So, yesterday, apparently, my post was taken as evidence that I was angry and “always angry.”
This shocked the living hell out of me, as the precipitating incident to yesterday’s post didn’t even rise above “annoying.” I’m fairly sure the person I was interacting with had bought the gospel of literature as social work hook, line and barbed sinker. I’m fairly sure that she didn’t realize the “write to change the world” is just a “social marker” of “real literature” (i.e. that the writer has had an excellent education and knows how to signal it.) I do know it because I not only studied literature, but I studied history of literature and literature criticism. Also, I grew up in a country with a long history. What is now signaled by this “concern for representation of the voiceless” (is this why you guys get so upset when the supposed voiceless shout back? Bah. You ain’t got nothing. Serious revolutionaries silence the “voiceless” before speaking for them. You’re Bush league.) and “writing for social change” is what used to be signaled by putting vast undigested classical quotes in your work, or (like Kit Marlowe) writing your stage directions in Latin. All it means is “I’m special and better than these people and I deserve special consideration and treatment.”
But it was clear the woman I was discussing this nonsense with had NEVER questioned it. Sweet mother of pearl, she admitted she didn’t know the difference between sad and rabid puppies. The practitioners of the big lie just say we’re all the same. She didn’t even know that.
So, no, I wasn’t angry. I was somewhere between annoyed and amused, kind of like when the kid gives the cat chocolate milk, and you know you’ll be cleaning feline diarrhea off the carpet for days, but hey, the kid doesn’t know any better and this is not even misbehavior, just ignorance.
As an aside, I find it very funny that these… Innocents Abroad aren’t even aware of cultural differences enough to understand the tone of my posts. I’ll paraphrase Bridget Correia, here (she was talking about Larry and the example she gave was buying tomato plants.) “Yeah, I sound angry. I was born and raised in Portugal. We get enthusiastic about things. Other times I sound angry — and am not — when discussing which type of tea to buy; when telling my kids about a book I enjoyed; when telling my husband we’ll go for a walk in five minutes; when declaiming poetry; when telling you good morning.”
I sound angry, that is, if you know absolutely nothing of the culture I was raised in. And of course, most of these people know absolutely nothing of any culture except what their professors told them, poor nibblings.
For Portugal I’m considered laid back, bordering on the boring. The first time my husband had a meal with my family he tried to dive under the table, utterly convinced we’d murder each other with the steak knives any minute. We were in fact discussing which shops I should take him to, to buy shoes. (I wonder if he realizes that somehow his kids have the same communication style, helped along by the fact I’m going increasingly deaf, so that I’m perpetually afraid that the neighbors will call the police when the boys shout at each other about their favorite comic books.)
But leaving all that aside, lets say I was really angry. So?
How does that invalidate my take down of their wanting me to write about “minorities” “by the numbers” each one the appropriate stereotype they were taught in school? And, mind you, at the same time, they tell me I can’t write about any minority I’m not (though I’m allowed to write about white, blond, American born men, even though I’ve never been one — go figure) because I can’t possibly put myself in their shoes, since they are apparently aliens, and mere empathy and human fellow feeling won’t do. Oh, and if I write about minorities (which I can’t do, remember?) I have to show them being oppressed forever. I can’t say, have a future in which most of the people in space are dark skinned and when a white man ventures into space he’s sneered at. No, because oppression now is oppression forevah, which is why the poor “voiceless” need crazy people to talk for them and tell other people they have to talk for them/not talk for them/shut up already/write more minorities or you’re a racist/how dare you write a minority when you aren’t one?
How does my reaction to their asshattery invalidate the fact that they’re wearing a stylish colon-hat?
It is the mark of the never thwarted child, who has attained what should have been adulthood without anyone EVER having had the nerve to tell them they are wrong, to think that someone being mad at their nonsense means the person is wrong. Because, I mean, speshull snowflakes are never wrong. Even when they’re being told by a Latina and an Indian man that, yes, they are wrong about what we want out of science fiction.
I wasn’t angry yesterday, just mildly annoyed. And, weirdly, also amused.
However, let me tell you things that DO make me angry:
I don’t get very angry about gatekeepers who try to impose their political opinions on the field when they don’t even know what they’re doing, and are just parroting what they heard at school and in their social circles. They just happen to think that this is the way everyone thinks.
But I get incandescently angry when they then use their bully pulpit to call in slanderous articles to major publications, saying that those who oppose their dominance of awards in the field oppose “women and minorities” writing science fiction. This when not only are those women and minorities organizing the resistance to them, but they’ve treated women and minorities who didn’t fall in line with their ideas like redheaded step children for decades. This is the school bully screaming he’s being harassed. I used to beat up school bullies. I’m much more controlled now, having grown up (you should try it sometime) but I still get angry.
Other things that don’t get me angry include innocent people parroting the cr*p you’ve been feeding them for years. People are people and homo sapiens are social animals.
On the other hand, I get incandescently angry when you use that crap to bully talented writers off the field, to besemirch the reputation of dead and/or older writers who had more talent in their little toes than you have in your entire bodies. If you don’t know damn well that it’s impossible to write more minorities and not to write them at all; if you don’t know that people don’t fit your stupid stereotypes; if you think that ANYONE needs to feel “represented” to read ANYTHING, then I’m sorry for you. There’s clearly some cognitive disorder involved.
But if you know those are idiocies of the first caliber, as most of you doubtless do, and wield them as a hammer to pound more talented people down? Then yes, I get incandescently angry.
You’ll know I’m too angry for words, because I will mock you with GIF posts.
Heed well, this is not a threat, just a reading of the circumstances and the current social mood: moderate your shenanigans. For I only mock you with GIFs, but behind me comes the mob who spanks you with axes.
I have a vested interest in not getting to that point. Superficially, coming from a Latin country, having a masters in language and literature, working in an artistic profession, if the mob doesn’t stop to think — and when do they — they could think I’m one of you and come after me too.
And you must know that I have the greatest attachment to my head. I think it looks best right on top of my neck.
So again I say, stop that crap. I know your parents never spanked you or even told you no, but it’s time you learned to say no to yourselves, and stop pursuing your mean-girl way (particularly if you’re guys) to the top.
You don’t know what you’re stirring.
And I don’t want it splashing on innocents.
According To Hoyt 
Always angry? Guess they never bothered to read:
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/07/02/why-are-you-so-angry/
Ah, but that might take… effort.
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That is thread is some interesting re-reading and reading.
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It reminds one of the ways in prior times oppressors reacted to the complaints of the (ungrateful) oppressed.
Recently, the Elites’ treatment of the Brexiteers, condemning them for not tugging the forelock and asking, “Thank-you, Guv, may I have another?”
Or, as once put in response to a complaint about certain colonies ingratitude for the blessing of using English stamps, “Our industry discouraged, our resources pillaged… worst of all our very character stifled.”
Dey likes der darkies when dey dance and sing in praise of massa, but dey don’ want to hear how de darkies axshully feel.
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“Deh overseer gave us trouble
And he drive us round a spell
We locked him in the smokehouse cellar
With the key throwed in the well.”
That, and the rest of Kingdom Coming came to mind.
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> dance and sing
I’m feeling a “Blazing Saddles” moment coming on…
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You rang?
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“My grandmother was Dutch.”
*must rewatch my DVD of that movie sometime soon*
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No one told them to read it. They can’t risk being caught reading something they weren’t told to read.
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‘y u mad bro’
It may not be the weakest of arguments, but it is not strong enough that I’m likely to interpret it as someone respecting me enough to concoct a plausible lie.
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Why am I mad? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that these progs are wasting oxygen that could be put to a better use, like rusting a bridge somewhere.
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Apparently idiots cannot distinguish between anger and exasperation.
I would have thought it a survival-conducive skill.
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I don’t think they have any self-preservation instincts.
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I think those instincts are just warped somehow. I mean, you don’t see them speaking about Muslims, or Marxists.
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They are Totally Without Instinct to Survive?
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Wellllll … in them it tends to manifest much in the manner of a drowning man throttling his savior.
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Either no self-preservation instincts or a complete lack of contact with reality in the assumption that their little fantasy world is all that matters.
Of course, to borrow from a certain feline poster on the Politics forum of the Bar, there’s always the “embrace the power of ‘and'” option…
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I think we must accord them some instinct for self-preservation — notice the way they avoid protesting against the people most likely to kill them without batting an eye.
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It wouldn’t matter if they could tell the difference. You aren’t allowed to be exasperated with them either. They just lump that in with angry anyway.
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Bless their hearts.
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And pointless heads.
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Nit, some of them have “pointy heads” because there is no brains in their heads.
Note, I won’t call somebody with nice sharp horns (like you) “pointy-headed”. You might be tempted to make sure I “got the point” of your disagreement. :evil:
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Just handlebars for the bullyback ride
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::Gets Popcorn Ready::
You try, I’ll just sit here and enjoy watching what happens. :grin:
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I don’t see any progloidytes managing the full weight seconds.
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Reaches out hand for some popcorn…
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It’s all very rider dependent. Some might ride “free.” Others.. will just have to roll with things.
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Actually I always thought of them as having very pointy heads, but, as Harry Nilsson pointed out, ‘A point in every direction is no point at all.’
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Spoken like a true Southerner, sir.
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Two thoughts.
One, it’s hard to “get tone” from written comments. There’s plenty of times where I’ve mistaken what others were saying because “in person it would come across differently”. Also, I’ve been told (by people I trust) that I come across as harsher than I intend.
Second, for some people it isn’t a matter of “your tone”. It’s a matter that you said something that they dislike but can’t refute so they can only complain about “your tone”. :wink:
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Tone from the written word, ah yessssss, as Mr. Fields was wont to say. I personally find it quite surprising how often folks fail to read my occasional comments as if delivered in a droll and detached tone, as if by a character in an Oscar Wilde play.
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I’m glad to see I got the voice pretty much spot on for you, then. Not exactly Oscar Wilde but certainly that droll, bored tone I always expect from a certain type of young English upperclass man in an pre-WW2 novel.
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as if by a character in an Oscar Wilde play.
Who?
(Yes, I’ve heard of him, but not only is his style not common, it seems like pop culture simply can’t grasp droll. There’s serious confusion of irony and sarcasm, and heaven forbid someone poke fun at a human flaw with love, rather than a razor or spear.)
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Author of Pygmalion and The Importance of Being Earnest, among other items.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eymdx4xomM
And a fount of delicious quotes, e.g., “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
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RES, hon, I get hassled for quoting stuff that’s older than the 70s. Much less musicals or things in technicolor. (gasp!)
It’s kinda sad, if they would look into it, folks might recognize the grandfathers of the hipsters.
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Those grandfathers don’t want to be noticed. They’re too afraid of the blame they’d draw.
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I had a sad conversation with a gentleman who was teaching a college level class on film comedy to a bunch of idiots who had refused to watch anything in black and white.
I would have simply failed them right out, but then I would have been willing to be out of that job…
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And miss Charlie Chaplin?!?! What were they thinking?
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And Buster Keaton, Abbot and Costello, Three Stooges, etc. etc. but most of all, they miss the Marx Brothers.
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But not Marx
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Karl was not a marx brother, no matter how funny his ideas
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Even later films… no Doctor Strangelove?
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No screwball comedies: It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, Ninotchka!
No Ritz Brothers. No W.C Fields. No Mae West. No Stan & Ollie. No Thin Man movies.
Nearly no musical comedies of Astaire & Rogers, Busby Berkeley or Rouben Mamoulian: Swing Time, Roberta, The Gay Divorcee, Follow the Fleet, Golddiggers of 193X, 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, or Love Me Tonight!
Some of Billy Wilder’s best are B&W: Some Like It Hot, The Fortune Cookie, The Apartment, and Stalag 17.
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Many people, even many film aficionados have never seen Rouben Mamoulian’s masterful 1932 musical, Love Me Tonight.
Knowing this will sit overnight in moderation, here are a few clips demonstrating Mamoulian’s early explorations of merging sound and camera cutting to build a scene:
A significant advance in cinematic story-telling, Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight has been sadly overlooked.
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Good grief! You forgot Preston Sturges altogether! How could you?
The Great McGinty, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story, Hail the Conquering Hero …
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Young Frankenstein …
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I once built a server cluster with four machines named Harpo, Chico, Groucho, and Karl.
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Karl never worked and caused the others to crash?
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The fourth one should have been Zeppo.
(Then again, our server farm is Lucky, Dusty, Ned, Eastwood, Wayne, and Wyatt…)
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and the fifth either Gummo, who never did the movies, or Margaret Dumont, who Groucho called “Practically the fifth Marx brother”
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But…but… there are black and whites that aren’t even talkies that are fall-down funny, and it’s so much easier to figure out WHY they earn the laughs, and pacing, and….
/sigh
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You’re assuming modern college students think they have anything to learn or desire to do so.
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Modern students come out knowing all there is to know. Hence the protests at schools and fascistic tendencies.
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Harold Lloyd!
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Safety Last! And so many others. One night way back when, a local station aired a Harold Lloyd marathon. I recall this not just from enjoying the films, but that early in the evening (6 PM perhaps?) I had set off a crude “carbide cannon” that… had a larger combustion chamber than ought be used.. despite some slight precaution, the resulting (temporary) hearing loss meant that the “title card” aspect of the films and visual storytelling was very welcome for a few hours.
