Quotulatiousness

December 31, 2024

Resolutions? Meh.

Filed under: Health, Humour — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

James Lileks considers the futility of New Year resolutions … for most of us, anyway:

New Year, New You — if you believe that all the cells in your body are replaced every 12 months. So we were told, right? I don’t think that’s the case. The brain, for example, stays constant, which is good, because the idea of the cells handing off memories to the new cells would probably end up like a game of Telegram, and after 15 years you’re convinced your first kiss was not on a boat in the lake on the 4th of July but deep in the Amazon forest on a dugout canoe during a meteor shower.

I don’t think your liver renews itself, alas. It has to sit there and take it. The bones, being the tentpoles for the cellular circus that is You, have to remain solid. No, the New You is entirely a matter of will, of resolutions and revelations undertaken on the First of the Year with solemn gravity, so you can be disappointed with yourself two weeks later.

Resolutions are always matters of self-improvement, and this presents a certain amount of difficulty. I’m at the age where the available options for self-improvement consist of the trivial and the insurmountable. Example: I should resolve to be more patient on the road with drivers who dawdle along a few miles below the speed limit, perhaps giving me adequate time to study the various political and philosophical statements glued to the rear of their auto. Why — why yes, you’re right, you cannot hug your child with nuclear arms. You also cannot defend the continental United States against the threat of ballistic bombardment with maternal limbs. A more pressing issue might be thus: Can we make the green light? No, we’re not going to make the green light.

I would indeed be happier if I could accept with zen detachment the lumbering pace of the car ahead. My impatience, my self-righteous desire to arrive at our destinations before Haley’s Comet arcs anew through the heavens — well, it brings me no joy. But this will not change. What’s the phrase? To thine own self be true. Well, being peeved because the driver ahead of me believes their face will ripple with G-forces if they go 21 MPH is my true self, and I am not about to deny who I am.

December 28, 2024

QotD: “If women ran the world” reality check

Filed under: History, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

    Severian “… if women were in charge there’d be no war …”

Backinmyyouth, early 20s or so, I was an even bigger smart ass than I am now. I had a class with one of those new-fangled feminists that people were talking about back then. She made that argument, about how if only women were in charge there would be no more wars. So as a polite smart ass I raised my hand, and she called on me.

I said, “I completely agree with you. I’d even say that if women had been in charge from the beginning that there would only have been one war in all of human history. It would have started in the stone age, and would still be doing on today, with no one remembering what it was about.”

After being warned by one of my spies in the feminist camp (wanted the professional hookup, but liked other kinds of hookups too if you know what I’m sayin’), I made sure to never take that professor for another class as she held a grudge against me till the end of time. An undying grudge for me pointing out that women hold undying grudges …

The reason I was aware of that particular female quirk was that I had recently been made aware that two of my aunts had been in a death-feud since before I was born. Pretty sure it’s still going on today in spite of one of them being dead.

Zorost99, commenting on “Friday Mailbag”, Founding Questions, 2024-09-27.

December 25, 2024

James Lileks on Christmas traditions

Filed under: Food, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

My family doesn’t have a lot of traditions that have carried on, although we do still do our big family get-together at our house on Christmas Eve, so I guess that counts. Here’s James Lileks‘ take on the tradition question at this festive time of the year:

Christmas gifts under the tree.
Photo by Kelvin Kay via Wikimedia Commons.

There are two views of Christmas traditions.

1. They are the jewels of the past, polished by time, handed down from loving ancestors whose memory we e’er keep warm and and alive when we do as they did, eat as they ate, and raise our new wine in the glasses of yore. Thus do civilizations maintain, and remember.

2. Traditions are the cold hands of the dead past punching through the coffin-lid of yesteryear and bursting up through the loam to reach out and smother the newborn ideas of today, because that’s not how Grandma did it.

I’m very much in the first camp, stamping around like Tevye in the opening number of Fiddler on the Roof. But I share his perplexity some times. Why do we do this? I don’t know. I don’t know why we always had Swedish Meatballs on Christmas Eve. Perhaps that was Grandpa’s favorite, and my Mom made it after he passed to remind herself of him. If so, cool; my daughter, who never met the old man, experiences a little of the remarkable old farmer – especially since I insist that she wash it down with a warmish Grain Belt and smoke an Old Gold afterwards.

