Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Everybody saw this coming.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Accountability, motherfuckers.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Usually wrong but never in doubt

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Blogging Is Legit WORK!

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(It’s been a long week, go with the joke. Bonus points for Bored of the Rings references… )

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195Comments

  1. 1.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    OT, but it looks like Naomi Wolf has now proven to be too crazy for Twitter.

    Something about special handling of sewage from vaccinated people….

  3. 3.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    Expatriot:

    The whole thing is an 800 page recipe for Lambas Bread

    Muireann Blue heart:

    The whole thing is an 800 page ad for Elven Celebrity Cookbooks. Do we get the recipe for Lambas bread? No we do not.

    It’s Lembas bread, dammit! LEMBAS!​

    With an ‘E’!

  5. 5.

    Mo MacArbie

    Just as canonically, Tolkien didn’t write any of it; he merely translated it. The Red Book of Westmarch was all we had at the time until the later sources incorporated by Peter Jackson into the movies. These are probably Gondoran sources rather than Hobbit sources, and they evidently had it in for Faramir.

  6. 6.

    sab

    I was obsessed with LOTR from age 12 to about 25, and that is exactly how I remember the books. I would never have learned to like mushrooms if the hobbits didn’t like them so much. Also too the botany love

    ETA Are lembas the same as those little debbie oatmeal cakes with cream filling we get in the grocery? When I was twelve I thought they were.

  7. 7.

    sab

    @Mo MacArbie: I did not like the Peter Jackson movies at all. Walked out in the middle of Council of Elrond early in the first movie. But I am glad they were good for the brand.

  8. 8.

    xjmuellerlurks

    Jeez, I wish I still had my copy of Bored with the Ring.  Haven’t seen it since the mid seventies.  A classic.  Frito, Spam, Moxie, Pepsi,  Dildo, Goodgulf, and Arrowshirt – I wonder if anyone nowadays would get some of these.

  9. 9.

    Gin & Tonic

    @sab: I was also obsessed for a time when I was around that age (although not for 13 years.) However, I actually remember pretty little about the plot details. Sometimes I wonder idly if the books would hold up to another reading, at my advanced age. Emphasis in “idly” as I have done nothing to find out.

  15. 15.

    Kay

    I listen to local Right wing Christian radio in my car when I drive for work. Had it on yesterday for a longer ride between counties. Boy they are ON the anti-wokeness theme. Woke, woke, wokedy-woke. There are 4 hotbeds of wokeness- “service” businesses, entertainment, academia and social media/tech companies. If you were wondering. No boycotts, the Left boycotts so that’s not for them- instead BUY-cotts. They buy things…other than what these woke peddlers sell, which is really exactly the same as a boycott so I’m not crystal clear on the plan yet.

    They always exactly track Republican campaign themes so we can expect this to be Issue One for the Right.

  16. 16.

    Rick Taylor

    @sab: “I did not like the Peter Jackson movies at all. Walked out in the middle of Council of Elrond early in the first movie.”

    So did I! Right at the point Gimli tried to smash the ring. I was fed up with it.

  17. 17.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: I listen to local Right wing Christian radio in my car

    You know, you can get help for this self abusive behavior. ;-)

  18. 18.

    sab

    @Kay: What happened to “cancel culture? ” They sure don’t like it when they get cancelled.

    Canton coaches fired for making the jewish kid eat pepperoni. Turns out head coach was head coach at St. Vincent in Akron. He quit when they wouldn’t give him a big enough raise. Post LeBron. Boy they dodged a bullet. My husband’s alma mater. His kids went to public school.

  20. 20.

    Benw

    On my way to a race and it’s already almost 70 degrees and we’re going to die

  21. 21.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @xjmuellerlurks: ​Jeez, I wish I still had my copy of Bored with the Ring. Haven’t seen it since the mid seventies. A classic. Frito, Spam, Moxie, Pepsi, Dildo, Goodgulf, and Arrowshirt – I wonder if anyone nowadays would get some of these.

    BORED OF THE RINGS, dammit. And I feel the same about my copy, which may yet be lurking in the stacks of decaying paperbacks in my basement.

    Paraphrase:

    Up from the pond behind them rose a corduroy monster, 40 feet tall, with broad lapels. Maim, mangle, mutilate – see “harm”, it roared

    O no, someone shouted, it’s the Thesaurus!!

  23. 23.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Kay:

    They’ll cherry-pick the most stupid comments of the hyper-woke (and most rational people find them incredibly irritating) in order to mischaracterize everyone who values measures of inclusion.

    That strategy stands a fair chance of success.

  25. 25.

    Kay

    @sab:

    Cancel culture has seamlessly merged with anti-wokeness, but you knew it would. That was inevitable. It barely made sense at the outset and now it’s completely incoherent.

    I THINK they can cancel IF cancelling cancels wokeness, but don’t quote me on it- they’re still formulating The Rules. If, then.

    I see some problems ahead for the theory. Some contradictions. NOT hanging together already.

  26. 26.

    Booger

    So I have to assume those of you who reject LOTR/Hobbit are by default ‘Atlas Shrugged’ acolytes? ‘Fess up, now…

  29. 29.

    Ken

    @sab: Are lembas the same as those little debbie oatmeal cakes with cream filling we get in the grocery?

    No, lembas is Twinkies. Remember, it lasts forever.

    I also like Pratchett’s twist with the dwarf bread. If you’ve got some, you’ll never be hungry, because at the thought “I guess I’ll have to eat the dwarf bread” you’ll suddenly realize how appetizing wood and dirt sound.

  32. 32.

    mdblanche

    @Kay: If you were wondering. No boycotts, the Left boycotts so that’s not for them- instead BUY-cotts. They buy things…other than what these woke peddlers sell, which is really exactly the same as a boycott so I’m not crystal clear on the plan yet.

