by things like the Amazon Echo so they'll know what time it is or what the weather is. Big Brother is here and we invited him in through Facebook and Echo and all the rest. Oh happy day!
This writer is the first to admit that he really has nothing insightful to say or write and does not have the talent to write common thought in an interesting and creative way. But some people do seem to enjoy the natterings of an old fool. Not many people enjoy them, but a few do. One can only suppose that they are the type of people who would enjoy watching an 1890s Ozark hillbilly trying to figure out what to do with a Smartphone. But the joke goes both ways. Clem can make music with a broomstick, a wash tub and a piece of rope while the Smartphone guy has to go to The Guitar Center and buy an electric bass guitar and amplifier to do the same thing.
But to get back to cases. For those who have enjoyed reading these exhibitions of mental deficiency this writer apologizes for the lack of current material. The only excuse is laziness and Facebook. Mostly Facebook.
To put it succinctly, Facebook is evil for bloggers. Actually, to be more to the point, Facebook is evil.
Facebook is evil for bloggers because it is a form of micro-blog that is really under the control of unseen forces and limits the free expression of bloggers. There is always the danger for an opinionated person being suspended from Facebook for a period of time for saying something that violates the Facebook terms of service. And these terms of service are mercurial depending upon the current liberal climate. One is left trying to anticipate the censors at Facebook and thereby censors oneself.
In a community, as was, self-censorship was not unusual. One had to live a a community in which there were various types and flavors of people, and to get through the day one had to prevent oneself from offending the man who delivered the milk despite the fact that it was known that he was a Mason and everyone knew (as far as your were concerned) that Masons were anti-democratic and perhaps anti-American. You wanted milk and if you ticked off the milk man you wouldn't be getting milk. And your doctor would probably use a dull needle to give you a shot.
The Internet, in a way, opened up the possibility for everyone to express his or her jerk opinions. One could be the biggest jerk in the world without worrying about not having milk for the Cheerios. After all, it was pretty unlikely that your milkman or doctor would read your blog.
But writing a blog is more troublesome than doing a Facebook entry. One cannot make a blog entry of one or two sentences. But one can do it on Facebook. And Facebook is controlled by a lot of people who have no knowledge or your life or life experiences. Consider this: You're a veteran of the Vietnam War. You spent your time in country fighting the Viet Cong and the NVA. You got into the habit of referring to the enemy as "gooks." Later, as an old fellow, you join a Facebook group of Viet vets. You write a post about the Viet Cong and use the word "gooks." All of a sudden the Facebook hammer comes down on you for "hate speech" and you're suspended despite the fact that you wife is Vietnamese and your kids are Eurasian. You're not racist. But you used the "wrong" word and therefore, according to Facebook you are a hater. And know for sure that the "wrong" word will change and become more numerous as time goes on.
Secondly, Facebook is evil because it pretend to be a "town square" where people of similar likes can get together and discuss and that all the people are friends of some sort. That is, in a sense, admirable. But there is a wagon attached to the thing. Whatever one writes, whatever one posts, becomes part of Facebook. It's not yours anymore. And whatever you write or post will result your name being sold to advertisers and groups that you may want nothing to do with. You become a commodity. You are no longer a person.
But that's modern life. People are willing to have their privacy taken by things like the Amazon Echo so they'll know what time it is or what the weather is. Big Brother is here and we invited him in through Facebook and Echo and all the rest. Oh happy day!
Sunday, July 16, 2017
When Religion Butts Against Society
This week there was a bit of a brouhaha when Eugene Peterson, the author of the the popular book The Message, which is a modern rendering of the Bible much like the old Good News Bible but a bit better and less slangy, said in an interview that he would officiate at a wedding between two homosexuals.
The result, as can be imagined was a lot of ash throwing and clothes rending by the evangelical community and a lot of, "Hey! we're cool with Peterson! We're on our way to being 'all that' with the Southern Baptists and Holy Rollers and Mennonites and such. Where's my wedding dress and where's his wedding dress?"
Then, a couple of days later Peterson retracted what he had said about officiating at a marriage between a same-sex couple. He said that his first statement was the result of, to put it bluntly and not as prettily as he did, pretty much being pushed into a corner and made to feel that if he didn't express the opinion of what he saw as the larger society (and this view is questionable) he would come across as hateful and all that nonsense. Some of the evangelical world decided to give him a pass because he's an old geezer, and other because he wrote the only version of the Bible they know. And the gay crowd have gotten the vapors as if they had been betrayed by a long time champion.
