The Stodgy Past Generations

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Our idea of the past has no relationship to reality. Specifically, our idea of “past generations.”

A few years ago, I accidentally found myself reading a page where some young women were talking about Christmas gifts. One of them was going on about how she was buying her mother — of all things — a vibrator. Because she thought her — Catholic, married, about my age — mother needed to find out that vibrators existed, and how wonderful they were. (Because her mother specifically had told her she didn’t want one.)

I was so shocked at the utter stupidity and callousness it took me a long time to realize that beyond this young woman being an utter and complete brat, she was utterly deluded.

Look, someone my generation could not have avoided knowing that vibrators existed. Nor could she have arrived at the conclusion she didn’t want one without pushing back on a lot of Freudian nonsense about avoiding frustration, and how terrible celibacy was for your psyche.

My generation came of age in the early eighties. We were taught by boomers in school. Our only chance to avoid having sex pushed on us was to be alone in a dark room and never interact with other humans.

Look, the boomers who came of age in the sixties and early seventies are now either grandparent age, or great-grandparent age or… well, dead.

Every time in a movie that someone talks about how shocked their parents or grandparents will be about pre-marital sex, or divorce, or some other “innovation” I wonder if the parents or grandparents were somehow transported forward in time from the 1800s or are perhaps Amish.

It’s not just sex, either. They will have the weirdest ideas, like that grandma never heard of communism. Or grandma never questioned the governmental organization. Or grandma–

Look, guys: Robert A. Heinlein was roughly the same age as MY grandmother. And in his twenties, he hit the artistic scene in NYC which was a wild sexual frontier. He also was a Fabian socialist (he got better.) And he had all sorts of wild ideas that curl the hair of young whipper snappers. If Heinlein were alive now, he would be 117. If he’d had a kid early, his kid would be my dad’s age. I could be his granddaughter. And I myself, had I reproduced in my early twenties, and had my kids had kids in their twenties, could now have a kid of marriageable age.

If you look at pictures of hippies in the sixties and seventies? They are now grandparents and great-grandparents.

So why do we have this weird picture of the past?

Mostly the media. And the fact that people who want to feel like they’re young, hip and rebellious keep forever rebelling against the same things that are already dead.

You know what’s rebellious? Refusing to buy the vibrator. Refusing to assume that abstaining from irresponsible sex is injurious to you. Refusing to believe that communism will work this time, if only the right people are in charge. Refusing the follow the insanity and the disproven myths of the last century is not old-fashioned or ignorant.

It is instead genuinely rebellious innovative and dangerous. It risks your career and sometimes your life.

On the other hand, it shocks the stodgy idiots who call themselves “progressive.” And it will make you feel warm and tingly.

So get out there, you wild person, you. Be traditional. Be uptight. Be monogamous. Be whatever the heck you want to be.

And cock a snook at the naive kids who think they are shocking us.

181 thoughts on “The Stodgy Past Generations”

  2. This. I always wonder when they were last outside the house, and do they pay any attention to what their children or grandchildren are going through at school? Because what they’re putting on TV and in movies is so out of date, the 1920s are rolling on the floor laughing at them. Read the room? How about “Read the culture” – the one you fought so hard to create. There’s nothing left to rebel against the way you want to rebel.

    As for me, I like the traditional route, thank you very much. There’s less heartache there.

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  3. Anyone that thinks boomer grandmom and grandpa were prudes would be shocked by “Blazing Saddles” or Cheech & Chong. Not to mention Richard Pryor’s standup.

    Or my much older cousin’s corn collections. Or all the loose preacher’s daughters in the 60’s thru 90’s that were the major buyers/distributors of condoms in the school.

    Older generations have forgot more about sex and politics than the youngsters will ever know. We didn’t have all the digital distractions so fsking and fighting were the main entertainment.

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    3. I recall Heinlein writing something to the effect that his generation was shocked by what his parents generation did.

      Dont forget there was a reason for all the mailman/milkman/iceman jokes

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        1. Cross-dressing? Yup.

          Women doing “men’s work?” Yup.

          “Old dears?” Yup.

          Naughty pictures? Oh sweet sheltered child, look at medieval manuscripts and tell me that the Victorians invented AHEM.

          Or heck, read the Catullus you don’t read in High School, or the Carmina Buranae and a few other things.

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              2. The choruses are incompatible, but you can sing the stanzas of Kipling’s “Gentlemen-Rankers” to the tune of the verses of Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls.” I discovered that independently, though probably not uniquely. Is it possible that Brian May intended this?

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      2. Gen Z, maybe even millenials, seem to be oblivious to the fact that their parents had to get at least a little bit funky for them to be alive in the first place. My mother used to tell people I was the milkman’s baby (I had strawberry-blond hair and hers was sable brown). Dad had a dairy/cheese truck at the time…. She has always liked to say slightly shocking things to get a reaction (then wondered where my little sister picked up the habit). Dad likes to say that if you can remember the 60s you weren’t actually there.