    Presumably they buy whatever the sponsors are selling.

  33. 33.

    sab

    @Ken: I left a box of twinkies in the car on a hot summer day. I can assure you they do not last forever. The filling evaporated.

  34. 34.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Booger:

    Is it OK to hate both? I tried to start LOTR, but found the prose to tedious to bother, and really don’t do fantasy realm plotlines. With Atlas Shrugged, I found myself enthralled with the unbelievable, unrealistic characters, the complete absence of normal human psychology on a meta scale, and the incredibly lousy writing. For me, Rand is an enjoyable hate read.

    Of course, Rand has some excuse given her history and the fact that English was her second language. Allen Drury (also a hate read) didn’t have a similar set of excuses.

  35. 35.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Yeah, I think a lot of the right now uses language as an incantation rather than communication of ideas.

  36. 36.

    Kay

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Anti-wokeness had some logical problems. Am I surprised it ended up as anti-protest laws in Florida or cutting off the mike at a Memorial Day event or firing second grade teachers for BLM flags? No, I am not. The “intellectuals” who promoted it did no fucking thinking at all when they put forth their half ass, fuzzy, poorly reasoned theory.

    How did you think this would go? Well? That it’s been weaponized by the Right was as predictable and inevitable as rain. It would have moderated all by itself because these things always do– instead the hall monitors had to rush in and start policing.

  39. 39.

    sab

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: So sad. Tom Bombadil reminds me of my best friend in elementary school who sang just like him, and died later of muscular dystrophy  after getting a PhD in mathematics. When I was twelve we didn’t think he would live through high school.

  40. 40.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Kay: It doesn’t seem coherency is required. It appears the only requirement is fealty to TFG.  Other than that ” do as thou wilt.

    Eta: I watch Hal Sparks watch the right nut jobs ( Don Jr, Glen Beck etc) and they’re currently all over Fauci being a fraud and a liar because of OMG his EMAILS!!

  41. 41.

    Kay

    @mdblanche:

    If you stop buying things at all it’s not a boycott. A boycott IS buying some things instead of other things. Not buying anything at all, from anyone, is something I guess, but it’s not a boycott.

    Boycott, buycott, same thing.

  42. 42.

    sab

    @zhena gogolia: New cat still lurking in basement, but he is eating and using the litter box so we know he is alive. The pitbull has settled right in. Even the cats like her.

  43. 43.

    MomSense

    My older kids loved the books when they were pre-teens and teens and my youngest joined in the fun even though he hadn’t read the books.  I made them all black sweaters with the flag of Gondor  on the front.  Got some classic photos of the three of them.  The older boys still wear those sweaters sometimes.  Youngest outgrew his.  He is considering whether he wants me to make him a grown up sized one but hasn’t decided yet.  I enjoyed the books and the movies, but I don’t need to read or see them again.
    Wearing those sweaters is apparently a really good way to find the nerds in any gathering.

  44. 44.

    RandomMonster

    @sab: In retrospect Tolkien seems to have been glaringly racist.

    This dawned on me as well much later in life. The elves as blond herrenvolk, the masses of orcish subhumans trying to overwhelm western civilization.
    I didn’t like the Peter Jackson films either —he leaned too hard on equating physical disfigurement with evil in the way he depicted orcs.

  47. 47.

    Falling Diphthong

    I remember reading a piece in which it was painstakingly explained that Google has an algorithm. If your recipe for Banana Bread is just

    Banana Bread:

    3 old bananas…

    Then you will plunge to the bottom of the search results. If the recipe bloggers listened to the people complaining about all the extra text, their blog would immediately be unvisited despite its pure recipe-only vibe. Plus these people are blogging for ad money, so you need a certain length to any post as a viable business model.

    The comments were of course all “sorry toots, couldn’t be bothered to read this” sprinkled with “Well I go to (paid subscription service) for my recipes” without connecting that the “paid subscription” aspect took away both the ad and the search engine components.

    If we want free recipes, which we find by typing “remoulade recipe” into a search engine, the top pages of hits will all be blogs that offer more than the bare recipe. But people are sure the bloggers are hiding remoulade recipes from them behind sense memories because spite.

  49. 49.

    Falling Diphthong

    @Spanky: She’s been down in “Is there someone close to you who could refer you to mental health services?” territory for a while. Like her warnings about the time travel device encoded in the vaccine, which she overheard Apple engineers talking about several years ago. (Pretty sure someone was talking about Time Machine, the backup system.)

  51. 51.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @MagdaInBlack: Concur. LOTR, The Hobbit, GoT – I couldn’t make it very far in any of these. **

    I am a science fiction aficionado and fantasy for the most part eludes me. The few fantasies that have seized and held my attention (Roger Zelazny’s Amber series, Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes and Sean McMullen’s Greatwinter trilogies) have in the end turned out to be much more (and in some instances much harder) science fiction than fantasy.

    ** Years back I copped a free pristine trade-paperback of the first GoT book at The Book Thing – and turned it back in to them when, at about page 330, I realized I didn’t give (as Frank Perdue might’ve put it) a frying flock about any of those characters – I was rooting for someone to queue up a killer asteroid for a planetkilling hit…

  53. 53.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    The funniest part to me is the dawning realization that huge corporations MIGHT be in this for the money. You mean….Amazon doesn’t actually give a shit about diversity? Who knew?!

    That’s what Glenn Greenwald says on Fox- that CORPORATE ACTORS are tricking us into thinking they’re liberal when IN FACT they are profit making entities. I almost fell off my chair at the brilliance of the insight.

  54. 54.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Booger: ‘Atlas Shrugged’ acolytes? Never read it. Somebody gave me a copy of ‘The Fountainhead’ which was so bad I didn’t bother finishing it.

