Douglas Adams excelled at that sort of wordplay. His metaphors just hang in the air, the way bricks don't.
----------------------------------------------
"What was that?" hissed Arthur.
"Something red," hissed Ford back at him.
"Where are we?"
"Er, somewhere green."
"Shapes," muttered Arthur. "I need shapes."
The applause of the crowd had been rapidly succeeded by gasps of astonishment, and the awkward titters of hundreds of people who could not yet make up their minds about whether to believe what they had just seen or not.
"This your sofa?" said a voice.
"What was that?" whispered Ford.
Arthur looked up.
"Something blue," he said.
"Shape?" said Ford.
Arthur looked again.
"It is shaped," he hissed at Ford, with his brow savagely furrowing, "like a policeman."
Charlie Brooker (or his writers) sometimes 'channel' Douglas Adams - similar to how Adams 'channeled' P.G. Wodehouse (in particular: Zaphod Beeblebrox is basically "Ukridge").
Anyhow... there was one episode of Charlie Brooker's "Screen Wipe" from about ten years ago where he used the phrase
>>> "As pointless as building a cathedral out of peas"
(This is a slight paraphrase: the 'bit' might not have started with "as pointless as", but "building a cathedral out of peas" is word-for-word and is gorgeous).
Obviously that also has echoes of Samuel Johnson -
>> "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
And of course Ben Curtis did a couple of variations on that theme when they had the Ben Johnson character in "Blackadder" (S02 E03 "Ink and Incapability") say (of why he hadn't made more than one copy of his new 'dictionary':
>>> "Making a copy is like fitting wheels to a tomato, time-consuming and completely unnecessary"
And Edmund (Blackadder) had a good zinger in that episode as well:
>>> [The dictionary is] the most pointless book since 'How to Learn French' was translated into French.
Contrast that with French "zingers" like "Il parle le français comme une vache espagnole". Comparatively weak, mon pote.
I initially thought it was "comme une vache l'espagnol" (indicating that the cow was *speaking* Spanish, but was not necessarily a *Spanish cow*) - which precluded my 'variation' "comme un singe chinois" (like a Chinese monkey).
It's possible to have the same fun with "It's spelt lasagne."
(Is it lasagne made of spelt, or is it correcting an idiot Yanklish-speaker who spelled it 'lasagna'?... OR... porqué no los dos?)
You know ... the best solution to the brain-dead idiots infesting society is to simply relax, smile and ask them when they are getting their next booster. Natural selection is a bitch.
Seriously, these people are akin to pedophiles & perverts who think they are somehow “normal” because they bamboozle some idiot parent into taking their 5 year old to watch some hairy dude pretend he’s a woman. “I was dumb enough to allow myself to be injected with an experimental gene therapy offered by a serial felon, so the only way I don’t look like a complete moron is if o force you to do it as well. It’s just not fair!”
For me, it was the "carrots", not the "sticks", that turned my "wait and see" into "no fucking way". $100 to get jabbed? Free *donuts*? Do they think we're idiots? Yep.
That whole season of bribery was totally bizarre. Washington state ran a lottery where people won $100,000 for getting the clot shot! Wonder where that money came from.
Remember the lotto for a free 4WD truck, even a gun!
As a pharmacist retired after 38 years of practice, I always said yes, I will consider the vaccine in 10 years, or maybe 15. Then, listening I think to David Webb's show, you know the famous "white supremacist," he mentioned that it was going to be a mRNA vaccine, and my antenna went way up from my knowledge of these types of vaccines with chickens.
I verified the fact, and nope, no, negative, no fucking way.
A brief explanation has usually been sufficient to direct many people the proper direction.
Other folks, well they just don't want to know the truth, they have already been demoralized-normalized and those folks can't come back.
We have learned that the strategy of saying "not yet" rather than a straight out "no" can buy one a lot of time, not just for "vaccines" but for all manner of things that others insist that you must do. Try it.