        Also, I can count. My folks got married in Nov and my oldest brother was born the following June. We still tease her about the ‘chandelier incident’ (if the trailer’s a’rockin’…).

        Also, the rudeness of getting someone a gift they specifically said they didn’t want is rather breath-taking.

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        1. When hubby and I moved in together, about the time we were engaged, mom was not happy. Said I was setting a bad example for my 17 year and 20 year old sisters. Fast forward 10 years, and little sister and her fiance bought a house and moved in together. Mom blamed me. I just laughed at her. “Little sister” was over 21. Their first was born 11 months later. They’d figured that because both of us older sisters had fertility problems, the odds were she would too. Let the dice fall. They did have problems later, second was 26 months younger, but youngest is 12 years younger than the oldest. Their oldest decided the same, that and she was over 30 when they got married. In fact they were expecting twins, until their wedding day, she miscarried that night. Since have had a little girl, who is now a year old.

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      3. It may have also been RAH who commented that every generation thinks they invented sex, in all its forms. The idea that Mom and Dad did (and still do; ewww!) that is a “refuse to consider it” thing. And yet they reject virgin birth, when by their lights they “are one”…😉

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      4. “But they didn’t have birth control and they only raised 2 children!”

        Correct response is “They buried 10, or more.” Rare was the couple who didn’t bury a child. A woman having a child was at risk for every child she bore.

        Yes, there were those like my maternal grandmother, and some of her cousins, who were infertile, or partly. She had two, three years apart, but the last one didn’t come for another 10 years. Paternal grandmother, OTOH, had two, grandpa would be on the road a lot, then he’d be home, two more. Repeated for the last two, youngest born when she was 45. The oldest was 20.

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        1. I had two stillborn sisters and Mom had at least two miscarriages on top of that. My brother was over two months premature in 1961. Some women have it easier than others.

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            1. We tried too. We didn’t have a number in mind. By the time we did get pregnant I was fully willing to accept the side effect of the medication I was on, which would have been twins. Did not win that lottery. But did win the important one – I got pregnant with one and did not miscarry him. Before then, one for sure miscarry, and 2 suspected miscarries, over 10 years. After son was born, zero suspected miscarries. I was not on birth control. Why was it so hard to get pregnant, let alone carry one to term? IDK and neither did the specialists.

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      5. I managed to horrify my SiL with saying that my husband’s siblings all looked like his dad, but he looked like the mailman. She said someone might believe me. I replied, “His mom was *married* to the mailman…”

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    4. Well, that is not cool and shocking. It is sexism and racism and violence and badthink, so it does not count.

      Some chick was outing herself as having an age gap between her and her husband of… ten years! Oh noes! How disgusting and exploitative! And she met him at age 18, so she was goomed!

      Okay, so they are happy and hubby is getting better as he goes, but her online friends think it must be bad! So it must be!

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        1. Even 30 years wasn’t especially abnormal; before decent medical treatment many women died in childbirth, and after that happened to the husband a few times the pool of eligible replacements would be quite a bit younger than himself.

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        2. I was born in 1949; C was born in 1961. When we met we were pretty close to Louisa May Alcott’s prescription “half his age plus seven years.”

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        3. My mom and dad were 15 years. He married at 38. Until he met mom he thought he might never have kids, and really enjoyed all three of us. My mom misses him (passed in 2006 with Parkinson’s), but has no regrets about it, wonderful memories and example from my dad (and mom).

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    5. “Corn collections”? Or should that be “corn” collections?

      I’m sorry, while I do know what you’re actually trying to slip past the WP delenda est censors, I have some odd images in my head now, brought to me by some friends who used to hang out at Castle Superstore for laughs. Because yes, sometimes it was corn-shaped.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Old man with 18 kids from 2 wives, 130 grandchildren and nearly 1000 great-grandchildren by the time he died at 104…and WHO invented sex?

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  5. “I’m not interested.”

    My psyche is more messed up by the reaction I got from other people when I said this than it EVER would be from just plain celibacy!

    Seriously, you wanted to have gay sex? Oh, hee hee, elbow each other, smirk,

    You didn’t want to have any sex? “What’s wrong with you?!?”

    Pfui. They’re all for individualism until you do something that makes it clear you’re not just like them….

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    3. The interesting thing is, like most falsehoods, it does have a k renal of truth.

      Most people in healthy environments both want and enjoy monogamous relationships, including the act.

      People in dangerous environments develop adaptations to survive those environments that can result in being genuinely offended at intimacy, or riding the human carousel.

      So it is not normal, and can actually block someone from forming romantic relationships. But the way to change that is not doing musical people: it is establishing measurable consistent trust so you can have space to relax out of Condition Yellow all the time.

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      1. A fair and decent point.

        I’d have to admit I’ve never been in a situation where I would consider myself safe to have even one drink, much less take some clothes off.

