Author: Kim du Toit

Fat Chance

Men & Women

So… now Millennial Grrrrls would rather date older men?

I’ve noticed a new strategy among my set of female friends—lovely, intelligent, independent women—to combat the grime of the online dating world: date up.
I don’t mean status, I mean age. More and more women I know are dating men twice, yes twice, their age.
There have never been more advantages to relationships with older men, precisely because Tinder and its ilk have made dating feel impossible to those of us who don’t want to participate in the battle of who-cares-less. Reach back two decades and you are more likely to find a man who can’t fathom swiping through a series of pictures to find a mate for the night.
Older men are attentive, they aren’t threatened by your career success, they didn’t grow up watching porn on their laptops, and they certainly don’t expect sex from you before you’ve even had a chance to meet. It’s not an “old-fashioned” dating scheme, it’s just a more humane one.

Hate to burst your bubble, sweetie, but for the (older) men of my generation, just the fact that you were ever on Tinder is an automatic disqualification. And that’s just the start. I wouldn’t claim to speak on behalf of my generation of men, but here’s what I see amongst today’s young women (I can’t bring myself to call you “ladies” because you are the most unladylike creatures imaginable).

Millennial women are hopelessly vapid, shallow and amoral creatures. They have no philosophy outside the most banal, bumper-sticker tropes, and they are enslaved to a trashy popular culture that men like myself find repellent and atrocious — think of Kardashian TV, Real Housewives Of [wherever], Jersey Shore, Britain’s TOWIE and so on. Millennial women are also enslaved to technology like Facebook, Twitter and the like, are chained to their vile “smart” phones and consequently have the attention span of gnats. Worse than that, Millennial women are sexually promiscuous, with all the ghastly, pox-laden potential consequences that such a lifestyle entails.

While all this may entice some older guys into what your Millennial male counterparts scornfully call a “pump & dump” relationship — i.e. a short-term, mostly physical encounter — it does not bode well for your prospects if you’re looking for more than that. Do you think that despite our supposed “ignorance” of modern technology, we’re unaware of situations like SugarBabies.com and their ilk? (FYI: we older men refer to this as “prostitution“, no matter what you were taught in your Fem Studies classes.) It’s an instructive lesson to hear how the men who sponsor these tarts characterize their charges: disposable, cheap and ultimately, repulsive. (Ever wonder why so few sugar babies end up marrying their sugar daddies? Check the stats, if you can even understand them.) When you start setting your cap at this demographic, this is what awaits you.

So to all those “lovely, intelligent, independent women” who appear to have finally grown up and realized that they’re not quite the catch they imagined they were: you fucked up.  Now you have to deal with the consequences of the choices made back when you were in your late teens and twenties. (And by the way: most of you aren’t lovely, intelligent and independent: you’re slovenly, overweight, dull and horribly dependent on, well, just about everybody from your parents to HR departments to government.)

The biggest mistake you Millennial Grrrls ever made? Believing the feminist bullshit that your mothers’ generation foisted on you as gospel. Guess what?  You can’t have it all.  Never could, and nor can anyone, ever. Life is a series of compromises; and you lot compromised your morals, your youth, your self-respect and your womanhood, all in pursuit of the unattainable.

I’d say I’m sorry for your plight; but considering the misery that the so-called third-generation feminism has inflicted and continues to inflict on both men and women in today’s wretched society, I can’t sympathize with you in the slightest. There’s a term in the patriarchy which describes your situation perfectly:  tough shit.

Good luck, grrrls.

And welcome to the Thunder Dome.

Don’t Go There, Lefty Fuckwits

Advice, Politics, The Gun Thing

Apparently, this latest round in the saga of Leftists’ desire for general citizen disarmament has them yucking it up about gun owners’ “cold dead hands” mantra, as seen in this revolting video.

Just to make it perfectly clear:  we’re not joking.  And if your response is, “Nor are we,” then I guess I need to buy some more ammo, and your storm troopers will have to buy more body bags. Assuming you’d have enough storm troopers, by the way. (Because we all know that you’d never try to take away our guns yourselves, you braying cowards.)

This is no joking matter; this is deadly serious stuff we’re talking about. Too many Americans have died defending our Constitution for the rest of us to submit meekly to this kind of subversion. And all your bleating that “20% of Americans support our gun confiscation agenda” simply means that 80% of us don’t, which is why the Second Amendment will never be repealed.

Choke on it. And watch as our numbers grow.

