The Counterculture

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

When I was in college I read “Counterculture comics” and counterculture magazines, mostly because I read everything, and they tended to be cheap or free or really free. (Really free is “Please take a copy of my comic. Please, please, please. I haven’t been able to give one away to random passersbys in weeks. Please take one, or I’ll cry.”)

Most of them weren’t particularly exciting. Look, guys, most of anything is not particularly exciting or particularly good.  Most cookery is not really exciting or good, but when what you want is some food, an egg sandwich is fine, and you just want plain bread and a fried egg, and you leave the fine points of cookery, herbs and how long you should beat the egg to the froo froo people. As long as it’s well cooked and tasty, that’s enough, right?

But one thing I’ll give them. Most of them, shown to a professor, or heaven forbid my parents would result in a heart attack, or at least a hissy fit, and probably revocation of my ability to read things unsupervised, if not to walk out unaccompanied. (No, really. Some of them, if I met my younger self I’d ask her if she was ready for a straight jacket to be reading that utter trash.)

Now mind you most of them managed that by being crude, lewd, bizarre or taking potshots at religion that didn’t even make sense in any sensible universe (which means they’re the background of Netflix series now. Never mind.) Which would legitimately shock the “adults” who “controlled the culture”.

Or something…

Even back then unless they were totally out of their rockers – which happened – and advocating for gunning down anyone over thirty, the political prescriptions of these publications shocked no one. Their Marxism was bog standard the same as those of our college students, and that of a lot of people’s parents, and their screams to eat the rich had been expressed better if just as stupidly earlier in the century, and were by then in all the mainstream publications, and all the assigned books.

So they were mostly counterculture in going where no one had done before in … well, being explicit, gross or bizarre.  All of which were, I grant you, shocking, but perhaps only because Portuguese society was relatively hidebound.

Anyway, that was the counterculture.

The problem we have right now, though, is that the culture views itself as the counterculture, which results in some truly bizarre distortions.  One of them being the absolute certainty of the very strange left – including the people who were writing the gross, bizarre and other strange stuff people doing the “counterculture” comics and books when I was a kid – that they are fighting against the establishment, while controlling the entire establishment, and thinking they are being oppressed when some parents protest or some people say they’ll pray for them.

At the same time, the kids raised under this regime think they’re being daring, brave, or pushing the envelope doing things that would bore my grandmother – like push the envelope a little (for perspective, she was a little older than Heinlein) about people being gay or having sex before marriage or equally anodyne topics.

Meanwhile, if you try to say real counterculture stuff – if you question Marxism, or say anything for traditional morals or culture — which is outrageous to most people alive today, they say you “sold out.”

We must be the world’s stupidest sell outs, people. If we go along with the establishment, we get all the grants from anti-racist and anti-discrimination and anti-whatever groups financed by international billionaires. We, instead, insist on questioning things, and pointing out that what they call “anti-racism” is basically racism which apportions everything by race; and what they call antifa, considering its tactics and beliefs and the type of people they recruit, is basically the same as brought Hitler to power, should be called ante-fa; and that the only valid women in current feminism are men manque. All of which means that we place ourselves instead in the invidious position of being considered idiots by the conventional left, sell outs by the stupid left, and end up making no money (except donations. Thank you) because our side has no access to either government money or NGOs.

I mean the number of things available to the left, under the cover of “fighting” things that only they do is astonishing. The other day I came across an advertisement on facebook for Noam Chomsky teaching how to combat “disinformation.”  He must be amazing at it, considering how much he produces. Oh, and a “science fiction writer” who has written books much talked about and not read, taught a class on “writing while black.” Try to imagine how that went. “Be black. Write.” Yeah. Of course the idea was that she suffered some mental anguish or discrimination, because apparently we stamp our skin color at the top of our manuscripts. Or perhaps use paper that magically imprint our skin color. I don’t know. It’s not like using characters “of color” (ever so much better than “colored”) is a distinction. I think we’re supposed to make sure we have a few, and they are heroic and flawless.  Same for women and anyone of divergent sexual attraction.

Meanwhile there are magazines that openly say they do not want any conservative writers submitting. The rest also don’t want it, but they only whisper it quietly in their offices.