You have a great website, Ben, but please...don't take Chris away from us. We need to hear his sober, reasoned, and unstructured voice to help us keep our sanity.
Hochul stole $565 million from the Seneca (Indian) nation and gave $418 million to the new Buffalo Bills stadium, of which her husband gets a couple $ million$ from the concession stands. That’s Hochul.
I used to think my obstinant defiant disorder and tendancy towards procrastination were a hindrance to my personal progress, until they saved my life. I am quite sure the Covid shot would have hurt or killed me, as I am low weight, had Covid (had it real good) and have formaldehyde and PEG allergies.
Oh, and when one of my acquaintances had a bit of anaphalactic shock after hers, that might've set me off some too. Another friend had horrible shoulder pain, is still off work. My ex had visual issues, quite badly and still occuring a year later. Another family member, vertigo and liver issues. Once I saw Dr. Bhaktis very first video, I knew we were in for it just by the look in his eyes. My family and friends, to whom I sent that video, said I was making a stupid and dangerous choice. I wonder how many of them will be alive in 3 years. C'est la mort!
First principles; who has the power? Is it the elected office holders? It isn’t in DC.
At the local level if it is then elections can work but you will have to elect people who can stand up to DC, their legal and criminal groups , the media and most importantly you must stand by your officials. Stand means stand, it doesn’t mean TALK.
Exactly: when there are protesters outside the elected officials house, or the policeman’s house YOU are standing there as well in equal or greater numbers ready to match their measures- all of them.
Whatever they do you do and do it as well or better.
If the Feds or DOJ are stirring up trouble, or the courts, or the DA you had Better be there in force as matching trouble.
For matters of law you have lawyers.
.....and.....this is the part where its over, isn’t it?
Yes.
This is why you suffer - because they stop at nothing, you want to be “law abiding “ oh and not risk anything.
They won - and they have- because they risked.
Because they dared.
And you don’t .
Until that changes don’t bother.
You’ll expose yourself to retaliation without any gains.
Crushing your enemies is a gain.
Ask Obama. Or Pelosi.
Until this changes it only gets worse.
This of course is nothing new and the eternal fate of man.
That silver lining that covid brought. We really learned what the people around us were all about. I think we knew before, but now we know without any doubt. I feel for the miserable people. They were dumb enough to get their jabs and now they want to share in their misery. The entire narrative is collapsing. Too bad they have ruined elections with cheating. This all goes away if we can rid ourselves of mail in voting. However, it is here to stay in blue states and the red states are turning more blue every day.
Not just people but the character of entire nations. Canada, for example, has shown itself to be cruel, cowardly and hysterical. Nothing like the stable and sensible image it carefully curated for decades. Obliterated in mere months. Canada, to me, is a fraud.
So you actually believe that 82 million people actually voted for and intended to vote for Biden? Our elections will never again be fair, while we are allowing people to vote by mail. What you probably do not understand is the democrats have set up hundreds of NGOs, strategically placed in battleground (formerly red states). Their sole purpose is to harvest ballots and stuff the ballot box. We can complain about things like censorship, hacked voting machines, etc. However, until we eliminate mail in voting (different from absentee voting), none of the other stuff matters. If people are so lazy that cannot get out to vote in person, most states have weeks where you can go, then they should not be voting. People need to present an ID to use their voting PRIVILEGE.
If we cannot vote out the assholes doing the power grabs, and right now because of mail in voting, we cannot, then this will never end. If we can ... this is over very quickly and we can start to focus on things like big tech censorship, corporate media corruption, etc.
Thus the comment ... Voter fraud removes all the power from the people to get rid of the corrupt politicians. If we cannot remove them ... game over.
No I am well versed that the election was fraudulent.
I also understand we moved past all that in what followed, to include Trump starting a fight then running.
I recall killing, jailing of the Jan 6 romantics.
I recall most of all unwilling and unarmed troops (human shields) then installed Biden.