  55. 55.

    EriktheRed

    I’ve never read Bored of the Rings. What’s the reference to it I’m missing?

  56. 56.

    sab

    @OzarkHillbilly: 16 yos are indeed supposed to finish all their books.

    ETA I think the first book I didn’t finish was something by Gunter Grass in my twenties. Left it on a bus seat. Hoped the next reader would like it better. Couldn’t have liked it less than I did.

  58. 58.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @sab: Turning the radio off is always an option. I haven’t had a working radio in my truck for over 10 years.

  59. 59.

    MomSense

    @Falling Diphthong:

    It’s hard to tell from a distance how much of what Wolf and Northrup promote is illness and how much is cynical marketing to the people who buy their crap. People spend a fortune on Northrup’s supplements and herbs.

  61. 61.

    RandomMonster

    @sab: a fantasy series out there written from the orcs point of view

    Now that will be worth looking up!

    I was very into Tolkein as a kid, and it was all for Dungeons & Dragons and wargaming.

  62. 62.

    Geminid

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Paul Ryan used to cite Ayn Rand as an intellectual influence. Then a Democratic challenger ran an ad using this Ryan quote in conjunction with some tape of atheist Rand telling an audience that there is no God. After that, when asked about his intellectual influences, Ryan was quick to say, “St. Augustine.”

  63. 63.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    There is a Canadian tv series called Continuum in which the future governance is a corporation. A detective goes back in time to try to stop the rebel group that wants to prevent the corporation from taking control of the world.  It’s interesting to see how the writers imagined a corporate future would come to pass.

  66. 66.

    Spanky

    @sab: The first book I remember not finishing was The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham. I was supposed to read it the summer before my AP English course. I got about 20 pages in and gave up. No fuckin’ way.

    Turns out the AP English teacher didn’t care whether I finished that one, either.

  67. 67.

    zhena gogolia

    @sab:

    Oh, that’s good. I hope basement kitty surfaces soon.

    A friend of mine in Chicago adopted a beautiful long-haired Siamese mix who apparently was abused, and she can only catch glimpses of her, now weeks later. The cat has gained two pounds and is very happy to sit in her bed and look out the window, but she won’t let my friend come near her.

  68. 68.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I think Republicans only tamped down the insurrection because corporate actors were getting nervous. I was relieved when they started indicating “concern”. I was pissed it took them so long, but I guess the massive tax cuts and gutting regulations bought a lot of time.

  70. 70.

    chopper

    @Falling Diphthong:

    makes sense. now, what’s the reason why you have to scroll through thirty goddamn pictures of the remoulade before getting to the recipe? oh hey, here’s one with a person’s hands lovingly cradling the bowl. here’s another one with a different set of hands, but you can see some of the cook’s living room and oh my god, i love your coffee table is that marble?!

  72. 72.

    Baud

    @MomSense:

    It’s interesting to see how the writers imagined a corporate future would come to pass.

    “In retrospect, the iGovernment app turned out to be a bad idea.”

  75. 75.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @MagdaInBlack:

    It doesn’t seem coherency is required. It appears the only requirement is fealty to TFG.

    In fact, lack of coherency is required. The ability to advocate for sheer self-contradictory lunacy is the sine qua non of right-wing rhetoric.

    It is the shibboleth of the right. The identifying trait that allows them to identify who to hate or not, to discriminate against or not.

  76. 76.

    Kay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I have a Lefty political “friend” (we only see each other at political events) who has gone down this rabbit hole. I blocked her emails about 2 weeks ago- that bad. Honestly though? I’m not surprised. She always had it in her. We once had a huge fight over her wanting to take over an Issue 2 event (Ohio law) with a 99% rally. I hate when people muddle things up and take over events other people organize and turn it into “we are MAD about SOME THINGS”. I feel like they don’t get told “no” enough so I was enjoying doing it :)

  77. 77.

    Anne Laurie

    @Gin & Tonic: Sometimes I wonder idly if the books would hold up to another reading, at my advanced age.

    Spousal Unit would advise against it.  We were both OG Tolkienerds in college — up until the pandemic, there was a group from those days who got together every Thanksgiving, for a feast which always included (like it or not) singing of We boggies are a hairy folk…   When he decided it was time to re-read the trilogy, he — opted out early.
    Confession:  I have an almost-first-printing of the Silmarillion, purchased when it first came out, which has been read, but not by me.  Even when I was enchanted with the original books (and I liked The Hobbit , plus Tom Bombadill, best), I skimmed large chunks of the geology & linguistics worldbuilding.  I might’ve been just entering puberty, but I already knew my limits for other nerds’ personal obsessions.​

  78. 78.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Gin & Tonic: I re-read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings recently, and was surprised by how much DID hold up.

    Are they racist? Yes. There are a lot of really cringeworthy bits in LOTR about the evil swarthy Easterlings, descriptions of orcs that make them sound like non-white people, etc. And more fundamentally it’s all based on a conservative intellectual framework in which blood will tell, noble races weaken with dilution and enter a kind of senescence over time, etc.

    But it’s also interesting to see how many moments there are in which Tolkien’s instincts seem to be warring with all this. He’s always careful to distinguish between bad humans, who are at all times redeemable while they live, and other imaginary creatures which are sometimes not, and I think this came out of his theology. There’s one passage in which one of the hobbits (Sam? I forget) sees a dead man of one of the enemy armies and muses about what lies brought him there, how scared and uncomfortable he probably was, whether he missed his family back home.

    It’s all a lot harder to take in The Silmarillion, which is purposely written in this antique mythic mode that looks at almost everything from a 10,000-foot view and loses some of the humanity. But that’s kind of like reading Tolkien’s unfinished background notes.

  79. 79.

