Intercepted Communication On The Glitter-Wave

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

As you all know, I went to an interstellar workshop recently and I was put in the C for Com (communication) work group. Little did I know that this work would come in useful so soon. It appears that through extremelytechydium, this blog has detected communications to the stars* from a race of infiltrators that has been among us for centuries. It explains both the SJWs on Twitter yesterday and the killjoy who thought he could browbeat us with half-baked history and “facts” that never happened.

I am not sure of my translation, of course. You know how difficult it is to understand an alien language, and this one is one of the most difficult. Frankly, if so much of it hadn’t been integrated into Marxism and other leftist twattery** it would be completely opaque.

Dear Masters*** of the Glitter Universe, from your servant Glitterbot, on the third planet from Sol, spiral arm of the Milkyway [they appear to call it something that might be fish-semen, but we’ll use our familiar name] Nebula in the farthest regions [lit. where the nether pointing tentacle cannot reach.]

I must trust this report to the star-waves, in hopes it will explain to you the difficulties I’ve run into in this the fourth 1×100 revolution of this miserable rock around its star  that I’ve witnessed from this planet’s forsaken surface.

As was planned, after I landed, I set about examining the dominant species. One would hesitate to call them sentients, or at least I’ve had plenty of reason to suspect they’d been easily led. Until this– But more on that later.

As per your shining instructions, when I landed, I discovered this species – which calls itself hooman – had one great weakness in that it developed in a saltational manner. By this I mean that one part of it would advance towards a culture that would make it capable of granting greater comfort and stability to its members and then, by invading other cultures, or simply by the other cultures imitating them, the whole world would be pulled up to that level, before the next leap. It had happened several times.

It was obvious that like the Glitter Race and others that we managed to stop just in time, this process would, according to some natural progression of intelligence lead this species to starfaring and, eventually to challenge your magnificence, oh, lords of the shining universe.

I set about exploring its differential development to our purposes, and here I must ask you to admire me, because their flaw was much smaller than the cannibalistic species in Alpha Centauri, or the slaver races of Arcturus. And yet would be enough and serve.

I set about convincing the civilization at the time spearheading the push towards better living and more knowledge that they were evil and that the savage forms of its own species were the best and most noble of them all.

It was not easy since this civilization, then in the process of spreading across the globe, was aggressive and self-assured.

It necessitated the spawning of several copies of myself, designed to look like the local race, and prepared to spread this message to the natives.

Among those humble replicas of myself, I want to recommend, for our holograms of eternal remembrance, the one called Jean Jacques Rosseau, the first one to write movingly on how savages were the most advanced of their race and how every attempt to civilize them was a crime. This idea, propagating itself like poison through their culture has led to every other civilization-weakening misery-increasing belief.

It took a while, of course, but for almost a century now, the technological and innovating arm of their civilization has felt guilty over its advances and spent much time writing novels and scholarly treatises**** and making movies about how much better the most barbarous and cruel of their kind, living in civilizations that had exterminated all large, edible land dwelling animals, instead of domesticating them, were “the best” and “lived in harmony with nature.”

The guilt of those more comfortable ones over living better than their brethren did the rest. I had to extrude another few replicas of myself, going by the names of Marx and Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, creating a theory of civilization and governance that extolled brutal oppression which by itself greatly reduced these creatures’ population, as well as creating a philosophy which if applied by definition makes the worst rise to the top, stops all technological development, and reinforces the idea that there is something magical in the primitive.

They are a learning species and they did the rest. A replicant here and there was enough. Provided the position, no matter how non-sensical is imbued with “class prestige” the rest of these apes will try to imitate it. Thus the same mechanism that led to their rise from flint-chipping apes to makers of synthetic materials can be used against them.

Fifty years ago, I thought that by now I would be reporting to you that I’d so far convinced them they were despicable and to be detested that they would line up and thank the glittery master race as they mowed the planet with their death-dealing rays.

I’m not quite sure what happened.

I’d made sure, like any advance scout of taking over their communication structure, the means by which they teach their young and the means by which they tell themselves who they are. I swear by the glittery center [lit, vagina] of the universe that I had them fully under my control. Even when they found ways to communicate person-to person and to tell themselves stories with no referent to the structures of power, I thought they’d been well enough indoctrinated to tell only the stories I taught them and complete their self abasement [lit. castration.]

But something happened along the way and these impertinent apes have been throwing off the so-carefully planted suggestions and storylines. They have been doing their own research and discovering things such as that no, most of the primitive races displaced by the slightly more advanced races at the time (the difference was small enough to be barely noticeable) weren’t more competent and certainly were not more respectful of “nature” – a concept I never understood, since star-traveling races like you, oh, glittery masters, create their own environment – and also that the “genocide” story I propagated was mostly due to infection by diseases to which herders and cattle-tamers had become immune while the races I carefully said were superior had preferred to eat animals into extinction rather than tame them. I also carefully hid the fact that the natives of those cultures had in fact not been exterminated so much as melded with the invaders, as has always been the way of this race, and I called any attempt to restore history a vile oppressor-race-aggrandizing narrative, when in fact these creatures are all so genetically similar as to have virtually no races.

I’ve also set their females against their males by claiming that sensible measures to ensure the reproduction of the species were oppression. In the most susceptible ones – in their education establishment – I’ve fostered the idea that oppression and reproduction are one and the same.

