Hey, folks. I’m taking care of some non-blog business (nothing bad), so posts will likely be a bit light for a few days, and moderation will be a bit slow. But please keep sending tips!
In the meantime, here’s a cat. I posted this one before but, come on, this is an excellent cat who deserves some more publicity.
This is the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
Is it just me or do all Nice Guys have an over-inflated ego and a mind-boggling sense of superiority ?
“I can’t put women on a pedestal” – dude, watch your footing on your own pedestal, gonna break your neck if you fall from that height.
That’s a fancy-ass name for a basic part of childhood cognitive development.
The other disturbing thing about this guy was the “oh yeah, I’ll just go to prostitutes instead of date and then you bitches will be sorry!” portion of the rant.
The implication is that with sex workers he doesn’t have to worry his poor little oppressed mind about pesky things like consent. He doesn’t seem to understand that sex workers can and do turn potential clients down and he would still have to obtain consent.
It’s a giant red flag when men see women who do sex work as some other subhuman category they don’t have to respect at all.
There’s this too.
Dude, I officially and volitionally ask you of my own choice to please stop using those words. Actually, all the words. All of them.
Re sex workers : I missed that part, but I can’t wait for his angry piece about how he gets turned down and it’s totally a crime because it’s their duty and he’s such a nice guy too.
This dude is a louse
My general rule: I don’t give a shit what the legal loopholes are in your jurisdiction. If you’re hitting on high school girls, I have nothing good to say about you. But it’s OK, cos he’ll only try his hand at older ‘girls’ from now on (older or him is still <30). Until one of them doesn't accept his bullshit. Then it's even older and older. And at no point will he question whether or not he actually is a nice guy (hint: not)
Also, he goes on this self righteous, deontology kick. But why is his whole essay about the consequences of his actions? He decides not to harass children anymore, only after the underage object (keyword) of his affections pushes back. He wants to do the right thing (or what he’s deluded himself into believing is the right thing) only because he thinks he’ll “succeed”. And that’s just the tip of the disingenuous iceberg. Not even gonna touch his mommy issues…
And he keeps apologizing but he never actually apologizes for anything! ‘I apologize for being so perfectly ethical and moral. Everything I do or have ever done makes perfect sense, and I haven’t learned a damn thing, but I’m so sorry’. Can’t fuckin stand that shit! We should have a Not Being Shitty course in middle school, and a whole month should be spent on apologies! Aaah!!1!!
We’ve actually got that in France.
Granted, it’s very flawed.
It doesn’t have dedicated teachers, so those classes often end up just being your math/history/english/whatever teacher doing their usual class instead of that. Even if they do it, they do it according to their own (often very loose) interpretation of what it’s supposed to be. And even if they do it well (which has only ever happened one year in my life, with my awesome philosophy teacher, all the gods bless her until the end of times) it’s only one hour every two weeks.
But hey, at least we tried !
@John
B-but that’s big gummint indoctrinating my babies! They’ll teach ‘leftist’ propaganda like tolerance of individual differences, basic empathy, or responsible sexual practice/consent. Can’t have that!
Some schools here (not where I live, somewhere in the country) do something like that, but there isn’t a school system in the nation that isn’t funded like ass. Get what you pay for…
@Axe
Responsible sexual practice is taught in our biology classes. To everyone – I believe even private schools have some obligation to teach it. By the way we don’t have the whole creationism/evolution debate either, heh. Nothing about consent though… that’s down to the teachers. But I hope it has changed since. Not gonna lie though, I won’t be surprised if it hasn’t.
Okay there’s some weird animal making some weird animal noises right outside my window. It sounds weird, but also super cute. No idea what it is.