And yet…  And yet, we keep doing it. And we have the overwhelming numbers.  And we’re winning as the election proved.

There is a power to the counterculture, to saying the repressed that everyone else is thinking.

Cultures instinctively reach for that which arises from everyone’s mind and can’t be spoken outloud because the authorities and the overculture forbid it.

And we’re telling the truth because we can’t help it, and because it drives us insane to see the truth and not tell it.

We’re the counterculture, the real one. And sure, there’s deprivations and suffering to live with, but there’s victory at the end, and the joy of knowing we did what had to be done.

And that’s why in the end we win, they lose.

Keep telling the truth and be not afraid.

151 thoughts on “The Counterculture”

  1. That was difficult to read, not because of the content, which it true, but because of the format. I never knew I was so paragraph-centric.

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    1. It was written in paragraphs, it’s just that the normal blank lines between paragraphs didn’t show up for some reason, probably technically-related.

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      1. It’s even crazier on Pale Moon. Long sentences wrap the last word or two, then I’ll get a hard CR-LF for the next sentence. It’s just a wall-o-text on Firefox.

        Some days are like that…

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          1. Amen.

            I’m fairly sure this means it was written in an email program, or there’s been an update to the copy feature, so it’s turning the wrap into a single-paragraph and any double-paragraph was deleted.

            Oh, and bad interaction with the “block” nonsense that WP(DE) keeps shoving in harder.

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                  2. “You killed my post. Prepare to die.”?

                    Yeah, I know, “does not mean”, but it just popped into my head.😉😜😜

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            2. I’ve been noticing for a while that for quotes, “paste as plain text” works better than just paste, in both Brave and Chrome.

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      2. Not the first time I have had the opportunity to say ‘Bleeping Computers. My comment was not meant as a criticism. Enjoy your work. Thanks from all of us.

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  2. My counter cultural media were publications like “2600” which depicted the machinations of big corporations and the government while showing the grey side of tech.

    Combine that with the plethora of little quarterly ‘zines at B&N that covered the spectrum of non-main stream polictical thought, there was some meat for discussion among the 3:00 AM lunch crew of third shift. Every idea was examined and weighted without the smothering junk information influence of daytime media. Twilight world was closer to real reality.

    Plus the BBS’s and the early internet was full of choice tidbits of thought and interesting people. We were living in the future.

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  4. Of course, there’s the “Speaking Truth To Power” when the speakers are more powerful than the people being spoke to. [Sarcastic Grin]

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    1. There are certain phrases which when used in the establishment media put me on the alert for massive quantities of incoming B-S: “Speaking truth to power” is one of them, and “Just raising awareness of …” is another. “The people’s (anything – park, collective, community, etc.) is yet another dead giveaway, just as any nation-state labeling itself as “The People’s Democratic Republic of —” indicates that it is in reality anything but that.

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        1. Yeah, I’ve got a twitch born of 20 years of work in higher-ed when it comes to “community.” You know there’s BS incoming when people start throwing that word around.

          And don’t get me started on “making a difference.” The couple years before I finally got out, I blew up more than one marketing meeting by pointing out that Hitler, Stalin, and any number of serial killers all definitely “made a difference,” and we might want to be a little more precise about what and how.

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      1. Liberals, thus liberal bumper stickers are quite rare in Flyover County, but in my travels (and travails, but enough of that :) ) west of the Cascades, “Question Authority” seems to have utterly disappeared from Wokeswagens and ilk.

        There’s a tiny appearance of honesty in that. Very tiny.

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        1. I’ve seen it morphed (by leftists, of course) into “Question Authority And The Authorities Will Question You”; a clear declaration of their approval of collectivism and authoritarianism.😒

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            1. If you can’t think of any bosses you’d like to have thrown out the window, either you don’t have a lot of job experience… or else it’s quite likely that you are the boss that your underlings secretly wish they could throw out of the window.

              I haven’t read the responses to Larry since X doesn’t like you when you’re not logged in, but I rather suspect many of them fall into category 2.