“But I don’t want to! They smell and they make me cough!”

“It’s tradition. Your grandfather would be delighted to know you enjoy the rich, apple-fresh flavor of an Old Gold.”

Ahhhh, kids, it’s hard to get them interested in history. Even harder to get them to knock the ash in the coffee-cup saucer. My point is that we are not having Swedish Meatballs this year, because Daughter wants to make some German dish. It’s a roll of pounded meat layered with mustard and pickles. (Not to be confused with the German meal of mustard and pickles wrapped up in hammered meat; that one has more syllables.) I have never been impressed with German food, but this dish has the promise to provide a piquancy missing in Swedish meatballs, which seem like something that answers the question “what if the telephone dial tone was a flavor?”

Drinker’s Christmas Crackers – It’s a Wonderful Life

Filed under: History, Humour, Media, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Critical Drinker
Published 17 Dec 2020

Join me as I review what may be the ultimate Christmas movie — the 1946 classic starring James Stewart and Donna Reed … It’s a Wonderful Life.

December 24, 2024

QotD: The real hero of It’s A Wonderful Life

Filed under: Business, Humour, Media, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

@BillyJingo
I get the feeling you’re the kind of guy who secretly rooted for Mr Potter.

@Iowahawkblog
George Bailey: whines for a public bailout of his grossly mismanaged financial institution

Mr Potter: reinvigorates boring small town by developing exciting nightlife district

David Burge (@Iowahawkblog), Twitter, 2022-11-16.

December 23, 2024

QotD: The tedium of work

Filed under: Business, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Few of us are talented enough to make a living from the exercise of our passion. So, driven by economic necessity, we fall into “jobs”. Most of these jobs are superfluous and invented — I’m sure of it! — to keep the talentless population employed. “Little girls don’t grow up wanting to become a prostitute”, or so the trope goes. And that is probably true. But it is also probably true that little girls don’t grow up wanting to become “vice-president for real-time card payments”. Or “senior manager for content licensing”. Or anything with “talent development” or “HR” in the title. Don’t get me wrong, these jobs have their uses. If you are a good vice-president for real-time card payments, someone, somewhere will be paid in real time. And that is a cause for joy. But how many of us are stoical enough to be motivated by the vague image of a nameless, faceless customer we will never meet, and about whom, let’s be honest, we don’t really care, when we push open the door of our open-plan at nine in the morning and brace ourselves for ten hours of drudgery?

Elena Shalneva “Work — the Tragedy of Our Age”, Quillette, 2020-01-29.

December 22, 2024

“It’s a major award!”

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

We’ve been fans of the movie A Christmas Story for many years, but I hadn’t heard this particular detail from winery owner Martin Malivoire’s end-of-year newsletter:

The Legacy of the Lamp!

As you may already know, in the years before I put my name on a winery, my profession was related to the motion picture industry.

In a pursuit spanning forty years, I collaborated with many great people. Few were as rewarding to work with as the late Bob Clark.

He was a seasoned and visionary film director, and it was at Bob’s suggestion that I undertook an unlikely project, one whose memory became the most enduring of my pre-winery career: the leg lamp made famous by the holiday film, A Christmas Story.

Why do I say “unlikely”? My expertise was in Special Effects, which I designed and executed for motion pictures, television and stage. Frequently these were loud and dramatic; I engineered fires, explosions, crashes and the like. Prop-making was a little outside my usual practice, but I happily agreed to build this one for my friend.

With a jolly demeanor and a sly smile, Bob handed me a napkin, bearing a sketch of a flamboyant light fixture. The rest is history.

A suitably proportioned young woman was hastily recruited to model for a leg mold, which was no small task, as it required immersing her entire leg, from big toe to navel, in quick-setting plaster.

From the mold, we cast a series of translucent plastic lamps. Each had to be individually crafted to the specific requirements of a scene and uniquely, meticulously illuminated by our Director of Photography. Accordingly, not one of the fixtures was a complete, C.S.A. anointed, “plug-in, switch-on”, and as Ralphie reminisces, “bask in the soft glow of electric sex” lamp.

Nonetheless, the illusion was a success. The presence of the lamp brought elements of levity, the ridiculous, fantasy and nostalgia to the film, magnified by the Director himself. Bob, as narrator, gave his own warm voice to Ralphie’s childhood memories, and made them ours.