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Pygmalion was Shaw. I’ve never been able to deduce whether Shaw was taking the piss out of the Fabians when he said he was one, or if he was serious.
Though you do have to love a man who can write a play with a major part for the Salvation Army in which the most moral character is an arms dealer.
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Good Lord, yes! My most egregious error.
In my defense, both were Irish playwrights sending up the English nobs.
Wilde was author of Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and Salomé. Non-theatrical efforts include The Selfish Giant and The Picture of Dorian Gray.
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H. P. Lovecraft was a Fabian Socialist. Thought I’d toss that in because so many idiots condemn ole. H. P. for politics that weren’t his.
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Not Pygmalion, that’s Shaw.
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Yes, pop culture appears to not understand subtlety, and have latched onto the notion that crass (and often vulgar) is more real.
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It’s a little bit like actually reading the Miss Marple stories, and finding out that she actually did some of the things that were sold as “clever parodies” of the knockoff of a knockoff of a knockoff. (like how DANGEROUS it is for a little old lady to go and “confront the murderer” by herself)
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That isn’t exactly new. When I was in high school, one of the plays put on was PIPPIN. Because the audience was sure to include fond parents and doting grandparents, a certain amount of editing was done.
There is a point in the play when Charlemagne look at the retreating figure of his bitch-of-a-wife and remarks to the audience that “Sometimes I wonder if the fucking I’m getting is worth the fucking I’m getting”
Our version was “Sometimes I wonder if the fornicating I’m getting is worth the fornicating I’m getting”
I think #2 is funnier. I also think that any playwright who could come up with PIPPIN in the first place could think of it.
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I would argue that it was significantly less common, however.
Have you watched one of the modern “celebrity roasts”?
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In the era when Pippin was brought to the stage, such transgressive speech was highly lauded. It was, after all, the time of Hair and Oh, Calcutta. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the playwright had originally used the version you opted for and was induced to change it for the “sophisticated” contemporary audience.
Subtlety was no more a hallmark of that age than of our present times. Alas, halfwit, I knew him well. a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times and now lies buried under a steaming mound of worn-out pigs’ bladders.
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Shock only really works once. Actual wit or humor can be revived 20 years later.
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A point lost on comedians who think the humor behind George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television is foul language and not the word play.
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Aye. Aside from a few technical historical changes, an old Jack Benny radio show works quite well today. Jack knew what he was doing.
And a friend who knows of vaudeville and such related the story of a kid/student going on about an episode of a TV show that she (said friend) did not watch. As the show was described, she started filling in the blanks. “I thought you didn’t see it!” “I didn’t. But they’re stringing together a few vaudeville bits that I know.”
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After his own career as film star ended Buster Keaton made a living as a gag writer for Red Skelton, repurposing many bits of comedic genius from his silent films.
Abbott & Costello provided much work for their friends from the Burlesque circuit, preserving for prosperity many classic comedy routines.
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As someone who lived through the introduction of email to the business world, I’ve evolved a very formal style for work emails – not quite up to the 18th century Royal Navy Dispatches level, but modeled somewhat thereupon.
This was the result of seeing firsthand how simple straightforward text could be misinterpreted and infused with whatever frustration or anger the reader brought to their keyboard that morning.
As a result I’ve added massive amounts of textual social lubricant, with “Please”, “Thank you” and “Regards” quite liberally strewn about, to every work email. That, along with a very long count if passions are inflamed by a topic before hitting send, and a preference for diverting conversations to phone or in person if possible, has stood me very well indeed in the work world.
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Same here. And txtspk, all-caps, no-punctuation, and rndum spalleen were common enough even then.
I used to cc incoming drivel back to the sender with “I’m sorry, your message was apparently corrupted in transit.” This got the usual howls of outrage, and I got “counseled” by higher management because I insisted on English instead of just banging my head on the keyboard.
If someone wants to “express their individuality”, business email is not the place.
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It can be somewhat surprising how many of those who wish to express their individuality have no interest in any expression of your individuality.
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I once had to conduct a counseling session with a new grad hire about txtspk and all lower case in work emails where I refrained from saying “when you do that you sound like a frikking moron” and instead gave him leaderly positive constructive criticism and advice in a supportive environment. I think he took it to heart.
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My syllabus says “Do not use text-speak in e-mails.” I’m tempted to add “Write to the teacher like you would speak to the teacher’s face.” Granted, some are young physically was well as emotionally, but manners are manners.
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Any idiot who says that children should be allowed to act “naturally” obviously enjoys being surrounded by savages.
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Hopefully they shall evolve to “barbarian” at least, though with some of the Millennials I am quite doubtful.
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I dunno… a lot of younger people I encounter seem to have some kind of mild Tourette’s Syndrome. At least, they speak in bursts of words, sometimes irrelevant or inappropriate, with long pauses in between.
It’s annoying as all hell, particularly when they start blasting more gibberish when you’ve started to answer what I thought was a completed statement.
I don’t know if it’s just a local thing, but I noticed friends’ children doing it 20 years ago; they do it as adults today.
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I don’t know. The kids I work with are not “normal” teenagers, in the sense that when they hit the school door, they have to act like civilized humans or there WILL be Much Unhappiness.
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Ah, that would be because of what my friend Bill Reader calls “unthinking.” They ward off what they’ve learned are “bad” thoughts with learned phrases and words. If you think of them as members of a cult, it will work.
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I can’t remember what it’s actually called– someone here will recognize it, I think it was an early example of computer intelligence– but there’s a thought experiment.
There’s a guy in a room with a bunch of little boxes.
Someone writes something on a piece of paper, in a script he doesn’t know.
He goes through the boxes, opens up the one(s) that match, copies the stuff on to the reply, and sends it out.
Translation without understanding.
You break the pattern, they’re sitting there like… reboot…reboot…reboot….
I think it was someone here who got me to looking at that phenomina, and now that I’m looking, a lot of people acting strange suddenly makes sense; their statements didn’t make sense before because it was like those idiots blaming Republicans, gun-rights activists and Christians when a Democrat joined the long-range jihad for Daesh and shot up a gun free zone. Or how avoiding being a victim is “living in fear” or some junk.
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Chinese Room
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I tend to use the same form as written business letters.
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I thought dragons meant to come across as harsh.
Once they’ve found out you’ve gone soft, then it’s work, work, work all the time.
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Dragons don’t like being “harsh” toward other Dragons.
Besides the problem of accidently starting a fight with another Dragon, the neighborhood suffers. :wink:
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Yeah, all that flaming around could damage part of your hoard, y’know!
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Think of it as an extension to the RAH quote about an armed society – Dragons are very intrinsically and extensively armed, and so are very polite.
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No. Tone is real. Obviously the music the words are sung to is more accessible in person, or in media that include more of the senses, but it’s there.
Competent grownups figure it out. Including ways to compensate for inherent weaknesses.
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One can, if one tries, insert a tone into text communications, but for someone who uses a lot of verbal tone and body language in their communication, while using very blunt words, it does not come through as intended when it is text only.
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True. Didn’t mean to imply it was easy.
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Lovely! Keep it up.
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I think they’re confusing you with me, Sarah! ;)
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Hmmm, do we have evidence they don body armor to read Sarah? Because I do to read you and we’re on the same side. I just worry about the wide area of effect of some of those motar shells you love to fire :)
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Wide area? I tend to think she’s generally spot on!
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Yes, but danger close distance varies with the size of the boom.
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Overpressure at distance x scales with Y**.33, and so blast area at given overpressure with Y**.67 where Y is the yield.
Works for MLRS, cluster bombs, and nukes. Carp? Needs experiment. In general, though, you get significantly greater area of total destruction with the payload split up.
This post has been brought to you by Asperger’s syndrome and the number e**(i*pi) + 1.
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I just take notes on the language. It tends to wear off after a few decades out of the service.
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If they are, they are sadly lacking in reading comprehension skills. I have yet to see “eat a ****” in any of Sarah’s posts. ( g,d&r)
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Heh. Almost got me with that one. I’m sure rice coming from my nose would have looked pretty bad. :-)
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Having had rice come out my nose, I highly don’t recommend it.
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Last night, I woke up at 3:30 AM or so and couldn’t get back to sleep, because I was feeling angry about the Supreme Court’s incorrect decision invalidating a Texas statute. And the thoughts that were running through my head were, “Texas should say, “Anthony Kennedy has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” After all, what’s the worst that could happen? Texas secedes and passes a law making abortion illegal, and it sparks a second civil war. Well, we fought one civil war over slavery; what better cause to fight a second one over than the murder of 50 million innocent human beings?”
A civil war would be terrible, and I really hope it doesn’t come to that. But I can’t help but be angry about the routine murder of innocent human beings that goes on every day behind the doors of Planned Genocide, and how half the country just accepts the Orwellian phrase “a woman’s right to choose” as a perfectly valid rationalization of cold-blooded murder.
Funny thing is, I probably sounded angry as I wrote the paragraph above, but I’m perfectly calm. You can tell because I haven’t bolded a single word. But yes, I do get angry sometimes about the deliberate killing of innocent human beings. And if someone doesn’t get angry about that sort of thing, it’s either because they haven’t really thought about it much (which is the case for a lot of people, who think abortion is a lot “cleaner” than it really is); or it’s because they have deliberately chosen to defend an evil practice, in which case I don’t care a fig for what they think of me.
And that last is the thing most relevant to the point Sarah was making: the “you sound angry” argument only matters when it’s coming from someone whose good opinion you care about.
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” …the “you sound angry” argument only matters when it’s coming from someone whose good opinion you care about.”
All the people whose opinions I care a damn about applaud when I get angry and bold shit all over the place. Usually because they’re angry too.
When SJWs call me an “angry white man” I always wonder how that’s a bad thing. I’m white (more pink, really,) I’m a man, and they pissed me off. Duh.
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“Well behaved white men seldom make history”
If they’re gonna put inane adages on their bumpers, no reason for us not to shove them down their throats.
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Have you noticed that they never get close enough with their horseshit that you can get a grip on them? Always on the internet, never in person.
That’s why I tailgate Priuses, Smartcars, Feelits (Fiats) and anything with a vegan bumper sticker. Mercilessly. Just menace the shit out of them, every time.
Juvenile perhaps, but it relieves my Angry White Man tension.
So, Vile666ers, if you look in the rear-view mirror of your tiny econobox and all you can see is rivets, that’s me or one of my many, many AWM fellows. Get thee to the right-hand lane, varlets.
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Hey, now, some of us just prefer small cars. While neither the Prius or the Smartcar interest me (as things to own, I find the latter interesting in engineering terms for how they achieve collision safety) but having rented a Fiat 500 I’m not adverse to owning one as our second car. My wife will be driving the SUV which is just “big” for me (which is ironic given I’m the taller and heavier of us).
So, screen the Fiats (at least) based on the bumper stickers. If you see one with one or a D&D or hockey one, it might be me.
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“I find the latter interesting in engineering terms for how they achieve collision safety.”
Much the same way a Pepsi can achieves collision safety with a Frisian’s hoof.
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That’s just it, while the car is easily totalled they are roughly on par with the standard sedan in terms of passenger safety.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24599768/ns/business-autos/t/smart-car-gets-highest-score-crash-tests/
That’s some damned good engineering even if you don’t like the car.
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I don’t know the veracity of the information, but I have been told that they were able to score that high because crash tests only require vehicles to be tested against other vehicles of the same class.
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Surely you do not mean to suggest our government might so stack a scientific test as to assure results consistent with their ideology? Not our government!
Law, I must hie me to my fainting couch.
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Not just the government, remember when NBC did a hit piece on GM pickups gas tanks using a model rocket motor to make sure the tank ignited upon impact with the other vehicle???
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Once I was driving home, and was waiting at a traffic light. I heard a loud noise, looked around, didn’t see anything to be alarmed at, so when the light turned green I continued on my merry way. The next morning I noticed all sorts of red marks, red debris, and scuffing on my tow hitch. Apparently somebody driving one of those little cars had crashed into my van, and aside from the noise I hadn’t even noticed!
So the moral of the story: drive a large vehicle as added protection against idiotic Progressives.
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It’s all relative… I’m minded of the time when I was riding a city bus, heard the most godawful terrifying noise, and was showered with glass. Looked to my left, and saw a big trailer loaded above the top with scrap metal – that once it was past, just went on down the road…
Totaled the bus, it was caved in all along the left side. Fortunately it was just a glancing blow. Being rather interested for some reason, I later found out the driver of the truck had his earplugs in, listening to music at full blast – he didn’t even hear a single thing.
Abrams is really the only vehicle model I’ll feel safe in…
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Back in 2004, the 2001 Nissan Frontier King Cab I still drive was sandwiched between a Ford F-150 (rear) and a Mazda sedan (front). Neither of them was driveable afterwards. The Nissan had the plastic cover over the front bumper split; heck, the airbags didn’t even deploy.
The Mazda and I were both stopped at the light; the Ford hit me at ~ 25 mph. Whatever Nissan made those bumpers out of, I want lining the walls of my house….
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When I had my Ford Bronco, I made up a bumper sticker for the hood bug deflector that read, in reverse, PEDAL FASTER, GREEN BOY!. Got a few dirty looks and a couple of flying fingers of fate, but my it was fun.
