I am pleased to report that this year’s [Halloween] tot army had more thank-yous per grabby hand than ever before. If gratitude was not forthcoming, the parent uttered the classic phrase “what do you say,” which produced the desired “thank you.” Insincere? Of course. Fine with me. Insincerity is the oil that lubricates polite society. Unless you prefer that the cashier shouts “just take your burger and DIE, I’ve had a NINE-HOUR SHIFT and my KID IS SICK” instead of nodding politely. I’m a big fan of insincerity. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
James Lileks, Star Tribune, 2004-11-01.
October 31, 2019
QotD: Insincerity
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October 30, 2019
Shakespeare Summarized: Julius Caesar
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 1 Dec 2013Here we go again! It’s only taken me several months…
Sarcastified Shakespeare returns, this time with a look at that historical tragedy we all love to write essays about, Julius Caesar!
I think the real main character here was Brutus’s crippling self-esteem issues…
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October 27, 2019
QotD: Hating jazz
Some people’s innate hatred of jazz is simply the result of an unfortunate experience, but then anyone who’s witnessed Art Blakey performing a three-and-a-half hour drum solo is entitled to feel a little peeved (and I speak as someone who has seen one at close quarters). On top of this, some people just don’t get it. Like the later work of James Joyce, the films of Tarkovsky and “tax harmonisation”, the fact that some things will always lie just beyond the common understanding is something jazz enthusiasts must learn to live with.
Also, jazz has often been victim to the vagaries of fashion, destined to be revived at the most inappropriate moments. The last time jazz was really in the limelight was back in the mid-Eighties, when it became the soundtrack du jour in thousands of matt-black bachelor flats all over designer Britain and when every style magazine and beer ad seemed to look like a Blue Note album cover. Jazz went from being a visceral, corporeal music to a lifestyle soundtrack. This was the age of Style Council, of Absolute Beginners … of Sting. Buying into jazz was meant to lend your life a patina of exotic sophistication and was used to sell everything from Filofaxes and coffee machines to designer jeans and sports cars.
Dylan Jones, “The 100 best jazz albums you need in your collection”, GQ, 2019-08-25.
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October 26, 2019
History Summarized: Byzantine Beginnings
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 25 Oct 2019It’s Rome! It’s Greece! It’s… The Byzantine Empire! Check out how late Imperial Rome transformed in the centuries from Constantine to Justinian, as it evolved into a new and unique iteration of Roman civilization. Watch as Byzantine craftsmen revolutionize artwork by throwing a megaton of gold onto every last mosaic in the Mediterranean, and radically reimagine architecture by asking “But what if *dome*?”
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A look into yet another dystopian future
This time, it’s Tom Slater looking at the parliamentary situation well into the future:
The year is 2051. An 87-year-old Boris Johnson is still prime minister, commanding a majority of minus 200 in the House of Commons.
The taxidermied remains of Jeremy Corbyn looks lairily at him each day from across the chamber.
The Liberal Independent Group for Anti-Democratic Change, formed by breakaway elements of the other parties in the great merger of 2020, is by far the largest bloc.
For some reason it has never found the “right time” to assert control of the Commons. But by some convoluted means it has successfully delayed some 187 attempts to hold a General Election.
The UK is still a member of the European Union. But no one else is. Long since collapsed, it is now just a portacabin outside the Mini-Europe miniature park in Brussels.
It employs one man, whose job it is to sweep up, sort the post, and respond to the United Kingdom’s periodic requests for an extension to Article 50.
Somehow, his expenses are exorbitant.
They say making predictions these days is a mug’s game. But I’m pretty sure that’s where we’re headed. Or rather, given the Kafkaesque turn British politics has taken, nothing could surprise me now.
PM Boris Johnson has offered the opposition the election they claim to have been craving, again, and they appear set to reject it, again.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has indicated he will back a General Election once the European Union grants an extension to Article 50. But the EU is holding off on making that decision until MPs vote on the election.