Yes, oh, Shiny [lit. Glittery] Masters [lit. Vaginas] of the Stars, I was well on my way to winning your war without a laser being fired.

Just recently, one of their females of their own accord, one Rose Eveleth [For whom I would like to claim the high Galactic Title of Vagina Vigilante] made a scientist who landed on a comet cry over his choice of wear which indeed did nothing but display the beauty (for them. I’ve not gone native) of the females of the species.

So, how is it I’m asking for help immediately?

Lately even the replicants I extrude seem to have lost control of the story line [lit. narrative] and there are indications these low apes are starting to suspect our narrative tends to nothing but making them loathe themselves. They are starting to say things such as that every race, throughout history, has committed crimes and horrors, and that this is normal because natural creatures aren’t perfect. Which as you know bodes well for their considering your emissaries perfect when they land. More, they’ve started to say that they like being hooman, warts and all. There is even a movement afoot to tell stories that laud hoomans as hoomans, and which encourage hoomans to reach for the stars and form their own galactic empire.

I don’t know what to do. My every attempt to shame them into submission – recently by attacking their primitive form of holo-play, by saying that it was not worthy, being a form of entertainment that aimed at enjoyment – meets with resistence and, worse, with derision.

I very much fear something has gone wrong in my control of the culture. My attempts to get them back in line by the pronouncements of their respected elders [lit. Massive Vaginas of the Establishment] is greeted with nothing but gales of laughter as they ignore these pronouncements and continue to escape my control.

I can only beg you that you, Oh, Glittery Masters [Lit – female reproductive organ] come quickly. Though you’ll meet with resistance to your death ray now, it’s likely to be smaller than it will be in fifty years.

In fact, unless you strike right now, I’m very much afraid they will be headed for the stars and will challenge your great and glittering magnificence [lit. Twattery] in your own homeworld.

I realize it might be too late, but while such creatures exist as the wonderful Vagina Vigilante mentioned abroad, ready to hate and debase members of her own species and her own species process in favor of an imaginary better, there is hope the resistance will not be too fierce.

Yours in Glitter

The Humble infiltrator who tries to communicate with plants.*****

 

Footnotes:

 

*No. Of course not really. Stop reading news from the White House. It’s so appallingly unbelievable that it destroys your sense of disbelief.

 

**Totally a word. I did tell you, did I not, of the woman in the village whose family nickname was “the lighted c*nt” (Or perhaps “the lit c*nt” or “the luminous c*nt” – translation is like that.) I suspect it related to some accident centuries back in which some ancestress tried to get over a private infestation with fire. But for the last day I’ve been giggling over translating it as “Glittery Hoo Ha.” So, take this as leftist shiny twattery

*** The words here translated as Masters or Lords, as a conventional sign of respect, show some indication of being in literal translation, the word for the female reproductive organ of this species (whose number of sexes is very hard to determine since, though their bodies seem to come in standard male and female format, they seem to identify by a variety of compound forms. We’re not sure what purpose this serves, and it seems an hindrance to reproduction. Perhaps the extreme rarity of their reproduction fuels their aggressive dislike of any other breed making it to the stars.)

**** It’s amazing what some people believe.

***** Literally “Cabbage head.”

276 thoughts on “Intercepted Communication On The Glitter-Wave”

  1. The Humble infiltrator who tries to communicate with plants.

    … *blink* Lemme see if my sleepily constructed understanding of this is correct:

    The troll was that crazy blogger Mary mentions now and again, as Ms Talks to Plants, the one who thinks all consensual, non-anal, non-oral, heterosexual sexual intercourse is rape?

    Feel free to correct me. I cheerfully acknowledge this is a comment made by a sleep-deprived person.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. So ‘Peter Connor’ is the s/hi/t or one of the similar crazies who agrees with Talks To Cucumbers, or is Talks to Rootballs herself? (though, honestly with that level of insane, it’s hard to tell, ain’t it?)

        Because I have problems imagining someone who has issues with the mere concept of heterosexual sex ever wanting to allow sperm from a man into her/him/it. in any form – even via IV fertilization. And the thought of such an individual splitting via cellular mitosis into clones is rather nightmarish…

        Or possibly this is the scientifically idiotic glitterbrain who spewed that reproductive science terminology is inherently sexist?

        o_o It’s getting so that it’s difficult to tell these crazy SJWs apart these days. Hive mind and all that.

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        1. You’re overthinking this. It actually refers to an idiot whose comment I didn’t approve. Peter Connor might be misinformed, but at least he tries. The other one was hopeless.

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                1. I remember second son doing a twice daily acrobatics show. At 11 and 3 you could see my wife’s stomach moving, like Aliens. At least he wasn’t like the first son, who would brace his feet and shoulders at opposite ends of the ribcage and push.
                  She still has tender ribs to this day.

                  Liked by 1 person

      3. 18 to 80, blind, cripple or crazy, if she can’t walk…

        No, that’s asking too much. Even for a Marine.

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  6. It would be nice if this self-loathing were a result of a nefarious outside invader acting to lead us into self-destruction, an enemy who was not of us that we could meet on the field of battle and defeat.