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Studies show that more Prius drivers are conservative vice liberal. When you commute 36 or more miles to your job, 50 MPG is a great selling point. And how many liberals commute that far in evil POV’s? My daughter was t-boned in a Prius. Actually, she was t-boned twice, in my Prius-C then in her Prius-C. She survived quite nicely. Wasn’t aware until her crashes that a one year old car with deployed airbags is likely totaled, as they both were.
Don’t put bumper stickers on cars. Well, I’ll make an exception for “Go Navy! Beat Army!”, but that one won’t get my car keyed or bashed. Even driven on to USMA grounds.
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When ever I see that well behaved women quote I think of this quote: “Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books.”
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Like one of my comments in class when a student asked if there was a single century when Poland wasn’t fought over. I thought for a minute and said, “Not that I know of. I suspect the early residents called it ‘Oh No, Not Again’.”
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“The 21st. So far.” (Gentlefolk, place yer bets.)
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When phunctorsdottir was 5 she came home from daycare saying “I’m not white! More of a peachy beige..”. Apple, tree, pride.
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Younger son, whom NO ONE presumes is white on sight, insists he’s white and puts it on all his forms. Whatevs.
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Sadly, I saw the Texas law as a reasonable ‘somebody do something’ in response to Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia and his little shop of horrors. But, I guess with the profit margins for selling fetal baby parts the Supreme’s didn’t want to shut down the only growth industry of the Obama administration.
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“…with the profit margins for selling fetal baby parts the Supreme’s didn’t want to shut down the only growth industry of the Obama administration.”
Dayamn, is that gonna leave a mark.
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Oh just wait for the class action suit by women alienated from the (economic value of) their labor. It’s gonna take a black knight lawyer with huge steel cojones.
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Actually, according the the USSC decision this week, it doesn’t need to be a class action, someone can sue on behalf of *potential* victims.
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A small quibble sir, if I may. The market for firearms and ammunition has never been better, thanks to the Obama administration and the Supreme Court.
So that’s two successes for Hillary to run on.
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Indeed. I was assisting my 86 year old Father in purchasing a new Colt 45 1911 just last Monday. I just didn’t want to get off topic. (A little humor, as most of Sarah’s commenters are always willing to go off topic).
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wait, wait … you mean we have a topic to deviate from … around here?!
An a related note, I was hoping to get another pistol before moving here, but just never had the time to poke around the gun shops while trying to pack, etc. My 1911 copy needs grip scales.
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My Dad has a Springfield Armory 1911, but I convinced him that life is too short to spend without a true Colt.
The fun part is that he paid for it (special order) when we were over in town for me to get a root canal. I pondered which of us actually spent more money that day.
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well, we do know who had more fun
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ehhh… there are better 1911s than a current Colt, for the same price.
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Blasphemy! He also has a ‘Made in America’ fetish. His Springfield Armory .45 is really a fine gun, but made in Brazil. I understand they have switched to Croatia now, but the only deviation he has ever allowed is on Browning Automatic shotguns, and there only Belgium.
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Pre- series 70 1911s? sure. After? naw.
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> topic to deviate from
It’s the Running of the Geeks here. If you can’t keep up with the topic changes you get trampled.
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Yeah, I think you might . . . Squirrel!
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Got a friend who makes some seriously BAD scales for the 1911. Ever seen a set of Damascus steel .45 grips?
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ooooh, sounds lovely.
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That’s why I bought a Jeep (even if it’s not really a Jeep – someone here told me it’s really a Japanese(?) Mini-van that Jeep puts its name on).
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Yeah, all the media foo-faw about gun control just keeps guns in everyone’s minds, and when there’s a birthday coming up … well, the idea is right there … heehee
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Funny indeed — Beloved Spouse and I sing along with this all the time.
I doubt Mr. Paxton appreciates our intent, however.
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This just made the rounds on Facebook.
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Notice the obvious absence of people of color in that ad — clearly they were intending to offer para-military training only to white kids, so that when the inevitable race war began white privilege would ensure their victory.
Did you notice the kid chowing down with that mess kit was … chubby?
Ya get “non-com stripes” and battle ribbons and dog-tags, “all the equipment you need!” — meaning officers (who are traditionally “college-educated” and therefore probably pink if not red) are unnecessary.
It is no surprise this “toy” is made and marketed by Marx.
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Ooh, how did I not know of this before?
“…’til he’s mastered nuclear fission,”
Hehehehe…
Yeah, not what he had intended.
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No guns for Johnny… they lead to war…
But you dare not say anything about certain militant groups of faith and their habits of child education for fear of insighting hatred against any member of said oppressed faith and being seen as prejudicial, which we all know is the worst crime of all.
(Let us not even consider that we are financing said education in some parts of the world through the U.N.)
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I would have thought the pro-abortionists would have been behind the law. After all it was designed to prevent fetus killing women from dying in horrible pain from a botched abortion. On the other hand the pro-life people should thank the Court. Overturning the law probably will not increase the number of abortions, but it will cause at least some of the women getting them to die. If you believe that abortion is murder, then the death penalty for those getting one is appropriate.
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The Pro-Lifers don’t want anyone dying, so … no.
OTOH, I can imagine a series of commercials showing images of unsanitary unsafe abortion mills and warning of the dangers attendant. Footage of Gosnell’s grisly clinic optional. Ad copy could be tailored to individual locations, warning of lack of hospital admitting privileges, distances to emergency wards, etc.
Possibly even a summary of the abortion mill’s physicians’ records and experience.
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No. Negligence is not an acceptable form of execution. Executions must be carried out as directed by order of a court. Furthermore, I am not convinced that the females necessarily have the mental competence to be judged guilty of murder. Remember, to prove murder in most jurisdictions you have to show that the killer possessed a mens rhea, a guilty or evil mind, in addition to all other factors.
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Please note, moreover, that the very phrase mens rhea indicates masculinity so it is impossible for any woman (or, I suppose, anybody who identifies as one or more women) to be guilty of any crime other than negligence.
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[squints hard, looking sidelong]
Saaaayyy… Is that… Is that some of that-there nuanced sarcasm stuff?
‘Cos, seriously… If it’s not, I can’t even even, y’know? Last I looked at my Latin phrase book, mens rea means “mind guilty”, derived from the Latin actus reus. There may be some Latinate sexism involved, in gendering “mind” as male, but I think that’s merely a linguistic vagary, not something intentionally meant to imply that to think and mentate is solely and inherently masculine…
We really, really need “sarcasm” tags and fonts on here, I’m telling you…
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Sir! Are you actually being so crass as to suggest that modern thinkers of enlightened thought ought be so crass as to make an effort to understand what people actually say and what words actually mean? So niggardly a dispensation for their superior intellects marks you as an -ist to be determined later.
As for “sarcasm” tags … I know not the meaning of that word. (Seriously — I tried looking it up but all I found was a picture of a cute little wallaby carrying a single long-stemmed rose.)
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Normally, I might have taken RES’s statement as inspiration, and tried to top him. Instead I had an ‘Oh, come on’ reaction. I took that as evidence that I am very ill, and perhaps in need of bed rest.
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It’s RES for the love of BOB. You don’t need a sarcasm tag. He has a permanent RES tag! :D
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RES means “Thing” in Latin thus Res is an “it” not he or she. :twisted:
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Sigh. Thank-you, Drak.
I dislike belaboring that point, but in these times when so many think that whether you are a “he” or a “she” affects the validity of your facts and reasoning I do so prefer to reduce the distractions.
As the “R” in my initials stands equally for “Rachel” and “Richard” (there was some difference of opinion as to which me mum was carrying until such time as the evidence — or lack thereof — was presented) my parents thoughtfully allowed for some small degree of discretion.
However, as the English language traditionally permits the use of the pronoun “He” for either a male or female or person of unexposed sex, I as a conservative accept that pronoun without demurral. To my thinking one of the best reasons to eschew Progressivism is the alleviation of any need to keep up with such flummery of fashion.
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“However, as the English language traditionally permits the use of the pronoun “He” for either a male or female or person of unexposed sex,”
So we’re all ‘he’ s, so long as we have our pants on?
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Pretty much. Sabrina Chase, for instance, is always he. As are her fancy friends. Friends who wear pants. (No one on this blog, natch.)
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Well, some of us have to wear pants at work…
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that’s because you haven’t tried petitioning against this cruel rule. (Nods smugly.)
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I’ll get right on that. And the week after that, I’ll be holding a garage sale. Including the garage. And the house, maybe the car… :-)
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Once a year, Wild Wild West Con weekend, I get to escape the tyranny of bifurcated lower body garments at work.
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Once the trousers drop many are hee-hees with skinny knees.
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We really, really need “sarcasm” tags and fonts on here, I’m telling you…
Well, well, well, and here we are in a blog about reading in intent…
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Considering how frequently it turns out that the women were facing extreme pressure to have an abortion– not infrequently pressure of questionable legality– and were lied to about what the procedure involves, not just by the people selling it, but by their schools (lump of tissue, indeed)– yeah, the reasonable expectation of knowing is pretty low, too.
I wonder how common pregnancy causing panic attacks is, too; they are terrifying if you don’t have an idea of what’s going on.
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Yes. Exactly.
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Not for the queasy of stomach:
Abortion
By Jay Nordlinger — June 30, 2016
I read a news story this morning that gave me a memory. I dug out the text of a speech I gave, many years ago. The speech was about abortion. And, in it, I outlined how I had come to an anti-abortion view. Here is a quick section:
This morning, I read this news article:
Two questions: What in our culture would have let Miss Weaver know that what she ended up doing was wrong? Also: What is the difference between her act and abortion? I mean, really? What is the difference? Why is one a celebrated “choice” and the other a crime worthy of life in prison?
What difference does a few weeks make? Or a few days, or a month or two? Honestly, what’s the difference?
P.S. An Army general, Wesley Clark, briefly ran for the Democratic nomination for president. Discussing abortion, he said, “Life begins with the mother’s decision.” Well, this college student decided no.
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General Wesley Clark. That unbelievable damned fool came closer than anyone else to provoking a nuclear launch from the Russians. Yes, Russians, this was June 1999. At the end of Clinton’s stupid Kosovo War, the Russians took over Pristina International Airport when they were supposed to occupy it in co-operation with the British. Clark ordered the British to attack and “overcome” the Russians, this at the period when control of Russian nukes was at its shakiest. British Army Captain James Blount, who is now pop singer James Blunt, refused. His commander, General Sir Michael Jackson, backed him up, telling Clark and Clinton “I am not going to start World War Three for you.”
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Typically the mense rhea has been absent for one or more months. The ostrich could not be reached for comment.
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You may also be misreading the pro-abortionists.
Fifty million procedures, targeted mostly at the urban poor. The number of Americans who identify as black is a bit over forty million.
Perform one abortion ‘cleanly’ and ‘safely’, and you eliminate one of whatever sort your eugenics policy intends to remove. A ‘botch’ sterilization or death of the pregnant female potentially eliminates more.
For those who oppose abortion because they think it is racist eugenics, the pregnant females are not most at fault. The fault would more lie with those who exploit natural variations in judgement to temporarily gain agreement that might not be given in one’s right mind.
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Yes, abortion is murder, but the woman whose pregnancy is terminated is not the murderer, she is the victim.
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some, at least.
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In some cases, murderer now, victim the rest of her life.
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Now now, you know that any second thoughts or anguish over such acts are ephemeral and mostly the result of Christian anti-abortion scare-mongering.
So she has no need for post-operative therapy or support groups (not that modern psychology offers much therapy in such circumstances, anyway.)
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Arguably the best priest I ever knew died recently of lung cancer. When he was diagnosed he was given a month or two to live. He lived two years, all the while working for a the Rachel Foundation, which works with abortion survivors/repentant perpetrators.
I think he was spared to us that long because he was doing important work.
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May God reward him.
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Amen
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Riiiiight…
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I vaguely recall in Integral Trees that Kendy (for the state) tried to convince the shuttle passengers to murder one of thier own as a way to ensure thier perpetual loyalty because it knew once someone had killed for a cause they would be very unlikely to ever abandon it lest they have to admit they were a murderer. I wonder to what degree abortion plays a role in insuring rabid feminist loyalty to the Dem plantation.
Speaking of message sci-fi… Integral Trees was almost as preachy as Niven’s infamously puppeteerphobic Ringworld screed.
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I know I’ve read Integral Trees. Other than that, I recall none of it. Perhaps it is as well.
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Yes it is worthy of being forgotten. My understanding is that he wanted to bring a Fantasy setting to a SF world. The gas torus allowed people to fly from one place to another.
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I was just joking about Niven’s stuff being message fiction. The setting and related details of Integral Trees was great. The plot was ho-hum.
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Some of them have been deceived, and don’t realize what they’ve done until later. But some — and, from what I’ve seen feminists say, I’d say “a LOT” — of the women who get abortions know full well what they’re doing, and are just as morally guilty as a woman who hires a hitman to kill her husband. Because that’s what they are doing: hiring a hitman to kill their babies.
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Know…hell, some of them are proud and film the damn thing to put on youtube or write articles about how wonderful it is or proclaim they are glad their have the right to abortion on mother’s day.
