“Going viral” now has a whole new meaning:
I am SO weak…
Of course, there are other ways to make light of this thing:
For my Tribe Readers:
(yeah, I get them too)
More celebrities:
And where would we be without the WHO?
Finally, a sooper-seekrit poll what I done myself (promise):
To quote Dan Rather: “Fake, but accurate.”
I always enjoy reading Theodore Dalrymple’s articles, and this one at Taki’s Mag is no exception because as he takes on the topic of modern architects and their pulchriphobia (fear of beauty), he drops little diamonds like this into the discussion:
Taste is very revelatory of character, and though we live in an age in which we delight to talk of ourselves, in fact we do so while carefully protecting ourselves from true self-revelation or true self-examination.
Longtime Readers will know that while this may be true of a lot of people, there’s a distinct lack of that nonsense in this little corner of the Internet — most especially when it comes to discussions of architecture, or guns, or cars, or women, or practically anything which can be beautiful or made beautifully.
Pulchriphilia is more the order of the day, here. How could it be otherwise when I marvel at things like this:
or this:
or this:
or (wrenching myself unwillingly away from further contemplation of Suzanne Pleshette) this:
…or, to return to the article’s original topic, buildings such as this:
Going along with Dalrymple’s quote above, I am quite aware that my classification of all the above as “beautiful” may reveal aspects of my character, and to be honest, I don’t care a fig. I am what I am, it is what it is, and each of the above is a perfect example of the eponymous poem by John Keats:
A THING OF BEAUTY is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
’Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.
Having pulchriphobia means denying the spirit that endless fountain, and we are much the poorer for its loss. Here’s Keats’s musk-rose:
Pause a while and smell it, while listening to this.
I wish I were a bookie. Then, if this happened:
…and somehow he got elected, I’d start an offshore bookie business:
Yeah, Hillary Bitch Clinton would be President, but I’d have made a lot of money and be living in the Caymans.
Here’s something so outside my range of interest that I had never even thought of it.
Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg’s campaign to make people feel “flight shame” if they travel by plane has led to the reduction of bookings in her native Sweden. Now the U.S. airline industry is worried that the trend could take hold in this country.
“Flight shame”? Let’s talk about this for a moment.
Every day I take people to the airport — most are going away on business, while others are jetting off to places like Aruba, Hawaii and Europe for their dream vacation, or else are taking their kids to a Disney Vergnügungslager in California or Florida. Others are going to visit family in far-off cities or countries (in some cases family whom they’ve not seen for years), while others still are proud grandparents off to annoy their children and spoil the grandchildren to death (as is their duty).
Does this sound like a bunch of people who would be “shamed” into foregoing their flights, all because some adolescent twerp thinks they shouldn’t be doing them?
Now I can see a couple of cases where there might be some kind of pullback on travel: a corporation, for example, buys into the climate shame mantra, and as a form of virtue-signaling tells their employees to cut back — unless, of course, such an activity would have a serious impact on their bottom line, in which case… uh huh, you guessed it. (“Yeah, boss, XYZ MegaCorp has canceled their million-dollar account with us because they haven’t seen any of our reps in a year…”)
Tell me that wouldn’t set the stoat among the rabbits.
Another group who might be shamed into reducing their travel would be the International Backpack ‘N Sandals Set, who would otherwise be off to Explore Other Cultures And Enrich Their Lives, or do the eco-tourist thing [gag]. Quite frankly, this could only be A Good Thing in that normal people such as me would not have to sit for the following six hours next to someone who smells like a badger (and the male travelers of this ilk are even worse). Also, all those exotic eco-destinations would either go out of business (unemployment!) or have to raise their rates to compensate for the drop-off, making their business model affordable only to the extremely wealthy.
I can’t see Val d’Isère, Monaco or Kitzbühel losing much business, by the way: the rich always carve out exceptions for themselves; or else they just don’t care, nor do they buy into the eco-shaming, or both. (About now, Mr. Free Market’s ears should be burning.)
Returning to the article: it’s all very well for, say, Sweden to experience a drop-off in air travel — there are many other ways to get from Sweden to other countries in Europe — but then again, all those countries are only a couple hundred miles apart. However, the U.S. is not Scandinavia, nor even Europe: I have to drive a couple hundred miles just to get out of Texas, for instance, and further than that just to reach any other major city like Houston or San Antonio, still in Texas.