When production wrapped, the lamps had nowhere to go. I stored them in Toronto, and for years they adorned the windows of my studio. However, the film company still owned them and when I was told to dispose of these props, I complied, leaving nothing behind.

As movies go, A Christmas Story was what we call “a sleeper”. It drew modestly on release, but grew in popularity year after year, to join the ranks of modern Christmas Classics.

We did not foresee this, nor did we foresee that of all the images generated by this now-iconic movie, the leg lamp would become its most-remembered, most-cherished, and most-copied Christmas symbol, launching a huge industry of luminous celebrations and decorative reproductions.

If we had known … well, I’m certain I’m not the only one who would have rushed back to rescue those fishnet stocking-clad plastic leg lamps from a Cherry Street dumpster.

No, I do not receive any royalties, but it gives me pleasure to see how many folks today own a modern copy of our original creation.

If you’re among them, may it light this Christmas and many more to come … and if you don’t have a leg lamp of your own, I hope that by sharing this story I’ve left you with a smile.

December 8, 2024

How it started – Blame Canada. How it’s going – Annex Canada?

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Humour, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the National Post, Tristin Hopper has some fun imagining what the Dominion of Canada would have written in its diary over the last week after President-elect Donald Trump joked about making it the 51st state:

TUESDAY
Don’t get me wrong; annexation would be thrilling. What could be naughtier than abolishing the world’s longest undefended border? Or getting a Chik-Fil-A in all 10 provinces? Or watching CNN as a swing voter, instead of just as a voyeur. Or screaming “I know my rights!” at a cop and having it mean something.

Who among us doesn’t want to lock up serial child molesters in a Supermax instead of sending them to a healing lodge? Or strap a revolver to one’s belt just to see what it would feel like to be an armed citizen at the mall. Or go to a store that sells booze, cigarettes, firecrackers and shotguns all in the same place.

I’m not ashamed to say it all gives me goosebumps. I’ve resented you, looked down on you, claimed to hate you, but I’ve never said I wasn’t attracted to you.

WEDNESDAY
And the lifestyle benefits; my god. A four-lane interstate to Alaska. Flyovers at CFL games that consist of an entire formation of fifth-generation fighters, instead of just a search and rescue helicopter. Hell, maybe they wouldn’t even *be* CFL games?

A dollar that’s worth … a dollar, rather than 60 cents. Books that can be purchased at the actual price, instead of the “in Canada” price. Productivity and per-capita GDP to burn, and all with lower taxes.

The thought is always there. Every time I’m clipping coupons or subsidizing some foreign automaker just so they’ll build me a battery plant, there’s always that weak moment where I think, “You wouldn’t need to be doing any of this if you’d just let America take care of you.”

THURSDAY
And yet, even when I lay out all the material benefits of statehood, I know it’s not for me.

Snoop Dogg has a net worth of $150 million. You know what his favourite snack is? Hard-boiled eggs like his mom used to make. You can offer me the world, but it’s not what I know.

I like giant monopolistic, uncompetitive corporations. Sure, my cell phone bills are high and my butter doesn’t spread at room temperature, but at least the logo on the package never changes. I like government programs that offer me benefits in theory, even if not in practice: I can’t find a family doctor or a daycare spot, but I can dream. I like making unrealistic international pronouncements, because no one would ever expect me to back it up with aid or military force.

December 1, 2024

“Fellow Canadians, forget your dire financial plight … it’s only a ‘vibecession'”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Humour, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tristin Hopper imagines what Chrystia Freeland might be confiding to her diary after she blithely assured struggling Canadians that no, really, everything’s just fine and dandy and you’re being deceived by “bad vibes”:


Screencap from a CPAC video of Chrystia Freeland speaking.

Monday

As a former journalist, I am fully aware of the awesome power of the press to distort and pervert reality. Here we all are in 2024 Canada. There is food. There is shelter. There is breathable air. The vast majority of us will go through the rest of the fiscal year without being stabbed on public transit.

And yet, to hear the misinformation and disinformation trafficked by the media, you would think we live in some kind of violent, economically depressed hellscape.