You can see the problem here. But at least it will keep half of Corbyn’s parliamentary party happy, who are apparently dead-set against an election and would rather we go for a second Brexit referendum first.
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October 22, 2019
Shakespeare Summarized: Hamlet
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 13 April 2013Well, this one is longer than the last one, but in fairness it’s 2000% shorter than the actual movie.
Continuing the trend, this video summarizes THE TRAGEDIE OF HAMLET PRINCE OF DENMARK, commonly known as Hamlet.
Goodness, he really is a whiner, isn’t he? And he’s supposed to be the sympathetic character!
Note: This is the second version of Hamlet Summarized, because I made the mistake of using a copyrighted song in the last one. Oops.
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October 19, 2019
Auberon Waugh’s wine book has been republished
It’s reviewed along with another book on Waugh by Henry Hitchings in the Times Literary Supplement:
“Looking back over my career to date, and at all the people I have insulted, I am mildly surprised that I am still allowed to exist”, wrote Auberon Waugh in 1980. For the remaining twenty-one years of his life he took pleasure in adding to his list of victims. Feminism and AIDS were bracketed together as “plagues”, ramblers were “semi-uniformed thugs”, the “lower classes” appeared “ugly, boring, humourless and desperately conceited”, and the female delegates at a Labour Party conference struck him as “either hunch-backed or hairy-legged or obviously lesbian”. It’s natural to associate such views with an age now pretty remote. But Waugh was born in the same year as John Cleese and Margaret Drabble; he was younger than Jilly Cooper and Vanessa Redgrave, John Prescott and David Dimbleby. Were he still alive, he would not yet be eighty.
[…]
A lot has changed since the period that Waugh on Wine covers. The British mass market is no longer in the grip of a “depraved” taste for semi-sweet wine. The drinkers he has in mind when he refers solecistically to “the hoi polloi” do not exhibit a “passion for filth” by favouring cheap Teutonic gut-rot. Pink champagne is easy to find, and Chianti is no longer the preserve of nurses hosting dinners in fifth-floor flatshares in Fulham. A large proportion of the most sought-after French wines now end up in Chinese cellars. The globalization of demand has stretched prices. When Waugh complains about the cost of 1982’s most rarefied clarets, he proposes as an alternative Château Léoville-Las Cases at £9 a bottle; anyone thinking of laying down its 2018 counterpart will have to find around twenty-five times that amount.
The durability of a few of Waugh’s claims is hard to assess. For instance, do the “semi-professional poules de luxe on the fringes of café society” continue to disappoint their admirers by failing to serve good vintage port? Yet much remains as it was. Dry white Bordeaux still doesn’t have a great following in Britain. Neither, more regrettably, do the best German wines. It is true that in America “only obvious alcoholics drink anything like as much as the ordinary English professional”. The British still go on holiday to France and return full of hyperbolic enthusiasm for some local plonk that they have been inspired to import in large quantities – only to find, once it arrives in Blighty, that it is no more potable than the contents of a fish tank. There is a certain prescience, too, in Waugh’s remark that the best wines are, increasingly, beyond English pockets “shrunk by the growing indolence, incompetence and indiscipline of our island race”.
Waugh writes entertainingly about the social life of the drinker: “A tremendous amount of unnecessary suffering goes on under the name of Liebfraumilch“. An enterprising young wine merchant is portrayed as someone who “in earlier times, might have spread terror among the fat galleons of the Spanish main”. He shies away from no quarrel: with greedy producers, covetous investors “who treat fine wine like rare postage stamps”, and wine merchants who spew out empurpled hype. Oddly, though, he clings to the belief that people choose wine in order to impress their friends, not to gratify their own palates, and he likes to pretend that perplexity exists where in fact there is none – “Aperitifs are not to be confused with aperients, which are laxatives designed to open the bowels”.
