A Blast from the Past originally at: https://accordingtohoyt.com/2024/08/26/why-dont-you-come-back-to-the-war/
Yesterday I stumbled on this post by Devon Eriksen on Twittex.
For those who don’t wish to follow through, he claims there were no real fat people in the fifties/sixties, when mothers cooked for their families, etc. It’s one of the those things of “he’s right and wrong” because he’s much younger than I and I can assure him the having home cooked meals was not universal, or even close to it, food was already processed by the time people bought it to use as ingredients, and there were indeed fat people (though very rarely as abnormally fat as now, but you do see those throughout history too. And I can go into that if anyone wishes me to write on fat, and why our society is exceptionally “fat”. It’s a number of circumstances, including that we’re as a rule older (the very fat people of the past were usually very wealthy, meaning they could live longer with serious physical issues. Like Henry VIII with a debilitating, never-healed leg wound) and that … well, the pictures that Devon uses to illustrate the “there were no fat people” are part of the problem. Because those pictures of the sixties and seventies show people who were by and large on extreme diets due to the worship of “thin.” We do know there are serious metabolic consequences to whip-saw dieting — trust me, I’m a case study — and to early-life anorexia, as well as to extreme dieting while pregnant, which screws up the baby.)
The post is still worth reading, and I’m very glad it can be said. It’s just his being younger than I, I think, and also falling into the writer trap of “there was a master plan.” This is usually true in novels, never true in reality.
Sure, there was a short of prospiracy of cult devotees of the communist manifesto in places of power in entertainment and mass communication which led to the poison of “Marxist feminism” inserting itself into the dynamic and making everything objectively worse.
Note henceforth I can refer to it as simply “feminism” because “feminism” in modern society is Marxist. But there was, before that nonsense, a sort of sensible feminism. It curbed the greatest excesses of societal oppression of women (which happened because women are the most precious resource of any society. Do I need to unpack? You don’t let the people who can literally give your tribe a future wander off on their own and be captured by the enemy, for ex. This leads to curtailing the movements of women, historically) and advocated for stuff like a widow’s ability to manage her own household and money, without needing to return to her parents’ home or be subordinate to her inlaws. My grandmother was a feminist in that sense and at points it was opposite what is considered feminist nowadays. How opposite? Well, you see Victorian feminism was for women and children. So, it actually encouraged a woman to have children, treat her children well, stay home with the children and have no other employment, if the husband could at all manage to support her.
This was most often not possible, btw. The mid 20th century ideal of the housewife who stayed home and did nothing but watch her kids, cook for the family, decorate and maybe garden is the ideal of a very wealthy society. As such it was probably transitory and illusory, both. It was also, and Devon is absolutely right on this, aspirational and amazing. Because if you can afford to do it — and are temperamentally suited to it — what is better than to spend your life making the life of your family and community better?
It is particularly suited — center mass — to most female personalities. Women tend to be more social than males and like to perform acts of service for the community. It’s not that we’re saintly, it’s just what evolution selected for in females probably from the time we climbed down from the trees, if not before.
While women’s work tends to be indoors and non-dangerous, most women throughout history worked. And I’m going to lay down a marker here that I’m not even sure most women watched over their own children, in the sense we tend to think of it, the sense of the mid century housewife doing everything for her own kids. (And here, as with my thinking those very thin people of the sixties and seventies — I have my own pictures and honestly it looks odd, because people a generation before and after were if not “fat” more “normal”. I think that thinness and all the dieting are reflection of “listening to experts” who indulged their own fancy — being the seed of weight problems later, that housewife having nothing to do but mind her kids seeded the boomers neuroticism.)
While people tended to raise their own kids, and certainly (as I’ve said many times) the societies (upper class Victorian, Roman) that outsourced the raising of kids to hirelings did NOT fare well long term, child raising was more… flexible in the past.
I still caught the edge of this, to an extent. I mean, my mother, like my grandmothers, worked from home in her own business, and minded me in the sense that mom — and grandma — were there and provided meals at set times. But to be honest, from the time I was four or five, I played with other kids in the neighborhood for entire days. They played at my house too, sure, but that meant mom watched us all maybe one day out of six (Sunday was for extended family.)
More importantly, going back to former times, the children were expected to help with household work at about four, and often were apprenticed/had jobs/were in serious school (how serious? Well, people often entered university in their pre-teens. And don’t tell me they didn’t learn as much. They didn’t learn the same, but the amount was maybe more than we do as preparation) all day, etc.
It is a mistake to look at the middle years of the 20th century as “the way things ought to be.” To an extent we were already seriously off course.