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    2. …an enemy who was not of us that we could meet on the field of battle and defeat.

      I wonder what we’d use for weapons and countermeasures, metaphorically speaking. The carpulets aren’t for use against the enemy, and they haven’t got the fine distinction of the art of puns anyway… Larry has his Tetsubo of Snowflake Seal Smashing +10…

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      1. There is a problem with using logic and facts on people who have been so well trained not to think.

        “It’s all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!”

        ― Professor Digory in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

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        1. My leaf blower (a corded electric, and not the highest power model out there) advertised nozzle flow velocities of 150mph. Glitter blown at 530mph would definitively embed in exposed tissue. Sensitive areas so glitter-embedded would be quite painful.

          This explains much.

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          1. Whoah! Typo’d to 530mph! Now that would be an awesome leaf blower! GLitter at that speed might cut right through…things. Ouch.

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          1. On a low setting, it diffuses the glitter thus making the ensorcerled thinking normal again. If that fails, the high setting (thank you, FlyingMike) forces the glitter THROUGH the person, causing critical damage.

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      2. In relation to my citrus-brined, applewood-smoked turkey: Their is such a thing as not enough stomach.

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        1. There can be too much chocolate! I’m so sensitive to it, I can’t eat it any more or coffee or tea. I miss sweet tea the most.

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      4. o/) Oh, Thanksgiving has been over for at least a week or two,
        And we’re still all eating turkey, turkey salad, turkey stew,
        Turkey bisque and turkey salad, turkey fritter, turkey fry,
        Turkey soup and turkey dumplings, eating turkey ’til I die.
        Turkey in the fridge!
        Turkey in the fridge!
        The pumpkin pie and puddings all are gone,
        But there’s turkey in the fridge, so we’ve gotta gobble on. o/)

        We learned that in grade school and I’ve never been able to source it, because the phrase “turkey in the fridge” gets you sludged on search engines.

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        1. That second “turkey salad” should be something else. My fingers stuttered and I can’t remember what goes there instead.

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        2. *giggle* It sounds fun. But I guess that’s because family sizes got smaller, but the sizes of the bird being cooked didn’t.

          We do the feast thing on Noche Buena the most though – google image search “Filipino Christmas Feast” and our typical centerpiece is either a ham or a roast chicken. Usually, there’ll be both. And that’s if one can’t afford the roast suckling pig / lechon.

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            1. I knooooow.

              That’s the kind of feast you set up for a gathering that doesn’t just involve your own blood kin, but the neighbors as well.

              I’d like to be able to try set up a spread like that for once in my life, but the last time I saw one like that the person had one of those large kitchens with huge wood-fire, cast iron stovetops and big, heavy iron doored ovens. There were several ovens.

              I have informed Rhys though that a lechon MUST be at the reception of our wedding.

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                  1. Eh. Dan told me — 84, just starting on his first job — “You know an engagement ring is supposed to be three month’s salary.” I said “you must be joking.” So we went out and bought an engagement ring for $129. :-P It broke when I was pregnant (might be repairable, we just haven’t got around to it.) so he bought me a tenth anniversary ring. Both the same: serpent eating its tail. (Again, I think, $150 or so, though it’s real gold with diamond chips and saphires, but we bought them in Portugal. Relative’s shop, so I get a discount.

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                    1. Eh, that was the rule the jewelry companies put about, trying to establish that there was no “good enough” absolute dollar amount.

                      OTOH, the popularity of engagement rings increased with direct relationship to the repeal of breach-of-promise suits. Presumably they were going for the same effect: financial commitment from the guy.

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                    5. Diamond engagement rings were a fairly recent invention. My Dad got my Mom one, but before that, he used his father’s engagement ring as a stand in, a sort of promissory ring. I have that ring now, a simple gold ring with a flattened area on it and an old English “C” engraved on it. My Dad gave it to me, perhaps as a hint, but I’m afraid that family tradition looks like it’s going to die with me.

                      A shame because Rory’s accounts of her pregnancy are tickling my inner sadist (and it sounds like her inner sadist is a little more literal.)

                      I’ll go find something to hide behind now.

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                    9. Wasn’t there a line in the Puppet Masters (IIRC) where a woman complained that the kicking baby must be wearing shoes, and the Old Man said “Well, were you wearing any when you made him?” (or words to that effect)?

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                    11. Yeah, FF was my next choice. I’ve only read that one once. Made me want to get my hands on some Ammonia and Iodine when I was a kid. Thank god I didn’t.

                      (When I looked it up in our encyclopedia, they gave the numbers for just how touchy that stuff was. eeek. Although they included the tantalizing tale and warning that it was common for chemistry students to mix it on blotter paper and put it in mouse runs, except they were more likely to blow their fingers off.)

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                    12. That must be what the professor used in the story a friend told me about how one of his professors put down something on the floor of the other professor’s classroom, and it kept popping as he was walking around teaching the class. Presumably in tiny quantities, so that it didn’t blow through his shoes.

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                    17. My understanding about the price of an engagement ring being two months (I thought) salary was because it allowed the couple to take things for a spin. If the male reneged, the female got the ring as sort of a damage deposit, as it were.

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                    18. Yup. A substitute for breach-of-promise-to-marry damages.