[…] Reflecting later on the effects of his “camped up” approach to writing about wine, he provided what could be taken as an epitaph for an entire stratum of maverick journalism: “I am not sure that it helps much, but it is more amusing to read”.
H/T again to Colby Cosh for the link.
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Remy: Horrifying Tweets Resurface
ReasonTV
Published 17 Oct 2019Remy returns to the news desk to bring you what passes for journalism these days.
Written and Performed by Remy.
Music tracks mastered by Ben Karlstrom.
Produced and Edited by Austin Bragg.LYRICS:
Trudeau denies the report. Ed?
A rough week for Canada’s first black prime minister. Thanks, Tim.A problem long posed, now finally an answer
A cure has been found to a rare form of cancer.
We’ll tell you who found it, what he thinks this means,
And dig up some tweets from his early teens.Plus the Good Samaritan, whose quickness and breadth
Saved a family of four from a fiery death.
We’ll ask how he did it, how he made it in time,
And why he tweeted this back in 2009.Uh, Ed? Yes, Tim. Forgive the defiance
But I think we should focus on the news part, the science
And not what they tweeted back when they were 10
The science, hmm. I’ll try it again.Archaeologists have unearthed a series of tweets
Made by this local hero when he was 13.
Will this middle-school tweet soon mean his demise?
Our report might just win the Pulitzer Prize.Pulitzer Prize? In what? Scrolling down?
We found immature things immature people wrote down.
Our country’s at war and that’s the story we sought?
War coverage, yes—I’ll give it a shot.This Navy SEAL unit is now under fire
For a series of tweets, we’ll take our magnifier
And pay no attention to how their recent life’s been
And tell you what you should think that says about them.Says about them? What’s it say about us?
That the first thing we do after someone’s discussed
Is comb through their childhood looking for dirt.
OK, I can do this, I assure you I’m cured.Well she’s the first woman to serve on the board
Of our town’s city council—and she just signed an accord.
We’ll comb through the details of what she did write
And through years of her tweets in hopes of wrecking her life.OK, see, I hate this, this is just what we do
Make things controversial for clicks and for views.
When we’re covering news, should our first thought each time
Be “Let’s find what they tweeted back when they were nine”?Finally, millions can now walk thanks to his prosthesis
But a hateful hand signal when he was a fetus
Leads many to now question what he promotes.
We’ll toss him in a well and see if he floats.
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October 16, 2019
QotD: Childhood fears of nuclear armageddon
It was 1968. On the night before the last day of camp, a counselor named Charlie Brown interrupted our sunset meeting by the shores of White Bear Lake to tell us the news: Russia had launched their missiles and they would destroy America before the night was out. It was time to get right with God.
Silence; crickets; small sobs. I’m sure no one thought much about Jesus right then. We thought about Mom and Dad and Spot and our room, where we really, really wanted to be right now, with the familiar smell of the goldfish bowl, and —
Charlie Brown guided us through some prayers. We all said Amen, and I’m sure for some it was the least heartfelt Amen we’d ever said. Then Charlie Brown said he had made up the story. Russia hadn’t launched the missiles. But what if they had? Were we right with Jesus?
Back at the barracks we were quiet and unnerved. No one wanted to go to sleep. No one wanted to talk, either. Finally John Larson, the bunkhouse bully, broke the silence. He was the mean kid. He was the one who tormented me at home, and had bothered me at camp. Nelson Muntz without the charm. John Larson expressed his simple wish to stab Charlie Brown in the stomach.
A dozen little Lutheran campers nodded in the dark: ya sure, you betcha.
James Lileks, The Bleat, 2003-09-11.
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October 12, 2019
History Summarized: Ancient India
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 11 Oct 2019Go to http://www.audible.com/overlysarcastic or text
overlysarcasticto 500500 to get a free audiobook, 2 free Audible Originals, and 30-day free trial.In the first of what is sure to be a multi-part series, let’s take a look at the history of Ancient India, from the earliest civilization through the development of Sanskrit literature and all the way to the great Maurya Empire!
