Foolishness

Under “Feminist Harpy” in the dictionary, you’ll find this picture:

Why? Because of this insane demand:

Mother demands her son’s school take Sleeping Beauty off the curriculum because the princess doesn’t give consent to be kissed and woken up by prince
Sarah Hall, from Northumberland Park, North Shields, claimed the fairytale promotes an ‘inappropriate sexual’ message to young children.
She argued the story is irresponsible because it teaches children it is acceptable to kiss women while they are asleep.
The mother of two said: ‘I think it’s a specific issue in the Sleeping Beauty story about sexual behaviour and consent.
‘It’s about saying is this still relevant, is it appropriate?’
Ms Hall is worried about what message the tale, which features a Prince waking up a Princess by kissing her, sends to impressionable youngsters.

Neither Prince Charming nor Sleeping Beauty were available for comment — because they’re fucking fictional characters.

Fuck The Cloud

…and by that, I mean this entire notion that we can store our stuff remotely as opposed to locally on our own storage devices, and that we can blithely entrust our writings and thoughts to the whim of others like the monstrous entities known as Google, Twitter or Facebook.

All this came from reading this article, and I’ve tried so hard to ignore the reaction it caused in me; but nearly a week has passed, and I’m still enraged. Let me count the ways.

[E]ven your private documents can be censored online. This morning, a ton of users reported being locked out of completely innocuous Google Docs for “inappropriate content.”
Google’s abuse policy prohibits the posting of serious threats, needlessly graphic or violent content, hate speech, harassment, confidential information, pornography, and anything illegal including child exploitation and copyrighted content.
Today, however, multiple users believe that the content they were locked out of did not contain prohibited material. National Geographic reporter Rachael Bale, who was locked out of a draft of a story about wildlife crime, claims that nothing in her document violated Google’s policies.

Which is why I don’t store a single fucking thing at Google Docs or anywhere else in “The Cloud”, because on my storage device, I and I alone decide what is and isn’t “inappropriate content”, i.e. “serious threats, needlessly graphic or violent content, hate speech, harassment, confidential information, pornography, and anything illegal.”

Bloody hell; under those constraints, where would they put my comment that I’d like to tie Ted Kennedy to a chair and beat him to death with a lead pipe? (Uttered, by the way, while he was still alive and therefore not only “hate speech” — which it most certainly was — but it could even have been construed as a “death threat” — I fucking wish.)

What also gets me is the unctuously-correct statement by the author of this same article, to whit:

Nobody should be writing hate speech or death threats in their Google docs — or anywhere.

Fuck you, you simpering asswipe. I’d like to point out that one man’s “hate speech” is another man’s truth — which is why our First Amendment leaves out all judgments in its protection of that freedom — and my suggestion of this treatment of various politicians and/or technology executives could be construed as a “death threat” whereas it is, so far, just wishful thinking on my part.

Here’s my take on all of this. If I were a corporate executive and one of my subordinates even suggested using Goggle Dox, Twatter or Fuckfacebook [sp?] to store and/or communicate our company documents, I’d fire him on the spot — because I think it is the absolute height of corporate irresponsibility to delegate those capabilities to any outside entity, let alone to these techno-bastards.

All that said: I’m perfectly aware that the service these tools provide is in essence on their private property and that they’re therefore entitled to set their own terms and conditions of its use. But that’s not how they sell it, of course. They pose as public offerings: “Just post or keep your stuff with us: it’s secure, convenient, no-hassle and — best of all — it’s free!

Well, there’s really no such thing as “free”, is there? There are always terms and conditions — and more fool the people who buy into this crap.

Fuck The Cloud, and the cloud-givers.

And by the way, seeing as this post contains “hate speech” and potential “death threats”, I might as well go the Full Monty with this sketch by Agostino Caracci:

Art, or pornography? (And just so we’re all clear on the topic; according to legend, Bacchus [sic] is supposed to have raped Ariane. Doubleplusungood crimethink pornography.)

NEW OLD STUFF!

In an earlier post on music, I griped:

 I’ve become sick of all the old music, “old” being defined as 60s-70s music of my rock star (uh huh) youth. I mean, if I hear “Sweet Home Alabama” and anything by Led Zeppelin one more time, I’m going to slip the safety off the 1911.

So maybe that’s what Classic Rock needs: for new guys to reinterpret their music (as opposed to just reproducing it), much as Dred Zeppelin did to Led Zeppelin (I love the Dred, by the way).

And it’s happened, in (of all places) Finland (!). Have a listen to the Leningrad Cowboys (!!) performing the aforementioned Sweet Home Alabama live with the Red Army Choir (!!!) and be entertained by all the rest of the Cowboys’ interpretations of the old hits as they appear on the page (e.g. the turgid Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door and even the syrupy Those Were The Days).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am a happy man today, and I have The Englishman to thank for bringing these guys to my attention. (I know they came on the scene in the 1990s, but somehow I missed them. More fool me.)

And now, if you’ll excuse me… I’m going to buy the album.

Not Here

Apparently, much of Britishland was smacked by rain storms and snow, with concomitant flooding etc. right before Thanksgiving*:

However, lest anyone be afraid that Yer Humble Narrator was thus afflicted, allow me to show the local conditions yesterday:

…and the view down my “street” yesterday morning at 8am:

Yes, that is blue sky up above the hill on the left. I had to explain the phenomenon to some of the locals, who’d never seen it before and were frightened.

Lest anyone think that the weather in Brigadoon-On-Sea is lovely, however, I should point out that the wind coming in from the sea was so strong (straight into my face, in this pic), I actually staggered a bit while walking back down to the cottage.

I love it here.


*I know they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving Over Here. I was just putting a date on the thing.

Convenience

File this under “Stuff you can do in Britishland that you can’t do in Murka”:

Back when I lived in Chicago, I used to joke that as you traveled south from there, the gun laws became easier and the liquor laws more stupid. (We could buy Scotch at the Treasure Island supermarket 24/7 except for midnight-midday on Sundays. But a gun? Fergeddabahtit. In Texas, you can buy a gun at a gun show without any hassle, but gawd help you if you try to order a whisky in a dry-county restaurant.)

It looks as though the same parallel works in an east-west direction vis-à-vis the UK and the US.

Of course, I think that Amazon Over Here offers liquor over the Internet simply because of the strange and unpredictable hours of business that UK retailers inflict on their customers.