Category: Pop Culture

Are We Losing Our Patience? REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

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From  September 3, 2019

In a survey of 2,000 adults in Britain, the Bic company found that most people nowadays quickly run out of patience if forced to wait for something (https://www.studyfinds.org/hurry-up-modern-patience-thresholds-lower-than-ever-before-survey-finds/).

People reported themselves “frustrated” if a webpage takes 16 second to load, or a traffic signal takes 25 seconds to change–and only 22 seconds to start cursing their computer or TV “if a show or movie doesn’t immediately start streaming correctly.” Seventy-five percent of those surveyed blamed “digital technology” for their loss of patience.

I don’t have a lot of digital doodads, but I can certainly admit that my computer often drives me crazy. If computers were human employees, they’d be fired. If a computer can’t drive you up the wall, what can?

The survey didn’t get into this, but I think that chronic impatience, if it’s truly on the rise, has a lot to do with children being praised and rewarded for even the most minuscule achievements, given trophies just for showing up, given high school and college diplomas without having learned anything, and generally being hailed and lauded just for existing–and all the while being made to wait and wait and wait some more, being ignored, being treated as irritating nobodies instead of valued customers, etc. Workmen who show up late or not at all, inferior slop served up by our “entertainment” media as if we deserved nothing better, politicians calling us racists, self-proclaimed intellectuals calling us dopes–there’s a lot of insult out there, more than enough to go around. Selfishness seems to be winning out over good manners.

It’s what we get for permitting the coarsening of our culture.

Climbit Change Causes Monsters! REPRINT

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From February 23, 2020

This was going to be an emergency bulletin from Joe Collidge, but he is currently prostrated with fear and unable to write coherently. Also some gym socks he ate for breakfast have disagreed with him.

It seems there’s a growing rumor of giant crabs depopulating islands and dragging whole coastal villages into the deep, all because of Climate Change and Greta Thunberg. Back in 1957, this was cleverly disguised as a science fiction movie. But in 2020, it’s a grim reality.

Or so we’re told. By college professors. So you know it’s got to be true.

Only world government, open borders, and real high taxes can stop the giant crabs.

Honest!

The New, Improved, Politically Correct ‘Wagon Train’ REPRINT

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From July 17, 2015 

Our secret agent in Hollywood reports that Schlockmeister Studios is going to remake the classic late-1950s TV Western series, Wagon Train.

“But of course,” says studio honcho J.T. Fidget, “we’re going to update Wagon Train to bring it fully into line with today’s highly-evolved, modern sensibilities.”

So instead of Major Adams leading the wagon train, we’ll have Sister Twonda, a street-smart African-American nun, and her wife, Spike, 450 pounds of towering female fury. Instead of Flint McCullough as the scout, we’ll have a “gay” character named Zooey (“Oh, the Native American braves are just so fabulously brave!”), and Charlie the Cook will be replaced by Imam Khalil, who will make sure everybody on the wagon train eats a proper Muslim diet, or else.

Out of respect for animal rights, the wagons won’t be drawn by horses, mules, or oxen anymore, but only by heterosexual white men. To Save the Planet, the train won’t actually go anywhere. It’ll just go around and around in a circle. The passengers will all be undocumented Mexican immigrants living on checks from the government. And each episode will begin and end with a sermon against the evils of heteronormativity. [Gee, look at that–my computer’s spell-check doesn’t recognize any such word as “heteronormativity.” Obviously it has never been to collidge.]

“A lot of those old classic shows were very good,” says Fidget, “as opposed to most of the shows we produce today, which are crap. All those old shows need, to be popular again today, is drastic modification which will make them grotesque parodies of themselves. And that should be easy!”

Small Town Pushes Back REPRINT

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From October 17, 2022

 

What the cities can’t do, maybe our small towns can!

[Thanks to Jeri Lynn for the news tip]

(I am so tired today! Weather’s turned rotten, that must be it.)

Can “teachers” and librarians hand out to children any old smut they please… and be immune from the prosecution that would ensue if you did it?

The state of Kansas says yes.

But the town of Edwardsville, KS, pop. 4,800, says no (https://readlion.com/2022/09/29/small-kansas-town-council-rejects-states-legal-protections-for-teachers-librarians-who-submit-obscene-materials-to-minors/?fbclid=IwAR3wZxal_F5TNpbgnOwYueOcW57zteY3WWqGorh3dGGRHMfEBptw1Na3gqs).

Kansas has a Uniform Public Offenses Code to serve as a model for towns and villages who want to make amendments to their respective governments. Many states have such codes. And in Kansas’ code, teachers and librarians can distribute sexually-charged materials to very young children–with no fear of prosecution.