Here's the deal from Bloody Nib Manor. Peterson is an old man. He wrote a version that is very popular for some reason. He wants to be popular and liked. He does not live in the world of everyday Christians, he lives in an academic world. He thought (because he wants to be liked and approved of and honored among his fellow egg-heads) that if he said that same-sex marriage was okay and Biblical he would gain the approval of his fellow eggheads and be thought forward thinking. Instead he discovered that his fellow eggheads didn't even hear what he said and that the people who had bought his books did and they weren't happy. So, he followed the money and said that he was misunderstood and that he does not agree with same sex marriage. And then all the evangelicals were happy and they all went to the seashore.
If you are listening to or following a preacher or teacher who is looking for the approval of his fellow eggheads instead of his Lord that guy is pretty much the worst of used car salesmen. And if that same person instead follows the money that he can make from his yakking he is even worse. He's almost a wizard in the Old Testament sense.
Regarding homosexuality, there is a right and a wrong in the Bible. There is a right and a wrong in both the Old and New Testaments.. You may not like it. You may not like the prohibitions against adultery, pride, coveting, and so on. And modern society may have made these sins good. How else to explain the Kardashians and sports and music culture, but the fact of the matter is that according to the Bible sin is sin and we are all sinners and should mourn our various sins while celebrating our salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We should not celebrate or honor our sinful behaviour lest we infect our weaker brother (or sister) with our sin.
Unfortunately Peterson, in his first interview, did just that. His words about his officiating at a same-sex marriage will live forever and a day on the Internet. What he said may not be recorded in the Lamb's Book of Life, but it will be recorded in the pink Internet.
The result, as can be imagined was a lot of ash throwing and clothes rending by the evangelical community and a lot of, "Hey! we're cool with Peterson! We're on our way to being 'all that' with the Southern Baptists and Holy Rollers and Mennonites and such. Where's my wedding dress and where's his wedding dress?"
Then, a couple of days later Peterson retracted what he had said about officiating at a marriage between a same-sex couple. He said that his first statement was the result of, to put it bluntly and not as prettily as he did, pretty much being pushed into a corner and made to feel that if he didn't express the opinion of what he saw as the larger society (and this view is questionable) he would come across as hateful and all that nonsense. Some of the evangelical world decided to give him a pass because he's an old geezer, and other because he wrote the only version of the Bible they know. And the gay crowd have gotten the vapors as if they had been betrayed by a long time champion.
Here's the deal from Bloody Nib Manor. Peterson is an old man. He wrote a version that is very popular for some reason. He wants to be popular and liked. He does not live in the world of everyday Christians, he lives in an academic world. He thought (because he wants to be liked and approved of and honored among his fellow egg-heads) that if he said that same-sex marriage was okay and Biblical he would gain the approval of his fellow eggheads and be thought forward thinking. Instead he discovered that his fellow eggheads didn't even hear what he said and that the people who had bought his books did and they weren't happy. So, he followed the money and said that he was misunderstood and that he does not agree with same sex marriage. And then all the evangelicals were happy and they all went to the seashore.
If you are listening to or following a preacher or teacher who is looking for the approval of his fellow eggheads instead of his Lord that guy is pretty much the worst of used car salesmen. And if that same person instead follows the money that he can make from his yakking he is even worse. He's almost a wizard in the Old Testament sense.
Regarding homosexuality, there is a right and a wrong in the Bible. There is a right and a wrong in both the Old and New Testaments.. You may not like it. You may not like the prohibitions against adultery, pride, coveting, and so on. And modern society may have made these sins good. How else to explain the Kardashians and sports and music culture, but the fact of the matter is that according to the Bible sin is sin and we are all sinners and should mourn our various sins while celebrating our salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
We should not celebrate or honor our sinful behaviour lest we infect our weaker brother (or sister) with our sin.
Unfortunately Peterson, in his first interview, did just that. His words about his officiating at a same-sex marriage will live forever and a day on the Internet. What he said may not be recorded in the Lamb's Book of Life, but it will be recorded in the pink Internet.
Sunday, July 09, 2017
How About You Go First?
We here sat Bloody Nib Manor are really not big fans of President Donald Trump. We think him crude and rude and just not a very nice person. But we realize that to get ahead in the business world a saint.
will always loose in history.
To be president of the USA really demands that the man, at least since 1900, be a real jerk. And Mr. Trump all too easiiy falls into that notch.
Mr. Trump, during his time in Germany and in Poland, said something that seems to have gotten the liberal press into a frenzy. What he said that the Western culture was good and something worth preserving. He said that traditional Western Christian culture was good for the West and for the world. The reaction from the media was that Mr. Trump was an awful racist.
