Tuesday, September 26, 2017

In which the pond welcomes the arrival of a new Ridders' dark age ...


It goes without saying that Hollywood, and therefore western civilisation, reached its peak with cowboys fuelled on baked beans sitting around a campfire and endlessly farting ...

In terms of comedy, it put the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to shame; and what philosopher could come up with something richer or more meaningful than a fart?

There are many Murdochians who in their flatulent way, keep on farting, and this day the pond could have spent time with the arm-breaker having an exceptional nuclear-powered mind fart ...


And look, there was Caroline Marcus saying we can't say 'square root.'

Is it time to get out the Donald, and get him to grope her pussy and call for the firing of this daughter of a bitch?


Yes, it's all the usual carry on about the thought police and political correctness, and it usually comes from dumb blonde bitches of the Caroline Marcus kind, and they're usually the first to protest at the use of bitching bad language, instead of doing a Teresa Kaepernick, and wearing their bitch status with pride ...

So there we go, the pond is reduced to fart jokes and talk of dumb bitches just to prove that it's politically incorrect and therefore sound in a proper Trumpian way and can diss everybody...

Whatever happened to ye olde worldly conservative who would stifle a giggle at a fart joke and frown at bad language and insist on civility and good manners and politeness and all the rest of the political correctness the pond endured in the 1950s?

Naturally the pond turned to the lizards of Oz for an answer, and was confronted by an agonising choice ...


What should it be? The bromancer heiling the return of the Nazis as the only choice, or Ridders entirely missing events in Germany and agonising that we've entered a new dark age ... despite the brightest minds in Murdochian la la land welcoming the return of the Nazis ...

Well the pond is a sucker for new dark age stories ...


Of course many historians contest that the dark ages never existed, and those that talk of it frequently contend that it's all the fault of the Xians. You won't find the Vatican talking of the dark ages when the Xians got to call the shots ...

But Ridders could have really sealed the deal for the pond, if only the splash had mentioned he was really shouting at clouds, or farting in a cumulus way at cirrus, in a baked beans, Mel Brooks way ...



Now at this point the pond should probably offer a disclaimer.

The pond thought that Blazing Saddles was pathetic when it was made, and that it has aged even more badly, like a lot of bad Mel Brooks' comedy. (The pond has spent long and happy hours arguing deep into the night whether Young Frankenstein is more abysmal than Spaceballs,  but is always willing to let History of the World and Robin Hood into the argument).

If the pond is going to indulge in subversive comedy, it might start with Lennie, head off to Richard Pryor, take in a bit of early Eddie Murphy, a little early Chris Rock, and just to show it's not all black, a touch of Carlin and Louis C.K.

The notion that Brooks' comedy was bold and brave and politically incorrect rests on the assumption that only a pissed as a parrot UNE undergraduate would accept - that fart jokes are wickedly subversive and disruptive, as opposed to loud, vulgar and an easy way to score a laugh, down there with slipping on a banana.

It's not as if comedy and comedians haven't gone other places since ...

  

Yes, they felt the need to obscure that last image over at news.com.au, so perhaps we are entering a new dark age ...

Time to hearken unto Ridders, abandoning his exceptional climate science for societal analysis ...


It's moments like this where the pond wonders if it's on the same planet as people like Ridders.

Have they ever dropped in on the comments on YouTube, which to put it mildly, are frank and forthright? Have they ever visited 4Chan or Reddit and seen the unmitigated flow of filth and abuse? Even the allegedly politically correct world of Facebook and Twitter provide much unregulated mayhem, though because more obvious, people are more easily called out ...

If your idea of civilisation is fart jokes, you should feel safe and extremely civilised on Malware's speedy, multinodal, copper-fired intertubes.

But when Ridders gets on a roll, he rolls all the way ... and the pond reckons he'll manage to slip in a reference to him being a blasphemer, because climate science is only a religion which doesn't tolerate heretics, isn't it?


Good old Ridders and at least he dished it out to the Xians as well as the fundamentalist Islamics and ratbag Hindus, but can the pond suggest that if he thinks fart jokes about baked beans is the way forward, he needs to get out a little more ...

If that's an hilarious satirical flourish, and a funny cut-them-down-to-size gibe, then western civilisation is doomed. 

