It’s funny to think that, when I was a child, the Queen’s Christmas speech was the cue for the nation to fall into a collective postprandial slumber. For the past few years, her nearest and dearest have seen to it that her life has outdone any Bond film when it comes to anticipation of what fresh hell awaits our battle-sore yet unbowed hero(ine) around the next corner. Is she going to ignore her favourite son’s alleged association with a dead paedophile? Her grandson’s allegation that her family contains a racist?
It’s certainly been a bumpy old ride of a year, making Her Majesty’s annus horribilis look like a teddy bears’ picnic. But though I’m not a royalist, I’m counting on this most stiff-upper-lipped of ladies not to mention those two little words which were inescapable this year: “mental health”, or the Mental Elf, as I’ve come to think of him.
Remember our old friends Elf and Safety? They’ve been replaced by Mental Elf, and he’s even more annoying, a nasty little imp intent on making every single member of this once-stoic island race confess to hidden sorrows.
The Royal Victimhood Olympics are now an open-season event, like tennis. The Prince of Wails had a head start, moaning about being sent to boarding school by his “distant” mother who – shame on her! – was a young woman doing her very best in a role she had neither wanted nor expected. Meghan Markle famously fled Frogmore Cottage with the Mental Elf in hot pursuit. Prince William, who appeared to be the sensible one, revealed this week he felt as if “the whole world was dying” after he helped save the life of a child while working as a helicopter pilot for the air-ambulance service.
And of course Sarah Ferguson has referred to herself as “the most persecuted woman in the history of the royal family”. All we need now is for Duchess Kate to weigh in with a detailed account of, say, her PMS problems and we’ve collected the full set of Unhappy Royal Families!
Yes, I know Princess Diana started it. But neurosis was just a part of her emotional repertoire. She realised that one of the best guarantees of good mental health is helping others rather than contemplating one’s navel. Or in the case of the wretched Fergie, one’s novel. The writing of Her Heart for a Compass was reportedly “therapeutic” and boosted her “self-esteem”. Is the world big enough for a more self-loving Fergie?
Julie Burchill, “The Queen is the last sane royal standing”, Spiked, 2021-12-09.
December 21, 2021
QotD: The Royal Victimhood Olympics
December 20, 2021
QotD: Turkeys
It did not go well.
As it turns out, turkeys are dumb. And not just a little dumb, no. Turkeys are catastrophically dumb. As in keeping them alive is a monumental challenge, kind of dumb. Turkeys are an abomination of creation: they will make you doubt the plausibility of natural selection. Nothing so dumb should be permitted to survive, except to sustain something more useful.
My husband recalls his peak moment as an amateur turkey farmer; he watched as one of his birds drowned itself in its own water dish. He swears that this is true. He watched the bird stretch down to take a drink, get stuck under the water, and die.
All in all, my husband lost nine of his 20 turkeys.
You should never feel guilty about an animal that is too dumb to pull its own head out of a shallow water dish. Poultry is God’s tofu.
Jen Gerson, “Done with the political turkeys after the holidays”, CBC News, 2021-01-04.
December 19, 2021
QotD: Sun Tzu’s Art of War reworked for the 21st Century by General Mark Milley
“If you think you might attack an enemy, pick up the phone and give ’em a heads up. It’s only fair.”
“You have to be careful not to surprise your enemy. They really don’t like it.”
“Treason is not treason if it is the lesser of two treasons.”
“Know thy pronouns, and know thy enemy’s pronouns.”
“The supreme art of war is to surrender to your enemy without fighting.”
“All war is white rage.”
“If you surrender, you can never lose.”
“If thy commanding officer sends mean tweets, thou need not follow orders or the chain of command.”
“The enemy of my friend is my friend.”
“Keep your friends close and your enemies on speed dial.”
“You can not betray the one to which you were never loyal.”
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for China.”
“When retreating, leave most of thy armaments behind so you know what you’ll be up against next time.”
“Chinese bros before American hoes.”
“He who turns on bad orange man gets big book deal.”
“General Milley Is Releasing A Revised Version Of The Art Of War — And We’ve Got Exclusive Excerpts”, BabylonBee, 2021-09-17.