The problem with our big gummint is that it doesn’t (want to) change anything to the funding problem. Systemic racism plays a huge role in it – those schools are barely standing, and it seems there’s a tendency for teachers who fuck up one way or another to get sent there. My high school was right on the fault line – enough white kids for the state to give a slight fuck about it. Go a few streets downhill (literally, look up Thiers, that city is freaking vertical) and it’s a very different tune – they don’t even pretend anymore. Oh, and they build different kinds of schools for different social contexts. After junior high you get to choose whether you’re going in “general” or “professional” (read : learn to work in a factory) and those are in separate schools. I’ll let you guess how they then distribute the number of either in each area.
Oh and of course, it’s illegal here to make “ethnic statistics” – it’d be racist to do so. Convenient. Systemic racism remains obvious, but completely unprovable. The paragraph above might even be illegal, I’m not sure.
Some socialist pinko commie country.
The icing on that euphoric gentlesir’s rant is the half-naked lingerie models every other paragraph.
“I’ve sworn off women” (pinup girl) “foreverrrr” (bikini model) “the evil conniving bitches” (hot actress)
P.S. I miss katz too. And Falconer. And Sir Bodsworth.
@WWTH. Hi, didn’t see ya there
[insert revolving door of slurs here] are never, have never, and will never be sorry to lose out on a penis they weren’t already interested in. ‘You didn’t know I existed until I wrote this Reddit post, but I’m not gonna fuck you. Bet ya feel sorry now, doncha!?’ Nope, nobody’s sad. There are literally billions of other penes out there, GenderRealist1995 taking himself outta contention ain’t gonna upset the balance
And the rest of your comment is spot on, per yoozh
@John
The whole country isn’t a disaster. I love in the Deep South, the Bible Belt, and I got pretty good sex ed (lotsa black people where I live. That means fewer Republicans ?). Mostly about STDs, puberty, pregnancy, and what your parts are called. Like you, no consent (mighta glossed over it) or anything too ‘graphic’. Then again, everything is too graphic for some parents. A plus tho, they did highlight the whole ‘everything’s fine, you’re not weird, whenever you’re ready’ schtick. That was nice 🙂
A persistent topic in previous comment sections (and elsewhere on the net) has been about a Black Lives Matter type movement in other countries. Whether it’s necessary or appropriate or feasible, stuff like that. That ‘color blind’ thing has the unintended(?) consequence of making that sorta campaign far less feasible. IMO, BLM’s biggest strength is in the availability of the facts and figures. ‘Black people get killed by cops sometimes’ is way less impactful than ‘346 in 2015 and 3x more likely than white people’. Everyone’s equally French tho… right? And fuck the burkini ban!
Indeed?
So, about cats that stand up: we had a pair visiting (while their human was gallivanting about on vacation). The boy learned to stand up and try to turn the door handle in the month he was with us. Impossibly adorable. And only effective as a beg.
His mother, on the other paw, learned to open the door if it wasn’t quite latched, which meant she got out rather more than we’ve admitted to her human.
@Axecalibur – I agree: facts and figures are useful, even if the categories aren’t absolute. Also definitely agreed that racist police violence/racial profiling isn’t just a U.S. problem: in Montreal, for instance, there were the killings of Fredy Villanueva and Jean-Pierre Bony (as far as I gather, both were suspected for drug crimes, not violent crimes).
@Sinkable John: France and Quebec seem to be having the same problems about using “state secularism” (is that a good translation of “laïcité”?) against Muslims. In 2013 the Parti Québécois proposed a “Charter of Quebec Values” that would ban “conspicuous religious symbols” for govt./public service employees, and, guess what, they focused mostly on hijabs.
As for Christian symbols, well… (quoted from Wikipedia): “[C]ertain items and customs with an ostensibly religious nature, such as the large crucifix on display in the Quebec National Assembly, and observing Christmas are exempt on the rationale of them reflecting the province’s cultural heritage.”
Nice rationale they had… Anyway, the law never passed, since a different government got in.
OT: I’m not in Quebec at the moment, but on vacation (yay!) in exotic Ontario. Right now I’m staying in Windsor, and there was a beautiful sunset on the Detroit River this evening. (Hello, USA! Nice to see you, even if only from afar).