                      Her legal footing depends on the state. In some states, it’s a free gift, and he can’t demand it back. In others, she must legally give it back if there’s no wedding. Inbetween, there’s states where she must if she broke the engagment, and others, if she broke it without cause.

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                    19. “If that’s your ring, I wanna go to the wedding reception!”

                      Seconded.

                      On another note, for a while it was popular to have engagement/wedding rings that came as a set of two that joined into one. My mothers is this way. The engagement ring is larger, with the centerpiece diamond in it. The ring slipped on her finger on her wedding day is smaller and has small diamond chips emplaced to ‘frame’ the main diamond, and small posts protruding on the side that go into small sockets on the engagement ring, joining the two into one.

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                    20. I have that type of wedding ring. It wraps around the diamond of my engagement ring pretty tightly.

                      Unfortunately, one of the emerald chips in it fell out, and we can’t afford to replace it at the moment, so I’ve stopped wearing it to keep further damage from happening to it.

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                    21. @bearcat: We had this idea of doing a platinum and sapphire engagement ring… and then one of these for the wedding rings made out of carbon fiber, titanium and tungsten. It’s appealing because well, given Rhys’ job, and we both like the thought of a ring that tough.

                      Dunno if we’ll still do the platinum+sapphire ring, but I think we’ll go with the wedding rings.

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              2. A friend of ours married a Filipino and they had a whole roasted pig (lechon?), with apple in mouth, at the reception. Along with those really good little roll thingies stuffed with shrimp, and some stuffed with seaweed that weren’t as good (and the two mixed together, so you never knew what you were going to get until you bit into them). All that delicious food and all the little Filipino kids would go get them a bowl of plain rice. :)

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                1. The roll things are probably the fried Lumpia shanghai

                  Here ya go

                  http://www.filipinorecipesite.com/filipino-recipes/lumpia-shanghai.html

                  There’s variations where folks put sprouted mung beans and very finely sliced green beans, and matchstick cut raw potatoes into the meat mix, to help stretch the meat. Quite yummy.

                  They’ll probably be a feature at the wedding reception too. I’ll have to make a massive mountain of the things if I can’t find a supplier I like.

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                    5. Yeah. WP improvements strike again. It was blocking one of my regular commenters from posting on anything younger than five days, despite my telling it not to do that.

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  8. I am getting very impatient with WP failure to re-enroll me in email commenting. Having to do these on a case-by-case basis grows daily more annoying.

    Stupid WP.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Perhaps the one exception to Sarah’s plans to take over the world and then leave everyone ruthlessly alone should be the programmers who insist on “improving” WP.

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        1. “… left a most disturbing image …”

          Oops. Read that as “moist” initially. Should be Maoist, I expect.

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  12. A thought occured to me while reading the Thanksgiving whines of the Usual Suspects. These people weren’t born like this. At one time, they enjoyed life, without having to lecture the rest of us all the time. But somewhere along the line they were indoctrinated into being ideological robots, programmed to spout the SJW Truth of the Moment.

    Or maybe they were replaced by Glitter replicants. ;-)

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        1. Oh no. They consume brains so that everyone else has the same amount as them. Besides, zombies don’t consume brains to think, they do so to remove the pain that makes them groan all the time. ;)

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        1. Or Margaret from Dennis the Menace, girls who assert authority because they are, well, girls.

          (Consider, children have for some time been growing up in a mother and female teacher centric world.)

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        1. Is there magical boy tentacle fic? I’ve read a bunch of tentacle fic in Stargate Atlantis fandom. The SGA fic was bed or wall attachments.

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  17. As a minor nit – this the wrong way ’round:
    …this the fourth 1×100 revolution of the star around this miserable rock

    Should be miserable rock around star…

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      1. It is all a matter of perspective. From a strict mathematical orientation, ANY point can be used as the focus of rotation.

        For example, I am immobile; the universe moves around me.

        Of course, once you’ve cast off the Sequentiality Delusion you realize that all movement is illusory.

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        1. From a strict mathematical orientation, ANY point can be used as the focus of rotation.

          Quite. Mind, you the equations of motion and related physics gets quite complicated with the Earth stationary and the Universe rotating around it, but simplicity is just a human prejudice, right?

          ;)

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          1. Issac Asimov once said we might still be using the Ptolemaic model with epicycles if they’d invented infinite series in time…

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  19. Thanks – I needed a good laugh today – though this is one of those “laugh so you won’t cry” things.

    “their bodies seem to come in standard male and female format, they seem to identify by a variety of compound forms”

    And what is it with all these nitwits trying to find their identities in labels? Sometimes I feel like screaming “There is no label that will ever properly define you, so get over it!” Instead, we get people trying to create ever more tiny categories, and they’ll never be satisfied.

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    1. My personal theory is that they are seeking satisfaction in things that are inherently unsatisfactory, and they grow increasingly desperate, seeking meaning when they’ve been taught nothing but deconstruction, deconstruction, and more deconstruction.

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      1. That’s post modernism for you, product of the Frankfort school. All destruction all the time.

        Only once you’re done destroying everything, you’ve got nothing but wasteland, and then, Socialism to the rescue!

        Only it won’t work that way because Americans are always building something.

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            2. Well, MOVE did a pretty good job of seeing that a substantial section West Philadelphia city was cleared by burning.