December 18, 2021
History Summarized: Minoan Greece
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 17 Dec 2021The classical Greeks weren’t the first kids on the Aegean block. Long before Athens’ golden age, before Homer, and even before the Trojan War, there was a civilization on the island of Krete. The land of King Minos was home to beautiful palaces, a fascinatingly-complex economy, and something approximating Bull-Cthulu. It’s a fun time, let’s jump in.
SOURCES & Further Reading: The Greeks: An Illustrated History by Diane Cline for National Geographic, The Greeks: A Global History by Roderick Beaton, Lectures from The Great Courses Plus — “Being Minoan and Mycenaean” from The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World by Robert Garland, and “Minoan Crete” & “Schliemann & Mycenae” from Ancient Greek Civilization by Jeremy McInerney. And I have a university degree in Classical Studies.
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
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December 16, 2021
QotD: “Advance Australia Fair”
O Canada!
Our home and native land…Which should of course be:
O Canada!
Our home on natives’ land…Game as I am to disparage the senior Dominion’s anthem, I have to say it’s effortlessly outpaced in insipidity by …
Australians all let us rejoice
For we are young and free
We’ve golden soil And wealth for toil
Our home is girt by sea…“Girt” is famously the only point of lyric interest in “Advance Australia Fair”. Peter Dodds McCormick wrote the song back in 1878, which meant, by the time they decided to make it the official anthem twenty years ago, most of the verses were unusable. No point shaking off the old cultural cringe of “God Save The Queen” only to start singing couplet after couplet about “gallant Cook from Albion” and “true British courage” and “old England’s flag”. And how about this quatrain?
Britannia then shall surely know
Beyond wide ocean’s roll
Her sons in fair Australia’s land
Still keep an English soul …So, after all the colonial sucking up was excised from the lyric, “girt” was pretty much all that was left. A few years ago, incidentally, there was an Aussie satirical magazine named Girt in its honor: I signed on with them but it folded after one issue. Don’t believe I ever got the check. Or cheque. I try not to be biased against “Advance Australia Fair” on that account, but honestly, was there ever such a gulf between the spirit of a great nation and its official musical embodiment?
Mark Steyn, adapted from A Song for the Season, 2008.
December 11, 2021
QotD: In praise of getting stinkin’ drunk
Slingerland admits the problem of problem drinking. Yet he convincingly argues that the downside of booze has been addressed at length over the last 30 or 40 years. It’s time, he observes, for some pushback against the “puritanical discomfort with pleasure lurking in the background of scholarly discourse.” Slingerland decries “our current age of neo-prohibition and general queasiness about risk,” and exports “the simple joy of feeling good.”
Slingerland, a philosopher at the University of British Columbia in Canada, then goes even further, positing that by causing humans “to become, at least temporarily, more creative, cultural, and communal … intoxicants provided the spark that allowed us to form truly large-scale groups.”
That is to say, without Budweiser and red wine, civilization might not have been possible. For our ancestors, intoxication was “a robust and elegant response to the challenges of getting a selfish, suspicious, narrowly goal-oriented primate to loosen up and connect with strangers.” Brewing vats and drinking vessels were found at a 12,000-year-old site in Turkey. When humans began to sow crops and domesticate livestock, it allowed us to get over distrust and work in larger numbers, giving rise to towns and then cities. Slingerland: “It is no accident that, in the brutal competition of cultural groups from which civilizations emerged, it is the drinkers, smokers and trippers who emerged triumphant.”
Mark Judge, “Drunk: The Vital Pleasure of Getting Hammered”, SpliceToday, 2021-09-01.
December 10, 2021
History Summarized: Britain and the Empire
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 20 Aug 2021How is it that the history of some islands off the northern coast of Europe balloons into a worldwide history? Empire is how! Let’s dig into the history of Britain since Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland in 1603, and follow that narrative through the monumental rise and precipitous fall of the British Empire.