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Those are some of the “what I’ve seen feminists say” that convinced me that yes, they do know precisely what they’re doing. Why else would they pick Mother’s Day, of all days? Because they understand exactly what abortion is — and they’re in favor of it.
As a Christian, I have to believe that all people are redeemable. Look at how Saul of Tarsus, one of the most anti-Christian zealots around, became one of the most gung-ho Christian missionaries in recorded history. But if it weren’t for examples like that, I would just look at these feminists proudly proclaiming their support for murdering babies, shake my head, and say, “Some people are just unredeemable.”
But God can do the impossible — so I need to pray for my enemies, that they may see the evil they’re doing and repent from it.
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Well, a case can be made for accessory to murder, or for conspiracy. However, the point remains–it is not the mother who kills the child, it is the abortionist. That is an important distinction because the pro-abortion lobby keeps trying to cast pro-lifers as wanting to arrest women for having abortions. Perhaps some do, but most, I believe, want to arrest the man who is holding the knife, not the woman who is bleeding.
And I suspect that the feminists who celebrate their abortions are by far in the minority. Surveys have shown that a very high percentage of women feel that they have no choice in the matter, they are forced by circumstances (and often by threats from the father of the child) to have an abortion that they do not want.
Invasively terminating a healthy pregnancy is a traumatic event physically and there are long term medical effects–although, of course, we are not supposed to tell women about this before they end their pregnancies because informed consent might lead to the wrong choice being made.
I believe that women should not be pressured into having sex with men that do not intend to raise a child with them, and that they should not be pressured into having a dangerous medical procedure done for a man’s convenience, and that they should be given all of the information available about their child and about the effects of abortion on their own health.
This, evidently, makes me a misogynist.
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Me too, Misha, me too.
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Yes to this. Add to “often by threats from the father”, “intense social pressure from family and other women, often close friends” — some of which comes from a selfish “if YOU don’t abort, but keep the kid, either we can’t be friends anymore (b/c lifestyle singles and single mothers often don’t have much in common) or I’ll have to change, and I don’t wanna”.
And some comes from well-meant “but you’ll ruin your life” from people who don’t understand that all lives change, all plans last only until real life is encountered, and taking the step of being responsible for what you do doesn’t ruin anything but an insufficiently-informed plan.
Both kinds of pressure can be very convincing, especially to someone who hasn’t really thought the moral issues through very well.
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H*ll I got pressure from my doctor and her nurse, who assured me Robert would be mentally retarded.
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Just think how large and intelligent he’d be had that not been the case. Why, he’d be Hugo Danner right down to growing up in a small Colorado town.
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Eh. Seriously. He MIGHT have some mental damage, but we thank G-d on our knees daily. Imagine raising him if he didn’t.
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Not to mention one of the untold effects of abortions, backed up by an extensive medical study (well suppressed), is a much higher chance the woman developing breast cancer.
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And even those celebrating can let their Freudian slips show:
full thing here,
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/may/25/weekend.julieburchill
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I knew things had gone across a line when I started seeing the bumper sticker, ‘If men got pregnant abortion would be a sacrament.’ Talk about loathing oneself…
But as to your first point, yes. When The Daughter was on her way a sister-in-law who was actively feminist and pro-abortion, sent us a just published book of photographs of children developing in the womb with the comment, ‘Wow, did you know? Incredible.’ Not that she grasped the implications in regard to abortion.
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If men got pregnant, ADOPTION would be a sacrament. I keep hearing there are more than enough people wanting to adopt to take all the kids who’d be aborted for reasons of rape or medical necessity – why haven’t we fixed this?
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That’s a rhetorical question, right?
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As the Blogfather says, insufficient opportunities for graft, among other things.
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Looking at the way liberals react to things like the recent SCUS ruling I would say liberals consider abortion, not the right to abortion but abortion itself, a scarament.
They sell “I had an abortion” tee shirts, make it the door to full personhood for women (without abortion women would be second class citizens to them) without a touch of irony, film it, and want nothing ever to stop any abortion not even basic medical safety.
Sounds like a sacrament to me.
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They’d have to admit that women do die from abortion, then.
And it’s safe, legal and rare, so that’s not possible. -.-
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Keep in mind that many in power on the pro-abortion side view the health and safety of the woman as a secondary concern to the goal of making abortions as easy to perform as possible. Virginia (I think), where Kermit Gosnell worked, had inspection laws on the books that should have put a stop to his charnel house of horrors long before he got nailed for selling prescription drugs. Unfortunatley, either the inspections never happened, or the results were suppressed. And the reason for that was because the pro-abortion proponents are determined to suppress anything that might reduce the availability of abortions even if it endangers the lives of those having the “service” performed on the contents of their womb.
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No no no. Don’t blame Virginia. Two states north.
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Pennsylvania.
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I see where the current governor of that state is considering following the lead of
Clinton Campaign ActivistGovernor of Virginia Terry McAwful and not only restore voting rights to all felons but go one step further and commute all sentences.He refuses to use the pen in Pennsylvania.
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Philadelphia. Foul, fuming, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia.
O Philadelphia, how far you have fallen.
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In fairness, it is likely Virginia is similarly lax about such inspections and enforcement — most states are, because the Abortion Advocates are sure that “anti-choice extremists” would abuse such regulations to deny women their rights.
The idea that such clinics could simply comply with such regulations is apparently beyond their grasp.
Similarly, complaints about the Hyde Amendment’s limiting their ability to fund poor women’s abortions have engendered massive spending on ad campaigns to end this injustice.
That such funds could have been more than adequate to pay for those “denied” abortions is similarly inconceivable to these
moronstwitspeopleentities. It would have been simple enough to set up a foundation with an endowment sufficient for the income to pay for abortions for indigent women, but they’d rather put our money where their mouths are.LikeLike
The idea that such clinics could simply comply with such regulations is apparently beyond their grasp.
Nah. They know that, were they the ones enforcing regulations on some group they found offensive, they would twist the regs into Gordian knots to find violations, so they assume the same thing would happen to anything they support.
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Projection is the average progs favorite Freudian defense mechanism.
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Especially with our aforementioned Governor, Terry McAwful. I suspect our public rest areas (sponsored by Geico) are far more sanitary than such ‘clinics’.
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Do you have walk-in / urgent care medical clinics in VA? If so, I wonder if a solution for abortion mill sanitation is to just classify them as special-purpose walk-in clinics, subject to exactly the same medical cleanliness, reporting, etc. rules as the others. Seems it would satisfy “equal protection” arguments.
(Assuming one is forced to accept the existence of walk-in early dependent child murder facilities at all.)
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Given what we’ve learned of their use for fetal tissue, perhaps reclassifying them as Tissue Collection Facilities would work? Be more honest, at least.
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That is essentially what Texas did. No good. If it interferes with dead baby, it’s wrong per SCOTUS.
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I doubt that is the real reason, but it is probably what the prince of lies whispers into the abortion advocates ear whenever they get nagging doubts.
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The idea that such clinics could simply comply with such regulations is apparently beyond their grasp.
Probably for the same reason that the idea that “women who don’t want to get pregnant (or men who don’t want to get women pregnant) could simply refrain from sexual intercourse” is beyond their grasp.
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Gosnell was Pennsylvania, but I seem to recall reading something recently about some Virginia clinics where you wouldn’t want your pets to get treated, let alone a fellow human being. Not as bad as Gosnell, but he was an extreme case, not the minimum standard at which you’d want to do something.
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I have lived long enough to abortion rights come full circle. As a youth we needed to insure women didn’t get a back alley abortion with a coat hanger.
Now we must ensure that a woman can get a back alley abortion with a coat hanger.
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Sadly, this. I had followed the Gosnell saga in a cursory way, swallowing down my urge to vomit most of the way. It seemed that he was “protected” all the way along by being a clinic which was on record of being available to perform late term abortions … and also being operated by a person “of color” – so no one in authority really wanted to look at him.
They held back, from censoring his charnel-house because of that.
Look, I am a woman of a certain age. Just old enough to remember the whispered stories, and also to acknowledge that yes, as tragic as it is – there are for some women, in some circumstances, where an abortion is the answer. I do not approve, I am horrified by the whole thing – but I can understand why a woman might find it the easiest way out of an impossible situation. Life is sometimes complicated and there is no good answer to the complications, just what is the least worst way out of it, and that is for the individual to judge.
When I was given the word that I was, yes, indeedy pregnant — I was also offered the opportunity to schedule an abortion. I think now that that was one of the most defining choices that I ever made in my life – and it was made reflexively, “No thanks – I’m keeping the baby.”
This made a huge change in my life, of course. There were fractures in my family because of this (most of them only temporary, thank God) but there were professional fractures that turned my career into another path entirely.
But because of this life experience, I am torn on the issue of life and choice. I’m on the side of life — but I do respect the matter of choice.
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Celia, I do not know what you would have become had you taken the other side of that choice but I (and, i think, the rest of the Huns here) are almighty pleased to count you among our horde.
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I also believe that having a choice is important. Unless a woman was raped, which does happen, she made a choice that led directly to her pregnancy; and it is the mark of a responsible adult to accept the consequences of one’s choices. So I am entirely in favor of a woman’s right to choose what to do with her body: whether to have sex with this attractive man, knowing that it carries a chance of getting pregnant, or whether to refrain, which will guarantee not getting pregnant.
However, nobody has a right to choose to commit murder. There may be women for whom it is immensely tempting, because it looks like a way to “erase” the consequences of the bad choice she made earlier, and that bad choice has led her to what she finds to be an impossible situation. Not being a woman myself, I will never find myself in the situation where I might be tempted to murder my baby for my own convenience. So yes, it’s hard for me to put myself in your shoes. I’m very glad you did the right thing — but how could anyone choose the other option? How could anyone knowingly choose to murder their baby?
Yes, there are plenty of women who have been deceived into thinking that they’re just “terminating a pregnancy”, or “removing a clump of cells”, or other euphemisms — and when they later realize that they didn’t hire someone to “terminate a pregnancy” but rather hired someone to murder their baby, the guilt they feel is awful. But there are also some women who know what they’re choosing, and choose it anyway. I cannot wrap my head around making such an evil choice.
Nobody has a right to choose to commit murder.
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Not being a woman I just want it explained to me why I should consider my moral and intellectual equal someone who demands the right to abort a fetus conceived from voluntary sex which she knew could result in pregnancy but decided to have anyway because the child is too big a burden…
While at the same time demanding if a woman decides not to abort the fetus have the right to demand the male she had sex with finance her choice to accept the consequences because “he could have chosen to not have sex.”
Given they at the same time demand this is true of 30+ year old women having sex with 13 year old boys I cannot help but conclude if a 30+ year old college educated profession women is less aware of the consequences of sex than a 13 year old boy women are, by the admission of their advocates, morally and intellectually inferior to men.
That is the only logical conclusion to feminist dogma on abortion and “reproductive rights”.
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… women are, by the admission of their advocates, morally and intellectually inferior to men.
That is the only logical conclusion to feminist dogma on abortion and “reproductive rights”.
There are a growing number of things I disagree with Vox Day about, as he seems to be slipping into the “race = genetic destiny” error. But one of the things I agree with him about 100% is his pointing out that if you take the feminists’ logic to its natural conclusion, it leads to repealing the 19th amendment.
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While at the same time demanding if a woman decides not to abort the fetus have the right to demand the male she had sex with finance her choice to accept the consequences because “he could have chosen to not have sex.”
Child support isn’t a right of the mother.
It’s a right of the child.
The cases where (generally) a female teacher raped a teenage boy, and the boy when he became an adult was sent child support claims, are because they didn’t terminate the rapist’s rights.
Especially in statutory rape situations, that’s not always automatic– imagine for a moment the kaboom of automatically terminating parental rights if an unmarried couple may have had sex before one of them was over 18, and the child could have been conceived then. If you just broke out in a cold sweat at what an abusive family could do with that, you’re in the right mental area.
I am rather lacking in sympathy for the grandparents that abandoned their grandchild with a child rapist because the rapist was the other parent.
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As it does not look like a person it cannot be a person — this is holy writ from the political faction which used to tell us the same thing about black, brown, yellow and red people.
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Child support isn’t a right of the mother.
It’s a right of the child.
Who gets the money? Who decides how to spend the money?
There is plenty of evidence that in many states child support from divorces is effectively alimony. Georgia’s Supreme Court found such was the case in Georgia leading to the overturning of the child support structure 20 years ago (of course, this happen when the woman made more than the man who had custody…until then child support as alimony was just hunky-dory).
The cases where (generally) a female teacher raped a teenage boy, and the boy when he became an adult was sent child support claims, are because they didn’t terminate the rapist’s rights.
On what grounds would they terminate the mother’s rights? I mean, such sex generally results not in jail but in probation Mary Kay Letourneau got three months and was right back at it. Every day Instapundit has at least one story of a female teacher having sex with a student with no jail time.
We don’t consider such women rapists or at least not enough to think we should terminate parental rights.
If people put half the effort into seeing these women treated as rapists as do they ruining the lives of rape victims when they turn 18 by present 3-5 of back child support bills I might find your argument compelling.
As it is I see the treatment of women who rape boys as just more proof we refuse to hold women to something even resembling the same standards of men. To the women here that is a grave insult. However, a lot of women think that is there due.