Finally, of course, we have the well-known hypocrisy of these holier-than-thou Greens, who think nothing of hopping on board a private Gulfstream just to attend a conference where they can scold other people for burning fossil fuels and destroyiiiiing the planet. Little Greta’s last scolding-trip to the New World, for instance, used more energy in total than a hundred and eighty families flying to Disney World for a week each*.
All that said: if this foolishness does come to pass, what would be the reaction of the airlines to a sudden (and perhaps permanent) drop in passenger count? We all know the answer to that: discounted fares and “bundled” vacation packages to attract those lost customers back — with the concomitant drop in their balance sheets’ profit lines.
And wait till Delta/American/United discover that eco-fuel costs three times more than avgas, with a similar effect on their precious bottom line.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.
*I just made that figure up — kinda like the Greens do in all their Doomsday predictions.
Back when I was a young starving musician, I was driving the band’s van loaded with equipment back to our storage room after a long gig. At about 3am I ran into a police roadblock — a common enough occurrence in apartheid South Africa. The block was manned by a single cop who’d parked his SUV across the road and when he saw headlights approaching, would just turn on his flashers to cause the oncoming car to stop. So I did.
“Where are you going?”
“Back home — well, back to offload all the band equipment first, then home.”
“Open up the back.”
“Now open up the side door.”
“I can’t see anything; all that crap is blocking up the doors.”
“Yeah, we have a lot of equipment.”
“Unpack it.”
“Why?”
“I need to see that you’re not carrying anything illegal in there.”
“I’m not not carrying anything illegal.”
“Unpack it.”
“No.”
“What?”
“Look, be reasonable, can you? It’s three in the morning, I’ve been working since 5 yesterday afternoon, and I’ve still got two more hours’ work before I can get into bed.”
“Not my problem. Unpack the van, now.”
I lost it. “No. You want the van unpacked, you can fucking do it. I’ll sit here at the side of the road, and after you’ve discovered that I’m not carrying anything illegal, you can pack it all back again, and then I’ll go home.”
I think he was more surprised that I wasn’t going to obey his orders — probably the first time it had ever happened to him. He stared at me, I stared right back at him. (My kids call it my “hitman” look.)
After a moment or two, he sighed and said, “Just get back in your van, and fuck off.” (I think he figured out that he and I were alone on a deserted road in the middle of Fuck Nowhere, South Africa, and I was a LOT bigger than he was.)
So I got back in the van, and drove off. As I did so, I touched the Colt Combat Commander strapped to my hip (which he hadn’t discovered), looked back at him in the rearview mirror, and murmured to myself: “You don’t know it, sonny, but I just let you live.”
I was that angry.
I told y’all that story so we could talk about this one.
We all know about the asshole who teases a normally-placid dog until it snaps at him, then beats it or kills it because “it’s dangerous”.
Feel free to read this article, then this one, and tell me if you don’t know exactly how that dog feels.
I should point out that almost every single incident of law-abiding people turning around and killing government agents or officials has been because someone’s property has been destroyed, confiscated or otherwise appropriated.
So if government agencies persist in this nonsense, do not be surprised if in desperation, angry and helpless citizens start doing stupid stuff.
Note that I’m not talking about those assholes who go round assassinating cops in cold blood — they need killing more than their victims do. But at some point, a government official is going to fuck someone over because, in terms of Government Regulation #132-22-47, they can.
One day, the person they’re fucking with is going to snap, pull a gun and start shooting. And of course, it’ll all be his fault.
If you think this is unlikely, ask yourself why so many government agencies have started installing bullet-proof glass in front of their customer service counters. They know how people feel, and still they carry on doing it — because that’s what petty bureaucrats do when their actions are protected or even “justified” by some law or regulation.
The fucking government agencies (like those in the attached articles) need to start backing the fuck off before the shit really starts to fly.
From !SCIENCE! comes this rather un-PC statement:
“To characterize this line of reasoning as having no basis in reality would be an egregious understatement. It is false at every conceivable scale of resolution.”
No, it’s not Marxist economics (although that might run a close second); it’s this “gender spectrum” bullshit, which (like Marxist economics) only exists at all because people wish it to be true.