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    2. “And what is it with all these nitwits trying to find their identities in labels? Sometimes I feel like screaming “There is no label that will ever properly define you, so get over it!”

      Actually… I thought nitwit defined them fairly properly.

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      1. It’s too general, and doesn’t celebrate their uniqueness! There are the nitwits who cry for the trees, and the ones who cry for justice for the little brown people, and the ones who cry for…

        Wait. Perhaps “crying nitwit” would be better?

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  20. Unrelated, I’m in Sac town again this weekend, and I missed meeting up with people the last time I was behind enemy lines. The Oyster Wife and I would love to have an impromptu Hunnish Gathering, so shoot me an email or respond here if you’re free tonight or tomorrow.

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  21. I know this is a little OT, but it deals with lunacy of a sort, so…

    OK, I know calicoes are insane to begin with, but my one-year-old calico rescue is sitting behind me methodically destroying the rim of a cardboard box one bite at a time. She’s been working on this box for days now. WTH?

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        2. I doubt it. Both our cats (one calico Turkmen warehouse cat and one mackerel/white Liberian street cat) have been shredding a random piece of cardboard recently. They’ve also chewed on box flaps, but we keep important papers (dissertation, so on) locked up so they haven’t been able to embroider it. They aren’t eating the cardboard, just pulling off bits. I think they’re either cleaning teeth or just bored while I’m on the computer and not giving them attention. Or it’s a plot to kill me when I slip on one of the cardboard shreds. You never know with cats.

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      3. We had one cat that shredded cardboard and manilla folders. My wife teaches the introductory Chem course at a local state college (now “University” Meh!). She had a set of tests that she had graded and tossed
        into a manilla folder. The cat found it and shredded the folder as well as several of the tests. Luckily the grades were already recorded. She did
        have to hand back several tests that were seriously dissected and
        say “I’m sorry my cat ate your test”. It did get a few laughs. The cat’s nickname was Ensign Shredder from then on.

        We did ask the vet, its called a pica and is usually attributed to cats
        looking for some nutritional element (mineral or vitamin) missing from their diet. Cats under 6 months old it might be teething (yes they have baby teeth too). As long as they don’t eat lots of whatever it is and the material isn’t one that can cause intestinal blockages (plastic etc) the
        cat ought to be fine. Unless of course you wring its fluffy little neck
        when it chews up something really important:-).

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    2. our puppy likes to shred paper. He on occasion likes to act like a roomba. He may have been an appliance in a previous life. He is however a very affectionate puppy, who demands food.

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        1. My parrot, Dolly, loves Amazon boxes – granted, there’s nesting instincts going on there. My parents have had to re-do cabinet molding twice thanks to their African Grey, Miss Harvey. I think’s it’s mostly plain old boredom.

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            1. This box is their “fort”. There are rules. The box is only about 6″ deep so any cat hiding in it is totally visible…but they are NOT ALLOWED to see each other. So they crouch and reach over the top of the box to bat at each other blindly, or take turns poking at each other through small finger holes in the sides. Finally one cat leaps over the top, and they change sides and continue blind fighting.

              They will crouch there in the box and look straight at you as you walk towards them, acting like you cannot possibly see them.

              Liked by 1 person

      1. There’s guac coming up in the transdimensional dumbwaiter’s next load…

        Hm, that should be guacamole, not the glittery zrellnyx delicacy called guaac. Just in case of an order misunderstanding, I’ll go get the grenade launcher.

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        1. I’ve got Greek yogurt/cucumber/dill arriving.all y'[all may find it bland. It’s tart but not spicy. great with wasa crackers.

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            1. certainly there are gyros to put it on. Specify your choice of meat please.There’s also hummus and pita, avogolemono soup and baklava for dessert.

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                1. Look here, I am trying my best to run a full Meze table here, but you folks can be hard to keep up with.

                  Esteemed hostess, I just put out a fresh plate of Marinated Octopus Skewers with Diced Tomatoes and Parsley. It is over there next to the Whipped Feta with Lemon, Mint and Garlic Spread. ;-)

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                2. …my comment about lamb was meant to go here. Why did it go to the other comment? o_o

                  Laaaaaaaaaaaamb. Souvlaki. The best I’ve eaten was in Paris. Little restaurant run by a couple of Turkish brothers, near the upper end of Rue de Charonne, located near this butcher with the best rotisserie chicken in the city (it’s characterized by the vegetables cooking in the drip pan, and the red storefront). They made their own bread, and the lamb meat had white peppers of some kind and a pale mild capsicum layered between the meat. This would melt into the flesh as the spit turned. The only reason I know this is because I saw them setting up the spit one day and some of the peppers needed to be poked back in.

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                  1. I don’t eat lamb, not in the States. Best lamb I ever had was in Istanbul, little family restaurant off the Hippodrome. What I’ve tried back here, everything tastes like it was left in the sun a bit long — near enough to spoiled. I don’t know what the difference in prep is, but there’s something.

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                    2. AH! Sounds exactly right.

                      Certainly explains why I could eat lamb all over the Middle East and enjoy it.