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It’s a right of the child.
Who gets the money? Who decides how to spend the money?
The custodial parent. Which, counter the trope, is not automatically the mother.
If you don’t trust the person you’re having sex with to spend it properly, don’t have sex with them.
On what grounds would they terminate the mother’s rights?
If you check the details behind the headline, you’d know that it is granted pretty much automatically because they are a rapist. There have been some cases where male rapists tried to claim parental rights– since they didn’t have custody, it was a much simpler situation.
If people put half the effort into seeing these women treated as rapists as do they ruining the lives of rape victims when they turn 18 by present 3-5 of back child support bills I might find your argument compelling.
Tell it to the adults responsible for the rape victim.
If they had treated the rapist like a rapist, the story wouldn’t even exist; instead, they treated the rapist like someone that a reasonable adult would leave in control of their offspring.
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Which is why a biggish chunk of whatever money I have for charity goes to what I call the “third door” agencies. Ones that provide medical care to continue the pregnancy, adoption where the child for whatever reason cannot be kept by the mother, battered women’s shelters and legal services to get them away from abusive husband/boyfriend…
A “choice” between horrible – and horrible – is not a “choice.” It is a dilemma.
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Exactly, RO – in certain circumstances and for some women – it is a choice between horrible and horrible.Thank you for contributing to giving a small sliver of a way out,
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I (thought I)’d known a dear friend for five years before she felt comfortable enough with me to share that she’d had an abortion 15 years previously. This was not her ‘choice’; it was forced on her by her parents in order to cover up her incestuous rape by her brother. Understandably, she was still dealing with the repercussions of that event, including the fact that the ‘procedure’ had left her unable to have more children of her own which helped lead to the breakup of her marriage to a friend of mine.
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Celia, just wanted to say thank you for being a compassionate voice. I’ve been a lurker here for a couple of years, and always enjoyed the comments. Like many others, I felt I’d found an online home of like-minded souls. This discussion disturbs me. I made the opposite choice. I was very young, the conception was not voluntary, and another child to raise would have tipped my family beyond hanging-on poverty level into disintegration. I was lucky to have professional, non-judgemental health care. My circumstances were not highly unusual for when and where I grew up. We all survived, grew up and are contributing members of society.
Unlike Robin and Herb’ rhetoric below, I wasn’t deluded. I knew exactly what was going to happen. It was a terrible choice, made in tears and desperation at a terrible time. If you all now want to call me a baby murderer…fine. You should also acknowledge that I coldly chose to do what needed to be done to keep my existing family intact.
For those of you who have never had to make this choice, I am truly, genuinely happy for you. Celia – thanks for understanding that life is complicated, that sometimes the best we can do is the least damage to everyone.
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Okay, from the other side: I was an unwanted child. Like yours, my family at the time was very, very poor. Mom had an abortion (yes, it was illegal, so what? It’s actually the one way to keep it safe, legal and rare. Doctors don’t want to lose their licenses.) From what I’ve been able to piece together, she probably aborted my twin. Three months later, she realized she was still pregnant. Dad found her appointment book and told her if she had an abortion, he’d walk out. (She’d had others.)
I was born. I cost a bazillion in health expenses, since I was very premature and have had autoimmune issues my whole life.
I’m still here. Is mom happy she didn’t “throw me down” as the quaint dialect went? I don’t know. She loves her grandkids.
Look, at one time, in circumstances I don’t care to recount, I considered it as an option. Not for me, but for the lives it would ruin. I miscarried. Some of us are “lucky” that way. BUT if I’d done it, I’d admit yep, I killed a human. SERIOUSLY when a woman gives birth to kittens, I’ll believe a fetus isn’t human.
I’m not saying there aren’t circumstances in which people make desperate thoughts. I’m not saying the people who make those choices aren’t equal parts guilty and pitiable. (In mom’s case she didn’t want any children. She didn’t think she was stable enough to be anyone’s mother. Dispassionately, she was probably right. BUT we survived.)
Celia’s POV is compassionate to the mother, ruthless to the baby. There is NO way to be compassionate to both. There is no proof that if you’re unwanted you’ll be unhappy. I’m not.
Do I agree with what Herb and Robin said? I think it’s something that needs to be said and needs to be faced. The very fact you insist it wasn’t murder means you carry unacknowledged guilt. Better it be dealt with.
Abortion will ALWAYS happen, even if it is illegal. BUT to say something like “it wasn’t really human” is to trivialize it and to lead other generations of women to consider it first or to consider it over alternatives (which arguably current “feminists” do.)
Consider, please, that no one is throwing the first stone. I suspect there isn’t an adult alive who didn’t AT LEAST consider it at some point. But one shouldn’t lie. Not to the young.
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Having helped start this, I feel obligated to make clear the intent of my prior comments, even though I prefer in general to impart them with sufficient spin that people have to think about what just flew by.
So long as the MSM (and others) maintain a Cone Of Silence over this traumatic choice, women who have had to make this choice are denied the support so desperately due them. Being confronted with the (possible) necessity to take a life is appallingly difficult, and living in a culture that refuses to let you discuss afterward the various feelings you’ve experienced is almost as cruel as confronting the dilemma.
Abortion is not the greatest sin one can commit. Pretending it is not a sin is perhaps greater.
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One more point: with the advances in ultrasound NO ONE can imagine the creature in the womb isn’t human.
And once we establish the principle it’s okay to get rid of people who are economically or emotionally inconvenient, it’s a fast slippery slope to eugenics. We’re already halfway to euthanisia and “flushing” of the elderly through old age homes that are killing machines.
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Eugenics? If only!
They’re doing it for convenience! Improving the species would, at least, be some sort of standard.
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Convenience is where you have a choice.
If the kid is likely to be disabled, or might be a carrier for a disorder, you don’t have a choice. It’s expected.
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If all you got out of Robin and Herb’s statements was “rhetoric,” I’m afraid it wasn’t from them.
I’m sorry you’re hurt. I’m sorry there was no other route you could find.
That does not make an innocent person any less dead.
Same way that if I had to kill someone. No matter my motives, no matter how justified I think it was– they are dead.
You probably don’t want to hear this, but that group Sarah mentioned her priest friend working with– there’s no time limit. They’ve got lots of people who can help, or– if you’re inclined that way– that you can help.
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Long ago a friend of ours ran over a child small enough that it couldn’t be seen until after it had run out from between parked cars. She had no choice, but if given a choice she might still have made that one — if, for example, swerving would have precipitated larger, more deadly wreckage.
This is the tragic nature of human existence — that we sometimes have (or feel we have) no good choice. Better to recognize that fact and accept it than to deny or judge others who haven’t worn those shoes.
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To recognize a fact requires recognizing all the involved facts, and honestly evaluating the choices made.
Those do not change by having gone through it or not.
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Sarah, my apologies for putting this in the wrong place. I’m not sure how to reply to your 7:44pm.
Where did I insist it wasn’t murder? (NB: It was clearly homicide, but not murder. Legal in that jurisdiction at that time.) Why do you imagine I carry unacknowledged guilt? Where do I advocate lying to anyone? Nor did/do I imagine, for an instant, that the baby wasn’t human.
Here is my point, clearly. ABORTION IS A TERRIBLE THING. Not everyone who has had one is foolish, deluded, incompetent, irresponsible. I simply wanted to thank Celia for not tarring every woman with the same brush.
Foxfier, look up ‘rhetoric’. Under one definition, that could even be considered a compliment. Please don’t assume I’m hurt. I appreciate that you might understand that there was no other workable alternative for me. Why you feel that you have to point out that the child is ‘any less dead’. Did I imply that he/she was? And please don’t assume what I want or don’t want to hear. I’m pretty familiar with Project Rachel.
Again, I simply wanted to thank Celia for understanding that life is sometimes complicated, and there are times where there are no good answers. I didn’t anticipate, although perhaps I should have, that responses would conflate my actual words with things I didn’t say, assumptions that I support things that I don’t support, and knee-jerk psychological assessments based on suppositions.
If this is the kind of response expected when one makes a comment contra to the regulars, it’s no wonder that no one else spoke up.
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Alice, IMO this conversation is a good example of the problem with “tone” and “on-line communications”.
I’m sure that if you had made your statement in person where everybody could read your body language, the responses would have been different.
Also, I think if you could have read their body language, you might not have responded as you did.
Mind you, I didn’t comment on your statement because I wasn’t sure “how you’d take my comment” and I’m not the most “tactful” person around.
Please take care. :smile:
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LOL. Yeah, we regularly shut down discussion. Alice, how long have you read here? Foxfier and RES for two, and a bunch of other people, otherwise have got in knock out/drag out fights. And yet they’re still friends.
My answer to you was reasoned, and called into question things like “compassion.” There is no way to have compassion for both parts of that equation.
As for murder, most people insist it can’t be murder because it’s legal. your comment seemed to reflect that idea.
Also, I’ll point out while a lot of women make the decision in despair and anguish, it is trendy, even hip to now video-blog abortions and talk how brave you are for having them just because you want to.
AND that’s the result of lying to the young. Not you, but society in general.
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… and another child to raise would have tipped my family beyond hanging-on poverty level into disintegration.
Was giving the child up for adoption not possible for you?
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Please be assured that I was not writing for shock value.
My sentiment is deeply rooted in efforts to intellectually understand libido that well predated puberty.
Libido mainly impinged on my sphere of interest through a) choices relating to ‘family’ and b) choices which led to the disappearance of children.
I guessed that a major cause of behavioral variation was the level of moral judgement, character, mastery and self-control etc. a person had prior to the development of libido. I decided to cultivate as much of these as was possible, so that I would not run short.
1) I have never been particularly effective at estimating the thought processes of others from my own. 2) This is an issue where I am not deeply in tune with the mores of my culture. 3) My background on this issue lends itself to making inflammatory statements.
I suspect that making more controlled statements serves my ends better.
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Drak, thanks for that. I really didn’t think my phrasing was incendiary or even mildly challenging. Did it come across as ‘proud of myself’ or something? I tried not, but…. I just wanted to present a different perspective. RES at 8:32 makes the same comment in perhaps a more acceptable fashion – that we sometimes have (or feel we have) no good choice.
btw – my life has been full of dragons, and we’ve always gotten along :)
Robin Munn – I don’t intend to start down a path where my long-ago decision is held up for inspection and discussion by strangers. I will tell you this – I was 14, going to school full-time and working full-time (yes, long days, long ago, unique circumstances). My paycheck, along with another sibling’s, supplemented my mother’s paychecks from her 1 1/2 jobs and supported a family of 7. My father was an abusive alcoholic, so no help there. Simply continuing the pregnancy would have destroyed the entire fragile structure; familial, financial, social. There were no social service organizations available to us that would not have sent my younger siblings into foster care a long way away, possibly never to return (based on other families actual experiences.) I was not willing to make anyone else suffer for my situation.
I didn’t and don’t intend to try to change your beliefs. I started this to thank Celia’s voice of moderation. In my head, I see her as someone who understands that sometimes ugly things happen, and you just have to roll up your sleeves and get on with life. Maybe it’s a Texan thing?
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Sarah – LOL. Under the name Alice, I haven’t ever posted here, so I’m no one’s friend. Nor did I expect to be treated as one. What I expected, was that if anyone chose to comment, that response would address what I actually said. Most responses to me had almost nothing to do with what I actually said, more a reiteration of previously introduced discussion points. My penultimate comment at 9:13pm still stands.
I didn’t intend to offend anyone, but I must have. I’m just a little confused that this group, on this topic, can’t have the kind of conversation I’m used to seeing here.
Sarah, I wish you and yours a safe and healthy trip. I look forward to seeing your posts when you return. Thank you for the blog.
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Alice — consider the conotations of what you said. What brought about the reply. You started by literally telling us how we’d disappointed you. In your FIRST comment. Go back and read it.
And, sorry, I do think you should give — I THINK it’s Rachel’s Foundation? Fox? — a try. The circumstances you describe are hellish and leave scars you’re probably not aware of. Someone I’m very close to went through this. They’re non-judgemental and you don’t have to be Catholic. Just talking helped this person A LOT.
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Project Rachel is what I know them as; there are a lot of branches, about the only constant is the name Rachel.
http://hopeafterabortion.com/?page_id=88
here’s their help page.
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They aren’t all Catholic, or even religious; I seem to remember one of the big agnostic pro-lifers volunteers.
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“she probably aborted my twin”
Wait! What?! You’re twin?! That explains a lot. You’re the left twin I assume.
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It’s not sure, because I can only piece it from things I overheard, but yeah, fraternal, probably as the other one was supposed to be a boy.
So, sorry, no, I don’t wear the goatee :D
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*checks her own chin automatically* If I remember your complaints about genetics correctly, the lack of facial hair is more a matter of extreme effort than anything else.
(Guess I can’t complain too much, at least women in my family don’t get the full-bear-rug look from collar to navel that the guys do.)
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yeah, thank G-d for hair removal wax.
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Of course you have to be the left twin, because you’re the one that was left. (RUNS)
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Bu … bu … but she is generally right, so how can she be left?
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She left to get some writing done?
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” You started by literally telling us how we’d disappointed you. In your FIRST comment. Go back and read it.” – YOU should go back and read it. I said ‘this discussion disturbs me’. It said nothing about you or anyone other than me.
