Category: Two-Minute Hate

Disgusting People

Quote Of The Day

Journalist Scum, QOTD

Man, it sure is difficult to come up with a single quote of the day, nowadays.  I should just post a transcript of all the responses by WH Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt — who (unlike her Biden-appointed predecessor) is not a DEI hire and actually knows what she’s doing — but let’s just take this one, made in response to this action by the White House:

“Gone are the days where left-wing stenographers posing as journalists, such as yourself, dictate who gets to ask what.“

Is it So Wrong that I’m falling in love with her?

The PPV Phenomenon

Journalist Scum, Media Assholes

Making a living from writing is extraordinarily difficult — ask me how I know this — and I have often been tempted to put much if not all of my non-novel writing behind a paywall (SubStack, etc.).  There are two problems with this action:  the first is that my blogging has never been a serious attempt to make money, which is why I have to resort to the occasional ad hoc  beg-a-thon for crises, and Patreon for “subscription” support.  (And to those of you who participate in the latter, thank you again:  you have no idea how much it helps.)

The second reason I don’t charge for access is that to be perfectly frank, I don’t think my blogging is that valuable in the grand scheme of things, and charging for access would be somewhat… impertinent on my part.  Put baldly, anyone with a little spare time can find pics of beautiful women, cars, guns and so on for themselves.  As for my commentary:  well, I know that many people — in the beginning, anyway — told me that my blog made them realize that they weren’t the only ones who felt this way, especially whether it came to political outlook and social perspective.  Of gun love, we will not speak.  But is it all that valuable?

And that’s all I care to say about that.

What I really want to talk about is how the various online media are starting to charge readers, most often not for their entire opus, but for certain articles only.  Here are a few examples:

  • The Daily Mail:
  • The Sun:  and we all know about
  • PJMedia: 

This, as opposed to other outlets who have pretty much set upon putting their entire publication behind a paywall, like The New York Times (lol never gonna happen), The Epoch Times, Britain’s Daily Telegraph and so on.  In several cases, I would really like to read their stuff but I can’t afford the subscription — not individually, but cumulatively, all those subscriptions would add up to a considerable amount which I cannot possibly afford.  (Ditto TV/Internet streaming services, but that’s a story for another time.)

Look, I don’t have a problem with any of this.  It costs a great deal to run a media company — although I would argue much less than when they were reliant on newsprint for their distribution — but even with the economies of Internet publication, they still have to pay for content (writers, photographers) and production (editorial/site maintenance staff etc.) as well as hosting bandwidth, which means that they have to charge for access.  TANSTAAFL, and this is as true for them as for any other business which offers a product to consumers.

We consumers have been spoiled in this regard, because when the Internet started, so much of the content came free and we became spoiled thereby.  So now when we get confronted by a paywall, we get all huffy and say, “It ain’t worth it!” and in many cases it isn’t.

I know that many people find my reading of the often-dreadful Daily Mail inexplicable, but let me nevertheless use them as an example for how I treat the mini-paywalls.  Here’s an example of yesterday’s Mail headlines:

I find this interesting.  If the Mail thinks that Gold-Digger story is enticing enough to make me want to join their little subscription club, they are sadly mistaken.  (Given the profile of their average reader, however, they may not be altogether wrong.)  And the prurient reader will find several examples of the Pineapple Sack type, all for free.

The only one of the four example articles which interests me at all is the one about pay-per-mile driving charges, not because it would affect me or most of my Readers, it being a UK phenomenon;  but because if the stupid Green Nude Heel program were to be implemented Over Here by various Green politicians of the Biden/Harris/Obama stripe, it would very much be relevant.  And as I so often say:  stuff that happens Over There will often make its way Over Here at some point, so we need to be vigilant.

Anyway, while there may occasionally be a paywalled article in any of the places I frequent for my daily news, generally speaking the PPV aspect is mostly an irritant — and as I’ve illustrated above, often not even that because the topic, details and/or commentary thereon is of little interest to me.

What I’m discovering is that there are a few writers / commentators whose stuff I might be tempted into paying for on a subscription basis — Victor Davis Hanson and Jordan Peterson come to mind — but honestly, they are few and far between.

And Megyn Kelly would have to broadcast her show in the nude to get my subscription dollar, and maybe not even then.