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                    3. I have never been a big lamb fan (and incidentally what lunatic decided that mint jelly should go with lamb?) but a friend raised lambs this year, and when she came over to visit this fall she brought both lamb burgers and stew meat to make a very good Irish stew. THAT lamb was excellent, I’m not sure if it was the raising process or the cook, but the end product was very good. Whereas most other lamb I have had is, well, edible if you are hungry enough.

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                  2. When I was much younger, my parents would get a lamb every spring (pre-butchered, thank you) and we had lamb in various forms throughout the year. Now all you can find are boneless leg-o-lamb, which is good, but 1) improved and 2) expensive! But a nice lamb roast, or lamburgers in pita with a little tart sauce and cucumber slices . . . . *goes hunting for something to wipe chin*

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                    2. There was a place south of our city in the Piedmont of North Carolina that would, by pre-order, sell whole butchered lambs, available every spring. Don’t know if it is still in opperation.

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      3. I made all-too-hot barbeque sauce. It’s on those ribs in the back. (Actually did make it a bit too hot on rib tips tonight. If we weren’t already married, husband would have proposed…)

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  25. I had to visit one of the local malls yesterday, and there were a couple of girls doing performance art about the blight of caged fur animals. One was in a cage, the other was running (or skulking, trying to behave like an animal, although I think they were supposed to be foxes but she aped cats more than foxes) around and there was dialogue (shouted) about cages and etc.

    Very loud and annoying.

    Now if they also did a performance how those fur animals escape into the wild, and then starve (or kill lots of wild animals, one of our local problems is minks which have been introduced here mostly from escaped or freed fur animals, and do decimate local bird populations) or die slowly and painfully of some horrible naturally gotten injuries, with no owner to feed them or to get a vet for them or to put them out of their misery…

    Fact is, I don’t like seeing foxes etc in those small cages. But it is a good business for lots of people here, and we stop raising them in this country they will still be raised in some other countries, including ones where they will be treated a lot worse than they are treated here. And besides, when it comes to animals which produce something humans want, if you do not raise them they will be hunted in the wild, so having a captive breeding population often seems to be a very good thing for the species as a whole because that makes poaching much less profitable than it is when you have only a possibly declining wild population.

    So now I’m considering buying a fox fur coat. And if any animal protection group member ever says anything about it to me I can tell that I was inspired to get it by that damn performance.

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    1. This. Coyotes (frost-free fur FTW), mink/ermine (weasels), sable to an extent are all considered pest species for reasons. And I’d sure as h-ll rather see people wearing mink, sable, fox, coyote, muskrat (for those under age 16), or nutria than snow leopard, jaguar, and other endangered/threatened animal pelts.

      *grin* A college associate was big into saving the whales, wymyn’s rights and freeing Tibet. She also wore vintage, including fur. When someone gave her unholy heck about a fox collar, she looked them straight in the eye and said, “Look, sweetie, no fox lives to be 50 years old in the wild. It’d be dead anyway.”

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      1. One of the things that I never liked about fake fur was it failed to keep me warm in winter.

        So when I once found a genuine fur coat in a secondhand shop I snapped it up.

        I tell Rhys that if we ever go hunting ferals, to save me the pelts, as well as the meat, and anything else on it.

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            1. There actually is one in some of the other style templates. But I’ve seen no means of looking for your posts that you’ve liked, or ones that other people have liked (Other than a notification thing that goes away after a while).

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              1. Yeah, I’ve noticed the little star notification sometimes, but I’ve never known how to give one myself. Oh well, at least replying to your comment allowed me to tell you I had liked it.

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      2. Actually jaguar is anything but endangered. The US has decided in its infinite wisdom to considered them endangered but those countries who actually have them (not including places like the southern US where the occasional vagrant wanders through) have an overabundance in places and they are both a danger and a nuisance. The difference is that the ‘civilized’ countries have deemed them “endangered” so no wealthy hunters can take home a jaguar as a trophy. This actually has the opposite effect intended, because now instead of providing a significant source of income via the spending of wealthy Americans and Europeans who would not only pay large amounts to come hunt them, but drop significant amounts into other aspects of the local economy while there; the jaguars are strictly a drain on the economy. They eat livestock and the occasional child, so any opportunity to kill a jaguar is immediately taken advantage of.

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        1. A few years back, there was this documentary on the Komodo dragon. It started out with the narrator in “Dragon Country” worried about being ambushed by one of them.

          Later on, there was a comment about these dragons being “endangered” but the natives still killed them.

          WTF!!!! You were worried about being attacked by one yet you “look down” on the people who “live with them” not willing to let them live????

          I guess your life is more important than the natives’ lives. [Frown]

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          1. I think that most of the I love nature soooo much, let’s protect the predatory animal activists don’t live near them.

            Has anyone noticed campaigns to save ants, cockroaches, flies, fleas, ticks and spiders? They are part of nature as well serving a distinct part in the eco-systems.

            (Oh? They’re disease carrying pests in your kitchen? Really. Um. Well then, how about the local snakes, say Copperheads?)

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            1. The word you want is “charismatic megafauna” ie. the cute/majestic/makes-a-great-stuffed-toy animals preserved at the expense of really important ecosystem members like, bacteria, skinks, snail darters, and other scaly/slimey/slinky/stinky stuff.