To the point of fat and there not being a fat gene, etc. True. But at the same time there are things that break the system and predispose people to accumulate fat.
I’m not going to defend pre-packaged food, which is a thing regulated by the government and therefore by “experts.” Like, the ones who decided in the eighties that fat was bad for you but sugar just “got used up” which is a metabolic misunderstanding of epic proportions. For me and my family I always preferred to cook from scratch, because it’s healthier and often cheaper. But let’s face it, the diet of our ancestors wasn’t particularly wonderful, between lack of refrigeration and often being limited to what grew locally. Sure, they got limited amounts of protein, which might be good in a way, but which we’ve also find stunts growth and perhaps brain development.
Go ahead and cook from scratch and local if you can, but the fat epidemic is probably more related to see saw dieting in an attempt to reach the standards of thinness the experts said we should have, and the fact our health care has gotten good enough people survive with serious illnesses. My metabolism has never been the same, for ex, since I was put on strict bed rest for six months with first son. It is likely at a less wealthy time I, myself, and my son would both have died of eclampsia.
However, there is one contributing factor that absolutely can be blamed on feminism and that Devon hit on, though glancingly: the fact that all of us work, and work ridiculous hours.
Someone else mentioned that Americans define themselves by their job, as if that justified our existence. They’re not wrong. I figured that out in the aftermath of 2018 and being let go by the two main purchasers of my work. I realized I was suffering from middle aged unemployed man syndrome, as I’d defined myself by my jobs, even though they were in many ways crappy and stress filled.
And it’s interesting that Devon pointed out corporations jumped all in on “Women should have jobs” because it expanded the workforce and therefore lowered wages for everyone, because my friend Bill Reader had tentatively told me the same a few weeks ago. As in “Was it all a ploy like importing a lot of third worlders? A way to depress wages?”
I don’t think it was a “ploy” as I don’t think it was calculated. I think it was partly, sure, the communist manifesto at the back of a lot of influential brains, but also the fact life had got so good. Women not only could stay home, but were under-utilized. Look at recipes from the fifties and these people weren’t really cooking from scratch, but buying a series of canned things and combining them, with the result that a meal that would normally take half the day to prepare (Still does to me, if I’m doing something big from scratch, which is why nowadays it’s so hard, because we don’t eat that much, and it seems a waste of time.) And cleaning the house had gotten exponentially easier with machines (Seriously. I washed clothes by hand. You don’t have any idea how much time it took.) Women found themselves seriously under-employed, and therefore started casting their minds to what else they could do.
Now, if that prosperity had hit fifty years later, when there was an internet, there would have been a flourishing of work-at-home jobs, and I still think that’s where we’ll end up. But in the sixties, seventies and eighties, what it caused instead was bored women to start ENVYING their husband who got to go out and have jobs. (The fact most men’s jobs were no longer difficult and arduous helped with this. Women are still not hankering to be construction workers, truck drivers or trash pickup workers.)
Did corporations step on the accelerator and aid and abet this ethos? Yes. But corporations are served by university graduates, and the universities had already come up with the narrative of the oppressed woman freed by work.
And this in turn depressed wages, which in turn made it absolutely necessary for everyone, male and female to be “married to the job.” Because there’s always someone who is willing to work harder/make more sacrifices than you.
Recently we found ourselves explaining to both sons that yeah, though in very different jobs, we too worked 18 hour days in our late twenties and up through our late thirties. It’s what you have to do to establish yourself. And to be honest, because of increased longevity “establishing yourself.” and gaining credibility in your field, no matter what it is, takes longer and longer and longer. I mean, Dan is still working way more hours than he should be, and he might still (I haven’t checked) be considered “the kid” in his office. (Even if he works from home.) I know I suddenly crossed from “Raw beginner” to “Old woman of science fiction” somewhere in my mid fifties, and I’m still working raw beginner hours.
As I tried to tell my parents at one time — with marked lack of success — that Americans aren’t overweight because we’re lazy but because we work too much. It’s just most of our jobs are so all-absorbing.
So, in the essentials — aside from quibbles on the “fat” thing — I’m in accord with Devon that feminism has caused a break in American life, and by extension destroyed the family in our health.
It’s more that feminism was not so much an intended thing as a trend that picked up after World War Two.
Part of the problem is that all reproduction is a war between men and women — or in the animal kingdom males and females — in that each sex tries to have the most babies with the least expenditure of energy and effort, so at the expense of the other.
If you study evolution, this is how some species ended up with things like…. well, eating your mate right after copulation, or completely atrophying and becoming a pimple on your spouse’s side, but a pimple that can still impregnate her.