Well, this kind of mendacity has consequences: A nationwide hysteria of bad feelings and negative energy. A fanatical devotion to bad vibes in the face of all evidence to the contrary. I don’t purport to know how to cure such irrational malaise, but I will be very surprised if $250 each and some tax-free liquor and Christmas shopping doesn’t do it.

Tuesday

Donald Trump’s threat of 25 per cent tariffs is easily the most serious challenge I have faced as Canadian finance minister. The United States is our largest trading partner, and the suspension of free trade across our shared border would invite economic ruin the likes of which we’ve never seen.

Worse, Trump is immune to our usual strategies. We suggested sending his tariff threat to committee, or having it reviewed by a Crown inquiry, but neither offer was accepted. Rather, they want us to stem the tide of illegal migrants using Canada as a base to enter the United States. They are under the impression — let’s call it “bad vibes” — that this is a problem.

But let nobody say that the integrity of our trade flows are not my department’s top priority. As such, we are immediately introducing a one-time bursary of between $150 and $240 paid to any resident of Canada who can prove they have not attempted illegal entry of the United States within the past 12 months.

November 28, 2024

A thought about “Second Thanksgiving”

Filed under: Food, Humour, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

Real Thanksgiving happened over a month ago, but our American friends constantly mis-read the calendar and schedule their event near the end of November instead. Just another one of those minor differences between the two countries, I guess. One thing that is similar, regardless of the month the holiday is celebrated, is the eternal Thanksgiving dilemma: is it best to be a host or a guest?

I don’t know what’s better: hosting Thanksgiving, or being a guest. And I don’t know which is worst, either. Each has its perils and pleasures.

Hosting: it’s so draining, so exhausting. I mean, watching your wife work so hard, it just takes it right out of you. Kidding: I help as best as I can, but it’s with the non-food jobs. My Thanksgiving culinary skills are limited to spanking the cranberry cylinder out of its can. I do the Cleaning. I make sure the wine glasses out, and the right ones — can’t have people drinking red out of white glasses, or the world as we know it would come to an end. I get the water pitcher down from the top shelf. No, not that one, the good one. The other good one. I vacuum and dust, in case guests want to push the piano away from the wall and check out our housekeeping.

[…]

Being a guest is hard because you just sit and wait and talk, and periodically say “anything I can do?” No. There is nothing you can do. So you drift to the living room where the kids are playing – all these small children, where did they come from? Just a few years ago their Mom or Dad was at your house at the kid’s table. And now they’ve reproduced. Hey, there’s football! You sit with the other guys and share the overhanging cloud of guilt — the womenfolk are doing everything, and you’re in here watching the Lions (why is it always the Lions). Occasionally one of the sisters or daughters who’s not doing anything at the moment wanders in and requests that someone explain football to her, and then she picks a team and gets excited when a player makes a great catch. Then she goes back to the kitchen and will not think about football for another year.

If I had to choose, I’d host, rather than be a guest. For some odd reason my wife at this point in life probably thinks the obverse. But I’ve noted over the years that even if you’re a guest at a family member’s thanksgiving, all the women end up in the kitchen anyway, talking amongst themselves about mysteries no man will ever know.

There’s a third option between guesting and hosting. For a few years we drove up to Fargo and had Thanksgiving Buffet at the Holiday Inn. Nothing to clean up. Turkey galore and unstinting stuffing. The hall was loud with communal consumption, and that somehow felt marvelously America. When you were done you just … got up and walked away and left the dishes where they were. Nothing more to do but digest, which brings an entirely new quality to the idea of gratitude.

Anyway: Happy Thanksgiving, be you guest or host. Here’s to lumpy potatoes and slabs of noble fowl. Gratitude is one of those things we figure we’ll get around to, and it’s marvelous to have a day where it’s absolutely required.

November 25, 2024

In search of bluer skies

Filed under: Humour, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In The Critic, Benedict Spence channels his inner David Attenborough to document the majestic migration of American progressives from their habitual grazing lands to friendlier territory:

What will Twitter do without its smuggest inhabitants?

And so we come to it again. It is that time of year when we put on our David Attenborough voices, and talk in low, slightly wistful tones about the great migration that is about to unfold. Everywuh you look, creatures great and small are beginning their treacherous juhneys across a vast and inhospitable wilduhness to happiuh hunting grounds and more pleasant pastures under the clear blue skies. The hullabaloo that accompanies them is impossible to miss — across the plains, the cries go up from elders to alert the rest of the herd of the imminent departure.