In sum I’m aware the Republic has fallen. You are -forgive me - a fantasist.
Its sad this clinging to a corpse.
Normie Bates talking to his mother.
The Republic has fallen at the hands of force and fraud, its dead 19 months now.
Move on.
As if voting ever changed anything? Yes - for the worse.
The GOP angers the Dems and they crushed the commons, Trump unhinged the Dems and they killed, jailed, blackmailed their way into power. The GOP and Trump bought Hell on us and did nothing. So 💩. Grow up.
The Democrats are dead 💀 serious, the Republicans are are cowards and frauds.
Bring us ruthless killers, burners, looters, jailers of the Democrats and I’ll vote for that, until then stop bringing retaliation on our heads.
Until fairly recently, I held this (entirely warranted) defeatist view. Also a fantasist but in a different way, dreaming of some future Ancapistan for our kids. 🥴
I'll spare you the details of my less than gradual about face but it began with the phrase "The side that wants to win will always beat the side that wants to be left alone."
Power will be wielded, regardless of our personal feelings about it. We can swallow a black pill with our morning coffee and daydream of some utopian paradise free of force, coercion and thirst for power or we can decide to do something meaningful towards taking that power back. Recommend checking out Pete Quinones's podcast and stack "By Any Memes Necessary." His strategy of sorts is based on Hoppe's "What must be done."
The thought of getting involved local politics and even voting still makes me queasy but it's either that or give up and accept a future in which my community is exclusively planned by the DEI committee.
I'm an old man and probably won't be here for a majority of the dark days that our country is headed towards. Since I've been around and old enough to know what's happening I've never seen it this bad. Not JFK/RFK, MLK Vietnam or anything since weren't as bad as today. You can tell I'm old but I'm not senile like some.
I won't forgive nor forget being treated the same by supposed friends and family. Some people were outright ashamed of my decision even though theirs was only based on a delusional herd mentality. God bless everyone who was brave and bold enough to say EFF OFF.
“I did what I usually do: I thought about the past to try to make sense of the present.”
YES.
The best was when questioned about this small problem of disease enhancement post-vaccination for original SARS, and whether they’d overcome this teensy-tiny problem, THE SCIENCE himself just waved it off like, oh, probably.
Read about Leicester, England in 1885 and their massive demonstration and revolt against compulsory smallpox vaccination. They were warned by the government about the serious illness and death they were calling upon themselves and everyone else by refusing to submit...
The cowardice has bothered me all along. Young men wearing masks...the contempt I feel for them. (For women, too, but as a woman, the men bother me more.)
My thanks to Margaret Anna Alice for "people-shaped things."
https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/
Douglas Adams excelled at that sort of wordplay. His metaphors just hang in the air, the way bricks don't.
----------------------------------------------
"What was that?" hissed Arthur.
"Something red," hissed Ford back at him.
"Where are we?"
"Er, somewhere green."
"Shapes," muttered Arthur. "I need shapes."
The applause of the crowd had been rapidly succeeded by gasps of astonishment, and the awkward titters of hundreds of people who could not yet make up their minds about whether to believe what they had just seen or not.
"This your sofa?" said a voice.
"What was that?" whispered Ford.
Arthur looked up.
"Something blue," he said.
"Shape?" said Ford.
Arthur looked again.
"It is shaped," he hissed at Ford, with his brow savagely furrowing, "like a policeman."
Nice.
😆 Very kind of you, Chris—I was quite pleased to see that in your subtitle :-) And I must in turn h/t Charlie Brooker for that one 🎩
Charlie Brooker (or his writers) sometimes 'channel' Douglas Adams - similar to how Adams 'channeled' P.G. Wodehouse (in particular: Zaphod Beeblebrox is basically "Ukridge").
Anyhow... there was one episode of Charlie Brooker's "Screen Wipe" from about ten years ago where he used the phrase
>>> "As pointless as building a cathedral out of peas"
(This is a slight paraphrase: the 'bit' might not have started with "as pointless as", but "building a cathedral out of peas" is word-for-word and is gorgeous).