        My intoxicants have been books, music, chocolate, or caffeine. All things you can drop at a moment’s notice when the emergency hits. Because there is always a life-threatening emergency.

        (Or feels like there will be, at all times. Sigh.)

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        1. Hm. My family has a strong history of addictive behaviors. I stay as far away from anything physically addictive as possible. That includes caffeine.

          I also need to keep firm control of actions, social media, etc.

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        2. Yeah. One of the things I really appreciate about ten he way he approaches it is the attachment styles are not disorders: they are adaptations to unsafe environments that can and do eat secure attachment people alive. The issue is they don’t have the tools to sustain long term bonds.

          But it is also largely is about tools and skillsets, not really some innate or permanent thing. Which means you can learn how to do it securely too, without giving up the tool set from the survival modes either.

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    5. These are the people who think a basketball player claiming he’s slept with over 100 women is normal but don’t accept that sexual interest, being on a curve, can and does approach zero as well.

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            1. And in the latest news, said kabooms were detonated one at a time with full knowledge of who and where:

              Each of the pagers that exploded on their Hezbollah owners across Lebanon on Tuesday, injuring thousands of the terror group’s operatives, was individually detonated, with the attackers knowing who was being targeted, where he was, and whether others were in close proximity, Channel 12 claims.

              https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/report-hezbollah-pagers-were-detonated-individually-attackers-knew-who-and-where-the-target-was/

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  7. Does TV have any effect? That you can have a mental image of someone from a 70s TV show and not realize they’ve aged like the rest of us?

    Then there’s the meme saying, “You’re having a nice evening, relaxed, energized. And then you see Pokémon cards on Antiques Roadshow.” That got my beloved and our son…

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    1. Recently Young Relative was shocked to learn that the Yu-Gi-Oh! card deck and the “Wrist Duel Disk Card Launcher Dueler!” folding card holder thingy YR used to love wearing as a small creature was worth $money$ these days.

      Also live-action Pikachu plushy was worth some money.

      Time goes by…

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      2. I went to an 80s-themed Halloween party a number of years back. I got a lot of questions about where I got my bright yellow sports Walkman tape player.

        It’s mine. I kept it from back when I got it in 90 or 91 (ssh! don’t tell anyone!) You want real vintage, you should look at the barrettes I put in my daughter’s hair, from 1983 or thereabouts.

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    2. I’ve had bloopers from 1940s films popping up in my YouTube feed recently, and inevitably the comments section is full of some level of “oh, my goodness, I didn’t know they swore like that!!” and I’m like “Do you have ANY IDEA what they were doing in films prior to the Hays act??? And that was in the 1920s!”

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  8. Every generation has this weird idea that their parents, and especially their grandparents, don’t know anything about sex. Maybe it’s just the human reaction of “oh, no, eeewww!” that happens when you think about your parents that way, but there’s only person who ended up on this earth via virgin birth. Your grandparents were having sex for decades before you were born; give up on the idea that you have anything to teach them about the subject.

    I’ll admit that this was one of the reasons I loved Miss Marple. She didn’t TALK about sex, but she clearly knew pretty much everything there was to know. The younger generation’s attempts to shock her always resulted in a comment along the lines of, “Oh, is that all they were doing? That seems rather tame.”

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  9. I’m an old guy.

    Mid-60s, made it through the sexual revolution, went to college in the late 70s, did four years in the military…

    …and I’ve been hugely active on the internet since 1988. More than half of my decadent life. So no, there’s really not much of anything that anyone can tell me or show me about sexuality that is really shocking.

    (Disgusting, yes, but that’s just common sense, mostly.)

    It’s trivial to find whatever kink or silly perversion you want. In large volumes. We even have the AI tools to make images of our own combination of sex/color/physical dimensions at the drop of a hat. Once they make it easy and consistent to animate, as well? All bets are off.

    Of course, we can still easily shock the kids, because so much stuff has been plowed under by the current Guardians of Immorality. As often mentioned, Blazing Saddles. Which I have shown to guys in their 20s, who were deeply shocked. As in “is that ALLOWED?”

    Yes, allowed. And encouraged, for most of my life.

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  11. This is a consistent theme with the Ieft. Unions are good because 1910. Ray-shell bigotry is still a thing because 1960s. Women are a discriminated minority because 1950s and 1960s. They live in a never-never land of the early twentieth century. Yeah, MY grandmother (born in 1912) might never have learned of vibrators and other “marital aids”. But I have step-great-grandchildren. They need to stop pretending it’s half a century or more back.

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    1. And a lot of the stuff they claim happened, didn’t happen the way they think it did. Their idea of what the 1950s were like, for example. Or pretty much anything, really…

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      1. I am reminded of an idiot lesbian feminist on a panel at a con, who claimed that the 1950s were the root of all evil because that’s when they invented the nuclear family.

        This con took place in the 1990s.

