3 Voices I Can’t Stand

…and I’m talking about singing voices, not (say) political screeching like that of Hillary Clinton.

When these guys start singing, I hit the Mute or Skip buttons:

  • Bob Dylan (any song except Lay Lady Lay, which I can get at least halfway through before hitting click)
  • Steve Tyler (Aerosmith; Dream On is the most egregious offender)
  • Van Morrison (Brown-Eyed Girl… OMFG kill me now, but everything he sings is horrible)

And let’s not forget the chicks:

  • Joni Mitchell (I’d rather listen to blackboard fingernails ad infinitum  than any one of her songs)
  • Joan Baez (preachy bullshit, and that vibratissimo… ugh)
  • early Dolly Parton (until she stopped warbling and started singing)

Don’t get me started on the modern chick singers;  you all know about them.

3 Dubious Announcements

Here they are:  worse even than INSIGNIFICA, these are announcements of things that should inspire fear, loathing or projectile vomiting rather than amusement or amazement:

Okay, the Freebird/Dolly thing struck me the same way as the collaboration between Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan and Luciano Pavarotti:  “Why?”

The Kardashian coven:  as far as I recall, it all started with the “leak” of a video of Kim Kardashian fucking her boyfriend.  Once you’ve done that in front of a camera, all the rest is simple.

As for the Crocs announcement… I hear hoofbeats.

3 Modern Affectations

…that make me want to go out into the street and slap random people in the face, just on the off-chance that they support this bullshit.

  • Gender reveal parties:  apart from maybe the grandparents, who the fucking fuck cares about someone else’s unborn baby’s gender?
  • “Hate speech”:  it was fucking iniquitous before it started becoming ingrained into law;  now it’s getting to be really toxic, as a tool for censorship and career destruction.
  • “Net Zero 2030”:  or, how to utterly ruin the global economy with quasi-religious fervor.

Feel free to add your particular contemporary triggers (another fucking burr expression in my shorts)  in Comments.

3 Questions That Shouldn’t Need Answering

Every so often one will come across a question to which the answer is self-evident, but someone’s going to ask it anyway.  Here’s an example:

1. “When you find a rusted-out old kitchen knife, why not just toss it out and buy a shiny new one from Williams-Sonoma?”
— because nothing looks as fine as a well-restored blade, not just in appearance, but in its intrinsic history.  Need proof?  See here, where some guy with mad skillz goes after an old cleaver.

Here’s another one:

2. “Why would someone spend $170,000 on a replica of an old car?”
— because as long as the replica has been manufactured by engineers with all respect for quality as well as heritage, it’s worth it, and not the least because the originals require not just stupid money, but insanely-stupid money available only to Russian oligarchs, software company founders and parvenus like Jeff Bezos (also criminals, some overlap with the aforementioned).


(watch the second video at the link…)

Here’s another question of this ilk (but by no means the final one):

3. “Why is The Repair Shop such a popular TV show?  All they do is restore old junk.”
…it’s not “junk”, it’s heritage, history, treasured artifacts and sentimental objects.  To watch Steve Fletcher fixing an old clock, Will Kirk restoring an old piece of furniture or even those two old pink-haired biddies bringing wrecked toy dolls and teddy bears back to life is to see and feel the joy of a miniature triumph of life over death.  If you are not moved by that, you are a foul, crass and cynical human being.

The overall answer to all the above questions can be summed up in one word:

Craftsmanship.

It’s a rare talent (and becoming rarer still when so many people are seduced by cheap, fragile and nasty knock-offs from China or Eastern Europe), and if we hold on to no other custom, craftsmanship is worth everything. To quote Oscar Wilde’s words from Lady Windermere’s Fan :

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.

I know I’m always teetering dangerously close to the latter, but all I can say is:  guilty as charged.  Especially where beauty and craftsmanship are involved.

3 Honest Questions

Okay, here are three things in the current Zeitgeist  that I need answers to.

  • Am I the only one who gets the creeps every time I see this little fegeleh‘s pic?
  • If the Stupidest Person In Congress (that would be Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas) has admitted that she wouldn’t be where she is without affirmative action, does that not condemn the whole policy right there?
  • Am I the only one who can’t watch a video of Biden mumbling, stumbling, stammering his way through a public appearance and making an absolute fool of himself?  I mean, I actually cringe at the spectacle and have to turn it off.

Feel free to voice your thoughts in Comments.