*waves from the US*
I have promised myself that if I go to a town where burkinis are banned, I shall wear one.
@louwe
True, three years doesn’t sound a lot to an experienced person, but by the looks of things, the girls he pursues are the most naive and submissive, and probably brow beaten Christian fundamentalists as well, who think that standing up to a guy is un feminine. (The girls who are up voting his posts certainly believe this) although it is exactly this environment which ‘breeds victims’, lets men get away scott free with bullying and sexual harassment and blames women for the aggressive behaviour of the man, saying she led him on, or in fundie parlance ‘sexually defrauded’ him. This makes me shiver, as I said I have seen where this leads first hand, and it is not pleasant.
@pinko
One of the problems I have with communism is the state atheism part. This was originally to remove the power of the church from government, and support the idea of ‘separation of church and state’. There are other reasons, the link between the church and the ruling class / monarchy, tithing of the peasantry etc (paying 10%of your income to the church) otoh some Christians and other religions have suffered terrible persecution despite not being involved with this stuff. I don’t approve of religious intolerance in any form, like the stuff we are seeing in France recently. Removing power from the church institutions does not give them the right to persecute the followers of these faiths.
Just thought I’d say, I’m away till Monday.
Going to Portmerion, where the Prisoner was filmed.
That’s up in North Wales. 🙂
@ Virgin Mary
Watch out for killer weather balloons!
@Axe
Way ahead of you, we’ve had that for a few decades :p
Okay, so to be fair it’s more of a bunch of separate group, one for each victim. They’re almost always named on this model “Verité et Justice pour [Victim’s name]” – it’s our equivalent to BLM. Each group is headed by either the victim’s family or people who were close to them, and mostly made up of people who live in the same city/area. But all groups communicate between them, there’s a few structures that provide aid between all of them (legal aid for example). That’s our workaround to the color-blindness problem right there : the names of the victims are enough. Here’s a few examples :
Zyed Benna & Bouna Traoré – the most famous case, 2005
Abdoulaye Camara – 2014
Adama Traoré – 2016
Wissam El-Yamni – 2011 (this happened in my city)
Sakine Cansiz, Fidan Dogan and Leyla Saylemez – 2013 (This case is a bit different but it is relevant and worth looking up especially from a feminist perspective.)
Hakim Djelassi – 2009
I could go on. I picked some of those at random, the others because they were important to me in one way or another. See the pattern ? We don’t need statistics with this kind of list.
That’s another thing. Some people aren’t “French” enough. They may be French in every official sense, if they aren’t white and named Durand, they won’t be called French. They’re viciously refered to by their “country of origin” even if they were born here and have never even been there. Hell even I can’t escape it. I’m basically the Polish dude, I’ll never be French enough. To add insult to injury, people then explain that they see me as Polish because… I drink too much ? What the hell ? You think of Poland and the first thing that comes to mind is alcoholism ? WHAT. And then the struggle faced by Muslims becomes clearly apparent : they’ll never be French, because Muslim. Islam is a country, dontcha know. The burkini ban is the latest example, which brings me to this :
@epitome of incomprehensibility
First off : laïcité – state secularism, yeah, that’s a good translation.
Yep, we’ve had that in the public sector since 2004, and I’m glad it didn’t pass in Quebec. The controversy on that still lives on here, and the burkini ban is its latest incarnation. And yeah, of course there’s a ton of ink spent just on rationalizing why “christian symbols are okay, because ME CULTURE” – hey, Muslims ! This country is not YOUR culture ! It’s MINE ! Actually, not even. But still !
The burkini ban in itself is particularly disgusting. Under some “feminist” rationale, they go and police what women can wear. Nice one, fuckers. But it’s okay, it’s for secularism ! Which brings me to :
@Virgin Mary
The religious persecution here really has nothing to do with secularism. (Also did you mean we’re a communist country ?) We have a certain “religious right” political fringe, the one that was most active during the rabidly homophobic “Manif Pour Tous” back in 2013 when we (finally) decided to make marriage law equal. Those guys aren’t persecuted. Like the american religious right, they like to pretend they are. I’m an agnostic atheist and big time secularist, but apparently the state and I disagree on what that means. These days, laïcité/secularism is a codeword for “No Muslims allowed”.
This specific debate has been hijacked by a particularly vicious fringe of the far-right, which tries to co-opt Muslims as allies in their big fight for “traditional values”. Look up Alain Soral if you feel you need some anger in your day.
So all in all, there you have it : it’s really all the same thing. Racism is a very versatile thing.
Re : schools – of course human beings and social dynamics being what they are, the poor areas are also where someone who wants to learn can find the most interesting places. Since I was kicked out of school, I’ve been to a few places where badass social workers and street teachers do by themselves what the state refuses to do. And they do it much better. Writing classes for the poor kids – that’s the awesome stuff. Been to those as a guest of sorts, to learn a lot and teach a bit about writing – come October, I’ll do a lot more of that in the town I’m moving to. Among other things, it’s how I ended up doing rap in addition to previous work in blues and hard rock. Also come October, my DJ/rapper buddy and I will work on recording some of our stuff, and I’m ridiculously excited about it. Haven’t recorded shit in so many years I’m not sure I can hold a mic anymore.
Whew, that was one long post. Woke up from a nightmare into a bad headache, heart and brain trying to one-up each other in making this morning shitty. The teal deer got it out of my system.
@Sinkable John
Whew! Nightmares can be really scary.
Sounds like you’re feeling better now.
Enjoy your day!
And congratulations on your kickass plans!
@Virgin Mary
I hope that you have a good time in North Wales!
@Kat
I like scary nightmares, sort of 😐
You always wake up from them and reality kicks back in. It’s the “good dreams” I’m most afraid of, for the same reason.
This one was a peculiar thing, a nightmare that reflected the worst of reality. Wake up, go “phew, just a nightmare” then realize it could basically be real. Well at least waking up wasn’t too brutal, since there’s no contrast.
I’ll become a transhumanist the day they find a way to make sleep unnecessary – I’ve got a shitty relationship with every aspect of it.
But yeah, ’tis better now, thanks :p
@Virgin Mary
Didn’t see that second post, have a great time there 😀
Teach me some cool welsh words when you come back. That language is awesome.
@ sinkable john & virgin mary
Either of you two familiar with Sleaford Mods?
I think you both might like them for different reasons. SJ, they have a really interesting take on rap. They’re great live. The guy who does all the actual production and music comes on stage but he just stands around drinking whilst his mate actually sings.
Mary, I think you might like their politics; though it might be a bit left wing for you 🙂
All their stuff is officially on YouTube (heaven forfend that they should actually make profit)
Maybe start with ‘Jobseeker’. The lyric is hilarious.
@Alan
I can’t understand dem lyrics 🙁
I no can engrish enoof good for dis
I’d never heard of them before, although I’ve heard this kind of musical approach before : sounds like the post-punk I’m used to hearing at my usual hang out, an “underground” concert hall where math rock is played the same night as regular old school hip-hop and weird fetish punk. The drinks are cheap and there’s fucking couches. Awesome place.
@Sinkable John:
I have been to metal clubs where you could probably contract any of a number of diseases from the couches. I’m a little scared of couches in clubs now.
That said, that club sounds badass awesome and now I want to go to the Auvergne to check it out.
Your music sounds very interesting. I’d love to hear it, if you want to share (or just post a link to where we can buy it.)
@ sinkable john
Heh, think we’re on the same wavelength. It’s always been a bit like that for me when my mates try to drag me out.
“We’ve managed to blag into this great gig!”
“(Such and such DJ) is doing a special appearance!”
“We’ve scored some top notch MDMA!”
“It’s got a VIP area with a free bar!”
“There’s somewhere comfy to sit”
“I’m in!!!”