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              1. … Huh. I always assumed from the name that snail darters were birds, until you put them in that “non-cute” list, which caused me to look them up on Wikipedia. (They’re fish, in case anyone else didn’t know). Endangered birds always get more attention due to the cuteness factor, and sometimes the majesty factor — hence the spotted owl thing.

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                1. But oddly, not the vegematic windmill factor, which has apparently been obscured because it is a Truth that we can’t handle.

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    3. Is it just me, or does actual contact with members of such organizations harden attitudes towards them?
      For example, I used to think of Greenpeace as a bunch of annoying, pretentious twits. Then, while hiking the Appalachian Trail, I met some of their recruits and their teachers. Now I think of them as a bunch of extremely annoying, extremely pretentious, hypocritical twits.

      Liked by 1 person

      2. Yes, there often seems to be some elements of holier than thou attitudes to be found in them. And you got the world savers, the kids who are all fired up for doing something good with their lives (and these organizations give them an easily found and simple seeming choice for a cause), the older farts who have dedicated their life to the cause and are getting thoroughly annoyed over the non-believers who stand in the way of their utopia, and they all REALLY want achieve this so they PUSH! while being secure in their convictions and their own rightness.

        And the most irritating part for somebody like me, who is sympathetic (yep, stories of mistreated critters can make me quite emotional… although I have gotten over crying for Bambi’s mother in that movie. Mostly.) but thinks most of the more visible organizations seem to be way more wedded to creating their personal utopia rather than trying to work in the real world by going small step by small step when it comes to bettering the conditions for those animals humans keep, and the survival of the animals in the wild – most of them seem to be completely unwilling to compromise, which can lead to them doing far more damage than good in the long run since their ‘utopia’ almost always is something which does not take into account the way humans actually behave. Or even how animals actually behave in spite of them declaring themselves as champions of the critters. Or how the real world actually works…

        So lots of them are VERY annoying, pretentious, hypocritical twits. Who may in the end destroy their own causes by driving all the normal people away… (not good, btw, unless they only destroy the extremist approach, several of those causes are actually pretty good as causes if approached in a more sensible way – remembering that humans do matter more, in the end – and the willingness to compromise).

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        1. The ones who whimper and whine about Bambi and Thumper wouldn’t really find much traction over here, because, Australia. Feral herds of deer (and cows, camels, horses, pigs) are pests and there’s no ‘hunting season’ for them as far as I know. Rabbits? You can hunt them all the time. Cane toads? Kill every one you come across. It’s considered practically a patriotic duty to do that, because of the damage they do to the local ecology.

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          1. Somewhat the same with reindeer here. They are not pests, but they are domesticated (well, half domesticated) animals raised for profit, not pets. Seems foreigners can be a bit shocked lots of us like to eat them, there is that association with Santa and so on. But lots of us have always assumed that Santa does eat them too. Because if you keep them you of course use them, for everything they can be used, and they are very useful indeed, good meat, good hides, reasonably good beasts of burden in that part of the world where horses and cows do not thrive and so on. So Santa will have boots made of reindeer hide and Mrs Santa will make him nice reindeer steaks. :)

            (And they are nowhere as cute in real life as Bambi’s ilk, at least not as adults. And thoroughly annoying if you drive a lot in Lapland).

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            1. I wonder how much people who “love horses but never met them” would like a horse popping in front of them. [Very Big Evil Grin]

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      3. Around here, we’re waiting for hilarity to ensue, as the Ferguson protesters have elected to march to the state capital. Through Missouri farm country.

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        1. Have they set up supply lines? Or are they planning on looting stores along the way? (Good luck with that.) I expect the citizens of Ferguson will be glad to see their backsides either way.

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          1. Haven’t delved into the details. Of course, the news footage showed an orderly procession of people towards suburban STL. Whether they have a supply train is unknown to me at this time. They did mention their intention of conducting “teach-ins” along the route. Apparently, they have no conception of just how sparsely populated their chosen route is. Once they clear the outskirts of St. Louis, it’s farming country pretty much all the way to Jefferson City.

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            1. Might do them good to see some open country — and shake their brains up a bit to discover how much of it there is.

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            1. Ok, they’re busing people back to St. Louis every night. So, they have done a bit of planning at least.

              Still, that’s not a real march.

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                1. If we were planning it, when we got picked up by a bus it would haul us in the direction we were going. But then logic is a tool of white privilege, after all it is the same thing we used to determine that the reason the cop shot the doped up thug who was attempting to jerk him through his window and beat him to death, was because said thug was trying to kill him, not because the thug was black.

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          1. Loot houses? From Missouri farmers? That’s where the comedy is expected. Rural Missouri has been pushed around by St. Louis for a long time. Holding grudges is the national pastime of the Scotch-Irish, and the Germans aren’t half bad at it either.

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              1. Expected results are less than five days march into hostile terrain, then calling on account of weather and a bus ride into Jeff City.

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                  1. I’ve really got to work on my sarcasm. What I meant was, weather will provide an excuse once it becomes clear that the march will be of little use to their cause.

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                2. 120 miles, no packs, flat terrain…doable if you just keeeeeep walking.
                  Supplies needed depends on how many people you’re supplying. You might just need a pickup truck’s worth of food and water for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or you might need a whole convoy.
                  For their sake, I hope they planned it better than I think they did. Logistics is hard.

