Enough With The Bananas

Over at Intellectual Takeout, John Horvat talks about bananas on walls:

My reasoning centers on a recent event in New York City in which the renowned Sotheby’s auction house sold a 2019 art piece dubbed “Comedian” by Maurizio Cattelan. The work consisted of a fresh banana duct-taped to the wall.

The bidding started at $800,000, and within five minutes, the item sold for $5.2 million plus auction house fees, which came to a total of $6.2 million. The new owner is Chinese-born crypto-businessman Justin Sun.

The actual banana cost thirty-five cents when bought in the morning at an Upper East Side fruit stand. The new owner will get a certificate of authenticity and installation instructions should he want to replace the banana before it rots. Mr. Sun has already announced that he will eat the original banana “as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture.”

Commenting after the sale, Billy Cox, a Miami art dealer with his own copy of “Comedian,” says the work is something of historical importance that comes only “once or twice a century.”

Uh huh.  Like the paint-splattered “art” of Jackson Pollock, to describe this as “art” at all, let alone something of “historical importance”, is to underline the folly of the so-called cultural elites and their absurd mania for post-modernist deconstructivism.

We are living in a society where certain liberal sectors inhabit an alternative reality where thirty-five-cent bananas are handled as multimillion-dollar works of art. The problem is that they want to force everyone else in society to believe their madness.

“Pull the other one” would be the obvious rejoinder.  But Horvat takes it further:

The first are those who do not want to see the absurdity of the banana on the wall and dogmatize that it is art. They create their own reality and impose it on the nation.

The second group consists of those tired of being told a banana taped to the wall is art. They long to live in a world where art is art and bananas are bananas.

In the [2024] election, some of the latter group said, “Enough is enough.”

This reaction was not against a single banana on one wall.

You see, there is [also] the banana that claims a man is a woman and a woman is a man. Other bananas claim that people can choose their pronouns, pornography in libraries is literature, or that it is just fine for men to compete with women in sports. We are told drag queen story hours are suitable for children, after-school Satan Clubs are educational and it is not a human baby but a clump of cells.

It is all part of a vast banana extravaganza that we are asked to admire and make believe is the blueprint for a dream society.

Quite right.  There’s only one thing to do when faced with these bananas:

yup.  Dip them in boiling oil.

Degradation

When I first moved to the U.S. back in the mid-80s, I was impressed by how well things worked.  I mean, you have to understand that all around the world — such as in Third World countries like Zimbabwe, India and Italy — things often just do not work as one would expect them to.  Whether it’s because they are badly made, or badly assembled, or just operated by fucking idiots (try doing a relatively simple thing like booking a flight out of Rome’s Leonardo Da Vinci airport — which isn’t even in Rome but miles and miles out on the coast, a story for another time) and you’ll soon see that not much works as originally intended.

I am also familiar with concepts such as planned obsolescence, where corporations deliberately design products that will eventually fail or fall to pieces so that you will be forced into buying a new one as a replacement.

But there’s another factor in stuff not working, and this is the one which really, really sets my teeth on edge, and it’s embodied by an appliance which is common in households all over the U.S.:  the dish washing machine, or dishwasher.

When I first came over, I fell in live with the  dishwasher, because I had never owned one.  Most families in South Africa didn’t, either because they had Black servants to hand wash the dishes, or they were too poor to afford such expensive (and they were expensive) machines.

But these GE/Frigidaire/Whirlpool dishwashers?  Oh man, there were great.  You piled your dishes in, coated with caked-on gravy or food particles or whatever, added a little detergent, and switched the thing on.  All sorts of magic would happen behind the closed door, and when the thing stopped running, you waited about ten minutes and then opened the door, and there were your dishes:  clean, dry and warm (maybe even still hot) to the touch.

And that was it.

Sadly, that is no longer the case.

Now, you have to pretty much hand wash the dishes first, or at least rinse them into near-cleanliness before loading them into the dishwasher, then do the same stuff as above and then, when the buzzer sounds or a light goes on, you open the door to find that your dishes are not completely clean, still wet or at best damp, and in fact, many times you will have to rinse them off and do the whole fucking thing all over again — with no guarantee that the outcome will be any different.

And why is this?

Because the dirty fingers of government have been stuck into the operation.  Thanks to an excess of Green zealotry, dishwashers can’t use as much water as they used to so the spray can’t be as fierce (and effective), and the heating element has been turned from its furnace-like operation into something that wouldn’t keep you warm on a cool autumn day if you gripped it in your fist.

Our dishwashers, in short, have been turned from appliances that once worked perfectly at their intended function into flabby little things that are the equivalent of convict labor:  surly, unproductive and unreliable.

There’s no point in complaining about this because Green Worship has become so ingrained in our culture that anyone daring to rail against the Great God EnergySmart (blessings be upon its name) might well face severe sanction and even penalties.

Such as happened to my friend Patterson when he rewired his 2015-model dishwasher to 1980 specs and made it work properly.  Me, I’m too stupid to do something like that, and too old to want to kick against the pricks in that manner.

So my private little rebellion against this nonsense is that I just wash my dishes again and again until they are as clean as I want them to be.  (I do the same with my low-flow-low-use low-efficiency toilet, which requires two and sometimes three flushes to take care of the old #2 bowel movement discharge, and has been know to rise to five, after a particularly stupendous roast beef dinner.)

Or I power-rinse my dishes with steaming-hot water before loading them, using twice as much electricity (via the water heater) as I would have used to run the dishwasher if it was working properly.

End result:  I use twice or three times as much water and much more electricity to wash my dishes as I would have in 1986.