I am not at all averse to media putting adverts and commercials in their product to generate revenue, similar to what newspapers and broadcast TV stations have always done — provided that said ads are not too large, too many, too obtrusive or too repetitive.  And the internet print outlets have only themselves to blame for the arrival of services like AdBlock, when the ads suddenly started shouting at me or auto-loading some fucking mini-movie which interrupted my reading.  I know the rationale for such commercials — I worked in the advertising business for years — but I reject it utterly.  There is a reason why TV channels could only run a few minutes’ worth of commercials per hour back in the day, and that’s because when the commercials became all-pervasive and a considerable irritant, then government had to step in and we all know what happens in such cases.

Anyway, what we’re dealing with now is a media environment which is constantly changing, much as the broadcast media changed with the arrival of cable.  All I can say is that everyone, from the DailyMail to PJMedia to Insty to humble bloggers like me, needs to be aware of their limitations.

I think I know mine, but I’m not so sure about the big guys.

Surrender

Legal Stuff, Muzzies, Two-Minute Hate

Surrendering to an enemy is not always a bad thing.  Sometimes, your position is hopeless, and continuing the struggle is not only pointless but perhaps ruinous — loss of life, loss of country, whatever.

But surrendering to an enemy when you have won?  That, my friends, takes a lot of doing.   Try this for an example of the latter:

Are you fucking kidding me?  The murderous bitch was “upset”?   Bloody hell, why not just put sunglasses on her to cover her eyes as well?  Or why bother with a mugshot at all?

When she expressed her anguish at the facial mugshot, they should have re-shot the thing, thus:

Or even better, if she had the proper attributes:

That would have been much better treatment for her… but no, Milord Justice had to roll over like a little possum and accommodate her stupid religious custom, when she’s accused of trying to join ISIS to kill non-Muslim people.

Fuck ’em — not just the terrorists, but the spineless assholes who kowtow to them.

By the way:  before the original and oh-so-objectionable mugshot is scrubbed from the Internet by the judge’s little cousins in wokedom, here it is.

Never Mind The Words

Music, Two-Minute Hate

…or, as musicologists call them, “lyrics”.

For the longest time, I’ve detested song lyrics.  I don’t mean specific lyrics, necessarily (although whoever penned the words in most Streisand songs deserves their own special circle of Hell), but all lyrics.

That’s because I love music, and lyrics are just a distraction from the art form.  It’s why the great paintings don’t contain expository words or speech bubbles — just a simple title suffices — and classical sculptures aren’t tattooed (although it’s only a question of time before they are, and I’m hoping that this can wait until after I’m dead).

Seriously:  somebody please enlighten me as to how Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, for instance, would be improved by a male or female warbler spouting some execrable nonsense over Ludwig’s deathless piano.

And as a one-time chorister, I have to make an exception for some (but not all) sacred music, e.g.  Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus  or Fauré’s Agnus Dei.  And even then, using the latter as an example, it’s the same three lines repeated ad nauseam anyway.

I have a special room of hatred in my heart for opera, because not only are the lyrics generally trite and awful, but unless you’re fluent in German and/or Italian, 90% of the art form is completely incomprehensible anyway.

“But the voice is just another instrument!”

My point exactly.  There’s nothing wrong with the singing;  it’s when you add words that the whole thing falls apart.

I also make exception when the lyrics are satirical or humorous — when the music’s job is just to make the words memorable by the addition of a melody.  A fine example of this is to be found in the works of Gilbert & Sullivan, e.g.:

For as a general rule we know / Two strings go to every bow;
Make up your mind what grief will bring / When you have two bows to every string!

No greater argument against bigamy was ever written.

Don’t get me started on modern music.  Take for example CSN’s Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, a love song supposedly written about Judy Collins — who ended up bedding two-thirds of the trio, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the young houri  bonked David Crosby as well (because it was the late 1960s).  The song is brilliant, the harmonies, well, CSN;  but the lyrics?

Friday evening / Sunday in the afternoon;
What have you got to lose?
Will you come see me / Thursday or Saturday?
What have I got to lose?

As sung by the boys, the lyrics sound wonderful;  but they’re incomprehensible rubbish.

Which brings me to Steely Dan.  As Longtime Readers know, I have no equal when it comes to admiration for the works of Messrs. Fagen and Becker.  Complex music, wonderfully arranged and played:  Beethoven would definitely approve.  Now try and make sense of their lyrics.