Special thanks to the community members on Discord who assisted me with my script: Corvin the Crow, Johnny, Jdedredhed, Joud, Jéuname, Klieg, RileyTheProcrastinator, The Missing Link, and thesleepingmeerkat
SOURCES & Further Reading: The Great Courses Lecture series Foundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western World by Robert Buchols lectures 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 30, The History Of England volumes 3 Rebellion, 4 Revolution & 5 Dominion by Peter Ackroyd, Scotland: A Concise History by Fitzroy MacLean, The Great Cities in History by John Julius Norwich, A Concise History of Wales by Geraint H. Jenkins, Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans by James Stavridis.
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
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December 4, 2021
Pope Fights — Frederick II: History Summarized
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 3 Dec 2021GET YOUR PINS HERE: crowdmade.com/osp
pope fight. Pope Fight. POPE FIGHT. P O P E F I I I I I G H T!!!!
In this episode, Holy Roman Frederick II wants to hang out in Sicily, but gets dragged kicking and screaming into The Plot. Despite his palpable disinterest in playing diplomatic footsie with the Vatican, he becomes one of the most dangerous opponents the Papacy ever faced.SOURCES & Further Reading: Sicily: An Island at the Center of History by John Julius Norwich, Great Courses Lecture “Emperor Frederick II” from The High Middle Ages by Philip Daileader.
This video topic was requested by our patron Dr Angela J Black. Thank you Angela!
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
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From the comments:
Overly Sarcastic Productions
2 hours ago
1:15 Wow emperor Henry sure did live for a long time, I had no idea. I could have sworn he actually died in 1197, but nope, the man lived right up through German Reunification. Wild.
-B
December 3, 2021
QotD: Questionable legal tactics
Conrad, “The Reverse Insanity Defense”, The Gweilo Diaries, 2004-09-28.
December 2, 2021
“Good idea, Judith. We shall fight the oppressors for your right to have babies, brother. Sister. Sorry.”
The power of Python compelled Stephen Green to write this:
Stan: “I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me ‘Loretta’.”
Still from Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979.
Of all the jokes, gags, and barbs thrown in every direction, Jesus is the only figure shown respect. Monty Python trouper Eric Idle later said of Jesus, “What he’s saying isn’t mockable, it’s very decent stuff.”
For a non-believing, take-no-prisoners comedian like Idle, that’s practically a whole-hearted endorsement.
Instead, the film — Python’s only real film, the others were basically collections of sketches, even Holy Grail — is anti-authoritarian, anti-fanaticism, anti-nihilism, and anti-humorless prigs.
Life of Brian is, however, very pro-funny.
The Pythons even saved their sharpest barbs for political extremists and self-deluded lefties.
Case in point on that last observation: The classic Colosseum conversation between the would-be revolutionaries of the Judean People’s Front.
Or was that the People’s Front of Judea?
Regardless, take two minutes (clip below!) to bask in the comedic good sense that would get the cast and entire production crew canceled in our times.
The postmodern Left should probably cancel everyone who laughed at this scene, just to be safe.
Anyway, point-by-point, Monty Python satirically dissected the then-nascent cultural trends that have since come to dominate not only our culture, but also our politics and even our private lives.
Enjoy … although I will admit that re-watching this today, the laughs were a bit more bitter than they were when I first watched Life of Brian nearly 40 years ago.
November 27, 2021
Making a Medieval TART DE BRY (Brie Tart) | Brie: The King of Cheese
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 28 Apr 2020This Tart de Bry, or Brie Tart, comes from The Forme of Cury and was served at the table of King Richard II (1367 – 1400). Its flavor is nearly as rich as the history of the cheese that goes into it, and in this episode I will explore both.
Help Support the Channel with Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tastinghistory
Follow Tasting History with Max Miller:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tastinghist…
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TastingHistory1Episodes mentioned in this video:
Medieval Cheesecake (for tart dough) – https://youtu.be/GCCJ2Qpr1nM
Medieval Cheese (for straining cheese) – https://youtu.be/vlQZ3NPnoLk
Rapé Fig Spread: https://youtu.be/_o7Oq-OjKu8LINK TO INGREDIENTS & TOOLS**
SAFFRON THREADS – https://amzn.to/2yTwoPS
PIE SHIELD – https://amzn.to/2YeTnjh
TART TIN – https://amzn.to/2yPbUrCLINK TO SOURCE:
The Forme of Cury: https://amzn.to/31frAAy**Amazon offers a small commission on products sold through their affiliate links, so each purchase made from this link, whether this product or another, will help to support this channel with no additional cost to you.