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                  1. During an…. interesting of internet history, shall we say, there would an occasional mention of $HOUSEMATE’s net.fame and some whiner would whine “Aren’t the 15 minutes of fame OVER yet?” And THAT was when there’d be a phone call, asking for some appearance or interview . Mind, this was without seeking such. It Just Happened.

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            2. Hell, I always thought that was a reference to the classic song by Moe Bandy & Joe Stampley, containing the lyrics “I threw my boss outta winder an’ got fired from my last job”.

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          2. If they require an explanation for the first paragraph of Monster Hunters: International, then they need to pick a book more suited to their reading comprehension level. Even The Cat in the Hat might be too advanced for them.

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        2. Larry enjoying the battle of wits with unarmed (but noisy) opponents.

          And yes, George, if you write an astonishingly popular series and write yourself into a corner, you still owe it to your readers to at least try to write your way out of it. So did David Gerrold, who wrote himself into the corner of “War Against the Cthorr,” and never finished.

          For that matter, John Ringo hasn’t really ended the Posleen series.

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            1. The Muse is funny that way, also sometimes it takes the back brain a moment (Brain moments are non linear) to work all the threads together into a nice tapestry. Then there is also writer boredom and the other stories fighting to get out and Arrggh I need to be writing…still can’t get that elf on the train…

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              1. But he had so many other things to write! I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the ‘Black Tide Rising’ series, or ‘Monster Hunter Memoirs’, or ‘Beyond The Ranges’.

                Who knew there was a larval Old One lurking under New Orleans? (I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there’s another one under D.C.)

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                1. Understood — and sad that one interesting post-apocalyptic series he was writing with junior co-authors seems to have stopped at the first book.

                  I need to get back to work on several of my indie projects, although stuckness is only one part of it. Time management is really hard when your control over your time is limited, even when the demands are legit.

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                    1. Pretty sure that would be #4. If there is a book in the series after:

                      1. Live Free Or Die
                      2. Citadel
                      3. The Hot Gate

                      …I can’t find it.

                      Still say he should have named Troy’s A.I. Hector. Forget that useless fop Paris.

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            3. Life is seldom neat, and often very confusing. I’m actually rather pleased at the way Raymond Feist ended his Riftworld series. But it seemed to take him a trilogy and a half to get there. ;-)

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            5. California having entered the “can’t hide the Left-caused disasters” phase of its Rand-novel ruin, it is now time for anyone not interested in an upheaval lifestyle to leave, ASAP, while some assets can be salvaged and moved.

              Last call, folks.

              Many of the remaining folks are going to demand change, largely by voting, some by recall petitions. A few by stupid.

              Assuming the system allows actual change by vote, the folks who created this mess are unlikely to remove the problems.

              Best likely case is a delay while moderate lefties try fixes. Then, the left majority resumes voting hard lefty, and MOAR! Neither set can reverse the course.

              Possible that sanity runs Red, maybe even MAGA, and CA flips. I very much doubt the system will allow it. Could happen. My liver spontaneously healed miraculously. So might CA. But assuming not, then what?

              Then folks are going to experience “next”. Fire, blackouts, earthquake, who knows. But “da man” will lose more control. And demonstrate decades of stupid. And wonder why their Unicorn Fart Front isn’t solving things by farting harder.

              And the whole left coast is packed with the left-yoot, and their hardmarx cadre, that like riots. Watching the Left eat it’s own cooking would be amusing.

              Failed State can happen fast. If that isn’t your desired lifestyle, get out now. If not, have multi-tier escape plans, and understand you will travel light and probably poorer on arrival. May I suggest a bank or credit union in a free state as insurance?

              Can we set up a “ground-level railroad” to assist like-minded folks to escape? (Grin)

              Oh, I am not -quitting- on CA. Quite frankly, I expect that within 4 years it will be so bad the US government sends in the US Army to pacify it. Which horrifies me. But that ends up with 3-6 new states, probably all but one solid Red. Might be the whole Left coast, and a sixty star flag, but I doubt the implosion gets bigger than CA.

              So last call. Scoot, or prep to scoot later under adverse conditions. Possibly actively opposed.