My question to the media drones is why don't you send your brats to school on Vietnam, China, Mexico or Peru instead of sending them to government schools in the US. Perhaps the reason is because the brats, once coming back from the workers' paradise of some sort, would cut the throats of the people who sent them to those schools.
When some idiot talks about the "infection" of the West overt the world the only thing one has to ask oneself is whether the charger has a gas oven and fridge or if he's cooking over cow dung and keeping his food cool in a stream. If the former, the guy (or gal) is an idiot. And if the latter the guy (or gal) is really in need of mental rehabilitation.
Western civilization is not perfect. It's flawed. Public Christianity is not perfect. It's flawed. But they are both better than than the soft Islamism and athesim that our "betters" seem to be constantly pushing upon us.
will always loose in history.
To be president of the USA really demands that the man, at least since 1900, be a real jerk. And Mr. Trump all too easiiy falls into that notch.
Mr. Trump, during his time in Germany and in Poland, said something that seems to have gotten the liberal press into a frenzy. What he said that the Western culture was good and something worth preserving. He said that traditional Western Christian culture was good for the West and for the world. The reaction from the media was that Mr. Trump was an awful racist.
My question to the media drones is why don't you send your brats to school on Vietnam, China, Mexico or Peru instead of sending them to government schools in the US. Perhaps the reason is because the brats, once coming back from the workers' paradise of some sort, would cut the throats of the people who sent them to those schools.
When some idiot talks about the "infection" of the West overt the world the only thing one has to ask oneself is whether the charger has a gas oven and fridge or if he's cooking over cow dung and keeping his food cool in a stream. If the former, the guy (or gal) is an idiot. And if the latter the guy (or gal) is really in need of mental rehabilitation.
Western civilization is not perfect. It's flawed. Public Christianity is not perfect. It's flawed. But they are both better than than the soft Islamism and athesim that our "betters" seem to be constantly pushing upon us.
Sunday, June 18, 2017
Let's All Put on Our Habits!
If the reader has spent anytime on the conservative side of the political Internet that person can not have missed references to, or articles by, Rod Dreher and his Benedict Option idea. Dreher has written a book entitled The Benedict Option and he is pushing it and his idea in the same way that Edison pushed DC electric power for homes and factories.
The Benedict Option, to put it in broad strokes, is basically a cultural retreat by Christians from the wider world in order to prevent themselves from being persecuted by the secular world while maintaining the tenets of the Faith. In other words, it's a sort of mild monasticism or a neo-Amishism. And it's silly.
This writer admits that he has never read Dreher's book The Benedict Option, but in Dreher's writings since he's written the book have pretty much spilled the beans on what it's all about. But this writer read several other of Dreher's books and found them unimpressive because they are light weight spiritual biographies of the CBN sort with an Orthodox or Catholic twist. Some years ago he wrote a book entitled Crunchy Cons which dealt with how conservatives should be, well, a little more Granola munching in their philosophy and presentation to appeal to the Greens and liberals instead of being just business friendly and socially friendly polyester wearing freaks that they are. And for months after he wrote Crunchy Cons Dreher was using the term "crunchy con" in almost every article he wrote. One could not help but wonder if Dreher was trying to push his book instead of institute and idea.
And this writer feels the same way about the Benedict Option, or as Dreher now calls it, "The Ben Op."
The Ben Op is predicated upon the idea that Christianity and Christian culture is a fragile thing that has to be protected from the world in times of trouble. Much like an orchid. It must be put into a greenhouse during the summer to protect it from being over heated and in the winter to prevent it being frozen. But the truth of the matter is that Christianity, even in its earliest days, has been quietly vigorous. Christians from 40 A.D. until 400 A.D., in Europe, did not embrace any sort of monasticism. They lived their lives as Christians in a hostile world and showed by their patience and grace that the Faith was truer than the Roman religions, and in fact, the true Faith. They got out and about and showed what is true by their words and actions. They did not retreat from the world. They encountered the world and, to out it vulgarly, gave the Finger to the world by living what they were. To be a Christian is to give the Finger to the world with joyful enthusiasm.
And that is what we need. Christians who stand quietly to show what the world should be and not a whining bunch locked away into a potential fossil state shivering in fear from the world. The Christian encounters the world and takes it. The Ben Ops become weak Amish who are cute and silly to the world selling quilts made in China
The model for the modern Christian is not St. Benedict. It is the Waldensians and Hugenouts.