Cultural Straws Part 2

Culture, Music

In yesterday’s post (Part 1) I looked at the trend in modern music covered by this article. Today I want to talk about the last couple paragraphs of said piece, which really deserve their own discussion. Why? First, the text:

“Music is at its core a social activity. People get inspired to play because they listen to their favorite artists or see them at a live venue. But that experience isn’t translated when you take music lessons. It’s usually a very solitary, one-on-one experience with one teacher and the students aren’t necessarily learning to play the songs they want to learn.”
…
“We teach students of all ages the same music theory they’d learn anywhere else, but you learn to use that theory with a band [emphasis added]. Students have group rehearsals where they can practice with a band every week. And we also have our version of a recital, which is really a rock show at a live venue. We put on more than 3,000 shows a year across the world.”

I cannot stress how good an idea this is, and here’s why.

It is a truism of education that unless there is relevance, fear or self-interest (or all three) involved, education or training will be a waste of time, i.e. no learning will be retained. (“Retained learning” being defined as being taught something, and being able to repeat the input a year later with more or less 90% facility.) This learning will be doubly successful if it is practical, meaningful and requires frequent repetition.

So here’s why the above approach is so successful.
1.) Pupils are not just learning musical theory (which I can attest is deadly boring), but are immediately required to put it into practice by playing with a group — i.e. it has relevance because the band’s performance will suffer if the pupil under-performs, and thus the band will rehearse over and over until they get it right (which provides the discipline to practice, as opposed to leaving practice to self-discipline — not an easy thing to maintain for months or years). Thus: application and repetition.
2.) Pupils get to play either exactly what they want or a close facsimile thereof by making a group compromise. Thus: relevance for the skills they’re acquiring.
3.) Finally, the audience’s applause provides the reward (i.e. self-interest) for the pupil.

I can tell you from my own experience that when our band really enjoyed a song — both the learning and the playing — we would play it for months or even years until we either forgot about it or got sick of playing it. On one occasion, after an absence of five years from the playlist, we got a request for Radar Love. As it happened, one of us had it on tape, so we listened to it during a break, then went back onstage and played it as though we’d done it the night before. Retained learning.

So I am totally unsurprised at the success of the School Of Rock, if this is how they’re teaching music. If I were a great deal younger, I’d enroll in a heartbeat.

As for the main thrust of the article — that Guitar Center is in financial kaka — I’m not worried, certainly not as far as guitars are concerned. It’s one of the few items remaining where a buyer absolutely has to touch the thing and test it before buying it, so GC should be able to weather the storm, even if in truncated fashion… I hope.

Cultural Straws Part 1

Culture, Music

Via Insty comes this article which, in talking about the financial woes of the Guitar Center retail chain, exposes two deeper issues. Here’s the first:

Guitars don’t figure as heavily into chart-topping music as they once did, according to [Guitar Center boss] Gruhn. He ought to know. Over the years, his customers have included everyone from Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Eric Clapton to Neil Young, Vince Gill and Billy Gibbons. Those artists have left indelible imprints on the music landscape, all the way from Clapton’s burning solo on “Crossroads” to Harrison’s signature guitar part on “Daytripper.”
But these days? Well, things aren’t as guitar-oriented.
“Baby boomers are the best customers I’ve ever had. They’ve driven a lot of the guitar trends, but they are aging and many of them are downsizing their guitar collections,” Gruhn added. “This doesn’t mean that guitar sales are dying, but instrument sales in general are under stress.”

And from another guy in the business:

“Rock is almost dead,” he said. “It’s almost nonexistent. And with guitar there’s no almost one to look up to anymore – no one to get you to want to learn. I have three or four guitar students who are about 12 to 14 years old, and I told one of them she should find someone in her class to play guitar with. She said, ‘No one else plays the guitar, and people think I’m weird because I do.’ ”

As a one-time rock musician, I note this trend with sorrow, of course. As much as I detest the modern obsession with 1,000-watt amplifiers in cars, it does allow me to note that I seldom if ever hear loud rock music emanating from cars these days — in fact, now that I think of it, I can’t remember when last I did — because the market in sub-woofer bass played by sub-moron drivers appears to be dominated by rap music and its adherents, Wiggers and and their Black counterparts. (And this in our upscale neighborhoods in north Texas. South Chicago must be just one large cacophony of thumping drums.)

I suppose that the trend away from rock music (and its instruments) is just one of those things — just as in classical music, harpsichord music almost disappeared when the pianoforte became more popular in the nineteenth century. Of course, I think this sucks, but then again if it means fewer hair bands then it’s not altogether a Bad Thing.