That kind of war is all very well, but the point of it is that it leads to more children.
This broken situation where each man and woman is an independent and competing economic unit is not leading to more children, or even a healthy and connected life.
Instead, it’s led to a life of anomie where humans have value only as economic production units, and can be discarded when no longer (or not yet) functional. Where it’s a shame to not be “employed” and “producing.”
This type of life is obviously completely compatible with communism/Marxism, in which the individual only matters so long as he produces, and where he’s a widget who is the same as everyone else.
And like all forms of Marxism, it leads to death and unhappiness. (Not necessarily in that order.)
The bitterly funny part of it (more bitter than funny) is that the entire left blames this on “capitalism” and doesn’t realize their version of feminism does nothing but feed all humanity into the maw of faceless corporations.
It would be funny if we weren’t living it and at risk of dying laughing.
(Note from Holly the Assistant: last night, Sarah lamented “I’m tired and I want to write Vic,” and I replied “Let me run a Blast from the Past tomorrow and go write Vic.” Vic being Skip’s mom, and a very interesting character.” So, in favor of getting a few words of the next book written, the blog gets a rerun today.)
According To Hoyt 
Lots of young men do not recognize the Obvious Signs of girdles, corsetry, and shapewear worn in the past.
Especially the Obvious Signs that men are wearing shapewear to make their suits fit better.
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Looked at the specific pics, and noticed that many of those girls would be shamed online today for having poochy little tummies, wide thighs, no abs, thick waists, etc.
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Despite the fact that they are fine, I mean.
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Wide thighs are a bit more in vogue these days in many circles. It’s part of what is referred to as “thicc”.
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‘Death of a Salesman’ was published in 1949, and mentions processed food. So as you noted, not a post-50s thing.
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Canned foods were rationed in WWII, so that the SPAM et al could be sent to the GIs. I have a cookbook from the late 1940s that uses some ready-made things, including Velveeta™-like cheese stuff. TV dinners (frozen) appeared in 1953.
Take-out has been around since ancient Rome and early Imperial China.
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“Take-out has been around since ancient Rome and early Imperial China.” Other man made substances (chemicals, pharmaceuticals, including radioisotopes) became much more common since ca. 1850.
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Of course for me the complaint that the 1960s were”better” in some way due to SAHMs brings to mind the 1966 song from the Roling Stones. If “mother’s little helper” got all the way into song lyrics by the mid-60s, it had to have been common enough for quite a while prior to that. The second verse plainly states:
“Things are different today,” I hear every mother say
Cooking fresh food for her husband’s just a drag
So she buys an instant cake, and she burns a frozen steak
And goes running for the shelter of her mother’s little helper
And two help her on her way, get her through her busy day
There are two of the different stereotypes present about that time, and they’re probably both extreme outliers of what most people lived.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-zxBNz3XbM
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Need coffee. ☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕
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Fat is a modern problem?
Since when? Note, grandma was a “skinny” 5′, 200#s as she aged. She was easily double that before she went to weight watchers in the 70s. Note, she always cooked from scratch from produce out of her own garden, fresh (self canned, frozen, depending on season) and wild game (family provided). Not just the women either.
Digs out extended family pictures back through the 1800’s. Looks at the wide variety of family sizes. Even through the depression. (I’ve commented reasons why my parents families were not affected during the depression of the ’30s, or rationing during WWII. Nothing changed for them. Maybe the realization that others routinely did not have their own gardens, chickens, turkeys, sheep, deer out the backdoor, fish, etc.)
Guaranty not the only family applies to.
Having an extra level of flesh (so to speak) historically a way to determine if a family has enough food in the household consistently for survival. A well fed family means any children born will more likely survive infancy, toddler, young child, stages (baring plagues). Well fed even gave the family an edge against most illnesses that swept through regularly.
For the most part this standard is not required anymore, at least in the US, because of the abundance of food for everyone. Even the worst off has food available if they take advantage of the resources. They do not even have to take advantage of post harvest field scavenging.
My weight problem is partly lack of exercise. Partly. Because I guaranty exercise not only puts on muscle weight (I’m informed muscle weighs more than fat), but my system going “Wait we are working? Oh. No. Must store more energy (fat)!” Same with dieting “Oh. No. Starvation. We got this! Survival means slowwwwwwwlllllllllyyyyyy releasing reserves.” I call it pioneering genes (the veterinarian calls it “Irish genes”, or how to survive “the troubles” and famine).
Here I am babbling on to those who know these truths. Sorry.