The Benedict Option, to put it in broad strokes, is basically a cultural retreat by Christians from the wider world in order to prevent themselves from being persecuted by the secular world while maintaining the tenets of the Faith. In other words, it's a sort of mild monasticism or a neo-Amishism. And it's silly.
This writer admits that he has never read Dreher's book The Benedict Option, but in Dreher's writings since he's written the book have pretty much spilled the beans on what it's all about. But this writer read several other of Dreher's books and found them unimpressive because they are light weight spiritual biographies of the CBN sort with an Orthodox or Catholic twist. Some years ago he wrote a book entitled Crunchy Cons which dealt with how conservatives should be, well, a little more Granola munching in their philosophy and presentation to appeal to the Greens and liberals instead of being just business friendly and socially friendly polyester wearing freaks that they are. And for months after he wrote Crunchy Cons Dreher was using the term "crunchy con" in almost every article he wrote. One could not help but wonder if Dreher was trying to push his book instead of institute and idea.
And this writer feels the same way about the Benedict Option, or as Dreher now calls it, "The Ben Op."
The Ben Op is predicated upon the idea that Christianity and Christian culture is a fragile thing that has to be protected from the world in times of trouble. Much like an orchid. It must be put into a greenhouse during the summer to protect it from being over heated and in the winter to prevent it being frozen. But the truth of the matter is that Christianity, even in its earliest days, has been quietly vigorous. Christians from 40 A.D. until 400 A.D., in Europe, did not embrace any sort of monasticism. They lived their lives as Christians in a hostile world and showed by their patience and grace that the Faith was truer than the Roman religions, and in fact, the true Faith. They got out and about and showed what is true by their words and actions. They did not retreat from the world. They encountered the world and, to out it vulgarly, gave the Finger to the world by living what they were. To be a Christian is to give the Finger to the world with joyful enthusiasm.
And that is what we need. Christians who stand quietly to show what the world should be and not a whining bunch locked away into a potential fossil state shivering in fear from the world. The Christian encounters the world and takes it. The Ben Ops become weak Amish who are cute and silly to the world selling quilts made in China
The model for the modern Christian is not St. Benedict. It is the Waldensians and Hugenouts.
Sunday, April 16, 2017
What Is Art and What Should It Be?
As those who are familiar with the residents of Bloody Nib Manor are aware, we are pretty old-fashioned. We are not as much 1950s as we are 1880s in our outlook on life. We don't like new things because they are new. The only reason we like new things is because they are more useful than the old things. We have a hot water heater because it's more convenient than boiling water on the stove, and we use electric mixing machines instead of egg-beaters because it makes life easier and thus, gives us more time to write angry letters to the editor of the local news rag signed signed, "Angry in Dorsetshire."
Being pretty much a cultural Philistine in matters of art, this writer does not claim to be an art expert. He only knows what he like, to use the old trope. Your faithful correspondent's taste in art ended with Bougerou. While the lovely Lady Nib in not to awfully fond of much modern and post-modern art, but she is more sophisticated than this writer.
Recently your faithful correspondent heard a piece on NPR (National Public Radio, or as some call it National Peoples' Radio) in which the film maker John Waters was interview. The man is a silly man. and worse, he is a silly homosexual man. He is, in a sense, almost a caricature of of a "gay artist."
In the interview Waters, without realizing it said two antithetical things. He said that the job of the artist (is movie-making an art?) is to offend the artists of the previous generation in order to "break barriers." But at the same time he said that the artist should, in a sense conform to the norm while trying to undermine it by being part of it. As is not unusual among homosexual men, he is a conflicted man. One day he loves Marilyn Monroe because he thinks that she's the perfect tragic woman ( gays love tragic women) and the next he loves Rock Hudson because he's just an awful hunk.
But to get back to the point. The question is: what is art and what is the purpose of art? The classical idea, going back to Aristotle, is the idea that art should show beauty and express beauty. It doesn't matter is the beauty is found in a woman, a man, a landscape or a war scene (and, yes, there can be beautiful war scenes; the effort of man against man can be a lovely thing, as can be a man working with a machine). But since the proclamation of "Art for art's sake" we, have been inundated with what is, in fact, forms of masturbation put on canvas with every "artist" thinking that his artistic orgasm is breaking the walls of the art that went before. And because of this nonsense we have had to put up with, well, a lot of ugly nonsense that nobody really wants to put up their living room wall and look at when the television is broken.
The first image is a deKooning thing. The second is a Bougerou. Which would you prefer to spend time looking at on a winter's day? Which reflects beauty and which reflect something else?