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        1. Well, if I were being literal, I’d say the nuclear family was started in August, 1945. I knew a lady at work whose mother survived Hiroshima, and IMHO, that’s about as nuclear as you can get. (As memory serves, the daughter had to undergo periodic tests “just because”.) This was around the late 1970s. As memory serves, she was born in the mid 1950s. Aha! Root of all Evil! /sarc /snark

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        2. Sounds like the real con took place in her cranial Carlsbad.

          That’s so not what “A Nuclear Family” means, and in the ’50s and ’60s, almost nobody in America would have declined to laugh her off the stage.

          I think the term in ’50s lingo would be “an Atomic Family” anyway, right?

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  12. This. I grew up an hour east of San Francisco, graduated H.S. in 1984. You know – height of the AIDS epidemic? I was reading medical articles (in lay language, but still…) about how it was transmitted, why the gay population was at higher risk as a 19yo. It was on the news all the time. Bathhouses, parades, protests, etc. Berkeley was right down the road – mom worked at an office there. Age 14, visited UC Berkeley complete with protestors, one nude under his bathrobe. We did get hustled past before the end of his rant when he was due to drop the robe.
    My kids were convinced I knew nothing about LGBTQ+. One of their dad’s office mates was a transgender lesbian. She was on Montel Williams before that was a common thing and had that guy tilting his head looking at “her” sideways. But we’re LDS so we live in a bubble or something.

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        2. Do a search in Amazon for Familiar Tales and for Familiar Generations.

          Word Press did not like my Amazon link for Familiar Tales.

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          1. Ahhh, okay, yes, I have heard of it. Though the Alma bit was part of the title, not the author :D (It’s been a long week, I’ve been doing 10 hours days. 12, with the commute, ugh.)

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    2. Heh. Reminds me of an Ensign article I read on my mission. The Ensign issue was from, I think, the early or mid-80s, and it was about sex. As in, yes, we believe in sex… :D

      Just because we’re LDS and have fairly strict rules about it doesn’t mean a.) we don’t know about it, or what people get up to, or b.) don’t enjoy it.

      I’ve never married, and always stuck to the rules, but that doesn’t mean I am not well aware of pretty much everything “shocking” out there. It’s like you said: they think we live in a bubble…

      (to be fair, some *do*. But that’s by choice.)

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      1. As someone put it once when students were giggling because they thought they were being edgy: “Latter-day Saints and conservative Catholics have lots of children. How do you think that happens? Hint—It’s not because they buy them wholesale at the warehouse!”

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        2. 40 years ago I did a road trip from California to the Midwest. The first night, I stopped in Salt Lake City (eastern side, in the toehills, if I have it right). Got some mild versions of The Look when I ordered iced tea at the restaurant, but the small motel next door was interesting. Decent looking place, but the bed had been seriously used (and abused–rode hard and put up wet). Gave up trying to sleep at 4:30 and headed further east. I got the impression that the two businesses were definitely helping to keep the population growing.

          Later stops in SLC led me to pick places nearer the airport. Not date-places and no eateries next door.

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      2. Yes, the assumption that some people make that women with lots of children don’t enjoy sex is bizarre really. My sister has eight and still gets rude remarks.

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  13. A clarion call to uptightness? YES! Where has this revolutionary movement been all my life!?

    Of course, I meet your other criteria as well. I recall when some classmates tried playing Freak the Prig by inviting me to a reception with Dr. Ruth Westheimer, at the apex of her popularity … and were left hanging when I accepted. To this day, I think Dr. Ruth is the most famous person I’ve ever shaken hands with.

    Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

    (Dr. Ruth, one-time Israeli sniper, would surely have agreed with the latter.)

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  14. Sarah you went and pushed the red button again. [/rant-mode-engage/] Ahem.

    We, the Boomers, are the ones who smoked weed in high school, dropped acid in university (except for a couple of over-achievers in my high school who dropped acid in Grade 9 and got kicked out for making another kid need “counseling” aka heavy-duty head shrinking) and drove too fast and did ALL the things. Yes, we were those bad kids.

    My grandfather, who survived WWI despite bringing home a leg full of shrapnel, didn’t worry about a single goddamn thing we did. “That’ll be alright son,” he’d tell me.

    My uncles, who both survived WWII, likewise did not give a single damn. Seriously, they did not care what went on in the news, or if they did they never spoke of it. Never spoke of what went on in the war either. It was over, all done, they’d finished the job and now they were Getting On With Life.

    But the Left, of course, needs something to rebel against. They finally worked up the courage to rebel against the aging Victorians in the 1920s, and they’ve been doing it ever since. The fact that all the Victorians are gone, and have been gone since the 1980s, seems not to have penetrated their tiny minds.