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Some 19th century shirts were sewn such that they bulged at the stomach. Implied you were fat, thus successful.
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Like the men from the Subcontinent, many of whom seem have little potbellies once they reach a certain rank or status.
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Big butt fashions did the same. Implying healthy baby birthing hips.
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I’m curious to know how “intermittent fasting”, a.k.a. eating only between the hours of 6 AM and 1 PM (in other words, skipping supper), works for you. Does it manage to get your body to release reserves faster, like some people say works for them? Or is it not something that works for you at all?
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Wags hands.
I mix it up. Which then works.
Definitely fewer calories in and more out does work, eventually. Also tends to creep back on slower when lost that way. But absolutely no “cheat days”. Take the eye off of the goal, not only does plateau happen but it starts creeping back.
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(Acknowledging that I am not dep729, but butting in is kind of the essence of internet commenting, so…) For me, it *kind of* worked. 5, maybe 10 pounds of weight loss at most (I had a lot more than that to lose), and I think it did improve my blood glucose levels, but I tended to make up for any calories foregone by having a really massive meal when I did eat again. Seems to me that it’s a metabolically healthy way to eat in general, especially if you have normal insulin response (diabetes complicates things), but like most things, very much ymmv. I did intermittent fasting for well over a year; felt pretty good for the most part, but couldn’t keep it up in the end. No negative consequences; just slowly drifted back to the weight I was before, is all.
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–
Appreciated.
I couldn’t (can’t?) keep up the intermediate fasting diets, not because of diabetes, although blood sugar is involved, hypoglycemia and it’s relative, reactive hypoglycemia.
Never know what exactly will trigger the latter (okay, there are some items that almost guaranty triggers; almost). But short of “sugar on an empty stomach”, do not know what will trigger the reaction. Nor do I know what should but does not raise blood sugar at all. I’ll find a general diet that works, stick with it until it does not work.
Regardless of what is causing the hypoglycemia, the reaction is almost an over reaction. Not gorging, or continuously grazing but not the point of gorging, either will make me sick. I reach for the items guarantied to get the blood sugar up. Hello blood sugar roller coaster until dang thing is under control. Repeat & rinse.
Keeping to said diet has been a lot easier when on a trip, be it car, or even easier backpacking (age has cut us off). Not working makes it a lot easier to keep to, too.
One solution has been the current pharmacy I’ve been on because of all the recent medical issues. The combination seems to been preventing the hypoglycemic triggers. But, this pharmacy combination is changing next week.
FWIW as of yesterday 8/4/2026, my A1C is 5.3. My glucose level an hour after eating (above yogurt and a banana), was 109. (Blood panel pre-surgery.)
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(Good rerun. Good for Sarah! Holly-T-A, you’re quickly becoming one of my favorite people!)
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It is the 1960s cult of the female teen. Women held as idols prior to the 1960s were normal adult women, even the “pin up girls” of the 1940s were not the willowy waifs and what would later be termed “heroin chic” skinny chicks that the ‘60s put forth, and that late-teen/barely-adult female form for some reason stuck.
Combine that impossible “ideal” with the various Really Bad Advice given by “experts” on diet, alone with the artificial sweeteners impact, and you have today.
And frankly it will only get worse – Ozemnpic et al. And ozempic-face will end up being the expected minimum standard look for ever younger actresses and influencers, the same way young women are doing Botox now, and that will drive yet more stupid female “ideal” standards.
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I may be wrong, but what I was told is that the 60’s and 70s the agents and clothing designers moved more toward men who were attracted to men, which in a female form is that barely adult ideal.
Certainly by the late 70s this was accepted as fact, and the gay agent was almost cliche.
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Mom considered herself a classical feminist, and had only contempt for the “We don’t need men” types. Dad’s Mom, on the other hand, was a modern feminist (for her time) who hated men, distrusted women, and said she would vote for the devil if he ran as a D. It made for some interesting conflict.
Our house was the hub for the neighborhood, partially because most of the other kids had two working parents who gave them “quality time” in the half hour between dinner and bed.
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? Already running as D. (grin)
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Regarding cooking practices in the 50’s … I was gifted a Betty Crocker cookbook as a wedding gift, which I believe might have been the 1978 edition — that cookbook used lots of convenience foods and techniques, clearly slanted toward quick after-work meal prep. It wasn’t really what my always-fulltime-employed mother prepared for the family — may the Lord bless her for her commitment to the amount of scratch cooking she did between 5:30 and 6:30 every evening. Pro tip, she was an early adopter of crockpot puissance (but not microwave).