FURTHER READING: The Discovery of India, by Jawaharlal Nehru (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discovery_of_India)
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October 6, 2019
Finally a reason to climb on the impeachment bandwagon
Andrew Heaton, in his latest newsletter, explains why he’s finally come down on the side of impeaching President Trump:
Okay, here’s the main thing I wanted to talk to you about: America is about to slap a TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT tariff on scotch. The underlying story involves the WTO and Airbus, but I think I can save everybody a lot of time by pointing out that our president is a mouthbreathing protectionist who’s too lazy to read Adam Smith’s wikipedia page.
Here are a few things to consider:
- Tariffs are just taxes, designed to punish you for having the gall to buy something from a foreigner.
- This will hurt Scottish distillers, and potentially price out distillers with low profit margins.
- I might have to switch to wine on dates.
- We have now spent more money needlessly bailing out farmers from a trade war with China than we did bailing out banks under Bush.
- We’ve known about the idiocy of tariffs since The Wealth of Nations came out in 1776.
- Trump, a man lacking an ideological core, for reasons which boggle the mind, seems to genuinely believe tariffs and protectionism are good things, as he has maintained since the 80s.
Chances are if you subscribe to this newsletter you’re not a teetotaler, but on the off chance you are, allow me to make a case against whisky taxes even if you are not personally apoplectic about a tax hike on Laphroaig. (A concoction personally invented by Almighty God. It’s like you’re drinking a campfire. Try it.)
There’s an old saying: when goods don’t cross borders, armies do. I concur with this. In fact my largest contribution to the field of economics (Nobel Prize forthcoming) is Heaton’s Peace Through International Mistresses Theory.My groundbreaking idea is that we want to have an interconnected, global economy with lots of transnational trade, because businessmen will be less supportive of bombing cities their mistresses live in. When trade wars happen, international trade collapses, and suddenly businessmen are flying to Berlin and Paris a lot less. Pretty soon we’re firebombing Tokyo.
It would probably be more appropriate of me to dedicate my political analysis to the forthcoming Ukraine/Trump/Biden/Impeachment circus which will dominate our lives for the next few months. However in my case I don’t need to. The president has messed with my scotch. Now it’s personal. I’m all in.
Impeach the guy.
#FreeTrade
You can subscribe to Andrew’s email newsletter here.
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September 29, 2019
History Summarized: Mexico
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 27 Sep 2019Go to https://NordVPN.com/overlysarcastic and use code OVERLYSARCASTIC to get 70% off a 3-year plan and an extra month for free. Protect yourself online today!
This video is quite serendipitous in timing — by complete coincidence, this is going live on September 27, the day of Mexico’s true political independence under the First Mexican Empire. This is the 11 year sequel to the more traditional Mexican Independence celebrations of September 16th, which marks Miguel Hidalgo’s proclamation of the “Cry of Dolores” and the start of the Mexican War of Independence. No joke, I only realized this when I was partway through researching the video. I do so much ancient history I’m not used to events having dates we can track to the day.
ANYWAY enjoy this look at Mexican History, here broken into three main acts, the Aztec Empire, the Colony of New Spain, and the Independent nation of Mexico.
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September 28, 2019
American politics as reality TV … maybe “reality” is a bit generous
At Catallaxy Files, John Comnenus guest-posts on The Trumpman Show of US politics:
Donald Trump addresses a rally in Nashville, TN in March 2017.
Photo released by the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.
Politics is reality television, especially American politics where a cast of a dozen contest the primaries. Like a good reality television show, there are set events and episodes, such as debates and primaries, where the weaker contestants are gradually knocked out until one emerges to fight the other side for the ultimate prize – the Presidency.
Reality television shows typically assemble a cast of mismatched characters who bond together and feud amongst each other over tasks that are assigned by the script writers and star. They inject challenges into the cast to create tension and drama that changes the cast’s allegiances and relationships in a way that engages the audience and leads to a cast member(s) being removed from the show.