    They’re trying to shock the generation that grew up on the Stones, the Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix and Cream. We are rolling our eyes and reminding them that Great Great Grandma Phantom would be rolling her eyes at them too, but they’re SO IGNORANT they’ve never heard “In the White Room” or “Hey Jude” and think that Chappell Roan singing “Good Luck, Babe!” is soooo edgy and transgwessive! Yeah, some chick complaining that her girlfriend likes boys, I’ve never heard anything… oh wait, yes I have. Since the freakin’ 50’s, you little dorks.

    Something else we’ve grown up with is ever-increasing government interference and propaganda. We know bullsh1t when we hear it, most of us. We’ve heard so much of it.

    When we hear that if an ugly middle aged man puts on a dress we -must- pretend he is Marilyn Munroe, not only fully female but desirably so, it sounds like bullsh1t. To object to his use of the lady’s bathroom is the worst possible crime? Uh huh. More like someone trying to draw my attention away from the foreigners flooding into the country, and the money the Chicoms are paying them. Ask Harley Davidson how that’s working for them this month.

    Not to mention, WE REMEMBER when the Soviet Union, the thing we’d feared since we were born was going to rain nuclear fire down on us at any time, came apart like a paper suit in the rain. It was hollow. A big fat balloon, puffed up with foul gasses and held in place by lies. The Soviet Union was the biggest lie perpetrated on the Western public in history, right up until Covid took the crown.

    Go ahead, you little pukes. Shock me.

    [./rant/.]

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    1. Recalls listening to somebody’s copy of Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies: “You Can’t Ever Come Down” from American Metaphysical Circus. That was a bit much and I elected not to make a recording of it. (Had tape deck; would copy. Unless it was too weird.)

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    2. Shame they couldn’t meet Brother Willy, our former pastor. Brother Willy spent his youth drinkin’, smokin’ (tobacco?weed? Embrace the power of, “and”? Don’t know), running around with loose wimmin, and getting in fights before he found the Lord. I remain convinced there was nothing you could tell him that would shock Brother Willy.

      Lung cancer took him years ago. I still miss him.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. The pastor of the church that I was a teenager in, had worked in his youth (during the Depression) as part of a traveling harvester crew … and then during WWII as a supply sergeant in the Army Air Corps, before going to divinity school (GI Bill, IIRC) and then as a reserve AF chaplain. There weren’t any obscenities or occasions of sin that Pastor Irl hadn’t already encountered, either as farm crew, or as a supply sergeant. He and my father (the agnostic) were good pals, and liked nothing more than knocking off a few beers together.

        He and Brother Willy would have gotten on like a house on fire.

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      2. The first Father Brown story is not so much a mystery as a gag. Father Brown knows more about crime than the professional crook, because he hears confessions.

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        1. All of the Father Brown stories are excellent, and show that he’s well-versed in knowledge of both crime and sin. The TV series is OK, but not nearly as good as the books.

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    3. There is a HILARIOUS YouTube channel (though alas, I forget the name and I’m at work) where the channel runner plays songs from the 1910s, all the way through the 1950s (at least) that have, shall we say, lyrics that absolutely shock the hell out of modern folks.

      She wears vintage clothing and makeup appropriate to the song’s era, and is usually doing something “domestic” while the song plays, and has her character slowly realize what the song is actually about… (And she’s got one of the wonderfully rubber faces that any good comedienne ought to have.)

      The one where the (female) singer was dropping an f-bomb pretty much every two words was, even for me, a little bit of an eye opener, lol. But after the initial “Wait, did she sing what I *think* she just did…?” I started laughing, because nothing anyone today thinks is shocking is actually new.

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  16. Now -this- (HONK)ses me off.

    Bad enough some illegal gets physical with a cop. In the below video, what must be 50+ vehicles drive right on by as the cop fights for her life. (HONK!)ing cowards! The -one- American on the road that day stops to help as best she can.

    Lady, you got more stones than all those (HONK!)holes driving by put together.

    https://x.com/policelawnews/status/1836836596873908636

    What the Actual (HONK!), over?

    Me? I see that, and “it’s clobberin time!”

    Folks, you want to live in civilization, dang well better fight for it.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. You missed all those “public service announcements?”

      “Don’t get involved.” “Stay back.” “Be a good witness.”

      That’s what they asked for. Hey, I’m not going to risk getting arrested by sticking my nose into police business, then.

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      1. Also how many “traps” for travelers are set by roadsides.
        I was just thinking that the “you have to move over one lane” (which makes a certain sense) might be responsible for no one SEEING what was going on.
        I wouldn’t have. I get incredibly nervous about having to shift over a lane unexpectedly, and I’d be concentrating on not getting hit, and never see anything beyond “police car.”
        So, there’s that.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Yeah, the move over one lane is something we really SHOULD do, given how many cops/first responders/etc get struck by vehicles when they’re on the side of the road. But it does make it hard to see what’s going on–I’m not sure most of the people passing would have seen it. I can’t tell, but I kind of suspect the woman who DID pull over is the one who had the taser hit her car as she passed, and it probably got her attention. Pulled over to see what the heck, and jumped in to help as best she could.

