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Good Timing

Bad News, Travels

Looks like I picked the right time to stay at The Englishman’s cottage in Boscastle (i.e. in December last year):

Fifteen flood warnings have been issued by the Environment Agency, most of which are concentrated in Cornwall and the south west of England.

And lest anyone think I’m being facetious:

The Boscastle flood of 2004 occurred on Monday, 16 August 2004 in the two villages of Boscastle and Crackington Haven in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The villages suffered extensive damage after flash floods caused by an exceptional amount of rain that fell over eight hours that afternoon. The floods were the worst in local memory. A study commissioned by the Environment Agency… concluded that it was among the most extreme ever experienced in Britain. The peak flow was about 140 m³/s, between 5:00pm and 6:00pm BST.

Granted, the British government has built all sorts of anti-flooding drains and such in Boscastle since then, but I’m still nervous. Government works are not always infallible, as a certain city in the Mississippi delta found out a few years back.

Ripples

Men & Women, Two-Minute Hate

As Loyal Readers know, I have little truck with the doings of the Kardashian coven and their assorted sperm providers, and just ignore stories of their immoral and foul doings.

But every so often a headline will catch my attention en passant, just as a door handle will occasionally catch your sleeve as you’re walking through a doorway (with much the similar degree of irritation, I should add), and one such thing happened to me over the weekend. Here’s the headline:

Kylie Jenner, 20, proudly poses in a thong just one month after giving birth to Stormi

…Kylie being the daughter of matriarch Kris Kardashian Jenner and one-time Olympic hero Bruce (now “Caitlyn”) Jenner, and “Stormi”, of course, being the illiterate invented name the twenty-year-old single mother chose to inflict on her illegitimate daughter. (Just think of all the questionable behaviors contained in that single sentence, and you have an idea of why I think the entire Kardashian-Jenner clan members are such a pox on society.)

And that’s what caught my attention. Regardless of all that immoral foolishness, at some point in time, Caitlyn Jenner is going to be introduced to this baby girl as “Grandpa”. The implications of this event on a young girl’s mind are unfathomable — although no doubt the introduction will be screened on the Kardashian attention-whores’ TV show so we’ll all be witness to the occasion.

Another little burr on my attention noted that Bruce / Caitlyn is all butt-hurt that “she” hasn’t been allowed to meet his / her grandchild yet. Quelle surprise.

And yes, folks: that is the sound of loud hoofbeats thundering in your ears at this moment.

Incomprehensible

Culture

When I were a young lad, I took a course in Art Appreciation, and I have to say it opened up my eyes to art, big time. For the first time I was able to appreciate, truly appreciate, the skill of the old masters — the golden triangle, the use of light and color, how different brushes and brushstrokes worked to create mood, its effect on the history of its time, and all that. My life was changed and enriched, and I look back on the class and its teacher with complete fondness because it opened a door for me, and I walked right on in.

I never got Picasso.

Now granted, I was similarly at a loss when looking at the Blue School, the Modernists (like Klee and Pollock) and what have you; but I always thought that Picasso’s art was wrong: it transformed the human form — and especially that of women — into a caricature, and I’m sorry, but caricature isn’t art, or at least not Fine Art.

And yet Picasso is regarded as one of the Masters by almost everyone. Even his lesser paintings fetch astonishing amounts of money, his life and works are commemorated in terms that border on idolatry, and his style is seen as the end-point, the very denouement of Impressionism; but as hard as I try, I just don’t see it. Here’s one of his most famous works, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon:

…and I know what it is: a depiction of a group of prostitutes in a brothel. And Picasso is looking at them… how? As objects of desire, as depraved women, or as tired working girls? Or is it all three?

Here’s my problem with the piece: it could be any one of those, but his grotesque style makes no statement — it’s left completely up to the audience as to which they see in it.

Now maybe that was his intention, but I have a problem with art that has no artist’s viewpoint, but leaves everything open to interpretation. It’s a cop-out to say, “Well, it’s whatever you want it to be.” My response to that airy nonsense is usually, “I want it to be gone.”

And while I can see why the art world would be immeasurably poorer without the Impressionism of Monet, Gauguin, Renoir, Degas and Van Gogh (to name just some), I just can’t say I feel the same about Picasso.

Feel free to add your thoughts in Comments.

Say What?

Terrorism

Lemme see if I got this right: U.S. forces capture two ISIS terrorist assholes — Brits — who have perpetrated all kinds of atrocities in Syria and Iraq:

Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, who were part of the execution cell that included Jihadi John, were detained by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in January.

….but the UK has stripped them of their UK citizenship. So, as they’re stateless assholes, we’re kinda free to do with them what we want (e.g. Guantanamo, execution, etc.)?

One would think so, but:

The British government also wants the US to provide assurances American prosecutors will not seek the death penalty against Kotey and Elsheikh.
It is threatening to hold back important evidence about them as leverage.

Excuse me, morons, but as you’ve stripped these two bastards of their British citizenship, you’ve lost all say as to what happens to them… right?

Frankly, I’m hoping for a “shot while trying to escape” scenario, because that would end the whole sorry episode on a satisfactory note (absent a little vigorous interim scourging, that is). As it is, however, it’s going to be a cluster-fuck, and no doubt these terrorist scumbags will probably end up living in the Bronx on public welfare.

American public welfare.

Me, I’d just hand them over to the Russians to let them deal with the problem. No doubt the Brits would have a problem with this idea, too.