    Anne Laurie

    @sab: Are lembas the same as those little debbie oatmeal cakes with cream filling we get in the grocery?

    I figured they were papadum.  Magically-enhanced papadum, to be sure, but you’d want the lentil protein content.

  80. 80.

    mrmoshpotato

    so maybe the whole saga is just one of those recipe blogs where they have to tell you a whole epic story before getting to the food.

    Haha, medium rare, sir.  Medium rare.

  82. 82.

    lahke

    @EriktheRed:

    A pretty good (juvenile) send up of Lord of the Rings by I think the Harvard Lampoon staff.

    It’s over30 years since I read it but I can still pretty much quote the confrontation of Goodgulf with the Ballhog, “and the dread runes spelled out ‘Villanova.'”

  83. 83.

    MomSense

    @Lacuna Synecdoche:

    The only thing they believe in consistently is cutting tax cuts and they keep absolute fealty to this belief They don’t even care what the rents are.

  84. 84.

    Jeffro

    @Kay:No boycotts, the Left boycotts so that’s not for them- instead BUY-cotts. They buy things…other than what these woke peddlers sell, which is really exactly the same as a boycott so I’m not crystal clear on the plan yet.

    Um…what?

    “We’re not ‘cancel culture’, we just um buy things other than from ‘woke’ businesses and corporations in the hopes that er um those corporations will be canc…will not be in business”

    That’s a lot of mental energy expended on their parts!  LOL

  86. 86.

    Anne Laurie

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Of course, Rand has some excuse given her history and the fact that English was her second language.

    I love Kurt Vonnegut’s essays, even though I find most of his novels unreadable.  One of favorite Vonnegut lines was (paraphrased) ‘I realized, like Conrad, that English was my third or fourth language.  Unfortunately, unlike Conrad, I had no *first* language… ‘

  87. 87.

    Falling Diphthong

    @MomSense: I really liked Continuum. It started as “the nice cop lady side must be the good guys” but then you realized “hey, this is a fascist state and the rebels have a point” but also “if you’re just a little corporate cog, wanting stuff around you to just not blow up is valid” and “huh, some of these rebels are power mad monsters too; they just think the wrong people are stomping on the masses.”

    Like, if you wanted to align yourself with those pure in means and motive, and with the skills to bring about good outcomes for all… that wasn’t an actual side.

  89. 89.

    artem1s

    @Kay:

    Cancel culture has seamlessly merged with anti-wokeness

    which sprung seamlessly out of whinging about political correctness. they’ve been trying to justify their cultural addiction to racism, homophobia, misogyny, etc… for a long time.  when one justification gets old and worn they find some other way to prove to themselves they are really the good guys.  just another chapter in their long history of denial.

  91. 91.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I didn’t learn until today, from that thread, that when Naomi Wolf made that tweet, Belfast was one of the few places on Earth that DID have 5G!

  92. 92.

    Jeffro

    @Gin & Tonic:Sometimes I wonder idly if the [Tolkien] books would hold up to another reading, at my advanced age.

    I was thinking about doing this with the Thomas Covenant Chronicles (which I really dug in middle/high school) but my pile of never-read books is way too big to even consider re-reads right now.  Or ever, probably.

  93. 93.

    mrmoshpotato

    @sab:

    ETA Are lembas the same as those little debbie oatmeal cakes with cream filling we get in the grocery? When I was twelve I thought they were. 

    Mmmmm Nutty Bars. :)

  95. 95.

    Tenar Arha

    @Gin & Tonic:  I’ve read Tolkien in every decade except my first, and it’s held up for me because it’s so written as a saga you notice different things. But definitely there’s books that I wish I hadn’t re-read because my adult self basically ruined my childhood/teenage years.

    ETA heck, I always kinda wished I’d read Narnia before The Hobbit because even my 6th grade self could tell Tolkien made more of an effort in plot & backstory.

  99. 99.

    Anne Laurie

    @EriktheRed: I’ve never read Bored of the Rings. What’s the reference to it I’m missing?

    It was written by ‘the Harvard Lampoon Staff’ (mostly, probably, Henry Beard & Doug Kennedy) back when every ‘hippie’ was devouring first-American-publication paperbacks of LotR.  One of the few things every reader remembers about it is the parody of Bilbo’s Birthday feast, which includes a much-too-long song beginning We hobbits are a hairy folk, doo dah, doo dah / We like to eat until we choke...

    It’s very short, because the writers got bored even faster than most of its readers, and was *meant* to be Politically Incorrect, back when that term was fresh & still had vague meaning.  Some of the references are still entertaining, but if it were as funny as it seemed in the early 1970s, it’d still be in print.

  101. 101.

    trnc

    @Kay: ​
     

    I THINK they can cancel IF cancelling cancels wokeness, but don’t quote me on it- they’re still formulating The Rules. If, then.

    “Formulating the rules” is a permanent state. See Calvinball.

    Anyway, I’ve learned not to be too surprised anymore at what kind of rightwing BS gains traction, but “cancel culture” and “woke” do seem a lot thinner than, say, “trickle down.”

  103. 103.

    Matt McIrvin

    …also, while The Hobbit takes place in an almost exclusively male universe, The Lord of the Rings has some bits that are almost feminist. I read somewhere recently that the movie’s portrayal of Eowyn is actually watered down from the original, and reading the books now, it’s true. She flat out gives Aragorn an earful about how he’s making up bullshit excuses for leaving her out of combat action because she’s a woman; Aragorn has no good answer for this and the text ultimately proves that she’s correct.

  104. 104.

    Anne Laurie

    @Percysowner: I do believe I linked to that thread back when it first came out!  (Also shared it with the Spousal Unit, expert DungeonMaster, who laughed so hard he almost chocked. And then pointed out that DMing was world-building, but with more input from a less-intellectually-refined batch of players than Tolkien’s fellow Inklings.)