Is that what caused the responses from you and Foxfier? That you interpreted what I said as disappointment in you and your group? And your reaction is what…go on the defensive and restate talking points that had almost nothing to do with what I actually said. That explains a bit. I was trying to say thanks to Celia (who has fortuitously stayed out of this, intentionally or unintentionally), and couldn’t understand the “you said this, so you really mean this” game. Knowing that you weren’t actually trying to have a conversation with me, as a person, makes much more sense.
Jasini said, “The only thing more annoying than being told I’m angry when I’m not, is when I’m going along talking about something, and someone tells me how to solve my problem, when I didn’t have one.” Remember that? That’s what’s happening here. You and Foxfier are essentially telling someone you don’t know, whose comments you can’t quite accept as offered or address directly, that you know her life better than she does, and that she should get help from an organization whose name you aren’t even sure of. If I chose to interpret your words that way, they would be condescending bordering on contemptuous.
However – reflexive speaking is often just that. I’m certainly not a blog visitor that you would feel the need to waste many brain cycles on. I choose to hope that if, as Drak says, we were meeting face to face, the interaction would have been more… no. If we were meeting face to face, I would never share my history. I’ve received valuable instruction, for which I thank you.
I’m leaving this topic, hopefully in charity with each other. I should never have posted in the first place. If I have offended you or disturbed your calm in any way, I sincerely apologize. Thank you again for your books and your blog.
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You did not disturb my calm. I gave you what I thought was a reasoned view on why opposition to abortion-on-demand with no restraint is a slippery slope to hell.
NOTE please that none of us attacked you or called you names.
Then go read your responses again.
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Well, let me cast the first stone.
Posting under a pseudonym.
Anonymized email.
Immediately start in challenging the content of the discussion.
Acting all butt hurt when everyone doesn’t agree with every detail you declare to be the absolute truth.
Looks like a troll, acts like a troll, posts like a troll?
I believe you may just be a duck.
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I don’t think your second sentence says what you meant it to say. If I omit “opposition to”, is that correct?
In my world, that isn’t a rational response to what I said, because I never called for “abortion on demand with no restraint”.
NOTE – I did not attack anyone or call anyone names. If you received it that way, accept my apology. The things you claim I said that I haven’t said? Carry on….
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Oh, Lars….another country mis-heard from. Did you even read my first comment? I thanked Celia for understanding that life is complicated, and that sometimes the best we can do is not very good at all. Is that really challenging the content of the blog? Is that really the intellectual strength and resilience of this on-line group? One person, saying quietly, that her experience was not the same as what everyone else described? I haven’t even said if I’m pro or con legal abortion.
Given the content of what I shared, of course I’m going to come in anonymous. What were you looking for, a way to out me? You, Lars, are predictable that way. And I’m not butt hurt (classy, there) because no one agrees with me. I’m annoyed because there has been very little response to what I actually said.I was hoping to have a conversation on what could be done to help women in impossible situations. No luck there. Lots of restating various positions on various points – none of which I claimed to be wrong. But the commenters here, on this topic, paint with a broad brush, and leave no room for understanding that the world is big, and not everyone fits their understanding. Why am I even trying? You’ll just twist this into something else I didn’t say.
Leaving the field now, so you can hold your little victory parade.
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“I’m annoyed because there has been very little response to what I actually said.I was hoping to have a conversation on what could be done to help women in impossible situations.”
On this I think we will have to disagree. There was response which you ignored, choosing instead to engage with those you apparently felt were judging your decision.
Even some of the comments you chose to take as non-constructive, such as seeking community with others who’ve experienced similar traumas, you have dismissed because those offering the suggestions couldn’t call to mind the precise name of a ministry taking a multitude of names according to its various chapters.
A Google search on the words “abortion rachel” produces a variety of responses, from Project Rachel to Rachel’s Vineyard to Rachel’s Hope to Rachel Ministries to Rachel Maddow. So it is no surprise that those only casually associated with such ministries cannot offer up the sort of precise information you declaim any need of.
You seem to have unresolved vulnerabilities to which you might want to tend before engaging in further interaction with participants here. While I think Uncle Lar (N.B. – L-a-r, not L-a-r-s) was hasty to adjudge you a troll, I understand his determination and dispute his reading of your intention, not your expression.
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Thanks for having my back.
Did not judge her as a troll, only pointed out that several of her statements as well as her approach had a very trollish tint.
But then what with the puppy wars, the gun control wars, and the vicious attacks by SJW on free speech I’ve grown into a very paranoid and suspicious old fart indeed.
This is actually a very open and welcoming group for anyone who makes the least effort to be civil and honest. Or so I’ve always found it. Those who object the loudest always seem to have hidden agendas and ulterior motives.
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Sarah, posting here was a big mistake on my part. I should not have shared that part of my life, and though I won’t be commenting anymore, leaving it out here in indifferent to hostile hands is bothering me. I know I don’t have any standing to request a courtesy from you, but if you could please delete the Alice entries, I would be most appreciative.
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Why do some people feel the need to announce their departure from a forum such as this?
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Generally means they were trying to make a point, and see no purpose in keeping at it. If they’ve been responding to people, it can be a way to convey that they will not be responding any more. Usually more of a regular responder and/or answering specific claims thing.
It’s kind of the flip side of those folks who, if you don’t respond in two hours, will then start yelling about how it’s because you can’t answer their amazing logic. (nevermind that real life happens….) Because that happens, the “I’m out” happens.
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“Why do some people feel the need to announce their departure” – more generously, because they don’t want a respondent to their last comment to be awaiting an answer from them they won’t be making? Seems courteous to me, if not expressed too petulantly.
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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Gosnell
But, as the wiki article points out, legally required inspections didn’t happen and/or none of the obvious health violations were acted on.
He was “caught” by state officials raiding his “clinic” for drug violations.
Reading between the lines, state officials knew about the problems and acted because the City of Philadelphia wasn’t going to act.
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Reading between the lines, state officials knew about the problems and acted because the City of Philadelphia wasn’t going to act.
So they were complicit in what he did. I doubt that they would care at all to have it pointed out that they were ignoring the fate of poor women of color.
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Not documented in the records turned over to the Grand Jury was a second complaint registered between 1996 and 1997. This one was hand-delivered to the secretary of health’s administrative assistant by Dr. Donald Schwarz, now Philadelphia’s health commissioner. Dr. Schwarz, a pediatrician, is the former head of adolescent services at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and was the directing physician of a private practice in West Philadelphia. For 17 years, he treated teenage girls from the West Philadelphia community. Occasionally, he referred patients who wanted to terminate their pregnancies to abortion providers. Gosnell’s clinic was originally included as a provider in the referral information that Dr. Schwarz gave to his patients. He and his physician partners noticed, however, that patients who had abortions at Woman’s Medical Society were returning to their private practice, soon after, infected with trichomoniasis, a sexually transmitted parasite, that they did not have before the abortions.
http://realchoice.blogspot.com/search/label/Kermit%20Gosnell
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well, according to progressive eugenicist and racist Margaret Sanger, a lot of those women getting abortions at Planned Parenthood are expendable anyway, IYKWIMAITYD
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Its a bit pointless to point that out. The vileprogs love to point out that MLKjr himself praised her for the valuable service she provides. e_e
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Although as I recall, while Sander was definitely a racist and eugenicist and pretty much any other vile names you care to call her, even she thought abortion was a bridge too far.
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I recall reading that many of the suffragette feminists strongly opposed abortion as being too great a boon to men and making the exploitation of women that much easier.
As those are now people highly revered by the party of Enlightenment (just ask them) it seems unlikely that their concerns over such exploitation were well-founded. Such articles as these [ http://www.lifenews.com/2015/03/06/7-early-feminist-leaders-here-were-pro-life-on-abortion/ ] are a shameless attempt by anti-woman pro-life fanatics to exploit a few out of context statements by the founders of American feminism.
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Actually the court dismissed that reason by saying bad people won’t be detered by new regulations.
I expect it to be cited in every gun control argument from here on out. After all, if that logic is good enough for that liberal lion Ginsberg it’s good enough for us, right.
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What are you smoking. Not in this corrupt country. All on what the politicians in robes want to enact, not the law.
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Quoth 7th Circuit appellate Judge Richard Posner:
Spend enough time on the bench and you come to think you ARE the law. Term limits for judges.
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Oops — apparently that /BLOCKQUOTE went unslashed. The point remains: when judges and justices are determined to ignore the written order of the law as legislated, then we have not Rule of Law, we have Rule of Interpreters.
Of course, such as Judge Posner miss a critical flaw in their reasoning: if we are not to be bound by the Constitution, then the Constitution’s authorization of “court created common law” is equally non-binding.
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A minor clarification that I think does not alter your point:
The US Constitution binds us as individuals only in that aspect of our collective National Sovereignty that we delegate to the Federal (and by extension State) governments – Basically the Constitution constrains the government, not individuals directly.
But Posner is still a moron.
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Agreed – the Constitution binds the government and those claiming to act with its authority, but to the degree they ignore the Constitution they sacrifice the fig leaf of its authority.
You would think a wise and enlightened jurist would know a thing like that.
But Posner is still a moron.
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“Posner is still a moron” – the new “Luna must be free”? :D
Oh, and Posner is still a moron.
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Friends, Huns, Blog Readers, I come to tell you that …. Posner is still a moron.
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So I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that Posner’s IQ is in the 69 – 50 range?
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In this instance the appellation does not so much refer to his IQ (clock speed) as the bad programming (crappy O/S) on which his mind runs.
But Posner is still a moron.
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I think we’ve found a new phrase for the pass book.
“Snickerdoodle”
“Posner is still a moron.”
*door opens* “Come on in.”
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A PERNICIOUS moron.
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What difference, at this point, does it make?
Posner is still a moron.
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So, if I understand this correctly, Posner is still a moron?
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I don’t think a moron that moronic can change.
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Thus Posner is of fixed moronicity?
Or just that there is zero probability of upward mobility, though descent to imbecility or even idiocy is possible?
However, at this point in time, Posner is still a moron.
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We could describe moronic utterances in Posner units.
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Not very moronic: microPosner(s)
Rather moronic: deciPosner
Moronic Standard: 1 Posner
Extremely moronic: KiloPosner(s).
Unthinkably (we wish!) moronic: GigaPosner(s)
And then, the AntiPosner… but that’s another matter entirely.
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An antiposner is approximately equal to a sowell.
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If a Posner and an Anti-Posner collide do they annihilate each other and release logic?
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No, the result is a Youtube video bannered: Watch [Anti-Posner] destroy a [Posner]!
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And that is unassailable grounds for his immediate impeachment. He has egregiously violated his oath of office with that statement.
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Agree 100% Posted that on my widely read by friends and family facebook page immediately after reading about Posner’s comments. Next step- writing my congresscritter (and emailing) and asking why Articles of Impeachment haven’t yet been submitted. Has everyone here done so, or are we all just preaching to the choir?
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The sad think here is not that a judge can come to believe such drivel, but that a judge can voice such an opinion without fear of impeachment. The GOP in congress won’t do anything and the Democrats certainly won’t.
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I didn’t I expected Gingberg to buy it.
I said expect to see it in every argument from here on out…and I expect Scalia and Alito to rub everyone of them in her face (Thomas is too good a person to do it).
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You have too much trust in them.
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Scalia might be too busy to come down to haunt her, unless there’s a chance of a Christmas Carol type conversion.
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Ugh, brain fart.
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BTW — as you wasn’t raised hereabouts — in America the question “Why are you so angry/” was a frequently used ploy of the Patriarchy, intended to defuse and distract Feminist critiques of Social Oppression. It was deployed to change the subject from a woman’s righteous indignation over some pattern of oppression into a discussion of her demeanor.
So, anybody voicing such a question today is advancing the Patriarchy’s narrative that women should be sweet, demure and retiring … meaning an appropriate answer would be “Why are you so sexist?” Alternatively, one could follow the lead of Henry David Thoreau and ask “The right question is, Ralph, why are you [complacent]?”
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Also, tone policing is well known to be a derailment tactic applied by the institutionally powerful to silence legitimate grievances.
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“I don’t see a “tone” knob on your head; how about I twist your ear until you hear me correctly?”
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Modern SFF criticism/activism:
“We need diversity in SFF!”
“You need to write diversity into your books or we’ll crap on them”
‘You can’t write diversity into your books if you aren’t an oppressed minority or we’ll crap on you”
“If you try to write diversity into your books without paying one of our protection rackets (aka, “sensitivity readers”) who tell you that you can’t write diversity into your books unless you do it our way, we’ll crap on you and your book”
“If you do all of the above, we’re still going to crap on you because you aren’t an oppressed minority, or an oppressed minority who has pledged their life, mind and efforts to the Democratic party”
“Your book, no matter when it’s set, has to shove our political agenda down the throat of your readers because they won’t actually listen to us anymore – or at all – so we have to co-opt your voice for our causes, or else”
Translation: “We don’t actually like to read books, so we are going to ignore and act snotty about anything written by a white person. Only GoodPeople are allowed to write books, and we’ll pick them out. You know, the three a year someone else tells us to read. And none of them will be from white people. And we don’t really care about books anyway – we care about advancing an agenda under the guise of things people like because our politics, and our demeanor, and our end goals are so reprehensible that no one will listen to us any other way”
Reality: These people are racist morons who hate the world, or sycophants trying to get the attention of their social betters in the hopes it will help their careers.