          And why the HELL was that female cop out there alone?!?! (Understaffing, I am sure.)

          Liked by 1 person

        2. If 1 car in 10 didn’t “rubberneck” to look I would be shocked.

          They saw.

          Sure, could be a trap. Stay alert and park oddly.

          We are Americans. “Let the goblins win” is enemy propaganda.

          Folks, you want our civilization to survive? Fight for it.

          Note that a little slip of a woman did just that. Successfully. Kept her head and saved that cop. Bought enough time. God bless her.

          Like Trump said: “Fight!”

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          1. The yoot that shocked me were the college kids who defended the US flag from the goons. I could see a bunch of vets, or a pack of bikers, but college kids?

            Bravo!

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            1. Bravo indeed. For both. I suspect it happens more often than the oh-so-pure MSM report it, since it doesn’t fit Der Narrative. Like defense against scumbags using firearms.

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  17. In other news, Israel attacked a senior leadership cadre in Beirut and, well,….

    Someone here mentioned, “Another One Bites the Dust,” and it does seem appropriate. Now, just hoping someone with the skills does the meme.

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  18. Kinda like how a year or so ago the singer Sam Smith (I think? They all blend together anymore) was all the rage for doing some song with devilish theming of his costume and all the young folk were losing their minds about how unprecedented such a thing was, while I (born in 1973) was thinking “How tame.”

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    1. They never saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show? How lame.

      I remember a nutty guy on late-night TV blowing up a bowl of Rice Krispies with a big firecracker because “This doesn’t snap, crackle or pop, it’s just a sort of sizzling noise.”

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      1. Midnight showing at the old Waverly theater on 3rd Street back in the day. All the fruits and nuts used to turn out. We used to go there all the time along with CBGB’s Mud Club, well, all the NYC places. Since we were a bunch of Catholic prep school boys with short hair, we got made fun of, a lot. Then again, the people who used to dress up are mostly dead — aids or heroin, sometimes both — and we’re mostly still here. God! It was fun.

        Liked by 1 person

  19. “Every generation thinks it invented sex.” I should not have to attribute that quote to THIS crowd. (RAH. Who else?)

    I’m convinced that the big push to transsexualism is this generation thinking it invented sex. Unrestricted promiscuity in the mainstream was their grandparents’ rebellion against sexual norms. Homosexuality was their parents’.

    There’s also a major component to all of this: “freaking out the squares”. The rebellion must “freak out the squares” if it’s going to be viscerally satisfying to the rebels. It must make people point and screech, else the rebellion is not extreme enough.

    Anyone who is uncomfortable with the fact that their parents (and grandparents, and so on) had sex needs to grow the hell up. Where do they think they came from? The stork??

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  20. Middle sister is of that “hippy” generation – and is a great-great-grandmother. I don’t think any of that line of descendants was over 21 when they married (and only one, I think, six month miracle).

    Meanwhile, I’m only ten years younger, and still waiting to add the “grand.” I’ll be prodding the son again when he’s down this weekend… I would like his progeny to remember me as more than that mean old man that kept poking them with his antique Budweiser cane.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Cousin, is a grand 3x’s over. She’s 20 years younger than I am. Meanwhile, her mother, only 20 months older, not only has 3 great-grands, she has a brand new grandson, 8 months younger than the newest great-grand. Meanwhile, I have zero grands. Sigh. Do have 11 great-nieces and nephews, oldest of which are 22. Helps that their grandmother was old enough to be my mom (if she’d had the first at 16), and their moms, the nieces, are older than my younger cousins. The difference between me being the oldest of my siblings, while hubby is the youngest of his, and he is older than I am. As my new nieces at our wedding stated “Our grandparents are the same age as your grandparents!” Close enough.

      Liked by 2 people

  21. I think Alice Cooper (a devout Christian who runs his own Bible study group and has been married to the same woman for decades) once commented that sex & drugs in the rock and roll scene was the norm–and that what he was doing was actually the rebellious thing. Made me chuckle, because he is absolutely right.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Johnny Ramone said that most punk rockers were actually conformists and that the most punk rock thing to do was vote Republican and the only punk rockers who did that were him and Iggy Pop.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Heh. That doesn’t surprise me overmuch. I rather think there’s more out there rebelling like that–but because the establishment in the music industry (much like tradpub) is capable of completely destroying their careers if they get out of line, most keep their mouths shut and their heads down and pretend to be good little liberals. Most of the ones I’ve seen who’ve openly defied it are either at retirement age, or have f-you money.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. One of the reasons for the regular arguments between Johnny Ramone and Joey Ramone was Johnny’s conservative political views. Now their estates are fighting (over money of course, not politics)

        Liked by 1 person

  22. I think I tripped over something that might be part of why they keep thinking Prior Generations weren’t doing the stuff they’re doing right now.