  105. 105.

    Geminid

     

     

    @artem1s: Because the term apparently comes out of African American slang, Conservatives think “Woke” is an especially good racist dog whistle. One Republican candidate for Virginia governor ran a frequent radio ad this Spring where he said, “Woke liberal mobs terrorizing our neighborhoods? Not on my watch!”

    For this jerk, “Woke” was the new “Black.”

  107. 107.

    mrmoshpotato

    @MagdaInBlack:

    Eta: I watch Hal Sparks watch the right nut jobs ( Don Jr, Glen Beck etc) and they’re currently all over Fauci being a fraud and a liar because of OMG his EMAILS!! 

    It really is the only way, but I could only take a few minutes of the bullshit Hal was mocking yesterday.  I don’t know how he does it day in day out.

  108. 108.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: The NH Libertarian Party has been tweeting about how the Republicans complain about “wokeness” but they won’t actually DO anything about it… but the Libertarians have the solution: Repeal the Civil Rights Act!

    Yeah, they’re not hiding much there.

  109. 109.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    Okay!

    So I guess now I need to start working on a mashup of “Bored of the Rings” and “Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas”.

    As your attorney, I advise you to eat more of the magic mushrooms Bombadil said.

    We can’t stop here! This is BAT country! screamed Frito

     

    Something, something, cursed superbowl ring.

  110. 110.

    Ken

    @Anne Laurie: It’s very short, because the writers got bored even faster than most of its readers,

    Also, when Frito and Spam escape Schlob and enter the land of Fordor, they realize how much further they have to walk to get to the Zazu PIts (whence the Ring must be cast to destroy it). Espying a nearby tar pit they decide it will do and, weighting the Ring down with Goddam, sink it there. Cuts off pretty much the entire third book of the original.

    (It’s on my shelf, I didn’t do that from memory.)

  112. 112.

    Emma from Miami

    @Kay: Good Goddess, woman! Please, please, ask for help when you need it. We’re here to save your sanity!

    OK, on a more serious note. Have I mentioned how much I admire you? If you ever decide to launch your own campaign, or legal defense group, I’m a donor.

  113. 113.

    germy

    The charter of Hudson’s American Legion post was suspended as its leader resigned Friday after a veteran’s mic got cut while he spoke about Black Americans’ role in the history of Memorial Day.

    The actions come four days after the leader of the Hudson Legion and head of the Legion’s auxiliary were involved with cutting retired Army Lt. Col. Bernard Kemter’s microphone during a Memorial Day ceremony in Hudson.

    beaconjournal.com/story/news/2021/06/04/hudson-american-legion-posts-charter-suspended-leader-resign…

  114. 114.

    Ken

    @Matt McIrvin: Oh dear, I hope we’re not going to get into that interminable argument about whether Eowyn or Merry was the “no man” who could kill the Witch King…

  118. 118.

    Emma from Miami

    @Booger: I admire it as a literary work. But it was glaringly obvious to me  early on that there’s nobody in those books I can identify with except hobbits. The human characters — let’s say I noticed early that the only people with dark hair worth knowing were Arwen (not human)  and Aragorn (human but speshul) and the only culture really worth admiring was the one based on Beowulf.   Those like me were Southrons and the bad guys.

  121. 121.

    Ken

    @Matt McIrvin: It’s obvious they both were.

    Ah, you’ve taken the sensible compromise position, so will now be viciously attacked by both factions.

    Or maybe not; this nearly-top-10000 blog seems a more mature group than those who posted to rec.arts.books.tolkien or (shudder) alt.fan.tolkien back in the USENET days. But then, a classroom of second-graders is a more mature group than that crowd.

  123. 123.

    Percysowner

    @germy: I used to live in that neck of the woods. I went to a New Agey church that was in Hudson. They rented to a day care during the week and on Fridays was used for a small Jewish Congregation. The founder of the church also did weddings and tended to get couples whose families had differing  religions. One time he married the daughter of the very Catholic mob boss to the son of the very Jewish mob boss. He said the wedding party was incredible.

    Anyway, when he first bought the church he asked where the local Democrats met and was told, “in the phone booth of the local drugstore”. Hudson is very, very white and very, very conservative. That’s what happens when you are the suburb that the well off live.

  124. 124.

    There go two miscreants

    Off on a tangent: The video in the sidebar does not play when I first come to a post, but starts if I click anywhere on  the page. Otherwise the site behaves exactly as before. FF 89.0 on Win10 Home 64bit.

  126. 126.

    Kay

    @Emma from Miami:

    I listen to a lot of Right wing stuff because I live in a Right wing area and I have so many Right wing clients. Most of my clients are not political (like most people) but those who are are probably 90/10 conservative. Every single judge I’m in front of (regularly) is a Republican. The best approach IMO is to kind of embrace being a political minority and not get defensive.  It took me a long time to get there though. I’m more confident in my views so less apt to get mad. It used to be more fun, honestly. They would tease me with some ridiculous caricature of a liberal and sometimes it was funny. Now they’re mean and grim and dead serious. Trump made them worse, you know, as he does to everyone and everything he touches.

  128. 128.

    Barbara

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I read the first book of LOTR and couldn’t for the life of me understand why anyone cared about this weird little world enough to tackle prose that reads like a dense stand of brambles feels when you have to go through it. My friends couldn’t believe that I never cared what actually happened to the main characters.  Hello, they’re ELVES, not even real people. Thus started my lifelong aversion to fantasy.  My kids just shake their heads at my preference for gritty reality.

  129. 129.

    Geminid

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Wolf and spouse are going full horseshoe. Last month, she tweeted out video of her blasting away with an assault type rifle. Then her husband tweeted that lefties are taking up and training with firearms- in order to resist Chinese encirclement! He finished his tweet by referencing Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin. Did not say why, just put Blinken’s name up.