Fast forward a number of years and I’m trying to make healthier, more enticing meals for my picky family. I saw my mother’s copy of the 1950 edition of said cookbook and got myself a reproduction copy. THAT book actually taught me what I had missed in how to cook from scratch, especially meats and basic baking. I still use THAT edition today.
Not to say that the home cook in 1950 was all crunchy, but commercially-canned foods were already in frequent use in 1950, yet the culture of cooking hadn’t quite got to ultra-processed. I believe I now cook more like a 1950 cook, yet I rarely use canned products and bless the year-round availability of fresh produce of all kinds. Our ancestresses did not have that blessing, so the produce they canned in their Ball jars was their work-around. Buying commercially-canned foods must have been their blessing (rather than having to do the canning themselves, in a seasonal rush, without air conditioning or outdoor facilities). So a little more nuanced than what people today normally think of. Disclaimer: this analysis may be slanted due to my parental families’ status in the peasant/laborer class.
As for today’s commercially-prepared food products … well, it’s been coming out for awhile that the addiction factor has been deliberately cultivated, and I am a recovering victim of that movement. I’m just waiting for the pikes to be deployed.
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I have very few things I use that are commercially canned. Use quick frozen or fresh, and steamed. None of us like canned.
Mom was canning through the ’60s and into the ’70s. Mostly did not have our own garden by then, but u-pick. Later she switched to quick blanching and freezing.
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I probably pointed out back then, too, that my mom’s mom was routinely on the lettuce-and-cottage-cheese diet for basically my mom’s entire childhood, except for one pregnancy where she was forced to eat like a normal human being.
It didn’t work so very well, and guess which one of the kids didn’t struggle with weight issues.
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The Reader was objectively fat through high school (graduated in 1971). He shed 25 lb his first term in college – bad food and high stress. He only weighs about 5 lb more than that today, although with much less muscle and more fat. There were fat people. Few pictures survive.
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I too lost weight transitioning from home to college dorm food. My system could not tolerate anything other than fresh salads, fruits, and fresh baked bread, at college. Not even the cereals (too sweet) could be tolerated. Once I was in an apartment food shopping consisted of raiding the parents pantry and freezer. Plus summer job involved hiking up and down side of mountains (bushwhacking, not trails or roads, following perimeter of unit boundaries, hillside profiles, and timber cruising).
Even today I buy lean meats. Do not deep fry anything. Only a few items we buy that are canned (red kidney beans and tomato sauce). A few soups. Low salt everything, and that is about to get worse (maybe? Might already be following a low enough salt diet.)
Grew up on lean wild game & fish, and fresh out of the garden foods.
I wish I was within 5#s of my college weight. I’ll never see that again (122#s). I am 100#+ over that (dang kid, partly). If I could get down to 160#, I would be thrilled. I am 5’4″.
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Heh. Looks like my link to the column in the scurvy fiasco tipped the moderation flag.
On the corporate side, a lot of that feels to me like the same Mark to Market checkbox stuff that killed publishing. The corpos maximized metrics and missed that they were eating their speed corn. Metrics are useful, but only if you remember they are also both wrong and incomplete. Don’t jump in bed with them, and certainly don’t marry them. A lot of C-suite staff did, and it seven slowly making them insane while poisoning them.
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I’d be interested to read that column; if WP isn’t allowing links right now, could you tell me the right keywords to search for in DDG to find it?
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The blog was Idle Words
Here’s the date and opening two paragraphs, if that helps find it:
03.06.2010
Scott And Scurvy
Writing about the first winter the men spent on the ice, Cherry-Garrard casually mentions an astonishing lecture on scurvy by one of the expedition’s doctors:
Atkinson inclined to Almroth Wright’s theory that scurvy is due to an acid intoxication of the blood caused by bacteria…
There was little scurvy in Nelson’s days; but the reason is not clear, since, according to modern research, lime-juice only helps to prevent it. We had, at Cape Evans, a salt of sodium to be used to alkalize the blood as an experiment, if necessity arose. Darkness, cold, and hard work are in Atkinson’s opinion important causes of scurvy.
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Ah yes, feminism. Men are scum, grrrl-bosses etc. Sure thing girls. Whatever you want. Let me know if you need a basement dug or a tire changed, eh? I charge double for feminists. Triple for blue or pink hair.
A tissue of lies, harking back to the Frankfurt School of Commie legend, where mere facts held no weight at all, and Reality was shunned.