    Because the successful folks generally don’t do that.

    Sure, Grampa was a hippy.

    He then cleaned up, stopped doing drugs, settled down, cut his hair and acted like a decent human being, or he’d have been dead and they wouldn’t exist.

    The losers who did what they’re being “daring” doing now are either dead or Not Cool.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I was too young to be so cynical, but around 1969-70, one could have started a death pool for which rocker was going to die of an OD. It seemed like once a month, some famous (for values of) rocker made it in the obituary corner of the newspaper’s entertainment section. Not sure I’m exaggerating…

      Stretching my memory, things slowed down after Elvis died in ’77.

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      1. Ted Nugent had a little essay in the Wall Street Journal 20 years ago or so about “What happened to the music? Drugs and booze killed too many is part of what happened.” I caught a bit of survivor’s guilt in the piece.

        Like

  23. Obligatory Man Who Was Thursday quote:

    “He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists. He had not attained it by any tame tradition. His respectability was spontaneous and sudden, a rebellion against rebellion. He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike. The more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached the point of defending cannibalism. Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left—sanity.”

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    1. In light of this post, advice on how to definitely keep those rebel youth in check. Oughta be a shoe-in.

      https://www.eugyppius.com/p/help-my-child-is-becoming-right-wing

      Meantime. I’ll admit being surprised in my salad days, how debauchery and degenerate the turn of the century* crew were. Post-freud, even the figleaf of polite hypocrite was gone. Then the reference book Georgian sex from further back, then the Romans…

      I’ve been banging the drum on that “dead white males” campaign the wokesters avant le lettre ran on us in what-? The 1980s? We thought it went nowhere because pfft: Not getting rid of Shakespeare, even if you add in a bunch of brown and vagina-bearing medicrities into the mix.

      What we lost was the midlist. The equivalent European and male writers and their books, and well… All their stories of How Things Were.

      *18th & 19th

      Liked by 1 person

    2. The Pythons had a sketch about the rebel son of Bohemians who falls out with his parents and storms out with the parting shot of:

      “Someday you’ll realize there’s more to life than culture! There’s dirt, and smoke, and good honest sweat!”

      Not one of the better-known skits, but a gem for that line.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. One of the former (graduated) students at St. Angus in the Grass School rebelled by wearing a three-piece suit, or waistcoat and tie and dress slacks, on casual days. Drove his parents nuts. He found a trove of beautiful suits at Goodwill or something similar, and grabbed them.

        My kind of kid.

        Liked by 1 person

  24. The kids of this generation (like every other generation) think they invented sex. Uh, how old is the Kama Sutra again?

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  25. Apparently the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted on X that in mid-September of 1939, Russia (or the USSR) launched a military humanitarian mission into Polish-occupied Western Ukraine (note that the USSR moved Poland’s borders West at the end of WW2).

    In response, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted the original map (with signatures) used to demarcate the planned division of subjugated Poland under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

    🤣🤣

    Liked by 1 person

  26. I don’t think of myself as that old…until I point things out from when I was younger, and that the 1990’s are a little more than thirty years ago from now. Many of the movies I grew up with and songs I love are “classics.”

    And I’m very irritated with the current kids on my lawn. (I blame TikTok and older Twitter for the fast dopamine hit culture we have right now. And thinking that it’s because they thought it up that it’s new and witty and charming. I don’t think I was quite that bad, but I suspect I was…)

    Like

    1. used to annoy my daughter when she would say “hey, dad, listen to this song’ and I would reply ‘ yes, that is nice, but I liked it the first time, X years ago – here it is on my records ….’

      Like

    2. Used to annoy my daughter. ‘Hey dad , listen to this song!’

      ’Yes, that is nice, but of course I liked it when it first came out in 196x’

      Liked by 1 person

    2. A young person who is not liberal before a certain age has no heart. The same person beyond a certain age, who is not a conservative, is the one getting the benefits.

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        1. I went conservative fairly quickly. But then can’t go off of my age. My husband is older, so he influenced me, a lot. Plus when I was in college at 17, a lot of my classmates were returning Vietnam veterans. The US wasn’t quiet out of the war (were before I finished my freshman year). But when working with older experienced, and hardened, students? I grew up faster. I can’t say I don’t have a heart. I do. My empathy is high. I’m not stupid either.

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      2. Though this gets attributed to Churchill it is apparently originally a French Revolution observation:

        Plusieurs de mes amis m’engageaient à répondre par le trait célèbre de Burke: « Celui qui n’est pas républicain à vingt ans fait douter de la générosité de son âme; mais celui qui, après trente ans, persévère, fait douter de la rectitude de son esprit. »

        Several of my friends urged me to respond with Burke’s famous line: “Anyone who is not a republican at twenty casts doubt on the generosity of his soul; but he who, after thirty years, perseveres, casts doubt on the soundness of his mind.”