While the music played you worked by candlelight
Those San Francisco nights
You were the best in town
Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl
You turned it on the world
That’s when you turned the world around

…and Kid Charlemagne  was one of their more comprehensible efforts.

But the greatest example of bullshit lyrics were undoubtedly the prog-rock Yes.

Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face
Caesar’s palace, morning glory, silly human race
On the sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place
If the summer changed to winter, yours is no disgrace

The best part is that Jon Anderson admitted many years later that the lyrics actually had no meaning;  he chose the words simply because of their sound and their scanning value to the music.  Which made me chortle out loud, because almost as many analytical pages had been penned by poseur “musicologists” attempting to divine some kind of meaning to Yours Is No Disgrace  as had been written by English literary poseurs attempting to do the same with the beaded curtain in Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants.  Same purpose, same foolishness.

No;  if you’re going to have lyrics in your song, make them throwaway stuff, e.g. Volman and Kaylan’s Elenore:

Elenore, gee, I think you’re swell
And you really do me well
You’re my pride and joy, et cetera…

Et cetera?  [snork]

I could go on all day about this stuff, but let me finish with something a little less tongue-in-cheek.  Here’s Ralph McTell’s Streets Of London:

Have you seen the old man
In the closed-down market
Kicking up the paper
With his worn out shoes?
In his eyes you see no pride
And held loosely at his side
Yesterday’s paper telling yesterday’s news

So how can you tell me you’re lonely
And say for you that the sun don’t shine?
Let me take you by the hand and
Lead you through the streets of London
Show you something to make you change your mind

Have you seen the old girl
Who walks the streets of London
Dirt in her hair and her clothes in rags?
She’s no time for talking
She just keeps right on walking
Carrying her home in two carrier bags

So how can you tell me you’re lonely
And say for you that the sun don’t shine?
Let me take you by the hand and
Lead you through the streets of London
I’ll show you something to make you change your mind

In the all night cafe
At a quarter past eleven
Same old man sitting there on his own
Looking at the world
Over the rim of his teacup
Each tea lasts an hour
And he wanders home alone

So how can you tell me you’re lonely
Don’t say for you that the sun don’t shine
Let me take you by the hand and
Lead you through the streets of London
I’ll show you something to make you change your mind

Have you seen the old man
Outside the Seaman’s Mission
Memory fading with the medal ribbons that he wears
In our winter city
The rain cries a little pity
For one more forgotten hero
And a world that doesn’t care

So how can you tell me you’re lonely
And say for you that the sun don’t shine?
Let me take you by the hand and
Lead you through the streets of London
I’ll show you something that’ll make you change your mind.

Not lyrics:  poetry.  Shakespeare would approve.

“Moderate”

Muzzies, Psychos, Two-Minute Hate

When looking at this little show (via Insty, thankee Squire), I was struck by one thing that CAIR chick screamed:

“I demand Jihad, I want ISIS to kill all of you.”

…which right there gives us the difference between a “moderate” Muslim and an “extremist” Muslim:  the extremist (ISIS) wants to kill all Jews, while the moderate (CAIR) wants ISIS to kill all Jews, and is quite okay with that.

Hope that clears everything up for you.

 

Peeve #564

Gratuitous Chick Pics, Two-Minute Hate

Among the several things about Modern Life that make me ultra-peevish is this thing about people walking around carrying drinks — water bottles, Yeti flasks, what have you — and I want to ask people (loudly) whether they think they’re going to die of thirst before they can get to the nearest tap or drinking fountain.  Mostly, this applies to women, the precious creatures, because Teh Experts tell us that We Must Remain Hydrated, Lest We Die.

Maybe when you’re crossing the fucking Mojave Desert, but not when you’re crossing the street in Dallas or Los Angeles.

However, let it not be said that I’m completely intolerant in this regard.  I am prepared, for instance, to make exceptions to my “Stop acting like a camel!”  gripe in circumstances such as these:

…although I should also point out that not all women seem to need that oh-so important drink in their hand every time they step outdoors:


…and of course, there are those poor things in obvious need of sustenance:

I mean, I wouldn’t want y’all to think I was that Krool & Hartless, after all.

But in all honesty, if you’re that thirsty, get off the street and find a place to assuage your thirst — and there are many of them, in cities all over the world.  Places like these:

It’s really not too much to ask.