On a related note, I stumbled upon this youtube the other day, Comics Corner #17 | How Watchmen Ruined Comics on the LotusEaters.com channel. (links are misbehaving today) This ties in with the “Dingy Stories” theme Sarah pronounced the other day, those stories where horrible people living in a horrible place do horrible things to each other out of spite. Like feminism.
So the topic of discussion was The Watchmen by Alan Moore, which came out 1986-’87, and was made into a one-volume graphic novel in 1987. Which I have, somewhere. I recall reading it at the time, and being angered by it. Revolting.
Alan Moore was a Frankfurt School follower, so the comic was an attempt to subvert heroes as a thing, and bring them to disrepute. A deliberate attack on a little insignificant slice of Western civilization, the comic book.
Problem being that the book made so much money that now it is the archetype for writing a comic book. ALL comics are The Watchmen. And naturally, because there must be a host for the parasite to live on, comic books are dying. The whole thing is subversion, and no one is interested in it. Number one in comics by sales these days is manga. DC and Marvel don’t break the top ten.
Kind of like when all women are “feminists”, none of them can get a date.
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The movie tracks (of course) all those antihuman themes. It was high budget, had some fair performances, reasonable dialog, so-so plotting, and in my opinion solely due to the source material, it sucked.
Apparently there was a teevee streaming show, which I have not seen, but reportedly it lost any of the good-ish aspects and thus sucked harder.
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Didn’t watch the TV show myself, but it was all completely original.
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Also probably why anime are blowing traditional American cartoons out of the water. WB and HB screwed themselves.
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Japan is eating their lunch. Like, just wolfing it down right in front of them.
I watch a lot of anime, and I can tell you Japan isn’t winning on originality or quality. Formulaic, repetitive, not much money spent on animation etc.
They are winning on STORY, CHARACTER DESIGN, and HUMOR. The plots are good, they remain true to the characters, and while they stick to the framework, they change it up all over the place. And it’s actually funny, not the cringe we get from America that masquerades as humor.
! Alan Moore and the horse he rode in on. And Frank Miller too. [insert many bad words here]
Let us pause to give thanks that Stan Lee lived as long as he did, or the Marvel Universe would have disintegrated into doodoo a lot sooner.
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And they deliver on their promise, not subvert it and expect you to thank them.
It’s not like they don’t do subversion, but they don’t do nothing but subversion.
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Yeah, The Watchmen is a pretty depressing graphic novel. Think of The Incredibles as the inversion of that—similar premise (superheroes outlawed) and much more positive messaging. (Plus the psychopath loses at the end instead of winning.)
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Which likely blew stuff up….
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You know what, I didn’t realize this before you said that, but I think you’re absolutely right: we probably wouldn’t have gotten the MCU movies if Pixar hadn’t made The Incredibles.
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Everything I have ever heard about Alan Moore leads me to not want to read or watch any of his work.
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:considers:
Yeah, watch the movie andfor love of all ignore the rest.
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Eh, the movie could probably be skipped too.
… of course it probably doesn’t help the movie that I loathe that “Hallelujah” song almost as much as I loathe “Imagine”
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I’ve read the Watchmen and his Swamp Thing stuff. You’re not missing anything.
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He also did the graphic novel series that the movie “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” was based on. The movie was popcorn fare at best; the graphic novels were more deconstruction.
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Ah, League… I enjoyed that movie, at the popcorn level, to be sure, mostly because I’m a big fan of Peta Wilson (TV La Femme Nikita).
Best parts were Nemo’s cars and the Nautilus.
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I did not know that Alan Moore wrote “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” Somewhat surprising.
I have never read the graphic novel. I loved the movie, it’s one of my all-time favorites. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is another favorite.
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The movie is more “inspired by” than a direct adaptation of his work. For one thing, Mina Harker was the principle protagonist of the graphic novel, but the movie decided to go with star Sean Connery instead.
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It was a good movie. I would have changed a few things for the better, but I’ve seen worse movies.
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“Everything I have ever heard about Alan Moore…”
He’s a communist. You’re missing out on a lot of pretty meh propaganda, written to attack your worldview. The art is bog-standard comic book, the storyline is -stupid-, and there is an awful lot of gross violence against women that turns the stomach.
It’s dingy. Bro does not deserve your money.
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I literally ran across a feminist today claiming that trad-wives just want you to protect and support them, men, you need a feminist who will appreciate all of you!
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A feminist who appreciates men? Isn’t that an oxymoron?
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Feminists are better at everything, always, so a feminist girlfriend is better than a trad-wife, because.
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Rorschach was a fun character for a bit. Other than that, rather unappealing.
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“Rorschach was a fun character for a bit.”