The mayor and council of Edwardsville rejected that provision. There are many compelling reasons for not habituating children to pornography. Everybody knows that except “educators” at teachers’ colleges, unionized teachers, pedophiles, and Far Left morons. Oh–and “TV personalities,” too. Get your 8-year-olds jazzed up for sex!

But they won’t let you do that in Edwardsville.

The Lord Our God does not despise the day of small things, and neither should we. Rejoice! We owe the mayor and council of Edwardsville our gratitude.

May their example inspire others to do the same.

Summertime Fads REPRINT

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Image result for images of kids using pea shooters

From September 16, 2017

We must not let the summer pass without some mention of summertime fads.

There used to be this place called “outside,” and that’s where we were, all summer long. I think it might still be there, somewhere, although children don’t appear to be visiting it much, these days.

One summer, we all had pea shooters–just these little plastic straws… through which we shot dried peas at each other. Now it’s all I can do to find a picture of a pea shooter. Mostly I just found stills and videos of this character called “Pea Shooter” from some electronic game which keeps kids indoors instead of moving them “outside.” I should add that nobody, for all the pea-shooting we did, ever shot their eye out.

Then there was the hula hoop, a nationwide craze that’s still with us. Everybody had one of those, too. Tommy Mascola, next door, used to be able to walk up and down stairs while keeping the hoop rotating around his hips. This made him a neighborhood celebrity. Too bad “America’s Got Talent” hadn’t been invented yet.

Another local fad was these little rubber rockets: you inserted a cap (from a cap gun) into the nose cone, and when you tossed it into the air and it came down on the sidewalk, it would go “bang!” Richly entertaining.

And there were impromptu bike races, home-made parachutes, and these weird candies that would go all fizzy when you put them into your mouth. I wonder what ever happened to them.

On the whole, I’m sure we had more fun than we would have ever had “inside” all day, fatzing around with video games and cell phones.

 

 

‘Alternate Reality Gaming’–in Spades REPRINT

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From February 22, 2016

As you read this, remind yourself that our country boasts the biggest, costliest public education system ever devised by human beings.

Here is some of what we get for it.

A dot on a map of New Jersey called “Ong’s Hat,” in the heart of the Pine Barrens, has fascinated people for years. What kind of town would have a name like that? Patty and I went there once, just to see it for ourselves. But there was nothing to see: just a lot of trees and a little-traveled road.

And then one Joseph Matheny in the 1990s invented an Internet game called “Ong’s Hat,” billed as “the secret to interdimensional travel.” And it took off.

“Alternate reality gaming” fans flocked to Ong’s Hat–which, remember, is nothing in particular–looking for a secret laboratory where rogue scientists discovered a way to visit parallel universes: not to mention the parallel universe now inhabited by some of these gamers. The most popular local legend had it that the place got its name from a man named Mr. Ong who, exasperated by a fight with his girlfriend, threw his hat into the air and lost it when it got caught in a tree. But now it was seen to be the nexus of a lot of far-out, conspiratorial goings-on. Gamers even went to Matheny’s house in California to peer through his windows, trying to spy out clues to the secret.

Finally, having decided that enough was enough already, Matheny discontinued the game in 2001. But a lot of people didn’t believe him when he said it was only a game that he’d made up. Sort of like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle refusing to believe Houdini’s admission that he had no genuine magical powers. “Yeah, right!” said Doyle.

Just this morning my editor, Susan, and I were talking about people who can’t seem to understand that science fiction isn’t real; and then Patty read me this article about the Ong’s Hat game which, for some, mutated into a full-blown delusion.

There is no interdimensional travel. There are no starships capable of faster-than-light “warp speed.” No time travel, no evidence that anything like a parallel universe exists, no Slender Man–and there was no secret science project headquartered in the nowhere that is Ong’s Hat.

And they say we’re credulous for believing the Bible.

Maybe we should’ve spent more time in college.

Ignorance and Superstition, in My Own Hometown REPRINT

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From July 24, 2014

On my hometown “Community Calendar” yesterday, the following two items:

It’s time again for the “annual Animal Spirit Guide Event,” featuring “Our clairvoyant medium.” Have you ever known a medium who did not claim to be clairvoyant? Also, “your Animal Guides will assist you in answering questions about any area of your life.”

In the next town over we have a meeting of the Citizens Climate Lobby, “a national grassroots organization working to build political will to address the challenge of climate change.” They try not to call it “Global Warming” anymore.

My town calls itself “the Brainy Borough.” There’s a rumor that the spirit of a cabbage worm gave it that nickname. We’re spending over $30 million this year to operate our four schools, just about everyone here is college-educated, or going to be–and we’re going to ask the Great Squirrel Spirit, “Should I unload this stock, or hang onto it a little longer?”