              And folks have largely forgotten how much crap the dust bowl folks had to deal with, landing elsewhere with nothing. “Okies” was a slur.

              Will be interesting to see who Gov Hairgel throws under the electric bus to salvage his 2028 Whitehouse run.

              Popcorn?

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                1. WP has been doing that. I’ve had many attempted new threads that got grafted on as a reply. Of course, with the way conversations go here, not sure it was all that noticable. :)

                  I don’t know about Washington, but I’m guessing that the NW corner of Oregon is also going to implode. Mercifully, most of the supplies we need come from places upstream of Portlandia, and given sufficient motivation on the part of the rest of the state, NW Oregonians can be “persuaded” to stay in NW Oregon.

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                  1. The Puget Sound area (aka the Seattle Blob) is in similar shape to Portlandia. Seattle is in an accelerating spiral of insanity. There are pockets of sanity in western WA, but only small isolated ones, as far as I can tell.

                    Also, much like Oregon, the eastern 2/3 wants nothing to do with the western slice. We’d do much better on our own or as part of Greater Idaho. Maybe the new state of Washegon?

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                  2. If only we could get their legislators to stay there.

                    A carve-out in the mold of Classical Syracuse – I asked Grok, and it tells me

                    Syracuse, particularly under its tyrants, might be argued as having some of the worst governance in terms of ethical leadership and freedom

                    Also applies to Seattle, San Francisco and what’s left of Los Angeles. City-states, walled to keep in their miasma.

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                    1. Mary Renault did a very good historical novel (The Mask of Apollo) covering the later history of Syracuse. Her case was the very competent tyrant was so afraid of being overthrown he blocked his heir from any form of responsibility, with predictably bad results.

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                    2. Like happened in the Ottoman and Safavid Empires. “I don’t want my sons to overthrow me, so I’ll let them stay in the seraligo/harem and party instead of learning how to lead the army and rule the empire. After I die, the vizier will announce who is the real heir.”

                      It worked for a while, sort of, ish. Then it didn’t.

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            6. And David Weber seems to have stalled on the second arc of his Safehold series and the Bazell Banahkson series. Arrgh.

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          2. Authors don’t “owe” readers anything beyond their published works, unless there is an actual legal contract with them.

            The author isn’t your b—h. Correia and others have stated this fact.

            You start reading an unfinished series, you take your chances. Same with watching a new television series. If you are lucky, you might get resolution. Good thing we have a cornacopia of choices.

            As for David… If he would spend more time writing and plotting instead of chasing younger men at conventions, he might be more successful.

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            1. On the one hand, it’s true that authirs don’t owe the readers anything. On the other hand, there are quite a few people claiming that Martin and Rothfuss (and to a lesser extent Jordan) have turned people off from buying into a series until the series is finished. Which means that new writers just starting their trilogy don’t sell any books, which means they decide this writing thing isn’t worth it.

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              1. All too true — and yet another reason that Dean Wesley Smith, among others, is basically telling new writers not to even bother with traditional publishing, at least for novels. Maybe short stories to periodical and anthology markets that aren’t rights-grabby, but for novels and collections, go straight to indie.

                Speaking of which, I need to get back to work on some projects that I’ve promised people.

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              2. Authors aren’t “owed” triologies or series ;)

                As for the three examples of writers that “scare” readers off, I couldn’t finish a single volume of any of their typeset diarrhea. And I’ve slogged through some absolute ordure of books in my lifetime. Rothfuss wrote “Mary Sue goes to Hogwarts” in insipid fancy prose.

                Successful authors like Correia, Butcher, etc… didn’t have these issues, even though they were newbies at one time too. The top tier that can entertain and deliver over time gets the spoils.

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              1. AI

                “Alexa, please complete Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” as a Public Enemy rap song in the style of “Shut ’em Down.””

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  5. Yeah, “Counterculture Comix.” Always remember that guy Disney sued the pants off for using Mickey Mouse in his gross comic. I read that comic. It was stupid. Zero originality, all played for “shock” value. Like almost everything else from those days.

    Now of course all that is Mainstream. Doing anything that isn’t gross, stupid, perverse and “shocking the squares” is considered “Conservative.” And they all shudder delicately and whisper “eewww” quietly to each other.