And all this just so I can have clean dishes to put away in the cupboard.  Or else I do my part for the environment by using paper plates which don’t need washing and just end up in the landfill.

I know this sounds like a really pointless and futile gesture, doesn’t it?  But it’s far less ummm radical than, say, were I to assassinate the CEO of Whirlpool or the politicians responsible for turning once-efficient U.S. products into pathetic Third World failures.

Isn’t it?

Too Old To Rock ‘N Roll

Here’s what Elon and Vivek are doing:

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by X owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, is looking for what they described as “small-government revolutionaries” ready to work on what they described as “unglamorous cost-cutting.”

You know what?  If I was five or seven years younger, I’d apply.  Having worked in both big corporations and small startups, I know exactly how to squeeze efficiency into a process and cut unnecessary processes as well as anyone.

But alas, I turn 70 next week, and while the spirit may be sorta-willing to do this, the flesh just doesn’t have the strength to swing an axe anymore.

Damn it.

Then again, I’d have to move to D.C., and… nah, it ain’t worth it.

It’s Not Just Squirrels

I kinda missed the story of Peanut The Squirrel because, as a rule, I’m not that enthralled by stories about rodents unless there are air- and/or .22 rifles involved.

But basically, for those who are like me, the story goes that a much-loved pet squirrel with an Internet following (!) was slaughtered as a result of some dubious Gummint raid on private property somewhere in (duh) New York.

Like I said:  tragic, but not of great interest to me other than providing yet another example of why a few random local Gummint employees should, as a rule, be whipped in the town square on a monthly basis by voters, just to remind them of whom they actually are supposed to serve and to stop them getting too big for their boots.

This story, however, is quite different:

America’s famously private Amish people are unreachable by phone or email and refuse to have TVs in their homes.  But that didn’t stop members of the conservative Christian group turning out on polling day in a trend that appears to have helped Donald Trump win Pennsylvania.

What sparked the voting rush? Government agents had stormed a local farm early in the year in a row over unpasteurized milk that left the Amish community absolutely enraged. 

Pennsylvania’s traditionally private Amish community, which some estimate numbers around 100,000, then registered to vote in ‘unprecedented numbers’.  Experts have said that the movement could won Mr Trump tens of thousands of new votes in the crucial swing state. 

The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture raided Amos Miller’s farm on January 4, sparking outrage among the state’s Amish population.

“That was the impetus for them to say, ‘We need to participate’,” the source said. “This is about neighbors helping neighbors.”

Trump’s winning margin in Pennsylvania was about 130,000 votes, by the way.

As much as I view the above story with satisfaction, on balance I think I still prefer the “monthly flogging” idea.


My favorite comment on the Amish story, however, was from the God-Emperor-elect himself:

“Imagine what law enforcement could accomplish if they went after members of elite pedophile rings rather than farmers selling to their neighbors??”

Strange Feeling

I thought that when God-Emperor Trump won reelection, I’d greet the news with all sorts of loud triumphalism, glee and savage invective directed at those who attempted to harass / persecute / jail / assassinate him.

Instead, when I woke up yesterday morning, I read the news about his thumping victory — way beyond the possibility of fraud, which had been what I so feared for so long — and rather than all those feelings, I was simply relieved.  Thoughtful, almost.

And yes, I want as much as anyone for Trump to set about the various offenders (and the Deep State in general) with a chainsaw.

But I watched his acceptance speech, and none of the above was in evidence.  Instead, Trump appeared almost subdued, and in wonder of the miracle of his reelection.  (His new VP wasn’t — LOL)  In a way, I felt almost the same as Trump — just relieved that it was all over, and he could start to accomplish the unbelievable set of tasks that need doing if we are to rescue this nation from its Democratic-Socialist malaise of the past four years.

I mean, just think about it: ending  illegal immigration, creating the groundwork of economic recovery and rebuilding the military (in every sense).  Let’s not even talk about foreign policy — fucking hell, what a nightmare that’s going to be:  Israel/Iran, Russia/Ukraine, China/Taiwan — a veritable Gordian knot, all created by the feckless Biden (or to be more accurate, his handlers, i.e. the Obamas and the Clintons).  (We can talk about giving that little Socialist tit BritPM Starmer a gonad-kicking later, because compared to the latter issues, he’s small potatoes, ditto that Canucki shithead Castreaux.)

And then there’s the issue of going after the people who attempted to subvert his candidacy by unceasing lawfare — that, and the concomitant Deep Swamp Draining alone would tax any man, let alone this magnificent senior citizen.  Hell, I’m over a decade younger than Trump, and just listing his to-do list exhausts me;  and he has to carry it all out and make it happen.

Let’s just hope Trump can enlist the proper people to help him:  Mike Pompeo as SecState, perhaps, Elon Musk for “government efficiency” har har, and dare I suggest Gen. Erik Kurilla as SecDef (we need a fighting soldier in that job, unless Erik’s better suited to JCS, I dunno).

And let’s be honest, Trump’s gonna need Congress to help him.  I have no problem with Speaker Mike Johnson, who has often shown the Right Stuff, but that fucking old bastard Mitch McConnell in the Senate?  I have no patience to put up with him, the prevaricating old roadblock.

What everyone else on that side of the aisle needs to know is that Trump has received a strong mandate from The People to get the thing fixed.  And gawd help those Republicans who get in his way, because we all know that the Commies are going to go batshit on him.  So now is the time for support, not obstruction from his own party.  (And while I’m there, all those NeverTrump RINO assholes need a good thrashing, the fucking turncoats.)

Go get ’em, Mr. President-elect.  I can’t wait to see your Cabinet — and your list of potential Supreme Court nominees, while we’re there.

See what I mean about a big job?  It’s endless.