Though some may never return from this arduous trek, most will. Disavow yourself of the mental image of elephants and zebras crossing the African savannah — that’s not what we’re here for. This migration is metaversical in nature: it is time, once more, for people to announce they are leaving Twitter.

This year’s exodus came later than usual, prompted by Donald Trump’s bulldozer of a victory over Kamala Harris in the US presidential election, with grown men and women across the country — and its second largest airbase, the UK — deciding that Elon Musk, the platform’s owner and the Orange Man’s endorser-in-chief, was at least partly responsible for this travesty. Not the economy, you understand, oh no. Nor immigration, nor the preoccupation by Democrats with shoulder-chewingly stupid culture war issues the average voter thinks are at best mad and at worst satanic.

No, no, it is all about Musk — who is at once the world’s wealthiest evil genius and also a gibbering moron, according to people who thought Cacklin’ Kamala was a born winner. Musk, we are told, has ushered in a stream of “hate” ever since buying Twitter and rebranding it 10, warping the minds of the impressionable and irreparably damaging the future of the West by facilitating Trump’s return.

This is not Musk’s only crime, though. He has also tweaked other aspects of X’s features, including the block function, making it possible for those on the receiving end of this internal exile to see the posts of their nemeses again without being able to interact with them. This was for a fair few blockees how they were reminded of the existence of their blockers, many of whom they had long since forgotten. Often, in the same instance, it was also how they learned said blocker was off somewhere else.

Musk has also moved to erode the power of institutions and individuals who lived their lives high on the power of credentialism, and the authority this brought them. The changing of blue tick criteria and the emphasis on community notes now means many who were once feted on the site by virtue of who they were must now work harder for their dopamine. But above all else, Musk has refused to silence a swathe of right wing voices who always existed but lived their X lives in the shadows. The platform became more right wing, and for many that was just too much. Having been reliably told throughout the past year that the crude reply guys were just Russian bots and that their gal would ride over them on a wave to victory, they and their allies over here — the infamous adults back in charge of the UK — are doing the grownup thing and going off in a huff to play somewhere else.

October 31, 2024

Nine Types of Trick-or-Treat Houses

Filed under: Humour, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

It’s a Southern Thing
Published Oct 23, 2018

Halloween is coming. Which one will you be?

#SoTrueYall #itsasouthernthing

October 30, 2024

Halloween Special: Frankenstein

Filed under: Books, History, Humour, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published Oct 31, 2017

It is a tale. A tale of a man … and a MONSTER!

It’s finally time to talk Frankenstein! Part sci fi, part horror, part opinion piece on the dangers of hubris, this classic story reminds us all to appreciate what’s really important to us: friends, family, loved ones, and most importantly, NOT creating twisted mockeries of God’s creations in an attempt to reach beyond the veil of life itself.

Nnnnnnnow here is a riddle to guess if you can,
sings the tale of Frankenstein!
Who is the monster and who is the man?~

October 19, 2024

Trope Talk: Train Fights!

Filed under: Books, Humour, Media, Railways — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published Jun 28, 2024

Everyone pack your bags, do your hand-stretches and file this one under “trope talks that could easily be bingo cards”! Today let’s talk about that oh-so-spectacular staple of setpieces, the marvelous Train Fight!
(more…)

October 14, 2024

QotD: Americans and their cars

Filed under: Humour, Quotations, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Given that, for “Americans”, cars are a pretty good proxy for personality. What you drive, and more importantly how you drive, shows everyone else on the road the state of your soul. There are entire models of car — Toyota Priuses (Prii?), Subaru Outbacks — that are only driven by SJWs. Karen drives a late-model SUV, almost universally, but if she’s forced to drive a minivan or, God help us all, a standard four-door, she’ll festoon it with a thousand of those “passive-aggressive” (or whatever we end up calling them) bumper stickers: My broomstick is in the shop. Stick-figure families in rainbow colors. Hate is not a family value (often juxtaposed, with brain-breaking obtuseness, next to one wishing that various “conservatives” would die in fires). And so on.

Severian, “Cars, Bikes, Motorcycles”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-07-25.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress