Dropkick Murphys
Published on 3 Dec 2012Music video for “The Season’s Upon Us” from the upcoming album SIGNED and SEALED in BLOOD (out Jan 8).
Directed by Garrett Warren.
December 20, 2018
Dropkick Murphys – “The Season’s Upon Us” (Video)
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December 19, 2018
Repost – “An ‘American tradition’ is anything that happened to a baby boomer twice”
Hard to refute the latest xkcd take on Christmas music:
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December 14, 2018
Assembling “The Cosmodemonic Sauder Adept Storage Credenza, from the dark Satanic mills of Sauder”
Having recently had a similar experience attempting to assemble a large IKEA wardrobe, I felt very sympathetic reading of Gerard Vanderleun‘s struggles with his cosmodemonic credenza from Sauder:
Item Weight 125 pounds
Product Dimensions 58.2 x 17.2 x 36.3 inches
Item model number 418344
Assembled Height 36.26 inches
Assembled Width 17.165 inches
Assembled Length 58.189 inches
Weight 133 PoundsSome assembly required.
Some? Some?! This little item took me the better part of 5 hours and left me shaken, exhausted, splinter struck, and drenched in a sweat that fell from the veritable fountains of profanity I launched at this !!!@@**%!*@!! item of our damned age. If it had not been a gift and if I had not just come by a pathological fear of fire, this THING would have been piled in the parking lot in front of my little apartment and set alight while I gibbered and danced about its flames in loincloth, pitchfork and torches.
Most of the first hour of trying to assemble this overweight and overbuilt POS was spent counting the nine (9!) different sacks of nails and connectors and sorting the various wooden slabs (one weighs in at around 50 pounds) and reading the always delightfully ambiguous instructions illustrated by a set of mechanical drawings in the ever-popular “oblique” style.
The next two hours would have found me assembling the various units to the mantra, “Slowly…. and ….. patiently.. and slowly… and…”
The final two hours would have found me in the 9th circle of Dante’s Inferno looking for the way out with only one beer to my name.
I’m not a petite man and I’m not a weak man. But this one brought this man to a new awareness of his age and his mortality; a mortality that I prayed would not kick in until I had hunted down the sadists behind Sauder and stood them all against the wall.
In the end I did get the !!!@@**%!*@!! item built. It stands on the back wall of my living dining area ready to receive the needful things for which it was made. As for me, I had to take to my couch for half a day just to get over the intense fatigue resulting from tossing 125 pounds of pressed wood around my house and trying to cuss it into place.
Following this experience I lay on my couch swearing to never, ever, “assemble” any item of furniture. But guess what? Unless you are ready to lay out serious cash, there are no items like that any more. Everything is Ikea-infected and made of sawdust.
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QotD: Burgundy
If it’s red, French, costs too much, and tastes like the water that’s left in the vase after the flowers have died and rotted, it’s probably Burgundy.
Jay McInerney, Bacchus & Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar, 2002.
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December 13, 2018
QotD: The Cabinet
[T]here is a clear similarity between the Prime Minister’s cabinet and the wardrobe/closet from the Narnia Chronicles: neither has any back to it and people who spend an excessive amount of time in either find themselves in a fantasy land.
Eric Kirkland, 2005-03-24.
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December 11, 2018
QotD: Academia
Academia has an infantilizing effect. I understand that. Many professors dress and act like adolescents right up to the time they are ready to hand in their tenure and live off their generous pensions. The Peter-Pan aspect of academia is not entirely the professors’ fault. After all, the points at which the real world intrudes upon academia are so few and so tenuous that academics may be forgiven for some of their hyperbole and inadvertently comic displays of self-importance. They exist, like kept women of yore, entirely at the pleasure of an affluent society they despise. So in a way it is not surprising that they endeavor to transform their entire campus into a sort of existential boudoir, which is French for “room for pouting in.”
Roger Kimball, “A Modest Disposal”, PJ Media, 2017-01-15.
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December 5, 2018
Yes, Minister – The Six Diplomatic Options
HenryvKeiper
Published on 28 May 2009My favorite scene from one of my favorite TV shows of all time.
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December 3, 2018
QotD: Scottish dietary preferences
The Scots have a fondness for deep-fried foods. Everything from fish n’ chips to Mars bars. A survey of shops said customers also request deep fried sweets, pineapple rings, and even ice cream. The health authorities are naturally somewhat concerned about this diet, but Dr. David Morrison of the Greater Glasgow Health Service Board is encouraged by “evidence of the penetrance of the Mediterranean diet into Scotland, albeit in the form of deep-fried pizza.”
Billy Munnelly, “Journal”, Billy’s Best Bottles Volume 21, No. 4, Spring 2005.
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November 26, 2018
QotD: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
… the story of a book, a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or even heard of by any Earthman.
Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.
In fact, it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor — of which no Earthman had ever heard either.
Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one — more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to Do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who Is This God Person Anyway?
In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 1979.
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November 24, 2018
QotD: The Anglo-Saxon invasion
The withdrawal of the Roman legions to take part in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (due to a clamour among the Romans for pompous amusements such as bread and circumstances) left Britain defenceless and subjected Europe to that long succession of Waves of which History is chiefly composed. While the Roman Empire was overrun by waves not only of Ostrogoths, Vizigoths, and even Goths, but also of Vandals (who destroyed works of art) and Huns (who destroyed everything and everybody, including Goths, Ostrogoths, Vizigoths, and even Vandals), Britain was attacked by waves of Picts (and, of course, Scots) who had recently learnt how to climb the wall, and of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who, landing at Thanet, soon overran the country with fire (and, of course, the sword).
Important Note
The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa).
The brutal Saxon invaders drove the Britons westward into Wales and compelled them to become Welsh; it is now considered doubtful whether this was a Good Thing. Memorable among the Saxon warriors were Hengist and his wife (? or horse), Horsa. Hengist made himself King in the South. Thus Hengist was the first English King and his wife (or horse), Horsa, the first English Queen (or horse). The country was now almost entirely inhabited by Saxons and was therefore renamed England, and thus (naturally) soon became C. of E. This was a Good Thing, because previously the Saxons had worshipped some dreadful gods of their own called Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, 1066 And All That, 1930.
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November 23, 2018
QotD: Inactivist bumper stickers
I’ve received several hundred suggestions for inactivist bumper-sticker slogans and, as befits the situation, I’ve been slow to read them. Still, I like some of them quite a bit:
Visualize me ignoring you.
How about “let’s not.”
Don’t honk if you can’t be bothered.
Don’t Act, NOW!
If not now, whenever.
Leave well enough alone
Slacking: It’s not just for kids.
YOU Save the Whales!
Practice Random Acts of Self-Restraint.
Ask Not.
Future Site of Political Statement.And so on.
But there’s a problem. Many readers segued too easily from celebrating inactivism to championing outright sloth. For example, “Practice Random Acts of Self-Restraint” is a fine inactive motto. But “They can have my channel changer when they pry it out of my cold, dead hand,” while very funny is off point. “Don’t Mess With Stasis,” doesn’t quite rhyme but it’s got the right idea. “Think globally, act loafally,” meanwhile, has the wrong idea — except insofar as it mocks people with stupid bumper stickers.
The funny thing is that inactivists are actually very active people. I would bet that — this is a broad generalization-the folks who find inactivism politically appealing probably work harder and are more successful then people who find conventional activism attractive. Inactivists didn’t boycott the Million Mom March simply because they had better things to do. They stayed home because they believe the Million Mom March was a vast, peripatetic parade of propaganda. Inactivists don’t fail to mobilize solely because we’d rather watch a rerun of Matlock than chant for vegetable rights and peace at city hall. We actually don’t believe in vegetable rights. We want our carrots to remain as chattel.
I agree that sloth is funny. And I suppose that’s why so many people want Homer Simpson to become the inactivist spokesperson. I laugh whenever I hear Homer Simpson speak admiringly of Teamsters: “Oh, I always wanted to be a Teamster. So lazy and surly… mind if I relax next to you?” And his campaign slogan when he ran for garbage commissioner was pretty good. “Can’t someone else do it?” The best line from that episode was when he told Springfield voters “Animals are crapping in our houses and we’re picking it up! Did we lose a war?” But still, Homer’s wrong when he tells his kids “You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is: Never try.”
Jonah Goldberg, “Let History Come To You”, National Review, 2002-07-24.
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November 21, 2018
The wisdom of Zim Tzu, post-Bear-mauling edition
After every game, even a putrid excuse for a game like the Sunday night contest in Chicago, the NFL requires that all head coaches make the time to talk with the local (and sometimes national) sports media about what the hell just happened. Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer is rumoured not to enjoy this particular part of his job, and as a result tends to carefully craft his words to cloak their real importance from the smelly, small-minded hoi-polloi he has to face from the rostrum. Fortunately, the Daily Norseman employs the world’s top expert in Zimspeak, Herr Doktor Professor Theodore “Ted” Glover, BA, MA, Ph.D, etc. Every week, Herr Glover works tirelessly to decipher, decode, decrypt, and de-everything-else required to dig down to the primal essence of coach Zimmer’s koans for we weak-armed, weak-willed, and weak-minded normies.
The Vikings warrior poet coach dispenses his words of wisdom
ED NOTE: This has bad words. Most of the other things we write on here usually don’t, but this one does. It seems to be a popular bit, so until the law catches up with me, I’m going to keep doing it. Thanks for understanding, and thanks for not reading and not letting your kids read it if bad language isn’t your thing. Hope you enjoy the rest of our articles—Ted
When you’re a warrior poet, you have to be on the lookout for self-fulfilling prophecies from your troops. Self fulfilling prophecies tell you that you can’t do X because of Y, based on past history. You can’t invade Russia in the late summer because of the Russian winter, or that you can’t masturbate without arms, for example. And as much as you tell your troops there is zero correlation between X and Y, because you have a cousin without any arms and he says he did just fine in that department thank you very goddamn much, once your troops believe weird shit happens in Chicago and that you’ll lose, when weird shit does happen in Chicago and you do lose, your troops are almost relieved. But you can’t let them walk around thinking they’re a bunch of no arms whacking reverse Nostradamus fap gods though, because then everything you’ve worked for is lost, and you’re on the street looking for work in someplace other than Cleveland. Yeah, fuck The Land, which is quite possibly the dumbest nickname for any city I’ve ever heard. Except for Green Bay, which is known as the toilet paper capital of the world, and that’s the most accurate nickname for any city ever.