Being pretty much a cultural Philistine in matters of art, this writer does not claim to be an art expert. He only knows what he like, to use the old trope. Your faithful correspondent's taste in art ended with Bougerou. While the lovely Lady Nib in not to awfully fond of much modern and post-modern art, but she is more sophisticated than this writer.
Recently your faithful correspondent heard a piece on NPR (National Public Radio, or as some call it National Peoples' Radio) in which the film maker John Waters was interview. The man is a silly man. and worse, he is a silly homosexual man. He is, in a sense, almost a caricature of of a "gay artist."
In the interview Waters, without realizing it said two antithetical things. He said that the job of the artist (is movie-making an art?) is to offend the artists of the previous generation in order to "break barriers." But at the same time he said that the artist should, in a sense conform to the norm while trying to undermine it by being part of it. As is not unusual among homosexual men, he is a conflicted man. One day he loves Marilyn Monroe because he thinks that she's the perfect tragic woman ( gays love tragic women) and the next he loves Rock Hudson because he's just an awful hunk.
But to get back to the point. The question is: what is art and what is the purpose of art? The classical idea, going back to Aristotle, is the idea that art should show beauty and express beauty. It doesn't matter is the beauty is found in a woman, a man, a landscape or a war scene (and, yes, there can be beautiful war scenes; the effort of man against man can be a lovely thing, as can be a man working with a machine). But since the proclamation of "Art for art's sake" we, have been inundated with what is, in fact, forms of masturbation put on canvas with every "artist" thinking that his artistic orgasm is breaking the walls of the art that went before. And because of this nonsense we have had to put up with, well, a lot of ugly nonsense that nobody really wants to put up their living room wall and look at when the television is broken.
The first image is a deKooning thing. The second is a Bougerou. Which would you prefer to spend time looking at on a winter's day? Which reflects beauty and which reflect something else?
Saturday, April 15, 2017
The Heart of Darkness
Earlier today your faithful correspondent made the mistake of writing on Facebook a rather long piece (for Facebook) about the evolution of the footnotes and introductions of various editions of Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness." There is no point in re-plowing what was written since it is easily found on the Facebook.
But the reason for this continuation of this writer's thoughts about the novel and the various introductions and footnotes on this platform is simply because Facebook is a platform that seems to be intended for people of machines to intrude themselves into places that they really do not belong. For example, the post on Facebook was written about the novel "The Heart of Darkness" while mentioning motion picture versions of the novel. Not an hour later there was a reply from a person or bot who was more interested in films and not novels. This writer is not a great writer and not a deep thinker, but he does not appreciate being a toll of crass commerce without his permission or without payment.
It is this type of thing that makes one wonder if the heart of darkness, spiritually and ethically, is not on the Internet and not in the Belgian Congo over one hundred years ago. The Belgians went for ivory. The modern hunter goes for clicks.
But to get to the point. "The Heart of Darkness" is one of those few novels from the early 20th century ("The Flying Inn" by Chesterton is another) that one is able to see something that the author saw and what the author saw that was not just of his time, but for many years ahead.
And what did Conrad see? Simply this: it is dangerous for all concerned to try to bring up (and this writer uses the term "bring up" as an ethnic European and ergo, by modern thought, a racist) other cultures to the level of Europe or the United States by intruding into their cultures. To do so ruins both cultures. The trade becomes the savage in order to get his product onto steamer or into airplane. The missionary bends the Gospel to fill his missionary church and thus distorts the Gospel and makes it something that his home church would not recognize. The United Nations sends forces into a benighted nation to keep peace and the "peacekeepers" perform acts that they would never want their mothers to know about, let alone God if he could be kept ignorant. And not only useless killing, but rape and pedophilia in an industrial manner. Consider the the liberal who loves every damn body. Soon after hearing a bitch from a Palestinian about how Israel rocketed that man (whether true or not) the liberal is anti-Israel and is calling Jew murderers on the level of the Nazis despite the fact that more Palestinians kill one another than do Israelis kill Palestinians.
It's all too easy for a missionary, a trader or an adventurer to fall into the ways and mores of those who that person once considered benighted by Fate or God and become those things that they once hated or fought against while, at the same time raging against what they have become.
That's the Heart of Darkness. And the last words of Kurtz, "The horror. The horror" are words that are all too often muttered by those who are guilty of those intending to do right while falling into barbarism
But the reason for this continuation of this writer's thoughts about the novel and the various introductions and footnotes on this platform is simply because Facebook is a platform that seems to be intended for people of machines to intrude themselves into places that they really do not belong. For example, the post on Facebook was written about the novel "The Heart of Darkness" while mentioning motion picture versions of the novel. Not an hour later there was a reply from a person or bot who was more interested in films and not novels. This writer is not a great writer and not a deep thinker, but he does not appreciate being a toll of crass commerce without his permission or without payment.