Obviously that also has echoes of Samuel Johnson -
>> "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
And of course Ben Curtis did a couple of variations on that theme when they had the Ben Johnson character in "Blackadder" (S02 E03 "Ink and Incapability") say (of why he hadn't made more than one copy of his new 'dictionary':
>>> "Making a copy is like fitting wheels to a tomato, time-consuming and completely unnecessary"
And Edmund (Blackadder) had a good zinger in that episode as well:
>>> [The dictionary is] the most pointless book since 'How to Learn French' was translated into French.
Contrast that with French "zingers" like "Il parle le français comme une vache espagnole". Comparatively weak, mon pote.
I initially thought it was "comme une vache l'espagnol" (indicating that the cow was *speaking* Spanish, but was not necessarily a *Spanish cow*) - which precluded my 'variation' "comme un singe chinois" (like a Chinese monkey).
It's possible to have the same fun with "It's spelt lasagne."
(Is it lasagne made of spelt, or is it correcting an idiot Yanklish-speaker who spelled it 'lasagna'?... OR... porqué no los dos?)
😆👏
You know ... the best solution to the brain-dead idiots infesting society is to simply relax, smile and ask them when they are getting their next booster. Natural selection is a bitch.
Deliciously biting, my friend!
I Use a variant of that question..Is that number 4 or 5? "booster"
Seriously, these people are akin to pedophiles & perverts who think they are somehow “normal” because they bamboozle some idiot parent into taking their 5 year old to watch some hairy dude pretend he’s a woman. “I was dumb enough to allow myself to be injected with an experimental gene therapy offered by a serial felon, so the only way I don’t look like a complete moron is if o force you to do it as well. It’s just not fair!”
Agree completely... those who continuously fail a #OneQuestionIQTest want to drag their cognitive (and moral) betters down towards the median.
Remind them that it's a booster for the 2019 strain of the virus.
I also do that "gag"..it gets blank looks.. :)
For me, it was the "carrots", not the "sticks", that turned my "wait and see" into "no fucking way". $100 to get jabbed? Free *donuts*? Do they think we're idiots? Yep.
Good point, and another sign of the weird desperation that ran through the whole thing.
That whole season of bribery was totally bizarre. Washington state ran a lottery where people won $100,000 for getting the clot shot! Wonder where that money came from.
Remember the lotto for a free 4WD truck, even a gun!
As a pharmacist retired after 38 years of practice, I always said yes, I will consider the vaccine in 10 years, or maybe 15. Then, listening I think to David Webb's show, you know the famous "white supremacist," he mentioned that it was going to be a mRNA vaccine, and my antenna went way up from my knowledge of these types of vaccines with chickens.
I verified the fact, and nope, no, negative, no fucking way.
A brief explanation has usually been sufficient to direct many people the proper direction.
Other folks, well they just don't want to know the truth, they have already been demoralized-normalized and those folks can't come back.
Yea and in some case they will LITERALLY never come back, tragically. That's what makes me so mad. They're murdering people!
We have learned that the strategy of saying "not yet" rather than a straight out "no" can buy one a lot of time, not just for "vaccines" but for all manner of things that others insist that you must do. Try it.
I will try it, but not yet.
😂
Bray, you need to write for American Greatness. Drop me a line, would you please?
Will do!
You would be a great fit there, no doubt.
Just don't abandon us, please.
You have a great website, Ben, but please...don't take Chris away from us. We need to hear his sober, reasoned, and unstructured voice to help us keep our sanity.
It doesn't have to be an either-or. I hope it can be a both-and. He does great stuff here. I hope we can help expand his audience.
A lot of us are already there, Ben.
And thanks!
Hochul stole $565 million from the Seneca (Indian) nation and gave $418 million to the new Buffalo Bills stadium, of which her husband gets a couple $ million$ from the concession stands. That’s Hochul.