Because you are Zim Tzu, The King In The North, Emperor of the Motor City Feline Tribe, Grounder of Airplanes, Defrocker of Cardinals, Subduer of Equestrian Excrement Consumers, Nightmare of Clan Fromage, Breaker Of Gold Fever, High Septon Of Eagan, Lord Commander Of The Iron Range And Twin Cities, Master Of Fortress TCO, Honorary Elder Of Mankato and Protector Of The Realm.
And when the Great Unwashed want to know how to keep their fears from becoming a real life Ouroboros, you must speak, to calm them and make them throw up their own ass, so you can get things back on track. And that is where we come in, your friends at The Daily Norseman.* We take what is said in the day after a game press conference, regurgitate what is really inferred,** and then everyone can walk away happy with an understanding of what’s to come.***
*I have no friends.
**We do nothing of the kind. The law firm of Franklin, Bash, and Bateman gently reminds you that this is a work of satire, and any and all interpretations are just mindless bullshit that have no inference on actual words of Mike Zimmer, spoken or otherwise, and they can sue you and take Ted for all his money in exorbitant lawyer fees if you try to sue him.
***If you understand any of this, seek professional medical help.
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November 17, 2018
Alistair Dabbs on the “Church of Failure”
He says he’s a recent convert:
“Work out loud,” my prospective new employer tells me, adding that “we are a team, not a family”. Sister Sledge need not apply.
I try to keep my best poker face but I can sense my left eyebrow raising by itself. When I first entered the work market in the 1980s, the prevailing language of corporate bullshit rolled its tongue around paradigm-shifting and envelope-breaking. Today, we talk about “high-bandwidth collaboration” and “it’s OK to fail”.
Come to think about it, my prospective employer just said something about “failing quickly and cheaply”. Earlier, they pontificated that “failure breeds success”. Clearly, failure is the key skill they’re looking for in an employee. I’m their man.
I come well-prepared for this onslaught of hipster interview gibberish: I grew some stubble, put on a lumberjack shirt, boned up on my IT certifications (just in case) and, most important of all, learnt the language of corporate culture decks. You too can master modern marketspeak for the digital era by reading Culture Decks Decoded by Brett Putter.
Unfortunately, the interviewer is now talking about “pseudo-harmony” and has just invited me to be “a no-ego doer”. My left eyebrow feels like it is travelling towards the back of my head.
It’s when he says “date the model, marry the mission” that I realise I couldn’t possibly keep up the pretence in such a workplace for more than five minutes. I can control it no longer. Visibly shaken by my sudden and uncontrollably explosive yell of laughter, my interviewer wishes me a good day. No worries, there are plenty of other organisations out there who’ll pay me handsomely to fail for them – quickly, cheaply and even frequently if that’s what’s required.
I am a recent convert to the Church of Failure. Previously, I regarded failure as undesirable and unnecessary if there was an option of not failing. My LinkedIn profile would list items under the “Experience” heading thus:
Provided consultancy to major newspaper group on how to maximise digital publishing productivity at minimal cost; was ignored; watched helplessly as six-figure sum poured needlessly into incompetent alternative system that inevitably failed; left company to work elsewhere; those who instigated embarrassing disaster received promotion.
Now I get the picture: bosses can forgive and even admire a brave failure, no matter how avoidable… but absolutely nobody likes a smart arse.
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November 14, 2018
Ronnie Barker – British Rail
T.V Allsorts
Published on 13 Apr 2016
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November 13, 2018
QotD: Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain
The first date in English History is 55 B.C., in which year Julius Caesar (the memorable Roman Emperor) landed, like all other successful invaders of these islands, at Thanet. This was in the Olden Days, when the Romans were top nation on account of their classical education, etc.
Julius Caesar advanced very energetically, throwing his cavalry several thousands of paces over the River Flumen; but the Ancient Britons, though all well over military age, painted themselves true blue, or woad, and fought as heroically under their dashing queen, Woadicea, as they did later in thin red lines under their good queen, Victoria.
Julius Caesar was therefore compelled to invade Britain again the following year (54 B.C., not 56, owing to the peculiar Roman method of counting), and having defeated the Ancient Britons by unfair means, such as battering-rams, tortoises, hippocausts, centipedes, axes, and bundles, set the memorable Latin sentence, “Veni, Vidi, Vici“, which the Romans, who were all very well educated, construed correctly.
The Britons, however, who of course still used the old pronunciation, understanding him to have called them “Weeny, Weedy, and Weaky”, lost heart and gave up the struggle, thinking that he had already divided them All into Three Parts.
W.C. Sellar & R.J. Yeatman, 1066 And All That, 1930.
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