  130. 130.

    Barbara

    @Baud: That’s a good way to put it, but it never ceases to amaze me how really beholden the right is to racism. Anti-woke means having the right to hold on to your bias against other people, and being “canceled” means having others push back when you insist on being loud and proud about your bias.

  132. 132.

    A Streeter

    @Gin & Tonic: “…I wonder idly if the books would hold up to another reading, at my advanced age.”

    I remember hoping that the prequel “Silmarillion” would be published before I outgrew Tolkien’s brand of fantasy. Unfortunately it did not, and since my early 20s I’ve had no interest in reading “Silmarillion” or re-reading LOTR.

  133. 133.

    JML

    @Jeffro: Covenant…not sure if it would hold up well (admittedly, I haven’t read the Last Chronicles). there’s definitely some problematic stuff in there? But it’s been a long time since I’ve read those myself; hard for me to find much enthusiasm to go back and re-read a story where the protagonist is generally unlikable.

  134. 134.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    I think it’s the reverse: campaigns following right-wing media. Glenn Beck’s hammering away at critical race theory, imitating a drunken Joe Biden (odd coming from an admitted alcoholic), and calling Kamala (intentionally mispronouncing her name) every name in the book).

  137. 137.

    Pappenheimer

    @Ken:

    Re: Dwarf bread

    It’s also good for clubbing camels that try to board your driftwood on the way to 4X

  139. 139.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Libtards cancel specific hateful actions (MyPillow, pussy-grabbing, etc.), while RWNJs cancel history (slavery, Old Europe), beliefs (nonsecular Christmas), and principles (science). Remember their outrage when someone pointed out slaves had built the White House?

    They’re just fucking idiots.

  140. 140.

    artem1s

    @Geminid:

    Conservatives think “Woke” is an especially good racist dog whistle

    of course they do.  never miss a chance to muddy their own jargon to the point where even the insiders have to be something like a level 400 mason in order to decipher the secret tweets to the masses.  they are so tedious.

  143. 143.

    narya

    @Tenar Arha: I’ve actually read it nearly every YEAR for the past . . . 40? 45? And at one point, when the movies were coming out, I was “translating” to a 6-year-old (ex-stepson) who was fascinated by my love/fascination for it. (For example, I explained that one of the things I very much hated about the movies was Jackson’s love of war; JRRT, on the other hand, has nearly every “good” character say at some point that war is terrible and should only be engaged in at the greatest necessity, that it’s not something to be enjoyed.) I told him that Jackson’s version was just that–a version of the story, and that others would tell the tale differently; it ended up being a useful lesson for him that there are multiple viewpoints, and everyone brings different things to a story. It’s interesting re-reading–many of the problems others identified above do become more glaring for sure–but it still holds a special place in my heart, and I can’t help but admire someone who created a world as a backstory for languages he was inventing.

  144. 144.

    Pappenheimer

    @Amir Khalid:

     

    Re: Elvish hardtack.

    I think you are right. When Gimli first opens a packet of Lembas he growls “Cram!” which is apparently the name for Dwarven hardtack, so it looks like rockbread. Then he tastes some and falls in love. It’s the Elvish magic that keeps it so light and flaky! And the Elves of Lorien live in trees…did anyone from the Tolkien estate ever contact Keebler?

  148. 148.

    germy

    So, most people are unaware that One Hundred and One Dalmatians, the novel, has a bonkers sequel called The Starlight Barking.

    It has never been filmed. It can never be filmed. It is unfilmable.

    Come with me on this journey. (1/8) pic.twitter.com/NzAuvCwAS2

    — Owl! at the Library ??‍♀️ (@SketchesbyBoze) June 2, 2021

  149. 149.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Amir Khalid: Same. It’s hardtack, only unusually good-tasting and nutritious hardtack.

    Terry Pratchett’s dwarf bread was the parodic inversion: a foodstuff that keeps you going because when you contemplate it you decide to keep marching instead of eating it.

  150. 150.

    debbie

    @MagdaInBlack:

    What came first to my mind: Those little wasps paralyzing caterpillars, laying their eggs inside them, and their larva eating the caterpillar from the inside out.

    Maybe it’s the heat…  ??‍♀️

  152. 152.

    Barbara

    @germy: Thank you for this link.  I like Raymond Chandler, though I think some of the books incorporate unpardonable racism.  Those are the ones I won’t re-read.  I read an interview with Amor Towles, who now oversees the Library of America editions and he was enthusiastic about Chandler first and foremost as an observer of Los Angeles between the late 30s and early 50s.  The excerpted letters found if you follow the link are just wonderful, especially the one about Shakespeare.

  153. 153.

    germy

    @Barbara:

    The sad thing about reading some older authors is the racism that slips in here and there.

    It shows how perfectly acceptable it was.

  154. 154.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Matt McIrvin: Yesterday while waiting for a car to be serviced I began reading William Bryant Logan’s Oak: the Frame of Civilization. The first 60 or so pages are about the myriad ancient peoples who ate food derived from acorns, including what is basically a hardtack which lasted more or less indefinitely and was very filling, if not necessarily completely nutritious. He sampled some foods made from acorns (still consumed among, e.g. Koreans) and found that while having no flavor, they were excellent at reducing/postponing feelings of hunger.

    So far a fascinating book, tying the spread of human civilization to the spread and range of the oak tree.

  155. 155.

    MagdaInBlack

    @debbie: ” The Mind Parasites”  by Colin Wilson. Please do google, cause my link skills are severely stunted. ?