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/buffalo/ny-state-of-politics/2022/04/05/seneca-nation-buys-tv-and-radio-ads-criticizing-hochul-for-spending-casino-money-on-stadium
Jeez that’s a lot of Hochul fans out there 🤣
I used to think my obstinant defiant disorder and tendancy towards procrastination were a hindrance to my personal progress, until they saved my life. I am quite sure the Covid shot would have hurt or killed me, as I am low weight, had Covid (had it real good) and have formaldehyde and PEG allergies.
Oh, and when one of my acquaintances had a bit of anaphalactic shock after hers, that might've set me off some too. Another friend had horrible shoulder pain, is still off work. My ex had visual issues, quite badly and still occuring a year later. Another family member, vertigo and liver issues. Once I saw Dr. Bhaktis very first video, I knew we were in for it just by the look in his eyes. My family and friends, to whom I sent that video, said I was making a stupid and dangerous choice. I wonder how many of them will be alive in 3 years. C'est la mort!
Procrastination is my superpower! When I want something, I go for it. If I have trouble getting started, it's probably the wrong thing anyway.
Groupthink. We are surrounded by indifference, bullies, and cowards. Your post today speaks for many.
The mentally ill are everywhere in positions of power.
Next steps need to be about replacing those people in power, one by one. So much good can happen when we chip that woke wall.
First principles; who has the power? Is it the elected office holders? It isn’t in DC.
At the local level if it is then elections can work but you will have to elect people who can stand up to DC, their legal and criminal groups , the media and most importantly you must stand by your officials. Stand means stand, it doesn’t mean TALK.
Exactly: when there are protesters outside the elected officials house, or the policeman’s house YOU are standing there as well in equal or greater numbers ready to match their measures- all of them.
Whatever they do you do and do it as well or better.
If the Feds or DOJ are stirring up trouble, or the courts, or the DA you had Better be there in force as matching trouble.
For matters of law you have lawyers.
.....and.....this is the part where its over, isn’t it?
Yes.
This is why you suffer - because they stop at nothing, you want to be “law abiding “ oh and not risk anything.
They won - and they have- because they risked.
Because they dared.
And you don’t .
Until that changes don’t bother.
You’ll expose yourself to retaliation without any gains.
Crushing your enemies is a gain.
Ask Obama. Or Pelosi.
Until this changes it only gets worse.
This of course is nothing new and the eternal fate of man.
That silver lining that covid brought. We really learned what the people around us were all about. I think we knew before, but now we know without any doubt. I feel for the miserable people. They were dumb enough to get their jabs and now they want to share in their misery. The entire narrative is collapsing. Too bad they have ruined elections with cheating. This all goes away if we can rid ourselves of mail in voting. However, it is here to stay in blue states and the red states are turning more blue every day.
Not just people but the character of entire nations. Canada, for example, has shown itself to be cruel, cowardly and hysterical. Nothing like the stable and sensible image it carefully curated for decades. Obliterated in mere months. Canada, to me, is a fraud.
We cannot leave out Australia, Austria, New Zealand. I really wanted to visit all 3 of those countries, now you could not pay me to go there.
What do you mean it all goes away if we get rid of voting by mail?
Good Lord. Of course not.
So you actually believe that 82 million people actually voted for and intended to vote for Biden? Our elections will never again be fair, while we are allowing people to vote by mail. What you probably do not understand is the democrats have set up hundreds of NGOs, strategically placed in battleground (formerly red states). Their sole purpose is to harvest ballots and stuff the ballot box. We can complain about things like censorship, hacked voting machines, etc. However, until we eliminate mail in voting (different from absentee voting), none of the other stuff matters. If people are so lazy that cannot get out to vote in person, most states have weeks where you can go, then they should not be voting. People need to present an ID to use their voting PRIVILEGE.