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                3. five days is being generous.I think it will last until the second day that the organizers can’t get their double mocha nonfat half-caf latte in the morning.

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        3. It is now December. Has anyone looked at the weather forecasts? I wonder how many who started on the march will finish?

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          1. I wonder who’s paying for this. Whence the money to rent the buses and hire the drivers? How are they paying the protesters’ per diem expenses? Are they being put up over night in lodgings, and if so at whose expense? Do the protesters have day jobs that are missing them?

            Following the money used to be an adage of the News Business, along with “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

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              1. And who funds the Civil Rights activist groups? (At a guess, I would say a sizable amount of their support derives from government grants, meaning The State is underwriting those protests against The State.) I notice Louis Farrakhan is now speaking out on this, so who hired his raggedy ass?

                Inquiring minds want to know?

                Meanwhile, there remains the curious incident of the dog that isn’t barking in the night.

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                1. Heh. Answer was right out there, in my daily news crawl:


                  Leftist organizers are using Ferguson to rehearse the Big Ugly
                  By Lee Cary
                  Multiple far-left groups are using Ferguson as a pretext to rehearse widespread civil disobedience when the Welfare State taps the brakes.

                  [SNIP]

                  Their stage setting is Brown’s death — the play is about anti-capitalism.

                  An Associated Press article dated November 27, 2014, entitled “For some, location of Brown’s hands irrelevant,” indirectly speaks to the fidelity of community organizers to truth-telling: It doesn’t matter to them if the “hands-up” meme is based on the lies of false witnesses to the Brown shooting. What’s most important is that the false image of “hands up” has become accepted folklore among the protesters.

                  The means of inspiring leftist street zeal are justified by the end.

                  Lies have long been a tool used by the tyrants of fascists, socialist, and communist ideologies.

                  In contrast, capitalism — an economic system in great distress in America — is inescapably tied to Arithmetic.

                  Real math doesn’t lie. It requires unbiased calculation. Far-left community organizers don’t traffic in unbiased calculation.

                  Scan the signage in the photos taken at Ferguson street protests across the nation and note that a handful of groups’ names reoccur. Among them are REVCOM.US (Revolutionary Community Party USA , A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition (founded by the pro-Leninist Becker brothers and aligned with the Party for Socialism and Liberation), Peoples Power Assemblies, Socialist Worker.org, and the International Action Center (founded by Jimmy Carter’s former Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, in 1992). There are more.

                  Standing behind the signs are well-funded 501(c)(3) groups that receive millions of dollars every year through donations and foundation grants, and then allocate monies to promote social change.

                  [SNIP]

                  Deficit spending is a federal addiction.

                  Sooner or later, taken to the extreme, all unhindered addictions kill. And Washington’s deficit spending addition — practiced by both political parties — will bring significant consequences to the Welfare and the Warfare States.

                  The far-left social change enterprises are leaning into what they know will be a generational opportunity as the Welfare State begins to face significant downsizing. Instead of signs reading “Justice For Michael Brown,” they’ll read “Justice For America’s Poor.” “Poor Lives Matter” will replace “Black Lives Matter.” The marching chants of “This is what democracy looks like” will grow louder.

                  The Occupy Wall Street model will be replicated widely in the Big Blue Cities as stationary protests compliment mobile protests convened by social media — the new bullhorn of community organizers.

                  [SNIP]

                  Zerohedge.com is just one of a cadre of relatively new on-line sites for economic news. Unlike the legacy media pundits (e.g., MSNBC), these sources tend to have no partisan ax to grind, and their writers are educated in economics.

                  A recent Zerohedge article entitled “Federal Reserve Confirms Biggest Foreign Gold Withdrawal In Over Ten Years,” reports how European nations are repatriating their gold reserves long-stored in the U.S. Germany has the most gold here, but the U.S. Treasury has been slow to respond to German requests to have it back. Just one more sign.

                  The Big Ugly is coming — perhaps not imminent, but inevitable. And the community organizers are preparing.

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                    1. It makes sense though. If you’re advocating for the system to fall, you should be prepared for when it does.

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                2. A certain number of suckers. Indeed, the chief benefit of the protests is to make things look bad and so generate donations.

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                  1. Ayup. If I correctly interpret the news reports, President Obama is holding three (THREE!) White House meetings this very day to address the “issues underlying these problems” and will no doubt be issuing grants to provide additional military-grade armaments to local police community activist groups to examine and report on the underlying core causes of such distrust between communities of color and the predators stoking their distrust and antagonism toward the police.

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              1. I can just imagine that at cocktail parties.
                “So what do you do?”
                “I’m a professional protestor.”
                “What do you protest?”
                “Whatever someone tells me is bad.”

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          2. According to WeatherBell, they’re kinda OK in terms of temps until the 15th. Then the Arctic is coming to visit and will hang out until mid February.

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            1. I was thinking the Wintry Mix predicted for Thursday and the cold rain on Friday. That makes miserable weather for outdoors activity.

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  26. “Jean Jacques Rosseau”

    Sarah, my apologies if the language is a bit too pungent for your blog, but … anyone who studies Rosseau’s life with any honesty has to conclude that the man was a real turd.

    There. That makes three people I have described that way in all my years on the Internet. One of the others was Jimmy Carter. I forget who the third was.

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