What I hate is what the trend means: that popular taste is devolving towards the primitive — but then again, I suppose that classical music aficionados said the same thing when jazz and later rock music began to supplant classical music among young people. One could say that the classical folks had a point:  Buddy Holly wasn’t exactly Beethoven; then again, in today’s world Heavy Z (or whoever) isn’t exactly Freddy Mercury. But on his worst day, Buddy Holly could write better music than the most accomplished rapper, who has to rely on plagiarism (a.k.a. “sampling”) to provide some kind of musical overlay to a soul-crushing, over-amplified rhythm section. Don’t even get me started on the differences between Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and  G-Eazy & Halsey’s Him & I  (errrr Him & Me or He & I, surely?).

Of course, another manifestation of the move away from classical- to rock music was that guitar pupils began to outnumber piano pupils.  After all, the guitar is an easier instrument to play than the piano, just as manipulating a turntable and drum machine is easier than playing a guitar (as the article correctly notes). I mean, when Paris Hilton can be known as a good DJ… those whirring sounds you hear are Stevie Ray Vaughan and John Bonham spinning in their basements.

One could get all upset about how this is just another sign of the Dumbing Down Of Today’s Yoof, but I think this is more a factor of how music has traditionally been taught and learned — which brings me to the second issue raised by the article.

In Part 2 tomorrow, I’ll talk about that. But just to help people know what I’m talking about, here’s a guitarist:

 

We Know What’s Best For You #2,572

Gummint

In future, every time someone suggests that the “government” should look after people’s needs, I am going to quote this story:

Thousands of school children in Rio de Janeiro have been left bitterly disappointed this Easter after council nutritionists replaced their traditional gift of a chocolate egg with a bag of rotting carrots following a major food ordering blunder.
Instead of buying 2,300 kilos of carrots, bungling officials mistakenly put a decimal in the wrong place and purchased a whopping 23,000 kilos, leading to a massive budget overspend of £15,860 (74,000 reais), ten times higher than the normal tab.

Let me count the ways:

  1. The “government” (doesn’t matter which branch) decided that kids would be better off getting carrots instead of chocolate treats, so they unilaterally changed the tradition because health. (Note the “we know what’s best for you” arrogance.)
  2. The same “government” no doubt decided on carrots because the vegetable needs no preparation, just washing. Also, carrots have a long shelf life before rotting — unless one stores them in plastic bags, which reduces the shelf life by 50% — more if stored in a warm, damp climate (such as can be found in, say, Brazil).
  3. The old “decimal place” problem: stupidity compounded by lack of oversight or controls.
  4. The article suggests that the replacement of Easter eggs with carrots was to cover up the ordering cock-up. Given that the carrots were sent in bagged portions and not in bulk makes me skeptical, ditto the inclusion of recipes for carrot cake etc. in the bags.

Frankly, I’m amazed they didn’t send fresh eggs instead of Easter eggs. In baggies.

Then we have yet another example of stupidity, this time at the local level:

Staff were left in a pickle as they tried to devise ways of getting rid of the mega-supply which needed to be eaten before the vegetables went off.

Milo Minderbinder’s chocolate-covered cotton comes to mind. Had I been on staff, I would have sent the bags of rotting carrots back to the council’s offices, to make it their problem. But you can’t expect any such initiative from government functionaries like school administrators because a.) they’re stupid and b.) they’re too timid to lash out at moronic managers.

Had I been a student, I’d have hidden the rotting carrots somewhere in the school principal’s office, to let him deal with the eventual smell. But that’s just me. (And in case anyone’s still alive from that time, I didn’t do it.)

The cynic in me also wants to ask whether any of the councilors owns a carrot farm and couldn’t sell his surplus, but I’m pretty sure that even such simple corruption may be beyond these idiots.

The best part of this comes at the end, when discussing the overspend:

The scandal comes at a time when thousands of council workers have been waiting for months for back-dated payments of late salaries.

One wonders of anyone will be fired for this gross incompetence… oh, who are we kidding? It’s government.

Happy 100th

Military

Britain’s Royal Air Force celebrates its centenary today. Which is an excellent excuse for me to show pics of my all-time favorite Brit warplanes, in no specific order.

Bristol Beaufighter

SE.5a

Hawker Hurricane IIc

Avro Vulcan

De Havilland Mosquito

Supermarine Spitfire

Hawker Hunter

Sopwith Snipe (not the Camel)

Avro Lancaster

Hawker Hart

This last was, I think, the best-looking biplane ever made. There are still several models (not replicas) flying, even though production ceased in 1938.

A couple of gratuitous book references about the early days of the RFC/RAF respectively:  Goshawk Squadron and Piece of Cake, both by Derek Robinson. And for the story of possibly the toughest human being who ever lived:  Reach For The Sky, by Paul Brickhill.