    While at the same time, people are beginning to wake up to the fact that there hasn’t been a successful “Woke” TV show, ad campaign or movie. At all. The more Woke it is, the less people put up with it. Culminating with the Bud Lite commercials, the legendary straw that broke the camel’s back. Utter brand destruction, one of the worst in history.

    It is my humble opinion that before long, the least whiff of Marxism or Woke propaganda will destroy the sales of any media product. People simply won’t stand for it.

    Example, is anyone excited to see the next Captain America movie coming out this spring? All I’ve heard is people mocking the trailer. I’ve seen the trailer, and they’re right. It’s going to be pretentious Woke garbage. A dumpster fire of DEI. As bad or worse than Fantastic Four the reboot. There’s an FF movie coming too, all I’ve seen for that is the art and I predict it will bomb like a B-52. Brand destruction.

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    1. FF, again? haven’t they pounded that one into the ground by now? How many times have they rebooted it, just in the last ten years? There are so many, many other stories that could be told without rehashing the old stuff over and over again.

      This is a large portion of why Hollywood is failing. Not just the Woke crap they keep shoehorning into everything, but the complete and utter lack of creativity or originality. New, creative, or unusual stuff gets bought and sat on so no one needs to complete against it while they churn out remake after unnecessary remake.

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      1. Fox had the rights to Fantastic Four, and failed with two different casts.

        FF is now back under Marvel’s control, so they’re hoping to do better with it as part of the MCU. But the MCU has been slipping lately…

        Also, Robert Downey Jr . is coming back to play Dr. Doom.

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        1. So he’s going to play an egocentric millionaire inventor? That’ll be a major departure from his previous famous character; let’s see how that works out.

          Do I even need the /sarc tag?

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      2. Cue the ’80s Bloom County story when Opus and friends visit a university campus, and inadvertantly trigger a student protest against the university establishment – i.e. the left.

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    2. I remember the (hard R, I suppose) rated Disney parody poster circa 1970 that must have been part of the lawsuit. Didn’t shock me, but I didn’t buy one, either.

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  6. With the latest California fires it may be that “Woke = Broke” is shifting towards “Woke = Dead” in the preception of a good chunk of the public.

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  7. “The problem we have right now, though, is that the culture views itself as the counterculture”. …. Just so.

    Speaking of culture. the Labour MP for Rochdale (used to be Cyril Smith, a convicted Pedo) and for Rotherham have split with Starmer over inquiry. In other news, the Labour MP for Hove who called for the investigation of Elon Musk has been arrested for soliciting boys (noncing) and Elon has been popularizing a list of 50 Labour politicians (not MP’s) what been done for noncing. This is a huge change in British culture. Now they need to do the Tories because noncing is a cross party affair. Then do the US, the 300,000 or so minors that came over the border during the Biden interregnum had to have gone somewhere. This cannot be buried, the guilty must be named, shamed, and punished,

    Musk buying Twitter is the most decisive act so far this decade, possibly more. It’s allowing the communication that allows culture to change and when we can communicate .. we win and they lose.

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    1. Musk and Twitter – great point. I used to rail against conservatives when they’d go off on the MSM for being biased. My complaint was that we’ve had 40 or more years to plan and take action against the MSM. I suggested that if they wanted a real plan, get some billionaires together and do a hostile takeover of at least one of the big 3 networks. But here’s Musk and he’s actually done it!

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    2. Musk and Twitter – great point. I used to rail against conservatives when they’d go off on the MSM for being biased. My complaint was that we’ve had 40 or more years to plan and take action against the MSM. I suggested that if they wanted a real plan, get some billionaires together and do a hostile takeover of at least one of the big 3 networks. But here’s Musk and he’s actually done it!

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      1. There used to articles in some magazines (Popular Electronics was one) about “What Will Save AM Radio?” NOBODY forecast that it would be the “Right” using ‘Talk Radio’ on AM as the counter-culture channel because all the Cool Kids were using FM and TV… and thus overlooked the ‘uncool’ AM band…

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  8. The revolutionaries in Russia were all for counter-culture, until they took over. Then, while they became the establishment, they used their power to crush counter-culture, calling it reactionary. That seems to be the current situation now, or perhaps whenever the far left gains power.

