Category: Bad News

Horrible, unpleasant stuff

And Another Institution Burns To The Ground

Bad News, Modernism, Music, Two-Minute Hate

Hardly had the smoke dissipated from the Notre Dame fire when this catastrophe befell us:

Classical masterpieces, orchestral prowess and sense of occasion have come to define the Proms over the years.
But purists may raise an eyebrow this time around – as the BBC plan to feature hip hop and break dancing.
This year, the concert series will include ‘The Breaks’ – a prom designed to ‘honour the global phenomenon of hip hop and breakbeat culture’. The concert – on September 6 – is likely to spark criticism from traditionalists.
But yesterday, Proms director David Pickard insisted the time was ripe for it as the divisions between musical genres are ‘being broken down’.
He said: ‘I think the Proms needs to reflect what is happening to music in 2019. DJing and concertos for turntables are now part of the classical world.’ But he warned the BBC would not ‘necessarily’ edit foul language if it is there in ‘a good artistic context’.

As an exercise in “artistic context”, I’d like to tie this little modernist milquetoast to a chair and beat him with heavy chains.

FFS, we don’t need more exposure to modern music — it assails our ears in shops, restaurants, malls, from passing teenagers’ inadequate headphones as they walk by us in the street, and from stereo speakers more valuable than the cars which encase them as they stand next to us at the traffic light.  And it is not repeat NOT “part of the classical world”, unless your idea of “classical” includes lyrics which refer to women as bitches and whores in every other line, and four times during the chorus.  It’s fucking jungle music — all beat and little melody — and if someone takes offense at the word “jungle”, I invite you to visit any part of the African wilderness and listen to the kind of music that is performed there, and explain to me the difference.  And now this swill is going to be featured at the Proms… and isn’t that  special?

What the Proms used to give the public was exposure to some of the greatest music ever created, music of exquisite beauty, unparalleled technical expertise and sophistication born of an unmatched cultural heritage — and boy, are we ever in need of more of that, these days.  Instead, we’re going to hear “songs” from some asswipe called N’Jiggy featuring overpowering bass, over-loud drums and underwhelming artistic value other than (you heard it here first) a few “sampled” fragments of Beethoven’s Ninth scatted around like diamonds in a pigsty.

Fuck that, I’m going to the range.  I may or may not affix a picture of David Pickard to the target.

Not Just The Weather

Bad News, Gummint, Nature, Weather

A while ago, I drew attention to the floods which have inundated the Upper Midwest states like Iowa and Nebraska.  What I did not know at the time (but should have), is that when there is catastrophe, can the fat finger of government be far behind?

 There is much more to the “management” of the Missouri River basin than just how and when to drain water.
In the interest of habitat restoration, etc. (the highest priority since 2004), tens of thousands of acres surrounding the river and more than a thousand miles of riverbank have been mechanically altered by the Corps — not with an eye to controlling flooding, but rather to facilitate the “reconnection of the river with its floodplain,” believed to be a necessity in achieving the goal of species and habitat preservation and restoration.
When the Corps believed that protecting people and property was a more worthy aim than fish and wildlife, the riverbanks were stabilized, shored against erosion and high-water events. The channels were kept largely free of silt infill to facilitate the draining efficiency of the river that essentially deals with the runoff of vast millions of square miles of mountain and plains snow and rain.
Dikes were built and maintained. Levees, too. Chutes (secondary channels of a meandering river) were closed to inhibit the ability of the river to overcome its banks in seasons of high-water. All these things (and more) combined to permit millions of Americans to develop the reclaimed lands, for farming, ranching, and homes. Indeed, these millions of Americans were encouraged to do so by their elected representatives, who happily took credit for the resulting economic benefits and increased tax revenues.

And then in 2004, it all changed.  Read the whole thing, and be enraged.

Cast-Offs

Bad News

I remember a cartoon from a long-ago MAD Magazine (back when it was still at least marginally funny) which depicted a young woman trying on an expensive dress.  When reproached about its cost, she said, “But it’s something that my daughter, and her daughter, can wear on their wedding days.”  And when it’s suggested she use her own grandmother’s wedding dress instead, she snaps:  “Oh, who wants to wear that old thing?”