It is this type of thing that makes one wonder if the heart of darkness, spiritually and ethically, is not on the Internet and not in the Belgian Congo over one hundred years ago. The Belgians went for ivory. The modern hunter goes for clicks.
But to get to the point. "The Heart of Darkness" is one of those few novels from the early 20th century ("The Flying Inn" by Chesterton is another) that one is able to see something that the author saw and what the author saw that was not just of his time, but for many years ahead.
And what did Conrad see? Simply this: it is dangerous for all concerned to try to bring up (and this writer uses the term "bring up" as an ethnic European and ergo, by modern thought, a racist) other cultures to the level of Europe or the United States by intruding into their cultures. To do so ruins both cultures. The trade becomes the savage in order to get his product onto steamer or into airplane. The missionary bends the Gospel to fill his missionary church and thus distorts the Gospel and makes it something that his home church would not recognize. The United Nations sends forces into a benighted nation to keep peace and the "peacekeepers" perform acts that they would never want their mothers to know about, let alone God if he could be kept ignorant. And not only useless killing, but rape and pedophilia in an industrial manner. Consider the the liberal who loves every damn body. Soon after hearing a bitch from a Palestinian about how Israel rocketed that man (whether true or not) the liberal is anti-Israel and is calling Jew murderers on the level of the Nazis despite the fact that more Palestinians kill one another than do Israelis kill Palestinians.
It's all too easy for a missionary, a trader or an adventurer to fall into the ways and mores of those who that person once considered benighted by Fate or God and become those things that they once hated or fought against while, at the same time raging against what they have become.
That's the Heart of Darkness. And the last words of Kurtz, "The horror. The horror" are words that are all too often muttered by those who are guilty of those intending to do right while falling into barbarism
Sunday, April 02, 2017
Be Eye Own!
As those regular readers of the musings and drooling idiocy of this writer are well aware, Bloody Nib Manor, while being a part of of Edwardian Britain, is, unfortunately, actually located in Southern California in the 21st century. It's not always an easy life to live. It's very difficult to find a proper Norfolk jacket or grey bags, parts for the old Alvis, or proper cook who can make cockie-leeky soup instead of pozole for Sunday dinner (meaning lunch). Life and place march on insisting on taking us with them despite the fact that we've buried ourselves like ticks into the fabric of our world.
When the lovely Lady Nib's younger brother, Marquess Edward, was a very small child his his sisters, being just awful young chits without the benefit of being raised by a governess with a good, stout leather strap to discipline them, used to tease the Marquess mercilessly. In his frustration with the cruelty that only pretty girls are capable of he would shout out, "Be eye own!" Then the sisters would collapse into helpless laughter while making sure not to soil their petticoats or mess up their curls because they knew what their brother was trying to say was, "Leave me alone!"
We here at the Manor find ourselves more and more often shouting to the state of California and the citizens of the state, "Be eye own!" We are weary of being governed by a nosy-parkers who think that they can live our lives better than we can while the state cannot even manage to maintain the roads and dams of the state. The infrastructure of the state is falling apart while the governor dreams of a high-speed rail system from Los Angeles to San Francisco that, if ever built, will be used by very few of the citizens. Most people would rather drive on the crumbling highways or fly because the former is cheaper and the latter is faster.
During the November election there was a state proposition on the ballot promoted by the awful and panicky Stanton ("I will save you from yourself!") Glantz, America's most well known anti-tobacco crusader and busy-body, that would implement a $2.00 per pack tax on a pack of cigarettes, the proceeds of which were supposed to go to health and education, but actually would go to a bureaucratic unionized and useless bunch of state employees. The tax increase would also apply to e-cigarettes, chewing tobacco and snuff, pipe tobacco and cigars. Part of the argument for the tax increase was saving the "innocent" from second-hand smoke despite the fact that there is no second-hand smoke from e-cigarettes, chewing tobacco or snuff.
But the voters of the state, being not loath to tax something that may be not especially dangerous to them, but is unaesthetic, voted for the proposition. On other words, using the same lack of logic that they often do, the high-speed rail is an example, voted in favor of the proposition and the result was that on April 1 the cost of a pack of cigarettes went up to about $8.00. And the cost of e-cigarettes and all forms of tobacco went up also because of the tax. The voters saw the tax as a cash cow for the health of the populace, but what they will see is a reduction of revenues because there will be more of the black market products sold. Consider this: If a smoker decides to take a trip to Las Vegas or Reno to gamble why would that person not stock up on a lot of cartons of Marlboros or pounds of Prince Albert to bring back to Seal Beach for his own use and the use of his friends? It happened a week ago. And it will happen more and more.