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        1. “There is no ‘Why’, Grasshopper. There is only ‘WPDE’.”; pastiche of “Kung Fu” and “The Karate Kid”.

          Wisdom of the Inscrutable Orient, and all that…😉

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  9. The revolutionaries in Russia were all for counter-culture, until they took over. Then, while they became the establishment, they used their power to crush counter-culture, calling it reactionary. That seems to be the current situation now, or perhaps whenever the far left gains power.

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  10. The most intriguing and semi-useful publication of the “counter-culture” was the “Whole Earth Catalog”.

    But then again it was based on tools, organic gardening, independence and the back-to-land/basics movement as well as personal technology. Also one of the first publications to promote free software and nerd networking.

    I tended to skip most of the any political tree-hugging commentary and enjoy the practical, more libertarian content.

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    1. There are non-political (or very quiet) hippies out there, often associated with crafts. They are usually a pleasure to deal with. Our last encounter with such were the owners of a small Yakima Valley winery. The place was totally unpretentious, including the cat, and the wine is quite good. (Paradisos del Sol, for anyone interested).

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        1. The old reputation for Oregon was ‘Armed Hippies’. That probably went away about the time of the last R governor.

          A little bit like ‘Mostly Harmless’ in HHG2G.

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    2. I bought (and wore out) The Last Whole Earth Catalog when it first came out. “Divine Rights Trip” really spoke to me. I was a rabbit-raising organic gardener on a 13-week round-the-USA camping trip in my (very used) VW microbus. A walking, talking meme. It was a great summer.

      Then I had to go back to high school.

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  11. I was thinking about the sharp decline in mainstream SFF entertainment since the mid-late 2000s and it hit me recently that we’ve probably lost an entire generation of brilliant young authors and creators’ works because they didn’t match the desired political paradigm and they either didn’t know about indie or the indie platforms and patronage systems weren’t fully developed.

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    1. I’ve recently been reading some utterly brilliant fan fiction and watching incredible fan films. Others like Critical Drinker and John C Wright have pointed this out: just imagine if instead of spending $200 million on trash like the Acolyte, they’d given a hundred $2 million grants for fan works and canonized the best?

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      1. There are tens of thousands of great stories, sci-fi and otherwise that never make it to the silver screen.

        I always thought that decent animation would bring more to life than flashy special effects.

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        1. It could well do so. And with today’s computer systems, a helluva lot cheaper. We may be seeing the start of a “sea change” in entertainment.

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          1. The Trek fan films were so good Paramount sued to stop them, and now enforces a set of rules so adverse they hope the fans can’t see how bad the pros actually are.

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              1. The Movie “Galaxy Quest” didn’t pretend to be a Star Trek movie and I’m willing to bet that the makers of that movie discussed with Paramount concerning it.

                The Star Trek fan movies were set in the Star Trek universe.

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        2. That’s one thing the AI may help enable, bringing stories to animation. Granted, it’s going to take SOME human input to feed the monster, but the possibilities are there. Darkship anime anyone?

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    2. P.S. I still don’t know where this groovy38e2a5c308 username came from. It’s not what I’m typing in.

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  12. BTW, was just amused by a reposting of a European gentleman explaining of course they have free speech. It’s just misinformation and disinformation are bad, and so they are not tolerated. Americans just don’t understand this.

    And another repost, this one of a leftist “debunking” the idea that leftists can’t meme. It consisted, of course, of a flat, pedantic, absolute assumption of leftist intellectual and moral superiority combined with an utter lack of humor. What else is new?

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  13. Fortunately, Sturgeon’s Law doesn’t apply to cooking, or 80% of us would be eating crap. Oh wait, that’s the standard American diet according to NIH and the FDA.

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    1. When I want peanut butter, I look for peanut butter with no sugar added. It’s impressive how few brands that includes. A lot of other food products have unnecessarily added sugar as well. I try to minimize my consumption of canola oil and other seed oils, and that rules out a lot of food products, too. I don’t drink anything with high fructose corn syrup, and again . . .