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Fortunately, these people also appear not to read indy-published books, so are decreasingly aware of what they should (by their lights) crap on.
They will take this (fewer tradpub books) as a mark of victory, and wonder where the jobs all went. While we will enjoy the new publishing market.
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The larger the indie market gets, the more attention it will. Remember that grievance mongers will have grievances, because otherwise they might have to get a life.
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Kinda hoping the grievance-mongers’ resistance to reading indie will last until after the meme of indie-has-good-stuff is sufficiently established with the general reading public that they’ll have negligible effect… i.e. will generally be laughed at.
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How can anyone think you were angry?
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I actually wasn’t, you know? Just annoying.
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You weren’t annoying. Annoyed, perhaps, but not annoying.
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annoying too, I guess. Or at least to them. BUT not angry. They’d KNOW if I were angry.
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insert Bill Bixby … “You wouldn’t like me if I was angry … “
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No, they really wouldn’t…
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Sarah SMASH!
[No, not the furniture, jeez…]
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Sarah Smash sounds like a drink, don’ it?
Dark rum for her Portuguese heritage, club soda, lime syrup, umbrella to taste, poured over crushed ice.
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I thought it was dance for Halloween, traditionally played after the Monster Mash.
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Ah, here’s where I get to be eeevil.
* Grabs pitchfork/trident, to go with hooves, horns, and tail. *
So, you were afflicting the comfortable, were you?
* Sets pitchfork/trident aside, really really quickly. *
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Funny, when I wish to afflict the comfortable I play them Tom Jones singing gospel.
It certainly tends to trouble those whom I consider too comfortable within themselves.
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Good Evil Ox…
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Hell sweetie, I’ve seen you angry. JM as I recall.
And yes you can be very annoying, but in a good way.
You make people think for themselves, how dare you.
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When they go into pop-eyed paroxysms of outrage, it’s only a reasonable reaction to your provocation.
When you curl a lip in ridicule, you’re obviously trying to hide at least as much foaming rage…
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Ooh, so that’s how we can judge the effectiveness of our barbs, by the pop-eyed paroxysms! Good to know. I’ve got to work on causing such things…
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Embrace the healing power of Lapua .308!
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No thanks i cant even afford the ammo….
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I think you hit a sensitive issue. They are angry, nor do they like the truth.
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You know, I think one reason the Ineptus Astartes might conflate the Sad and the Rabid is that Illness of Conjugal Excess _does_ point out problems that it is outside the Overton Window to speak about, and they cannot stand even the truth of an inquisitor.
Oh, sure, ICE’s predictions and solutions start by looking at the baby in the bathwater with a very considering eye and get worse from there. Much like Ayn Rand, with the solutions she hawked. But his questions _do_ pertain to the real world.
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Non illegitimi carborundum. Don’t let the bastards grind you down. Also, semper ubi sub ubi. ~:)
More and more, as I survey the vastness and sameness of the literary and media plane, it is my opinion that you can’t talk to these SJW people. You can defeat them, you can ignore them, you can defy them, you can spit in their eye and dare them to do their worst… but you can’t talk to them.
Personally I prefer the vocal defiance and eye-spitting. Any attempt at compromise is really a capitulation to their freakish worldview, which I decided was unseemly many years ago. Fuck ’em. Let them capitulate to me instead.
If you kick them in the balls hard enough, they will back down. I know Teddy Beal says SJWs always double down, but he’s wrong about that. Put a 2×4 up next to their tender little heads, and they scurry. Bullies always do.
http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2016/06/sjws-double-down-then-backpedal-hard.html
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To have a rational argument requires rational people on both sides. With SJWs, there is an incredible paucity of reason.
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Indeed. I’ve been having an extended “discussion” with one of Them, it consists mostly of me posting facts and links to facts, and Them accusing me of “mendacity.” For, you know, posting facts.
I call it the “Damn you and your Truthyness!” method of argument.
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Myself, I prefer pointing and laughing at them, and if I am really supremely annoyed, I put them into a book of mine as a character. An idiotic, ludicrous and feckless one.
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I put a hipster in one of mine, he doesn’t do well until he cuts off the man-bun. Gets shamed into it by a space alien. Good times!
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Seen on a meme:
“Are you considering a man-bun?”
“Are you Toshiro Mufune?”
“If the answer is ‘No’, then don’t get a man-bun.”
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I’ve already been evil once today…
Gee, I hope it’s not habit forming.
I wouldn’t look at all good in a Nun’s outfit.
Oh Well…
Man-bun? Is that what a fellow puts his man-meat in?
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Hey now, keep it family friendly! :-O
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You don’t remember “Manwich” brand sandwich stuff in a can? Or in packets you added to ground or minced beef or pork, IIRC. Sort of Hamburger-Helper for loose-meat sandwiches. Did. Not. Like.
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Don’t you be runnin’ down Manwich, now, young lady. That right thar is comfort food.
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The beauty of Manwich was the opportunity for the consumer to adjust the product to suit personal preferences by adding cumin, oregano, Tabasco …
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My host family had it A LOT. That and sloppy Joes. I liked them.
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If your name is something like Krishna and you’re a martial artist from India, you can also wear a man-bun. But yeah, I think you have to start with being manly and tough. Then grow your hair later.
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When you’re dangerous enough to worry innocent pieces of landscape, you can wear any darn hair you want…
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Yeah, I had a character in need of a story wander through my morning caffeine run. He’s going to meet a sad end, smart phone, Prius, fancy hair, and all. Forget Captain Oblivious, right here we had a three-star Lt. General Oblivious.
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Next time you tailgate the shit out of three-star Lt. General Oblivious, use the train-horn you’ve mounted behind the grill of your giant menacing vehicle. Startle-reflex is hell on steering, the short little Smartcar might actually swap ends for you. [evil laughter!]
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If we’d been on the road I might have been tempted. We were in a shop and the manager knows me by name, so possibly not such a good thing. I did consider asking him if he could still text with the phone in his @ss, but refrained. I’m not a nice person after medical appointments.
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After medical appointment and before caffeine? Oy.
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You see why I didn’t start anything. It could have . . . escalated. Quickly.
Very quickly.
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“write to change the world”
As I consider two of my favorite books (there are many more) that are both considered to be greats, I reflect on this statement. Jane Austen’s writings did not change the world. Harper Lee’s book likely did. One thing both have in common is interesting people, place, and story; they both entertained.
What good is a book, however ‘good’ its message might be, if it becomes a tedious chore to read and therefore remains unread?
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told by a Latina and an Indian man
A-ha, but you’re not a wise Latina, so that doesn’t count.
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In all truth, I think I’d sleep a lot better if Sarah Hoyt changed places with that doofus on the Supreme Court. Sarah would know enough not to repeal the laws of physics as a political stunt.
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The quality of American SF/F would take a hit, but the quality of Supreme Court decisions would surely improve.
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The problem is that you are trying to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person. The first clue yesterday was her admission that she didn’t know the difference between the Sad and Rabid Puppies. After that, everything is just a matter of ignorance and spew of the File666 minions.
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The only thing more annoying than being told I’m angry when I’m not, is when I’m going along talking about something, and someone tells me how to solve my problem, when I didn’t have one.
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THIS.
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Oh, when that happens all you need do is pull out your handy .45 Colt 1911, cock it and place it against the problem-solver’s forehead while intoning, “I know how to solve my problem.”
Easy-peasy.
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.45? Way too much work. Glasgow Kiss. Much less cleaning up, and still with the satisfying crunch of breaking nose cartilage.
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Yes, but always remember that the Glasgow version, like any kiss …
requires commitment.
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Admittedly, some practice is required.
Funny how opportunities to practice keep turning up these days. ~:)
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I would have to be careful not to kill the target if I did that…
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And follow-through. As sensei said, don’t aim for your target, aim for two inches behind your target.
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The thing with that head-butting move is that you have really got to select your potential victim carefully. Kinda like kicking a guy in the nuts, you really need to suss out what you’re dealing with, before you try it.
I’m a person of excessive cranial thickness. I know this because I’ve broken 2″X4″ dimensional lumber with my face, and because of that one time where some dumbass tried giving me a Glasgow Kiss while I was trying to break up a drunken fight in the barracks one night. I turned away to look at him when he tried to get my attention, and he made his move. There was this delicious “thwacking” sound, I’m standing there looking puzzled, and he hits the floor. Skull fracture, ambulance ride, MRI, observation, and a field-grade for assaulting an NCO in the performance of his official duties. He didn’t wake up for about six hours, from what I remember. I had a mild headache.
The fight stopped for some reason, and I don’t think it was because they suddenly realized the Staff Duty NCO was present, either. Apparently, I wasn’t the first person this idiot had done this to, but it would seem that I was the first to remain standing afterwards. This fact lent a certain amount of authority to my admonishments to knock off the bullshit and go to bed.
I’ve never been very good at fighting, but people seem to break themselves on me with great regularity. I quit playing soccer as a kid, mostly because of the one idiot who went to take the ball from me, made a sweep for it, encountered my shin, and… Broke his leg. I really don’t like the sound when that happens, and the screams are even worse.
Oh, and about that shot to the nuts? It works, 99 times out of a hundred. That hundredth time? You’re gonna get your ass kicked in by someone with an entirely unlikely tolerance for and reaction to pain. Watched that happen, once, and about all I could do was laugh hysterically as the genius who tried it got the ever-loving snot beaten out of him. The look on his face, as he realized that a.) he’d just performed a perfect kick on his target, and that b.) contrary to expectations, the target was not writhing on the floor…? Well, let’s just say that his expression was one for the ages, because he suddenly realized what he had coming. If you’ve got short-man syndrome, a predilection for picking on big men, and then kicking them in the testicles? Count on things eventually catching up with you.
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> unlikely tolerance for and reaction to pain.
Once you’ve been through it once, the second time is a *lot* less traumatic.
It hurts just as much, but the “shock and awe” factor only works the first time.
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The thing with that head-butting move is that you have really got to select your potential victim carefully.
Or be krogan.
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Funniest thing I saw at a gun range in quite a while, a good-ol-boy (yes, we even have them in Minnesota) offering to ‘help’ a young lady to fire her pistol. Said young lady being Nancy Davis, SSgt USMC (medically) Ret..
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People’s Republic of Minnesota?
I used to live in Marshall, far from the black hole that is Minneapolis/St. Paul. A university town, but the SJWs were very -polite-, being surrounded by corn and Swedes.
I always thought Marshall was a great place for .338 Lapua and long range shooting. It’s so damn flat you can see the curve of the Earth from a second story window.
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Well, I suspect that the average “good-ol-boy” would learn his lesson better than the average SJW. :wink:
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Average “good-ol-boy” would probably have a proposition, too… (Yes, an honorable one!)
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*Thumbs up!*
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Heh.
French President Francois Hollande endorses Hillary Clinton
French President Francois Hollande endorsed Hillary Clinton, claiming that Donald Trump would only ”complicate relations between Europe and the U.S.”
“The best thing the Democrats can do is to get Hillary Clinton elected,” Hollande said in in a French newspaper article published Thursday, as he warned of Trump’s isolationist rhetoric.
The socialist president currently faces opposite from Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front Party, who is calling for France to follow in the steps of the United Kingdom and exit the European Union. Hollande is against the idea of a “Frexit,” and used his platform to compare Trump’s nationalistic rhetoric to Le Pen’s.
— — —
That oughtta leave a mark. If Trump were putting ads on the air that clip would deserve prominence.
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I have a vested interest in not getting to that point. Superficially, coming from a Latin country, having a masters in language and literature, working in an artistic profession, if the mob doesn’t stop to think — and when do they — they could think I’m one of you and come after me too.
This is my greatest fear in all this now. They are stirring up mobs both nominally on their side and slow those nominally on “ours” as well. Once it is up to the mobs their victories will be meaningless even if they remain standing. Gay marriage is of no value to dead people and the privilege of breathing will trump any others they may feel guilt about us having.
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Yes. Exactly.
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I’ve got a cousin (actually, several, and I know it’s a shock….) who pulls this.
It’s almost *funny* how he’ll be yelling at me, and if I so much as talk fast or show enthusiasm in any way, I’m “out of control.”
Mom’s side of the family. They’re both deaf and incredibly enthusiastic, 99% of the time, and “talk louder” is a norm.
Annoying, yes, but it’s how I know I’m winning. :D
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I get that perception from a lot of the people i know…. I know a lot of folks working in the entertainment industry, especially VFX, and voicing any opinion contrary to the ‘accepted wisdom’ is met with that attitude, especially if i dare make a response- even a completely factual one- to their silly little political memes.
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I have seen a lot of Leftists use that “why are you so angry” line as a way of deflecting an argument away from facts.
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“But leaving all that aside, lets say I was really angry. So?”
That was the first question to pop into my mind in the first couple of lines. There are plenty of reasons to be angry. You can even use the Left’s silly little bumper sticker philosophies against such a meaningless charge: “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.”