If video stores still existed, Brooks' comedy would be languishing somewhere in the comedy section, a curiosity for the insight it offered in to what made people laugh back in 1974:

[Bart returns unexpectedly after being sentenced to death] 
Charlie: They said you was hung. 
Bart: And they was right.

Lili Von Shtupp: Would you like another schnitzengruben? 
Bart: No, thank you. Fifteen is my limit on schnitzengruben. 
Lili Von Shtupp: Well, then how about a little... [whispers in his ear] 
Bart: Baby, please! I am not from Havana. 
Lili Von Shtupp: Will I... see you again? 
Bart: Well, it all depends on how much vitamin E I can get my hands on.

Hedley Lamarr: My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention. 
Taggart: Ditto. 
Hedley Lamarr: "Ditto?" "Ditto," you provincial putz?

Hedley Lamarr: Qualifications? 
Applicant: Rape, murder, arson, and rape. 
Hedley Lamarr: You said rape twice. 
Applicant: I like rape.

Oh dear, quick, the pond is feelingly alarmingly politically correct, or at least in need of an axe...

Would someone please pass the pond a Rowe, offering an echo of what the pond missed with the bromancer, and with more Rowe here ...



12 comments:

  1. Hi Dorothy,

    “Anyone questioning the idea that climate change is an imminent catastrophe, however gently, is quickly labelled a ”denier” (i.e. a blasphemer).”

    The 5th Viscount Ridley to give Ridders his full tittle, inherited the 8,500 acre Blagdon Estate in Northumberland from his father. In fact his family have owned the land since 1700.

    As luck would have it the estate sits on top of 8.3m tonnes of coal worth more than £300 million, which the Viscount is profitably exploiting with two open cast coal mines.

    So no I wouldn’t describe Ridders as a denier or a blasphemer instead I would call him a greedy unscrupulous chiseller.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/15/matt-ridley-accused-of-lobbying-uk-government-on-behalf-of-coal-industry

    DiddyWrote

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :)³ In the pond's experience, behind every ideology and ratbag, there's a chisel ...

      Delete
  2. Mark Latham: "Australia needs to go nuclear."

    Don't worry Mark, it will - just as soon as Trump starts WW III with North Korea and then China, it'll go nuclear all over the continent (including Melbourne this time).

    ReplyDelete
  3. "...there was Caroline Marcus saying we can't say 'square root.'"

    Who would want to when you can say "power 1/2". A 'root' is only a small proxy for 'power'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And GB, think of all those Unix programmers having to revert to "superuser"

      Delete
    2. And I had such a fight over a request to give a developer 'root access'.

      Delete
    3. Fortunately in my IBM mainframe days we knew nothing of such esoterica.

      But we did spend some amount of time doing 'root cause' investigation and analysis. Maybe we'd have to call it 'rhizome cause' now.

      Delete
    4. The pond should have mentioned that Marcus was getting herself into a knot over a uni maths matter the reptiles had spotted, keen as they are to root out heresy wherever they find it ... but who can be fucked?

      Delete
    5. Yair, found it, thanks DP [ http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/next-theyll-say-we-cant-use-square-root/news-story/1309e18c3ef718cdbac038409c3975eb ]

      That post by Marcus could really do with some REAR-ward proofing: only two students quoted, but one claimed a "thesis" had been returned with the evil heresy marked out. But there's absolutely no evidence that Marcus attempted to verify either student's account, she didn't even ask to see the "thesis". In short, the usual reptile bullshvt with even less impact that a rat's fart (using my WOW - Word Of the Week)

      Besides, after reading her post, I couldn't tell if she was thinking the problem might be "root" or whether it might be "square". Both terms can be used offensively, after all.

      Delete
  4. "Good old Ridders and at least he dished it out to the Xians ... "

    Yep, he did. Pity though, that he's such a pissant little fart (err, apologies for that) that the Catholic Boys' Daily has no hesitation in publishing his little rant. Truthful indeed, but just a tiny little rant all the same.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :)³ pissant - the pond loves that word all the more because it evokes piss and pisser and piss-weak by etymologically connecting piss and ant to make it slightly less overtly offensive.

      1655-65, in sense “ant”; piss + ant, probably orig. on the model of pismire
      http://www.dictionary.com/browse/pissant

      Delete
    2. And I always thought it was a deliberate, ironical take on 'puissant' :-)

      Delete

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