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      1. My sister and I have legume allergies, especially soy, but nearly everything in the stores these days has soy fillers or soybean oil, or ….

        Which is why we have to make pretty much everything from scratch.

        So there’s a thought… We make the majority of our food from scratch, sauces, soups, breads, etc, but these days it’s almost to the point where it’s cheaper to buy the prepackaged kits and stuff. Is this one more plot of our elites, to force us all to eat the plastic infused, soy protein ‘enhanced’, vitamin ‘fortified’ garbage churned out by the mega-corps?

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        1. A friend of ours realized after one Pennsic she hadn’t had a single bad headache in two weeks, eating what came out of the camp kitchen. (Said kitchen being near restaurant-quality, complete with bake oven). Then she realized nobody in camp was cooking with soy. When she got home, she deliberately ate a product with soy in it. Voila, a headache!

          Now she reads labels before she buys anything.

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      2. As much as I love peanut butter, I can’t eat it due to it’s inflammation causing properties. (This is different from short term food allergies…). At best raw peanuts are supplemental cattle feed in a pinch.

        Then again most seed oils and products aren’t as healthy as Big Food/Big Ag wants us to believe they are.

        So sticking to butter, lard and tallow. Maybe avocado or olive oil in small amounts. Local sourced or organic.

        Also United Slave flour isn’t the same as Euro-peon flour. Plenty of family and friends can’t eat our baked goods without issue, but can on overseas vacations and business trips.

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        1. That is because some bright bulb discovered that if you spray the field with RoundUp it all comes ripe at the same time, increasing yield by a not insignificant amount. And now the only way to avoid it is to do organic or gluten-free. A LOT of people these days who think they are gluten-intolerant are actually RoundUp-intolerant, but convincing the agro-corps to go back to the old way and stop poisoning people is unlikely to happen.

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          3. There was also a push (back in the ’90s, if I have it right) for artisanal bread with higher gluten content. I’ve found that even small quantities will do my GI system in. Can’t go to a Chinese restaurant any more. Had to stop at the taqueria when one of the ingredients (guacamole or refried beans) got wheat flour in it.

            I’ll just say my body went to “repel boarders” mode. Got lucky; merely diarrhea. (Yea, “merely”. First time entailed 4 days in the hospital with “WTF is wrong?”) For really bad cases, the stomach is paralyzed. With food in non-digesting mode, it can be really bad until the body says “Out!”.

            I brownbag when I’m doing the market trip to town. So far, I can eat at Costco if I’m careful. Starting to reconsider that, too.

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        1. I add salt to absolutely nothing I’m cooking. The only way I get salt is if I get chip cravings, or we go out and I have fries (hubby gets most of mine) which I’ll salt. Salt cravings happen because I’m not getting enough salt. Which means I’ve managed to steer away from preprocessed foods with salt.

          I don’t drink any soda. Sparkling Ice 0 Cal, with has a little sucrose (not enough to affect glucose levels, based off the the CGM), carbonized, and 0 salt.

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          2. I drink Cock’n’Bull diet ginger beer; it has an intense ginger flavor that Iike, and isn’t adulterated with other flavors (one brand that I’ve tried adds pineapple juice, which I find appalling!).

            I don’t salt anything when I’m cooking, though for stir-fry I use reduced sodium soy sauce. I sometimes add a little salt when I eat what I’ve made. However, I do still enjoy French fries when I eat out. . . .

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          4. When I make chicken stock, I add absolutely zero salt. It’s going into the freezer anyway.

            Though I will say I shed salt massively when active. I have to keep electrolytes on hand or eat salt direct to keep headaches away. Learn your body.

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        2. That’s why we cook almost everything from scratch.

          The only slightly “salty” thing served is brisket and that’s from the rub that forms the bark, which can be skipped.

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      4. I have enough food issues that I say away from PB with any additives. I like the Adams Peanut Butter; made by Smuckers, and the ingredients are Peanuts, and 1% or less (so they say) of salt. You have to stir (or not) the peanut oil in, but barring going to the You-Grind-It machine at the big independent grocery store, it’s as good as it gets.