TART DE BRY
RECIPE (1390 – The Forme of Cury)
Take a crust ynch depe in a trape. Take yolkes of ayren rawe and chese ruayn and medle it and the yolkes together. And do thereto powdor gynger, sugar, safron and salt. Do it in a trape, bake it, and serve it forth.MODERN RECIPE (Based on Lorna J Sass’s adaptation from To The King’s Taste – https://amzn.to/3bNg2XE)
INGREDIENTS
– 1 pound of Brie cheese, the younger the better
– 6 egg yolks
– ⅛ tsp saffron (about 10 threads ground up)
– ¾ tsp light brown sugar or more if you want a sweeter tart.
– ⅜ teaspoon powdered ginger
– A pinch of salt
– A sprinkle of nutmeg or cinnamon (optional)METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 425°F / 220°C.
2. Roll out your tart dough to about an ⅛ inch thick and line your tin. Add pie weights and set in the oven to blind bake for 10 minutes. Remove the crust and remove the pie weights. If the bottom of the crust is not fully cooked, return it to the oven without the weights for 5 minutes. Once out of the oven, press down the bottom of the crust if it has risen. Allow crust to cool completely and reduce the oven temperature to 350°F / 175°C.
3. Remove the rind from the brie saving some to the side. Then cut the brie into small pieces and place in a blender with the egg yolks. Blend together. Then add the saffron, brown sugar, ginger, and salt and blend to combine.
4. Place a bit of the rind on the bottom of the tart and add the cheese mixture and smooth the top. If you are using cinnamon or nutmeg, sprinkle a bit on top now.
5. Bake at 350°F / 175°C for 30 to 40 minutes or until the top is set and begins to brown. Serve warm or at room temperature.SOURCES
The Forme of Cury – By Samuel Pegge – https://amzn.to/3cXBycA
To The King’s Taste – Lorna J. Sass – https://amzn.to/3bNg2XE
The Course of History: 10 Meals that Changed the World – https://amzn.to/2yWuIoL
Brie Cheese History – https://www.thespruceeats.com/history…PHOTOS
Abbaye Notre-Dame-de-Jouarre – Fredlesles CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
By J. Chéreau – Musée de la Révolution française, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index…
A carriage underside has broken sending the occupants flying Wellcome / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
Blue Stilton – Coyau / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
Limberger Cheese – Original photo by John Sullivan
Gruyere – © Rolf Krahl / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
Stracchino – Cvezzoli / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
Brie cheese with fresh thyme on black background – Marco Verch / CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://flickr.com/photos/160866001@N…)#brie #cheese #medieval #medievalfood #tastinghistory #medievalrecipes
November 23, 2021
QotD: Generation X and the 1990s
I’m referring, of course, to Gen X’s patented brand of “irony”. We’ve talked about this before, but here’s a quick recap: Every middle-class kid born after about 1965 was raised to believe that Authenticity was the thing, the only thing. Just do what you feel. Question authority. Don’t listen to The Man!
The problem, of course, is that we were told this by The Man.
It had a weird, telescoping effect. On campus, you were surrounded by people who actually were hippies, plus a whole bunch of wild-eyed fanatics who were sure they would’ve made truly excellent hippies if they hadn’t been in elementary school at the time, plus a bunch of kids — these would be your classmates — who thought of “Woodstock” as a brand name, a kind of backpacking-through-Europe, taking-a-year-off-to-find-myself experience that everyone has as a matter of course before settling down to the serious business of making partner at the law firm.