Things pass, and the tragedy is that often what was beautiful, or majestic, or seemed destined for immortality, doesn’t end up that way.  And few better examples can be found than among magnificent ruins such as these.

…and these deathless words spring to mind:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

And The Last One Falls

Bad News, Conservatism, Men & Women, Sports

As any fule kno, I hate change, especially change which won’t necessarily improve anything.  I also hate it when “change” is replaced by a euphemism such as “overhaul” — because “overhaul” to me means improving something or, at worst, restoring it to its original form or function after neglect.  Imagine then my disgust at this development:

Overhaul of Augusta National ahead of the Masters is sign of the times as golf seeks to be the ultimate family sport

  • Historic occasion for women’s golf on Saturday with first amateur Augusta event
  • It was the turn of some of America’s best juniors to play the course on Sunday
  • The club where nothing changed for decades is undergoing huge transformation

…and all the dreadful details are included in the link above.  Several comments come to mind immediately.

Unless the something that has been going on for decades is genocide, institutionalized child molestation or South African-style apartheid, there’s no need to change anything.  What has gone on for decades at Augusta National GC is a policy of men-only membership (only recently relaxed [spit] ) and a culture which creates a male enclave — and only to the most fevered feminist could this equate to the three horrors above.  I know, wimmens are going to say, “It’s not that important;  why are you making such a fuss?” to which my response is: “If it’s not  that important, then why the fuck  are you trying to change it?”  I’ve written about men-only places before, and the benefits of such places where men can be unholy assholes without some woman or girly-man taking offense at their language / behavior.  It’s a safety-valve  for such activity, and I for one miss it terribly.  I see nothing wrong with gender-specific institutions, whether female-only universities or, like Augusta, male-only golf clubs.  (Don’t even get me started  on military schools.)

So:  why allow women to play at Augusta, when there are thousands upon thousands of other golf courses for them to play at?  Pure symbolism, is why.  (And I’ll bet these Amazon golferettes didn’t play off the back tees, either.)

Then there’s this crap about golf as the “ultimate family sport”?  What the fuck is that all about?  Let’s be honest:  golf has always been a male preserve, except for the many lesbians who participate in the women’s tour and for the wives of male club-members who need to take a full day out of the week for a “Ladies Day” to get together and fuck around  — don’t get me started on the double standard involved with that.  (The truth of the matter is that male golfers prefer  a Ladies Day because women play too slowly and pathetically, and it beats having to wait for twenty minutes per hole while Agnes, Pookie and Frances each take four or five shots to reach a green easily reachable in two by a pre-adolescent boy golfer.)  And how can golf be the “ultimate family sport” when it bores everyone but the golfers involved to tears?

And Augusta’s decided to go along with this bullshit?  Why?  The Masters is already one of the most popular sporting events on TV, it’s already regarded as the world championship of golf by all golfers, and if even one of the tournament’s big sponsors decided to quit because feminism, other equally-large sponsors would get into fistfights to be their replacement.  (The Masters allows for only a few sponsors and severely-limited advertising time, which is probably a prime reason why it’s so popular.)  In other words, Augusta and The Masters are dealing from a position of strength, here, and — let me be quite blunt about this — they have no need to change anything.

But they’re going to, and that’s the pity of it.  And if Augusta goes, what chance do any of the other men-only clubs have of continuing?

It’s enough to make a man have a double for his morning gin.

Isn’t That Special?

Bad News, Pussification Parade

“Never marry outside your class.”

As a conservative man, one of the old customs I’ve always respected is that nobility / royalty always kept a closed shop when it came to marriage.  If a royal princess came of marriageable age, some other royal prince would be found — mostly in Europe — to be her husband, and ditto for the future Earl Whatsit to find himself a brood mare wife among the dozens of well-bred girls available either locally, or else abroad.

Yes I know, such customs have led to inbred morons and black sheep in the various families, but over time, the benefit of said unions have outweighed the potential disadvantages.  Both parties know the rules of the game, and behave accordingly.