If we cannot vote out the assholes doing the power grabs, and right now because of mail in voting, we cannot, then this will never end. If we can ... this is over very quickly and we can start to focus on things like big tech censorship, corporate media corruption, etc.
Thus the comment ... Voter fraud removes all the power from the people to get rid of the corrupt politicians. If we cannot remove them ... game over.
No I am well versed that the election was fraudulent.
I also understand we moved past all that in what followed, to include Trump starting a fight then running.
I recall killing, jailing of the Jan 6 romantics.
I recall most of all unwilling and unarmed troops (human shields) then installed Biden.
In sum I’m aware the Republic has fallen. You are -forgive me - a fantasist.
Its sad this clinging to a corpse.
Normie Bates talking to his mother.
The Republic has fallen at the hands of force and fraud, its dead 19 months now.
Move on.
As if voting ever changed anything? Yes - for the worse.
The GOP angers the Dems and they crushed the commons, Trump unhinged the Dems and they killed, jailed, blackmailed their way into power. The GOP and Trump bought Hell on us and did nothing. So 💩. Grow up.
The Democrats are dead 💀 serious, the Republicans are are cowards and frauds.
Bring us ruthless killers, burners, looters, jailers of the Democrats and I’ll vote for that, until then stop bringing retaliation on our heads.
Ta.
Until fairly recently, I held this (entirely warranted) defeatist view. Also a fantasist but in a different way, dreaming of some future Ancapistan for our kids. 🥴
I'll spare you the details of my less than gradual about face but it began with the phrase "The side that wants to win will always beat the side that wants to be left alone."
Power will be wielded, regardless of our personal feelings about it. We can swallow a black pill with our morning coffee and daydream of some utopian paradise free of force, coercion and thirst for power or we can decide to do something meaningful towards taking that power back. Recommend checking out Pete Quinones's podcast and stack "By Any Memes Necessary." His strategy of sorts is based on Hoppe's "What must be done."
The thought of getting involved local politics and even voting still makes me queasy but it's either that or give up and accept a future in which my community is exclusively planned by the DEI committee.
"The side that wants to win will always beat the side that wants to be left alone."
YES.
Wow, you sound very unhappy. As if voting ever changed anything? I am sorry, you seem to point out a lot of problems with absolutely zero solutions.
Sure there’s a solution, the opponent applied it in 2020 and won. The Founders found it, hint hint. The Taliban found it.
Of course that solution is unacceptable.
So no, I don’t have a solution then.
I'm an old man and probably won't be here for a majority of the dark days that our country is headed towards. Since I've been around and old enough to know what's happening I've never seen it this bad. Not JFK/RFK, MLK Vietnam or anything since weren't as bad as today. You can tell I'm old but I'm not senile like some.
You're right I don't go back to spears Harbor nor Appomattox
The self-righteous and sanctimonious disposition displayed by those in power is incredible (impossible to believe).
Ditto this. "Wait and see" became "Arrest me, assholes" when they went all 1933 on us.
I won't forgive nor forget being treated the same by supposed friends and family. Some people were outright ashamed of my decision even though theirs was only based on a delusional herd mentality. God bless everyone who was brave and bold enough to say EFF OFF.
Remember when Kramer refused to wear the ribbon at the AIDS walk.
“I did what I usually do: I thought about the past to try to make sense of the present.”
YES.
The best was when questioned about this small problem of disease enhancement post-vaccination for original SARS, and whether they’d overcome this teensy-tiny problem, THE SCIENCE himself just waved it off like, oh, probably.
Read about Leicester, England in 1885 and their massive demonstration and revolt against compulsory smallpox vaccination. They were warned by the government about the serious illness and death they were calling upon themselves and everyone else by refusing to submit...
...that never materialized.
We live in a time loop, don’t we.
The cowardice has bothered me all along. Young men wearing masks...the contempt I feel for them. (For women, too, but as a woman, the men bother me more.)
That’s really sexist
🤣