        The book “Histoire de la Révolution de 1870-71” by French literary figure Jules Claretie included a reprint of a public 1872 letter from academic and politician Anselme Polycarpe Batbie, him quoting apparently Edmund Burke, though the source can’t find the Burke quote documented.

        https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/

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  28. Video game news –

    Dragon Age is a video game franchise owned by Bioware that’s been around for a while. The fourth game in the series – Veilguard – recently went up for pre-purchase, and the character creator has been shown off.

    The character creator has quite a lot of options – top surgery (i.e. double mastectomy) scars, pants bulge (available on both Type A and Type B bodies), cellulite, and more. But you won’t find patriarchal things like male and female bodies (they’re Type A and Type B), breasts bigger than roughly a B size, or curvy hips.

    Liked by 1 person

          1. “Strange powers have our enemies, and strange weaknesses!” said Théoden. “But it has long been said: oft evil will shall evil mar.”

            Like

    2. I was wearing a C-cup when I was thirteen. I demand representation!

      [/sarcasm off. They finally levelled out at DD some years back.]

      Like

      1. Yeah, I’ve seen multiple tweets from amused women noting that in the new character creator, they can’t even create a character with their own perfectly normal body shape.

        Liked by 1 person

    3. I saw a screenshot: the “chest size max” might do for a moderately fit man’s pecs… one with a sedentary job who only goes to the Y for the pool and the treadmills. My own are bigger, and I barely bench my own bodyweight.

      As to calling them mammaries? Are we echidnas now?

      Like

  29. Improving my mood greatly, watching a Forged in Fire tournament.

    Yeah, TV version. Still neat to see how folks approach the various asks, and how few understand “edge”.

    The fellow I apprenticed with, -he- made knives that contractors used and abused.

    R.I.P. “R” You are missed.

    Liked by 2 people

  31. My stepsister used to pull that s*7t on my stepmom. “you’ll love this movie!” (that spits on Christian culture) it will broaden your horizens!” My stepmom knew what apostasy was, she didn’t need it shoved in her face. That’s not being helpful, that’s being an arrogant little punk.

    Liked by 1 person

  32. i miss the days of my youth, people at least tried to have some class and be polite, every other girl you met wasnt trying to look like a whore or a sailor. People now are just disgusting if you ask me, all skin all the time, is why i like my girl, she aint like that, has class, she is younger than me by a bit and half her generation seem to be in a competition for who can be more lude. Im not a prudish dude, just think leaving some stuff for private and for the imagination is a good thing. The worst part is half the ones letting it all hang out, really need to cover that schitt up, ya know, if its tight and taught, well theres that but these uglyish over weight rude people just need to stop! Is why i wouldnt cry if half the world went away, cities first

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  33. From another great writer:

    “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?…The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
    ― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

    Hmmm…

    I would like to buy a copy of The Gulag Archipelago for every graduating Senior at my church. Solzhenitsyn says the same things as Ayn Rand; but more realistically — Atlas Shrugged was really pretty dry Science Fiction, though I confess I read it.

    Liked by 1 person

  34. Even though I get lumped in as a baby boomer along with people almost 20 years older than me by the official Committee of Generational Boundary Years Determination Committee, I’m roughly the same age as Sarah. While I was present in the 60s, the Summer of Love for me was more about looking forward to first grade than any of the hijinx then ensuing up the road in SF.

    But growing up in the 60s and 70s and 80s, so from the hippies free love through disco to AIDS, to think that sex was somehow a vast unexplored terra incognita is just crazy.

    And it is without a doubt that the true Boomers only came about because the Greatest Gen was going at it like rabbits, just like the prior generations did, but this time the infant survival rates skyrocketed due to the midcentury medical advances.

    If you go back and look into what the 1920s flappers were getting up to in their scandalously short skirts…

    And so on and so on. RAH (pbuh) was right.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Bah!

      Started college in San Francisco Fall of 1967, immediately after the ‘Summer of Love’.

      The heroin dealers moved in that fall. By spring 1968 there was darn little to love in the Haight. Wasn’t too bad in daylight …

      Liked by 1 person

  36. OT and heads up: we may be starting to see, “supply chain shortages,” again. The commissary was almost completely out of beef, with the beef counter hidden by curtains. There were other empty shelves and signs saying, “We are having problems with our distributor.”

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    2. 10,000 head were lost this spring with the Panhandle range fires, either to injury or being sent to slaughter due to lack of feed. That and the earlier drought hit the area hard. The range is great right now where the fires were (typical), but ranchers are still understocked, and the cost of feed inputs is through the roof. There’s just not that many cattle. Things will even out in a few years, IF the drought stays away and if the feds and others don’t mess with the fertilizer/feed/land access.

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  37. The title of this post makes much more sense on my PC than on my phone, which renders it as

    The Stodgy

    Past Gene

    rations

    Which while interesting a concept, is not quite related.

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