So what if you’re angry? Why is it ok for the Left to be in constant state of misery and riotous anger, but the moment you use emphatic language, then suddenly it’s “EVERYBODY JUST CALM DOWN!”
Ok, I’m angry. Now, can you try sticking to the point?
Imagine the howls of rage from modern feminists if someone told them they just sounded angry. I know, I know, self awareness and intellectual consistency are the tools of patriarchal oppressors.
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> JUST CALM DOWN
A favorite SJW tactic to try to assert dominance, cut off opposing viewpoints, and establish moral superiority.
It’s a signal that you could cut in the afterburners and flame them to a crispy frazzle.
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to which I might say “oh, I’m still pretty calm. You.wouldn’t.want.me.to.get.ANGRY. Now, what was your point, again?”
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By introducing a slight typo, the title turns into “But frankly I don’t like your tome,” which is frankly a pretty good description of most SJW-authored works I’ve been subjected to.
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Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a hoot.
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Accusing you of being angry is a rhetorical device intended to disqualify your opinion because you’re hysterical, and thereby divert attention from the hollowness of your opponent’s intellectual position. It’s also an admission that her position is hollow since, if your opponent had a worthwhile argument to make, she’d have made it; the fact she didn’t make it is compelling evidence she had none to make.
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This is 2(a) on Larry Correia’s Internet Arguing Checklist: “Disqualify that opinion” because “you sound angry.”
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“… their wanting me to write about “minorities” “by the numbers” each one the appropriate stereotype they were taught …”
Reminds me of a comment someone made over on another site few like but we’re all familiar with swarming with insulars in response to a post on writing about ethnicity and gender. They concluded that without “proper” identification of someone’s “race,” “everyone” would just assume characters were white. They then brought up a checklist of what, in their mind, each character introduction or description should mention based on each ethnic possibility, so that “the reader” could tell what ethnicity they were, and said that a number of them had to be present.
Those numbered items were impressively offensive. But they were completely serious. They actually believed that this was the “fair” way to do things. Horrifyingly offensive checklist of “attributes” of each race, several of which “had to” be mentioned each time someone of that ethnicity was present.
Brings to mind Community‘s human being: Not being racist is the new racism.
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I am angry because I resent being otherized and my views, education, experience and intelligence dismissed by sexists ad racists who consider no views valid but their own.
I tried being compassionate, I tried being empathetic, I tried being reasonable but it appears that anger is the only thing such dunderheads comprehend.
As noted by Jonah Goldberg in a post at NRO’s The Corner:
Emphasis added. Arguing with “arrogant or naive fools and oblivious dogmatists” nearly always requires raising one’s voice.
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I knew “that guy” in high school. Even his fellow nerds wanted to shove his smug, self-righteous head into the toilet.
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We had one of those my Junior year. An Air Force brat who thought he was going to come into this rural West Texas high school and show us what a mighty intellectual force he was.
He learned what a swirly was, and after that, the secondary uses of Atomic Balm.
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Youch! I lettered in Baseball in high school – as (among other things) the equipment manager. You do not want to piss off the equipment manager. (Evil grin.)
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I’m not ashamed to admit that I assisted with a snipe hunt held in honor of one of those fine, upstanding, arrogant urban morons. I had nothing to do with the bull-tipping episode, however.
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I generally tip 15% for bull, 20% if it is really good bull.
Anybody know if that is still the standard rate?
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And 18% if the bull is wee bit better than normal, I think.
In case anybody has failed to notice, many places put a list of tip percentage amounts on the bill, and base it on the post-tax amount, rather than the pre-tax. So observe carefully when you dine out.
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I’ve actually started tipping a little higher these days. I figure if times are tighter for us, they’re probably tighter for the wait staff, too.
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All tips gratefully accepted. }:o)
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Some of my city-bred Guard enlisted went cowtipping one night on annual training. And quickly found out bulls are MUCH lighter sleepers….
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Didn’t know we were classmates… I was that guy in high school.
Fortunately, the grow up hormones eventually kicked in.
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Weird. I was that girl…
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Ugh. And then they have temerity to argue that their dogmatic solutions to problems are obvious when they have no way to actually stop the events that caused them (gun control, climate change etc)
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Condescending Colonialsists™; always want their Client Oppressed™ to be People of Color-by-numbers™.
M
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Aaaand the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers just won the College World Series! It was their first trip to Omaha: they’d never made the playoffs before this season. :D
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Don’t they get tired, hanging from the ceiling and all?
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Catching the carp on your horns won’t work if Sarah gets that load of gigan-fish she’s waiting for.
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Makes ’em batty.
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Good job! I bet that today “Chauntecleer so free
Song merier than the mermayde in the see.”
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It is expected that the 3-day weekend in South Carolina has become a Four Day Weekend, at least in a certain college town. :)
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I just heard the news, and will have to wait to drown my sorrows until I get off work.
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Just don’t drown ’em in a wash, k… Wettest June I’ve seen around here in a long time. Not that I’m complaining, except about getting out the weed whacker and the lawnmower way ahead of schedule.
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I love this weather, it’s been gray and dismal all day. Beats the heck out of 110+.
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Yeah, we finally got rain last night and this AM. Not so yeah, I got rather damp as I was walking this AM. And of course it tapered off as soon as I reached Redquarters. *wry grin and a shrug*
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We have flash flood warnings today.
All this rain means we’ll miss the traditional lighting “A” Mountain on fire with the City’s fireworks display.
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Here’s a real example of tone being wrong. I’m linking to the Passive Voice because that blog is awesome, but the actual post at Humanities is really really long and worth reading. In parts, anyway.
If you boil it down to facts, you can feel for this woman. Traditional publishers’ marketing stinks on ice, even when they actually bestir themselves to do it. She was happy for the opportunity, but not bargaining to be far away from home for months and months, or pregnant and far from her husband for months and months.
But her tone is just so… erghhh. Annoying. It undercuts everything she says. I can also believe that her night with the Shakespeare actors was cool. But she talks about it, rather than bringing us in it. That makes it meh.
The thing where she obsesses about some guy doing open carry at breakfast was ridiculous. He could have been a cop. He could have been anything. Why didn’t she just ask, if she were curious about him? It’s a small place, she’s foreign with (probably) a cool accent, and unless the guy looked like she couldn’t talk to him before coffee, she could just have introduced herself and asked. Sheesh. If you’re going to be nosy, be nosy all the way.
But anyway, that’s how the 0.000001% of writers live….
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Forgot the sf relevance. “This woman” is Emily St. John Mandel, who usually writes litfic with crime stuff, but who recently wrote a post-holocaust sf litfic instead. That novel, Station Eleven, is about some kind of plague and Shakespearean actors. So obviously it fit into a lot of bookstore and reading club gigs, and recently it got picked for some kind of Big Read thing in Michigan.
I’ve seen the book in my local library, but it seemed like it was one of those books where all the protagonists were doomed and depressing. (Possibly this is not a fair assessment. I don’t usually have enough spoons for depressing books, so I stay away from anything that seems close.)
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“Sheesh. If you’re going to be nosy, be nosy all the way.”
That takes all the fun out of being smug and superior. You might find out those yokels have feelings (well, feelings other than fear, hatred and incestuous desires) and, even more disturbing, logical reasons.
Let’s face it: if those rubes had anything worth your knowing they wouldn’t be rubes, would they?
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Yeah, but if you like Shakespeare and you like Shakespeare plays, doesn’t it ever occur to you that 99.9% of the male characters are doing open-carry with swords or knives or clubs? And they aren’t usually using them to kill anybody, unless it’s a tragedy.
Of course, not every play can be Cyrano de Bergerac, the ultimate open-carry with swords, concealed-carry with his heart….
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Thank you, my dear, that made me smile.
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I fully support open carry of swords, as it’s impossible to conceal carry a Highland Claymore on my 5’6″ frame.
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Oh, come on. You could put it in a violin case.
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I’ve seen a few – not sure you’d get it into an oversized bass case.
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In my youth, in a misbegotten effort to instill some appreciation of music in their arhythmic child, my parents spent a year on trombone lessons for me. Acquaintances of that era still share tales of me sitting forlorn at bus stops with my trombone case looming its nearly six foot height over me.
While age has extended my perspective I am confident I could have fit a cleighmore within that case.
I suspect it could also be disguised as fishing rod or pool cue, although a pool cue is itself a fairly deadly weapon.
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Ya made me check it!
Repro claidheamohmors are listed as in the 51″-55″ range, overall – so my impression of them being longer must be from the length of handle sticking up over the shoulder of a big guy or two in the SCA. So, yeah, it would fit nicely in a bass case; maybe even a cello case.
OTOH, I think my own trombone case is rather shorter than six ft. Could be the scale of things in a kid’s memory? ;-)
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I was looking for a “doesn’t look like a gun” case long enough to handle a Mosin-Nagant 91/30. Musical instrument and sporting equipment cases five feet long on the inside turned out to be rare…
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Hard side banner tubes should do nicely; a character could even roll his own with PVC easily. Not as incognito as an instrument case, but much easier to get in the right size.
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My younger son thought a coffin shaped bass case was the perfect home for my Mosin-Nagant M44.
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But remember — most people who say “claymore” don’t mean “claidheamohmor.” They mean the basket-hilted single-hander (claidh begh?) the Highlander regiments carry. Much more concealable, though still not very concealable).
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Hmm – learned something. Hadn’t even heard of the claidh begh, mostly just the hand-&-a-half to two-hand swords depicted in glorious paintings and occasionally actually carried. At least that’s what I’d gathered local enthusiasts are generally talking about, often uninformedly, when they say ‘claymore’.
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Oh. And what you were probably remembering was some brawny fellow with a German great sword. Those things were huge.
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Played a trumpet in the school band, and once there was some open speculation of exactly what we had in our trumpet cases besides trumpets.
My friend and section leader opened his and removed a billy club.
Another friend opened his and removed a pair of homemade nunchucks.
Me? I opened mine and removed a length of logging chain.
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Considering your musical section, I am surprise a pair of brass knuckles didn’t make an appearance. :)
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Those were already worn
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Takes a lot of use to put any appreciable wear on brass knucks – or is that not what you meant?
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Thus turning into a potential violence case.
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Bring your claith mhor or bat’leth to Arkansas and carry it any way you want. We got rid of all of our knife laws a few years ago.
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I’m in Arizona, we had open carry before we had concealed carry…
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Come to think of it, doesn’t Viola wear a sword, too?
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Celia Hayes points out over on The Passive Voice that Mandel is probably just exhausted. Which can also make you obsess, come to think of it.
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Oh, they know very well what they’re stirring. They’re just convinced that not only will it not splash on them, it will benefit them.
“I am the very model of a Social Justice Warrior” or possibly “I am the very model of a modern useful idiot”
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They probably will keep thinking that until what ever is going to spill their brains makes contact with the skin on their head.
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Perfect!
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Thank you ma’am.
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Don’t like my tone? But C♯ major is the natural scale for my vocal chords and sinus cavities!
Your implicit threat to reshape my sinus cavities is a non-trivial aggression.
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Sarah, what happened was analogous to what happened to me in a Gun Control, with am author. She has apparently (thankfully) unfriended me since then. She got so angry that she _openly_ *admitted* that she would not accept _any_ “facts,” (no matter how provable) contradicting her *opinions.* =8-0 At which point I lost *all* respect for her.
People like her, want _only_ what reinforces what she already thinks is true. They will stick fingers (figuratively) in their ears, going. “LA, La, La, you can’t make me listen.” They *will not* listen, ever.
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Ya. I may have to try again to introduce family to firearms if they come for Christmas
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All SJWs are still just trigglypuffs to me. And I’ll try to have more of your Sad Puppy books bought and read and thoroughly enjoyed before they take me away.
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I thought that the whole point of the lefty paradigm was the “rage” of the workers and the traditionally marginalized.
Rage for me but not for thee.
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A) There’s a reason “You sound angry” is on the ILOH Internet Argument Checklist.
B) Reading the better half of the Correa household’s comment reminded me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyVMiE7jAJo
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I hadn’t seen that Simpsons scene before. Nice! I had a similar experience when I spent a year in an international boarding school in Germany. A lot of missionary kids (“MKs” for short) whose parents worked in different parts of Europe went to that school. The MKs from Germany would sometimes speak German to each other, either to keep in practice, or (more likely, I suspect) when they didn’t want other kids to know what they were saying. (This wasn’t a case of preferring to speak their native language: the native language of the people I’m thinking of was English.) One of the other kids commented to me, “I know they’re not angry at each other, but it always sounds like they’re two seconds from wrapping their hands around the other one’s throat.”
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ARGH!!!
I cannot stop reading the title of this article as “I don’t like your TOME.”
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:) I once started an academic book review with “This work is a tome. A very good tome.” The editor agreed but had to trim the comment out (250 word hard cap).
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Well, that’s understandable. There are a bunch of writers around, so thinking of books when reading here is reasonable. :-)
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The place is a-tome-ically powered.
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People who can’t tell the difference between “frustrated” or “annoyed” and angry… ?
Maybe they’re way down further on the autism spectrum than I am. Or reading-handicapped. I can find sources to help them, if they want.
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The steadily shrinking vocabulary that is being employed in texts for schools and in daily life may be contributing to this problem.
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Some think they should have a Loc on Tone.
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