Donald Trump produced and starred in the highly successful reality television show, The Apprentice, for 11 years. I believe Donald Trump is the first politician to conduct politics as if it were a reality television show. Rudolph Guliani claims the Ukraine story, which blew up this week, was a trap laid for the Democrats who walked straight into it. Trump knew the cast of Democrat Congressmen and Presidential candidates couldn’t resist the challenge Trump injected into the cast.
Succeeding in reality television is about timing that creates the drama that engages the audience and gradually removes cast members. So why inject this Ukraine story now? I suspect Trump injected this script item into the Democrat Party cast now to ensure that he dramatically realigns the cast’s relationships and allegiances as they go into primary season. He wants to do this by removing the front runner. If I am right, Trump wants a viciously divided Democratic Party Convention that can barely stand the nominee the Party selects as the Democratic challenger to Donald Trump.
The Ukraine trap effectively knocks Biden out of the race – he can’t go to a debate with highly credible and growing allegations of corruption swirling around him. The Democrat establishment will ensure he retires for “health reasons” to avoid Democrat corruption dominating the next debate. So the 20%-25% of Democrats who previously supported Biden will need to cast their lot with another candidate. But who?
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September 26, 2019
Titania McGrath reviews The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray
It’s a corker:
I’ve never reviewed a book before, and I fully intend to follow my editor’s advice and be as impartial as possible. But just to make it clear from the outset, Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds is an abomination. It’s a sustained invective against woke culture, an attempt to reverse all the hard work of passionate civil rights activists such as Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi and Lily Allen.
It’s essentially an Alt-right handbook, and I don’t think it’s too much to suggest that every copy ought to be incinerated. Preferably in a public square or something so that we can all see what happens when fascists try to spread their wicked ideology.
For the best part of 300 pages Murray spews his hateful bile – on white paper, no less – denouncing social justice, identity politics and intersectionality. Even the font has a certain heteronormative quality about it. He rails against “millennial snowflakes” who all “identify as attack helicopters” and how “you can’t say anything anymore” and that “you can go to prison for singing the national anthem these days”. I mean, he doesn’t actually write any of these words, but we all know that’s what he’s thinking.
The book is divided into four sections: “Gay”, “Women”, “Race” and “Trans”. These are all wonderful subjects – coincidentally, they also happen to be the names of my tropical fish – and so it is heart-breaking to see such noble ideas befouled in Murray’s grubby paws.
Needless to say, the last thing the world needs right now is yet another book by a straight white cis male. I’m told that Murray claims to be gay, but as journalist Jim Downs said of gay entrepreneur Peter Thiel after he appeared at the Republican National Convention, he “is an example of a man who has sex with other men, but not a gay man”. The idea that you can be gay and have conservative opinions is absurd. It was the same with Kanye West, who gave up being black once he’d put on that MAGA hat.
Murray seems to believe that, as a society, we have gone “through the crash barrier” (a typically male Top Gear-style analogy) and messed everything up through our supposedly divisive obsessions with race, gender and sexuality. “It is a curiosity of the age,” Murray writes, “that after the situation appears at the very least to be better than it ever was, it is presented as though it has never been worse”. What the hell would he know? As an ecosexual vegan intersectional feminist, I am surely better qualified than anyone to understand that ours is the most oppressive society on earth.
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September 22, 2019
QotD: “Light reading” aka trash novels
She had the habit of reading, formed early, and could often be found lost in a book. To her mind literature was meant for an escape: from nursing, housework, and raising difficult children. So if the book was arduous, it was also useless. “You can’t be serious all the time,” she would say, “you have to take a break from it sometimes.” To which I would reply, “But surely you can be serious some of the time.” For I wasn’t only a viper. I was also a little jackass.
David Warren, “Summer reading”, Essays in Idleness, 2017-08-08.
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