Now, be aware that the lovely Lady Nib, Scarlet Woman that she is, is a cigarette smoker, and that your faithful correspondent is a pipe and cigar smoker. We know the dangers of the habit and we accept the hazards of the habit. We just want to be left alone by the state. And because we are responsible citizens and not on the dole in any way, we have private health insurance, so we don't cost the state for our nasty habit. We want to be left alone. We want to leave other people alone. But there are people who just can't keep trying to tell other people how to cook their omelet. And those people should probably be either sent to New York City or hanged from sequoias.
When the lovely Lady Nib's younger brother, Marquess Edward, was a very small child his his sisters, being just awful young chits without the benefit of being raised by a governess with a good, stout leather strap to discipline them, used to tease the Marquess mercilessly. In his frustration with the cruelty that only pretty girls are capable of he would shout out, "Be eye own!" Then the sisters would collapse into helpless laughter while making sure not to soil their petticoats or mess up their curls because they knew what their brother was trying to say was, "Leave me alone!"
We here at the Manor find ourselves more and more often shouting to the state of California and the citizens of the state, "Be eye own!" We are weary of being governed by a nosy-parkers who think that they can live our lives better than we can while the state cannot even manage to maintain the roads and dams of the state. The infrastructure of the state is falling apart while the governor dreams of a high-speed rail system from Los Angeles to San Francisco that, if ever built, will be used by very few of the citizens. Most people would rather drive on the crumbling highways or fly because the former is cheaper and the latter is faster.
During the November election there was a state proposition on the ballot promoted by the awful and panicky Stanton ("I will save you from yourself!") Glantz, America's most well known anti-tobacco crusader and busy-body, that would implement a $2.00 per pack tax on a pack of cigarettes, the proceeds of which were supposed to go to health and education, but actually would go to a bureaucratic unionized and useless bunch of state employees. The tax increase would also apply to e-cigarettes, chewing tobacco and snuff, pipe tobacco and cigars. Part of the argument for the tax increase was saving the "innocent" from second-hand smoke despite the fact that there is no second-hand smoke from e-cigarettes, chewing tobacco or snuff.
But the voters of the state, being not loath to tax something that may be not especially dangerous to them, but is unaesthetic, voted for the proposition. On other words, using the same lack of logic that they often do, the high-speed rail is an example, voted in favor of the proposition and the result was that on April 1 the cost of a pack of cigarettes went up to about $8.00. And the cost of e-cigarettes and all forms of tobacco went up also because of the tax. The voters saw the tax as a cash cow for the health of the populace, but what they will see is a reduction of revenues because there will be more of the black market products sold. Consider this: If a smoker decides to take a trip to Las Vegas or Reno to gamble why would that person not stock up on a lot of cartons of Marlboros or pounds of Prince Albert to bring back to Seal Beach for his own use and the use of his friends? It happened a week ago. And it will happen more and more.
Now, be aware that the lovely Lady Nib, Scarlet Woman that she is, is a cigarette smoker, and that your faithful correspondent is a pipe and cigar smoker. We know the dangers of the habit and we accept the hazards of the habit. We just want to be left alone by the state. And because we are responsible citizens and not on the dole in any way, we have private health insurance, so we don't cost the state for our nasty habit. We want to be left alone. We want to leave other people alone. But there are people who just can't keep trying to tell other people how to cook their omelet. And those people should probably be either sent to New York City or hanged from sequoias.
Saturday, April 01, 2017
Time to Turn the Calendar Back?
We here at Bloody Nib Manor have always tried to be as kind as possible to the various animals living on our extensive estate. We have treated our various cats and dogs, birds, the odd cow, lamb or pig with the utmost respect even before we milked them or slaughtered them to make a delicious fried chicken, pot roast or ham or lamb chop. The idea here at the Manor is to treat the animals that are to be used for food of one sort or another kindly because, not only are they animals, but because they are animals that are to be killed after too short a life or animals that will be expected to lactate on demand. That is the way of the world. Man is, by nature, an omnivore and not an vegetarian or vegan
Recently PETA has come up with an ad campaign that basically says that the drinking of milk is a symbol of white supremacy because, well, milk is white and ethnic Europeans drink milk and ethnic Europeans are white. Ergo, accordingly to their logic, the drinking of non-human milk is racist because Europeans drink cow's milk. But they forget that Mongolians drink horse and pony milk and many ethnicites drink sheep and goat milk. Your own dear correspondent, once weaned, had to spend a deal of time drinking goat's milk before he was able to drink cow's milk as a child.