        (Note: since Covidiocy, they’ve been having trouble getting lids fastened on correctly. Look out for leakage. It’s better than a year ago, but the next jar up in the pantry shows signs. OTOH, I haven’t found any contamination. I try to check before buying, just to be sure. Must have forgotten for that one.)

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          1. Back when I lived in southern California I was able to buy Laura Scudder’s Old Fashioned, which was quite good. They even had an unsalted version. Sprouts has a store brand that’s comparable, but not quite as good.

            I have to say these days I prefer cashew butter to peanut butter, but it’s a lot more expensive!

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      5. I grudgingly sometime use canola oil as it’s the least bad (NOT good!) of the lot when olive or avocado, or such cannot be had/used. It’s soybean oil that is all too common and it’s a huge NOPE! I know I still get it as it is ubiquitous, but I can at least try.

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  14. Mad Magazine was the most subversive thing I read back in the day.

    They stopped publishing in 2019 when it was no longer possible to mock current culture.

    Sad.

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    1. No, it became redundant to everything else in culture. I mean how do you mock a culture that exists to mock itself?

      Like

    2. If they’d been like the Bee and published daily they could have stayed ahead of the “parody curve”. Not possible for a mag, of course, but we can be sure the Bee won’t suffer the same fate.

      “Whaddya mean it’s not parody?!? It was last week!”

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        1. “The Rifle, Man”

          “Son, there ain’t nothin’ more gentle and peaceful than a dead man.”

          “And you believe in [forget what it was; gentleness and peace, probably], Pa?”

          “No, son, I believe in killin’ people.”

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    3. I read MAD at a young age. Some years later (I am old) [and conservative]]) I discovered “underground comics” like the ‘Freak Brothers (my favorite was Fat Freddie’s cat’), ‘Herald Hedd’ and ‘Junkwaffel’. The difference back then was good artistry, the story had a plot, and the writers had a sense of humor. There were very pointed political and social jabs but usually confined to a single panel with a memorable quote. I still remember some of them.

      Liked by 1 person

  15. I have always said, searches through fortune cookie sayings, ‘Your Lucky Numbers are’ . Nope wrong one, be back later with real profundity. Now where was that damn fortune…?

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    1. My favorite fortune cookie gag:

      (Loud enough to carry to other tables) “Good morning. Your mission, should you choose to accept it…” (look puzzled. Spot distinguished suit wearer nearby) “Uh, sir? Sir? I think this one was yours.”

      Pulled it off once with a bunch of coworkers and a nearby fellow who looked a bit like Phelps, was listeng to us read ours, and can play straight-man when surprised. “Uh, thank you.”

      Busted up about half the room.

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        1. Pratchett had a similar Christmas cracker one. ” ‘Help help I am caught in the crakker machine I cant keep runnin’… That appears to be it, except for the stains.”

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  16. Today is a good day to tile. :-D

    It’s sunny and 70° so, about perfect for setting some more floor tile in the laundry room. I’ve got the dryer moved outside, the big tile saw set up, the stereo speakers on their temporary shelves and a tub of thinset powder ready to mix. A few more days like this and the job might be done.

    Last week I needed to spray paint just the heads of a bunch of screws. Now how can…Lightbulb! I stuck the screws through a piece of cardboard and sprayed away. Maybe that idea can help somebody just a bit.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Sounds good; good tip on the spray painting, too.

      I saw your first comment, and decided I’ve been watching/reading too much “early West” stuff when what popped into my head was “Ya-ta-hey! It is a good day to tile!”.😜

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  18. The Marxists of the 1960s took over the schools, entertainment, and other cultural institutions, went on to indoctrinate a generation in which far too many embraced the insanity of Marxism and its neo-Marxist variants like Critical Race Theory, and notwithstanding all that control they still think of themselves as the “counterculture” when in fact it is those resisting their Marxist insanity who are the real counterculture.

    They particularly hate Trump and those who support him precisely because of how effective that resistance to imposition of even more Marxist insanity has been in pushing to roll the insanity back. “How dare we!” is their cry.

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