Rorschach is the proof that even a blind communist pig can find the odd acorn. He’s a great character. From my reading, it seems that Alan Moore hated him with the fire of a thousand suns.
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That moron Moore was surprised at how many people liked Rorschach.
Of course, many liked Rorschach because Rorschach was murdered because he didn’t like what had been done and was willing to speak out against it.
And he was killed by the only “superhero” in Moore’s story universe with Super-Powers.
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“That moron Moore was surprised at how many people liked Rorschach.”
I don’t understand how guys like Moore get through a day. Seriously, to be that detached from reality and your audience, but still manage to get published somehow? It’s a mystery.
Rorschach is the only hero in the book who pursues a righteous, heroic course. All the rest of them are in it for what they can get out of it, and they’re perverts as well.
Tells you something about the author, if you ask me. All that stuff had to be in his head before it could come out, right? Ew.
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He wrote about Americans without understanding Americans.
When I learned more about Rorschach, I came to see /some/ short comings, and that he had plot armor on his side for a lot of the backstory.
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Once, I whined to my grandmother and great aunt about doing the laundry and folding clothes. Once. Because the potted plants got removed from the wash cauldron, wood was stacked, and I got to wash a load by hand, then dry it on the line (in Houston). I was cured of whining about laundry.
Both my parents’ families used a combination of fresh, home-canned, frozen, and commercial canned foods. Since all four parents worked, they needed a little convenience. Growing up, the only prepared foods I remember on a semi-regular rotation were frozen chicken pot pies, baked beans in a can, and bread. Everything else was scratch. Granted, we didn’t have a lot of money for luxuries like frozen dinners and snacks.
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I used an outdoor wringer washer one summer. Cured me of whining about doing any kind of laundry.
Based on European reactions here for the world cup, even having a washing machine with a dryer is a luxury item. I figured the HGTV European washers in their kitchen area (kitchen? really?) were washer/dryer combo now available. No. Just a washer. Wash still must be hung out to dry properly.
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Brits tend to have washer/dryer combos, that (as I understand it) are deficient at both tasks.
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That sounds perfectly Yurupeeyun to me. 😁
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Not surprised.
Makes a lot more sense. I figured what we have in the states now, concept (if not product) came from Europe/UK.
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Hanging the machine-washed laundry out to dry is something that sometimes pops up in C-dramas that I’ve seen.
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In the Asian country I live in, there are many houses without washing machines or dryers, many laundromats that have both, and many houses with just washing machines but no dryers. The house we’re renting right now is one such, meaning that we hang our laundry up on the line behind the house. There are also small “laundromats” that are just a collection of three or four coin-operated laundry machines that some local entrepreneur has bought and set up in a neighborhood. Invariably, those do not have dryers. The larger commercial operations have both washers and dryers, but the small local laundromats expect that you’ll take your damp clothes home and hang them up on a line.
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I get a kick out of the trend of promoting the new fancy “solar dryers” … i.e. Hanging laundry out on a line.
Okay for some items. There are items I hang dry even owning a dryer.
Other items like jeans or towels dry too stiff for my likes.
YMMV
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I had to so it that way in Japan, because the apartment only had a washer.
It was a nice washer, though – one of the top-loading ones that has an agitator drum rather than an agitator spindle, which meant you could wash bulkier items.
Hanging the clothes out worked amazing well because I had a bar on the balcony, not a line. I could just put the damp clothes on their hangers, give them a whip to shake out the wrinkles, and put the hangers on the bar. Sometimes I had to turn over the trousers to dry both legs properly. Never had to worry about ironing anything to look presentable for work.
Sometimes I miss that.
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Daughter’s in-laws bought one of those w/d combos. Daughter says it does not seem to work very well, and of course cuts out any parallelism of one load drying while another washes.
We stayed at a cottage on Islay, where the kitchen was equipped with a washer, but no dryer function. How anything ever gets dry outside in Scotland I do not know.
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There still exists a clothesline in my old folks’ backyard. Used it quite often whilst I was a young ‘un. It ain’t the worst thing in the world. But I’m not a fan of it. Especially in wintertime.
Modern electrical convenience uber alles. Not a fan of housework, me. When it needs to get done, done it shall be. When it can go a day or three, you’ll find me to be lazy.
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I must be on at least some of the bot lists by now. Had emails inviting me to send my unpublished manuscripts to two publishers for review, buy a method to synchronize my book arcs, buy a service to add me to GoodReads, and a few others.
No offers of marriage yet.
is this normal?