And here, finally, is the point. PETA is a silly and stupid and dangerous organization that has become mainstream because the news media, after sloughing them off as a joke or extremist, has so infused the news media with their nonsense that the younger reporters believe what the organization is true. And the reason that the younger reporters believe what PETA claims is true is because the colleges that teach journalism have not taught critical thinking. The colleges that teach journalism teach the cutting and pasting of press releases. And this is a dangerous thing.
This writer remembers when PETA first started and when it was considered an extremist animal rights organization. At that time PETA billboards of pictures of fried chicken on a piece of china and called it Holocaust on a Plate as if the deaths of chickens were equal to the deaths of six million Jews during World War Two. Or make such claims about the fur industry with silly glamour models posing in furs with blood dripping down from the furs. And let this writer admit here and now that industrial farming is not a pretty thing. But neither is plumbing, road working or being a coroner.
The result has been, while that there is no reduction of customers at the local KFC, the fur industry has taken a hit from PETA's campaign and it has resulted in the loss of a lot of jobs in both fur animal raising, fur processing and the production of various fur garments. It has gotten to the point that when an actress shows up at a premiere for her new movie wearing a ratty old fox fur stole that her grandmother bought sixty years ago PETA calls the poor girl a killer of the worst sort; almost a Himmler. And the press reports this seriously because the people in the press have not been taught to think because the people who taught them did not want to teach them to think. They wanted them to become reflections of their own nonsense: In other words, two legged stools bitching about three legged stools.
Here's the point. Thirty years ago things that were considered silly and stupid are now considered the norm. Not because they make any sense, but because the media says that they are of import instead of just damn silly and stupid. If we at the Manor could get some young female (and it's usually a female) just out of journalist school to cover the annual sausage rolling festival (because it's ethnic) here at the Manor your faithful correspondent would not have to work any more and just take in the cash from the idiots who think is's a stand against The Man.
Recently PETA has come up with an ad campaign that basically says that the drinking of milk is a symbol of white supremacy because, well, milk is white and ethnic Europeans drink milk and ethnic Europeans are white. Ergo, accordingly to their logic, the drinking of non-human milk is racist because Europeans drink cow's milk. But they forget that Mongolians drink horse and pony milk and many ethnicites drink sheep and goat milk. Your own dear correspondent, once weaned, had to spend a deal of time drinking goat's milk before he was able to drink cow's milk as a child.
And here, finally, is the point. PETA is a silly and stupid and dangerous organization that has become mainstream because the news media, after sloughing them off as a joke or extremist, has so infused the news media with their nonsense that the younger reporters believe what the organization is true. And the reason that the younger reporters believe what PETA claims is true is because the colleges that teach journalism have not taught critical thinking. The colleges that teach journalism teach the cutting and pasting of press releases. And this is a dangerous thing.
This writer remembers when PETA first started and when it was considered an extremist animal rights organization. At that time PETA billboards of pictures of fried chicken on a piece of china and called it Holocaust on a Plate as if the deaths of chickens were equal to the deaths of six million Jews during World War Two. Or make such claims about the fur industry with silly glamour models posing in furs with blood dripping down from the furs. And let this writer admit here and now that industrial farming is not a pretty thing. But neither is plumbing, road working or being a coroner.
The result has been, while that there is no reduction of customers at the local KFC, the fur industry has taken a hit from PETA's campaign and it has resulted in the loss of a lot of jobs in both fur animal raising, fur processing and the production of various fur garments. It has gotten to the point that when an actress shows up at a premiere for her new movie wearing a ratty old fox fur stole that her grandmother bought sixty years ago PETA calls the poor girl a killer of the worst sort; almost a Himmler. And the press reports this seriously because the people in the press have not been taught to think because the people who taught them did not want to teach them to think. They wanted them to become reflections of their own nonsense: In other words, two legged stools bitching about three legged stools.
Here's the point. Thirty years ago things that were considered silly and stupid are now considered the norm. Not because they make any sense, but because the media says that they are of import instead of just damn silly and stupid. If we at the Manor could get some young female (and it's usually a female) just out of journalist school to cover the annual sausage rolling festival (because it's ethnic) here at the Manor your faithful correspondent would not have to work any more and just take in the cash from the idiots who think is's a stand against The Man.
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