  157. 157.

    frosty

    @Anne Laurie: Ms. F and I have been laughing until we cry from the quotes here from “Bored of the Rings”. Okay, maybe the book doesn’t hold up, but the names! They’re all perfect.

    i just made a note to myself to try and find the box with my copy.

  158. 158.

    Doug R

    @Rick Taylor: I knew that Peter Jackson had it mostly right when I left Fellowship with the same WTF as I had when I had read the book decades ago.

    But I stuck it out and Two Towers was better and Return of the King earned its Oscar, mostly for itself, but partly for the whole series.

  159. 159.

    Jay C

    For a dated, hastily-concocted and hackish parody, the stuff in Bored of the Rings still has the ability to pop up unwanted at the slightest hint: e.g., the mention of food themes in LOTR reminds me of the line (which I am reciting from memory) –

    “Like most creatures who live in enchanted forests with no visible means of support, the Elves ate rather frugally; and Frito was somewhat disappointed to find on his plate a small mound of ground nuts, bark and dirt.”

  162. 162.

    Robert Sneddon

    @sab: ​
     

    There is a fantasy series out there written from the orcs point of view. I liked it a lot.

    There’s “Grunts!” by Mary Gentle, not a series though. The Orcs are genre-savvy, they’re totally aware the Forces of Light and Benevolence are out to exterminate them, then one of them steals a Dragon’s horde of magical weapons bearing runes like “AK-47” and “Main Battle Tank” and things change. This does not make the Orcs likeable though…

    “Pass me another Elf, Sergeant, this one’s split.”

  163. 163.

    Another Scott

    @Gin & Tonic: One of the (many) things that stuck with me from our visit to Yosemite was a ranger talking about the natives making some sort of bread-like food from nominally inedible black oak acorns.  They ground it and boiled it to remove whatever made it “inedible” then cooked it.  People are clever, and seeing a mountain of nut-like things on the ground every fall when everything else was going dormant must have been quite an incentive to figure out how to eat it without getting sick.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  164. 164.

    Doug R

    @Snarki, child of Loki:

     

    So I guess now I need to start working on a mashup of “Bored of the Rings” and “Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas”.

    If only Army of the Dead was that entertaining.

  166. 166.

    Barney

    @xjmuellerlurks: I didn’t understand “Moxie” until about a year ago. Or “Serutan” until about 5 years ago. Is “Goodgulf” a specific reference to something? (ah, just tried it with a space – “Good Gulf gasoline”. Another 50+ year old American pop culture reference)

    My favourite is “Deus ex Machina Airlines”, run by the New York cabbie-style eagle.

  168. 168.

    James E Powell

    Lord of the Rings. Read the trilogy in 6th grade because my four years older sister was reading it and back then I read whatever she was reading. Didn’t really think about it in a meta way. It too early in my development. I just read it without thinking about it. Read it again years later. Oy! Major ideas in there. Some of them odious and the white= good, black=bad was everywhere. Still, not worthless. The adventure story sections were pretty good. Not so much the tedious histories. All taste is taste.

    Atlas Shrugged. Like many people, I read this book in college because I was nagged into by a friend who believed he had found that one book that explains everything. It was real work to finish it. Before I was halfway through it I wanted everyone in the book to die.

    Not long after that we watched Ayn Rand on Phil Donahue. She came across as full of herself, going out of her way to be contrarian and controversial as way to get more notice. I am still amazed that intelligent people are enamored of her, her Big Thoughts, and her books.

  169. 169.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kay: I think Republicans only tamped down the insurrection because corporate actors were getting nervous.

    Concur. Most of us really don’t understand that there are two very different movements in play here:

    • Tribalist herrenvolk-minorities attempting to impose (and lock in) dominance of the political/social/economic environment on the local and national level everywhere in the world, and
    • A Global Oligarchy Project aiming to impose (and lock in) extranational rights and privileges of bazillionaires and megacorporations to do whatever they want, where- and whenever they want, without consequences

    This last includes paying no local or national taxes or fees, incurring no local or national responsibilities for their actions, and tapping national treasuries like ATMs at will for the cash squeezed in taxes, fees and fines from the “little people.”

    The main point is that the local/national GQP and the worldwide GOP operate hand-in-glove because their goals reinforce.

    • The GQP is happy to maintain the facade of “elected democracy” where it can retain control via gerrymandering and restriction of the franchise (and where it can’t, via coup, with or without insurrection). In the process, they establish (as Adam has noted) and lock in the in-group with (gently restricted) political, social and economic rights, and the out-group(s) denied them; more specifically, they impose white-Christian-patriarchal hierarchy on the functions of society.
    • The worldwide GOP has no problem with this, providing they can buy (with the spare change found under the seat cushions of their megayachts) or otherwise finagle their way out of any local/national laws they find inconvenient. (E.g., when Daddy Warbucks’ Little Annie comes home from college minus a couple of periods, she’s bundled off to a posh resort in a country that doesn’t consider abortion murder to quietly have a “procedure.”)

    The putative Global Oligarchs had no problem with Cheeto Benito cuddling up with Vlad the Paler, because they consider Vlad one of them, just another bazillionaire, who is doing their work by using the resources of Russia to subvert liberal democracies across the globe. (One commanding lethal force that will eventually be used against them – a lesson that the German industrialists learned too late & were only bailed out by the Western Allies.) And it hardly bothered them that Twitler posed as the Champion and Protector of the white patriarchal Christian Herrenvolk & acted as if his merest whim should be The Law Of The Land;  it’s nothing but the Führerprinzip in redwhite&blue, and he’s such a cheap SOB they hardly noticed when he “wet his beak.”