As for the Citizens Climate Lobby, “grassroots” means “funded by George Soros” or some other villain. They must think we all just fell off the potato truck.

But the presence of these two items on the same page teaches an important lesson.

When you desert the living God, and reject Jesus Christ the Savior, you don’t just stand there from then on without any god at all.

No–you wind up in the clutches of a false god; and the biggest false god of them all is the State.

“Pay higher taxes, sign away your liberties, and obey us in all things, and our experts will protect you from the dreaded Climate Change.”

Falling off the potato truck is bad enough.

Falling away from God is worse.

A Candy Bar in Poor Taste REPRINT

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

From October 31, 2013

Would you believe it? There is now a Hunger Games Chocolate Candy Bar ( http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/category/vosges-wild-ophelia-hunger-games-chocolate-candy-bars ).

If memory serves, The Hunger Games is about a nasty world where most of the people starve while the ruling class wallows in debauched luxury, and once a year a bunch of teenagers have to kill each other off in a kind of lethal Survivor game: the last one left alive wins a food supply for his or her district.

When I saw this product, I asked the clerk behind the counter, “Are these people serious?” He replied, “It’s advertising; and advertising’s always serious.”

You can always buy a chocolate bar; so what is it, really, that they’re selling here? A chance to identify with the parasitic ruling class? Or a chance to feel solidarity with the downtrodden common people?

Maybe my sensitivities are too nice, but I can’t help thinking this little marketing gimmick is in rather poor taste. If I had written The Hunger Games, I think I would object. I mean, I write about all this misery and suffering, and you name a freakin’ candy bar after it?

The times we live in are not only evil. They are inane.

Satan has a lot of real idiots working for him.

P.S.–I was wonder, what comes next, after the Hunger Games candy bar? My wife suggests 50 Shades of Grey… licorice whips.

 

This Book Has Got Me Cranking! REPRINT

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The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein: 9781585427123 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

From June 3, 2021

 

I spend hours every week studying the follies and deficiencies of our public education system, the costliest ever created in recorded history. I know it’s awful.

But just one chapter into this book–The Dumbest Generation, by Mark Bauerlein–had me shaking my head and muttering to myself.

It’s far worse than I thought.

Bauerlein, a college English professor, realizes something I realized years ago. The single worst thing about public school is, it makes your age-group peers the most important people in your life. That in itself was one of the worst ideas ever. But now, says Bauerlein, social media and a plethora of electronic gizmos have made an atrocious situation horrifyingly worse.

Kids and teens now live in the moment, cut off from the past, never pondering the future, unable to look any farther than their own little social media bubbles–obsessed with what other kids are doing, saying, playing… And they know… nothing.

All those boxcar-loads of money spent on “education,” and they come out of college knowing bloody nothing. They’re fixated on their peers in the social media. They never look beyond it. No history, no civics, no literature, no nothing. Maybe they’ll read a comic book now and then. And watch TV.

The author bases these claims on the results of many authoritative studies involving hundreds of thousands of school and college students.

What’s to worry?

Well, they can all vote, can’t they? And they’re always ready to Protest For Social Justice. Because it’s expected of them. Because their peers do it.

It is literally the march of ignorance.

I’m going to review this book for Chalcedon, so I have to read the rest of it. And I think I’d better pray harder! We are talking about creating a country full of conformist know-nothings who will not be able to sustain a constitutional republic. I’m a political scientist, I know these things, trust me: you can’t have a republic of idiots.

The Lout in the Gym REPRINT

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From  January 7, 2016

I wanted my exercise yesterday, so I went to the Y to play some basketball. “You should know, we have no heat in the gym today,” they told me at the desk. I said I’d work hard and generate my own eat.

Well, they weren’t kidding–there was no heat, and the gym was very cold. That’s why I was the only one in it. But I worked myself hard, and the cold wasn’t cold enough to make me stop.

By and by another guy came in, and he used the other basket. And then a third man entered the gym.

He brought some kind of gizmo with him, set it up on the bench, and began blasting the gym with really loud, really crummy “music.” Just like it was his gym and he was the only one in it.

This is what you get when people are raised by comic books and video games. This lout, this oaf, goes shambling through life unaware that there is anybody else who ought to be considered. He is oblivious to the presence of others. The only way he’ll stop doing something is if someone makes him stop.

You see more and more of this lately. There are now yobbos who double-park on the busy main street of my home town, creating traffic jams for everybody else. They park wherever they feel like parking. They play their “music” at you. When they walk their dogs, they leave the neighborhood decorated with little plastic bags full of faeces. They toss their fast-food scraps into your garbage can. They aim powerful floodlights at your bedroom window all night long. They talk on their cell phones as loud as they can in restaurants, in movie theaters.

Go ahead, tell me I’m wrong and our culture is in good shape.