There have been some notable exceptions to this rule, of course, most notably in the case of Prince William’s wife, the former commoner Kate Middleton (now the Duchess of Cambridge) who will one day became Queen Catherine of Great Britain.  As a commoner-turned royal, she has been an outstanding success and is a tribute to Britain’s Royal Family.

Credit: Euan Cherry/WENN.com ORG XMIT: wenn29585715

The same cannot be said for the other prince (William’s brother Harry) who not only married someone way below his class, but a foreigner to boot, who not only has no background in the vagaries of Britain’s class system (not always a Bad Thing, mind you) but also seems determined to inflict her New Age / New Woman bullshit on the long-suffering Windsors.  Hence:

Once he was a beer-drinking bachelor with a penchant for fast food, who was most likely to be found at the heart of the party.
But then our action man prince met a free-spirited Californian actress living by the ethos that most things can be ‘cured with either yoga, the beach or a few avocados’, as she wrote on her now-defunct blog The Tig.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Ever since Prince Harry met Meghan Markle something has changed. Last week they were spotted leaving a Notting Hill wellness shop which offers ‘energy healing’ and meditation with ‘singing bowls’.
Then it was revealed they had stayed at Heckfield Place hotel in Hampshire for three nights. It boasts an organic ethos, a yoga studio and a spa offering ‘all-natural treatments’, and holds mind-expanding talks on subjects such as ‘How the world thinks’.

And it gets better:

The Duchess of Sussex has delivered an astonishing snub to the Queen’s highly-regarded doctors, insisting she doesn’t want ‘the men in suits’ to oversee the birth of her first child.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, in a significant break with Royal tradition, 37-year-old Meghan has appointed her own delivery team, led by an unnamed female doctor.
Royal Household gynaecologists Alan Farthing and Guy Thorpe-Beeston – who is a specialist in high-risk births – attended at the arrival of all three of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s children. They are among the best in the world but neither has been given the leading role in Meghan’s care.

FFS.  The only was this could get any worse would be if the “unnamed female doctor” turns out to be that chick from Gray’s Anatomy.

Look:  Britain has had a long and storied tradition of eccentric royals, most of whom were kept out of view of the public (unless they were actual monarchs, in which case they were kept more or less in check by Parliament).  And over time, their effect on the Royal Family has been either minimal or else forgotten.

Nowadays, of course, there is no privacy for Royal Loons, and the tabloid press (no longer restrained by lèse-majesté  laws of old, more’s the pity) seize on every little eccentricity and bray it out loud to the world.

In the grand scheme of things, of course, none of this matters — especially to us Murkins, who look on these goings-on with, at best, bemused indifference — and in centuries to come, the Pussification Of Prince Harry will be (perhaps) just a footnote in someone’s book about royal foolishness.

But for those like me who are interested in things like tradition and long-established customs (especially when they’ve been proven to work), this dim-witted modernist broad has done more damage to the Royal Family than Hitler’s bombs.

AP Photo/Evan Agostini

Well-Earned Reward

Bad News

This kind of thing makes my head ache.

Father deserts family when kids are young.  Then, years later, kids (or one of them) becomes Rich & Famous basically through talent and/or luck.  Whereupon Runaway Dad, who did fuck all to help and has since Fallen On Hard Times, suddenly reappears (usually following some media discovery) and bemoans the fact that he’s No Longer Part Of The Family, or similar.  Like in this case.  Whereupon my reaction:

I remember John Lennon once telling that his father walked out on his mother and emigrated to New Zealand before John was born — and the next time he heard from Daddy Dearest was after the Beatles exploded onto the music world, when his father wrote to him asking for money.  Lennon’s response was as expected:  caustic and dismissive (think:  FOAD).

Now, of course, someone like Adele (whose talent is astonishing and her success justified) is going to get some stick from the Bleeding Hearts Brigade because she somehow owes this asswipe a piece of her vast fortune.  I hope that her response is even more extreme than Lennon’s, and should be quite simple:  “He wasn’t my father;  he was just my sire — and he doesn’t deserve shite  from me.”  (Her Cockney frankness is one of her more endearing features.)

Stick to yer guns, darlin’.  Never mind all those Commiesymps at The Sun.