In short: Our parents were stuck in adolescence, and, being adolescents ourselves, we didn’t understand that “Rebellion” wasn’t something the hippies invented. We wanted to experience sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, too, but since the Baby Boomers treated those as their exclusive property instead of what they actually are — i.e. the natural impulses of teenagers in all times and places — we had to be all, like, you know, whatever about it. […]
That was the 1990s. Faced with a paradox that everything your parents say, do, and believe is lame — according to your parents! — the only safe way is to make sure nobody can figure out exactly what your attitude is at any given instant. You might end up working 90 hour weeks at the office to pay the nut on the McMansion and the Volvo the same way they did, but at least you’d be, you know, ironic about it. The ketman of the suburbs.
See what happens when you listen to your elders, kids?
Severian, “The Virtue of Hypocrisy”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-01-19.
November 20, 2021
Modern navigation aids compared
In common with most people in this age of pandemic, I don’t travel very much these days. Back when I did manage to get out and about on the roads, I had an early Garmin GPS device in my vehicle and when I eventually updated the sound system in my truck to a new device, it included a built-in GPS (that constantly “loses” satellite fixes and loudly informs me, even when I’m not using the mapping function). I’ve had both good and bad experiences with these devices, but Alistair Dabbs is much more entertaining with his story:
“Sat Nav FAIL” by J-o-n-o is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Turn left. Turn right. At the roundabout, take the fourth exit.
Nobody enjoys being told what to do all the time but in the case of Google Maps I will make an exception. What I like about it best is that I can ignore her directions – should dissent take my fancy – and she doesn’t get cross.
This is in sharp contrast with all the classic sat-navs I have ever used, including the one embedded permanently into my current vehicle. Not only does it have a penchant for taking me on pointlessly circuitous routes, the wrong way up one-way streets, and along shortcuts too narrow for a bicycle, it grows angrier by the second when I refuse its orders.
“Turn right, turn right, turn right, turn left,” it would yell at increasing volume, trying to browbeat me into making a U-turn. Well no, I don’t want to drive through that building site or weave between those ambulances and fire engines dealing with that overturned lorry. Can’t you take me on an alternative route?
“Recalculating …” it would bark like a sulking dalek, but never accomplishing such. “Recalculating … Recalculating …”
Clearly I am not the only reluctant motorist to have given up on traditional sat-navs: not a single ad for one of these has turned up in my Black Friday spam deluge this year. And good riddance. Of the £3m per minute spent by Brits on their Black Friday shopping, roughly £0 will be spent on in-car nags.
Google Maps is more chilled. It’s as if she has resigned herself to my penchant for taking the wrong exits and missing turns. This is a habit I acquired by trying too hard not to drive like my father, who would obey every instruction from his sat-nav with military immediacy. As soon as he heard the words “Turn left”, he’d turn hard on the steering wheel straight away and we’d find ourselves heading up someone’s front drive, into an underground office car park or across a pedestrianised shopping walkway.
Me, I prefer to wait a bit – maybe a bit too long. Google Maps doesn’t mind and gives me no grief. Perhaps she also recognises her own faults in occasionally trying to direct me to drive through bricked-up entrances and children’s playgrounds. “Pff, whatever,” she probably thinks. “He’s too thick to follow the normal route. Let’s try a longer one.”
The odd thing is that she talks to Mme D in a very different way. On her smartphone, Google Maps is, well, chatty.
While all I get is a functional “Turn left/right” or “In 300 metres take the slip-road,” Mme D is treated to a tirade of verbosity. “Move into the filter lane and turn left at the next traffic lights heading north-northwest into B3496 Lower High Street but keep to the right to avoid the turnoff, mind the pedestrian crossing and wave hello to the butcher on the corner …” it spews, one directive tumbling into the next in a single continuous description of the journey and all its finest details.
November 14, 2021
Literary corner – the life and work of the great American author, Bort Juggs
I hang my head in shame for having to admit that until Saturday, I had never encountered the legendary Bort Juggs. Fortunately the latest edition of the SHuSH newsletter from Kenneth Whyte helped open my eyes:
Twitter has less and less to recommend it these days but still has its moments, especially in its literary corners. One of my favorite follows is @TheEsteemedFox who a couple of weeks ago posted this:
And then the fun started:
The thread continues, so go RTWT if you know what’s good for you.
QotD: Traffic in India
Severian, “Cars, Bikes, Motorcycles”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-07-25.