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I would definitely hold out for an offer of marriage XD
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And like all forms of Marxism, it leads to death and unhappiness. (Not necessarily in that order.)
I disagree, lots of people are very happy under Marxism.
See, lots of people.
Talking about Sweasels (hey, a neologism) and Covid, lookup Mat Hancock (UK Health Secretary).
I was trying to find the quote in which he was reported to be, mid-Covid, jubilantly boasting about how he was incredibly powerful.
Of course, Newsom, mid-Covid, was dining with friends in a public restaurant. No fallout from that; I wonder why.
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https://xcancel.com/wretchardthecat/status/2084943013797880244#m
Guys, maybe there is a chance that an associates degree from a community college is not something I should consider worthless and be ashamed to advertise to others.
I do not think I would have ever willingly gotten an advanced degree from an ivy league or prestige foreign university. I think that if I had, I might be less willing to consider valuing or advertising one.
(There is such a wide range of tertiary schools around the world, that it might be worth pursuing an otherwise useless and bureaucratically difficult combination of degrees just to demonstrate playing the game. But that probably reduces to wealth, connections, and political skill, hence not a true value of academic worth. but, still, if one had gotten exactly three degrees at different low prestige but interested in $speciality schools, that work in different languages, and are /not/ interested in catering to foreign students, it would prove a certain persistence, capability, and insanity. )
I think quite a lot of seriously disabled tertiary students may have actually sensed some of the potential opportunities that Jason Arday made the knowing choice of evil to actually exploit.
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“..there is a chance that an associates degree from a community college is not something I should consider worthless…”
You worked for it, can’t be that worthless can it? Proves you can read, write and speak English, not a small thing in today’s job market.
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The phrasing suggests things I did not intend.
I think the community college degree would be more credible and less embarrassing than a university degree.
I’ve maybe gone insane in weird ways (even for me, and even for crazytimes) during these past few years.
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The two year programming degree was more helpful in all my computer jobs than the CS degree theory. I tend to combine the two computer based degrees because for most it makes sense. Plus, I did the bachelors/associates combo, backwards. Bachelor of Forestry ’79, Associate in Programming ’85, finally Bachelor of Computer Science ’89.
I’d pat myself on my back for going to the local community college instead of the closest university in ’83, but reality is I just did not want to drive into downtown Portland from Longview and back for classes. Even the second bachelors was only because an employer wanted it worse than I did (for business reasons) and was willing to pay for it (until an opportunity opened and the company moved out of town; they paid for more than half).
Tell you this much. Community level classes are a LOT easier than university level. Even classes supposedly the same class. Should have done community college forestry to start. But the university would not accept the credits as transfers to the degree (maybe basic “core” classes including some of the math, maybe). Would have changed many things. Including not meeting my husband at age 17. We did not date until I was 21. But we were part of the same group of friends and club until then (never had a class with him). I cannot regret my choices.
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Um, I have two problems with this view of “feminism”.
My impression is that the “women’s rights” (feminist) movement fell victim to the same mistake as the rest of the civil rights movement(s): it stopped being about getting equal treatment under the law and started being about getting revenge. Not sure why that happened, but it clearly did.
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In New England, and many coastal regions, women were under their father or husband’s legal identity, BUT also had the role of “deputy husband” if he was not present to sign or make good on contracts. Mississippi passed the first Married Women’s Property Act in 1831, and in pretty much every state west of the Missouri River, women could vote in local elections, and in some they could own property in their own names. Federal law was different. State laws for voting and divorce and so on were different.
Women’s Suffrage in the US began in the 1820s, then was set aside in favor of focusing on Abolition, on the assumption that black men would then join the women’s suffrage movement so their wives and daughters could vote. After 1870, suffrage for women became more northern and urban, although “the women question” was a frequent topic in regional business and news papers in the late 1800s. [Wild trivia: The Feds were NOT enthused about Utah Territory allowing women suffrage, because they reasoned that all those women would vote as their husbands ordered, and when one man had 10 wives, well …]
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When I was working for the Manuscripts division at the U of U library, one of the items donated was the journal of a woman who talked about going to the polls to vote away her right to vote.
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In the end, the 19th Amendment was passed and ratified — by men. Because most women were not allowed to vote before the 19th, and its enabling legislation, were put into place.
It seems like all civil rights movements get taken over by perpetual activists that are constitutionally incapable of declaring victory and moving on. When all of their grievances have been alleviated, they have to make up Moar Grievances so they can continue their pursuit of The Great And Noble Cause. They’ve made ‘Activism!!’ the center of their identities, and they’re nobody without it.
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Don’t underestimate the money.
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