    What bothered the GOs was that by being such a brazen bastard, he woke the decent people up to the danger of lapsing into authoritarianism and provoked a backlash. Civil unrest is not good for the bottom line – the ideal situation was to dismantle democracy in “frog in the cookpot” fashion, and while those out-groups struggled harder and harder to make their way in society, keep them funneling $$$ into the megacorps’ MoneyBins by buying their wares. Now that the liberal-democratic opposition is aware of the threat and fighting it, the worldwide GOP wants to be seen as being on the “correct side” of things – because they don’t care about white, black, yellow, or brown – only the green of your greenbacks and the gold of your gold. And since fortunes are (barring financial disaster) eternal, they will happily back away from violence and coups…until they can try again with perhaps a slicker figurehead, say, Preying diMantis.

    (whew!)

  170. 170.

    Just Chuck

    Bored of the Rings is 70’s juvenile humor and it hasn’t aged well.  But I wouldn’t have minded an illustrated version by, say, R. Crumb.

  171. 171.

    Just Chuck

    @germy: Nice, and they don’t mince words either:

    “Effective immediately, [American Legion Department of Ohio] Department Commander Roger Friend has suspended [the] Hudson Lee-Bishop American Legion Post 464 Charter pending permanent closure,” stated a news release issued by the American Legion Department of Ohio Friday afternoon. “Upon demand, Jim Garrison has also resigned as a Post Officer and we have since demanded that he resign his membership altogether. The American Legion Department of Ohio does not hold space for members, veterans, or families of veterans who believe that censoring (Black) history is acceptable behavior.”

  173. 173.

    Robert Sneddon

    @sab: ​
      There’s a long-running webcomic, Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic which has orcs and other traditionally evil fantasy Bad Guys as, if not heroes, at least heroic and even noble in their own way. The first storyline is complete, the writer has just started a new “ten years after” storyline.

  174. 174.

    Anotherlurker

    @xjmuellerlurks: “Bored of The Rings” is available on Amazon.  Tim Benzedrene and Hashberry turned me on to this info.

    Apologies if other Juicers previously supplied this info.

  176. 176.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Doug R: If it’s WTF you want, The Silmarillion has more of that in a chapter than The Lord of the Rings had in three volumes.

    (The single best chapter is the one that has a heroic talking dog, and protagonist-lovers whose magic jewel heist involves turning into a vampire and a werewolf. All of this is described sort of casually like he was rattling off instructions for small engine maintenance.)

  179. 179.

    SFAW

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Of course, Rand has some excuse given her history and the fact that English was her second language. Allen Drury (also a hate read) didn’t have a similar set of excuses.

    Neither do Christopher Paolini and Dan Brown.*

    * DaVinci Code Dan Brown, not Boys in the Boat Dan Brown, although BitB Brown is not exactly David Halberstam.

  180. 180.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Booger: So I have to assume those of you who reject LOTR/Hobbit are by default ‘Atlas Shrugged’ acolytes? ‘Fess up, now…

    Go on & make an ASS of U but leave ME out of it. Never read a word of Ayn “Social Security Deadbeat” Rand. Never even tempted to read the cover blurb on “Witless Slagged” or any other badly-written trash of hers.

  182. 182.

    narya

    Obligatory quote, given the discussion here: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
    –John Rogers [Kung Fu Monkey — Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009]

  184. 184.

    Brachiator

    @Just Chuck:

    Bored of the Rings is 70’s juvenile humor and it hasn’t aged well.

    Loved Bored of the Rings. Still prefer it to the Lord of the Rings novels.

  185. 185.

    lowtechcyclist

    @JML: ​
     

    @Jeffro: Covenant…not sure if it would hold up well (admittedly, I haven’t read the Last Chronicles).

    I’d say give the Last Chronicles a pass, and I say this as a longtime Donaldson fan. It’s a four-book* set, and if you have any idea what’s really going on after midway through the second book, you’re doing better than I was.

    I don’t know how well the original trilogy holds up, it’s been awhile since I last re-read any of it. But I love the world he created in that trilogy.

    * I give Donaldson credit for pushing back against the notion that everything has to be a gorram trilogy.

  187. 187.

    Ol'Froth

    I took a writing course in college taught by a professor who was a Tolkien freak.  It was….interesting.

  188. 188.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Matt McIrvin: ​
     

    If it’s WTF you want, The Silmarillion has more of that in a chapter than The Lord of the Rings had in three volumes.

    Not to mention, it’s written in a style that reminded me of the history books in the Old Testament – 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, etc. I think I eventually read all of Silmarillion, but I won’t be re-reading it anytime soon.

  189. 189.

    KrakenJack

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    These are the types of comments that I treasure since they lead me to new authors.

    I have a similar problem with fantasy. I made it through Rothfuss’ A Wise Man’s Fear, but only 50% of Brian Sanderson’s The Way of Kings. However, I’m not going to read Rothfuss’ first book in the series and am indifferent to whether he ever completes the third. Perhaps I’m beyond being interested in stories of precocious youth. I did enjoy Guy Gavriel Kay’s Lions of Al Rassan. In the genre, I should stick to The Year’s Best collections. That’s more my speed.

  190. 190.

    Morzer

    @sab: Lembas are wafers. They also determine whether the eater is good or evil by their reaction, so presumably they are communion hosts. Or maybe they are just garlic bread…

  191. 191.

    Morzer

    @RandomMonster: Tolkien was very clear that orcs are elves who have been distorted and abused. This is a point that the fans of “Tolkien was a racist” theory never seem to get. Also worth noting that the Elves are responsible for many of the disasters that befall Middle Earth (thanks, Feanor!).

  192. 192.

    Morzer

    @KrakenJack: Brandon Sanderson isn’t really a very good writer – in much the same way as Robert Jordan wasn’t. It’s very paint by numbers and drag out the narrative stuff. If you want something fun and twisted and cynical, which also goes after a lot of the tropes of fantasy, you might give Joe Abercrombie’s First Law trilogy (and world) a look.

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