Guidelines

So now we have this foolishness:

“Unacceptable costumes” listed on a University of St. Thomas diversity flier are “wearing Native American headdresses, dressing up as a ‘Mexican’ by wearing a sombrero, dressing as a ‘geisha,’ any form of blackface.”

“Cultural appropriation is defined as ‘the act of taking intellectual and cultural expressions from a culture that is not your own, without showing that you understand or respect the culture,’” explains a University of St. Thomas diversity memo to students.

“This can be as simple as wearing a Dashiki without knowledge or respect to West African culture, and as serious as wearing a fake Native American headdress without any regard of its sacredness,” adds the memo. “It generally incorporates a history of prejudice and discrimination by perpetuating long-standing stereotypes.”

At UC Santa Barbara, a social justice workshop set for Tuesday will delve into how Halloween costumes abuse “indigenous wear” and teach students how to “spot appropriation with the help of bell hooks’ essay ‘Eating the Other.’”

At a “Conversation Circle” at Princeton University this Sunday, students will “engage in a dialogue about the impact of cultural appropriation, Halloween, and why culture is not a costume.”

Oh FFS, I wish these priggish, self-righteous shitwits would just lighten up.

Sounds like an excuse for a nationwide “Clothing Optional” Halloween on campus… although feministicals will no doubt start squealing that swinging dicks create an atmosphere of terror for women or some such bullshit. What a bunch of wussies.

And let’s face it: there’s no fun in everyone dressing in fucking togas, which seems to be the only costume I can think of that’s safe to “appropriate” because all the Romans are dead. (No, modern-day Italians are not Romans except by proxy. Look it up.)

I am so glad I’m not a student anymore, because I would get into shit on at least a daily basis. I just wish that more students could do the same, but they’re the ones calling for all this sensitivity crap. Snotty snowflakes, all of ’em.

Correction #973

FFS, if I hear one more retarded person say that they did something “on accident” I’m going to… going to… going to… well, let’s just say there will be .45 ACP rounds flying in all directions.

It’s “BY accident”.

BY accident”.

BY accident”.

Aaaargh. And it’s too early for a drink, even for me. Gawd knows what my mood will be like by Whisky O’Clock.

Tread very carefully in Comments…

Waste Of Time

So I went for my annual checkup last Wednesday, and caused the usual response from Dr. Whatsit: “Bugger off and stop wasting my time; I have sick people to look after.” (Oh, and I’d lost nearly ten pounds avoirdupois since my last check-up — most, I suspect, since I returned from Britishland and stopped consuming all those pies, fish & chips, Turkish Delight and Wadworth 6X.) But that’s not the topic of this post.

All the staff were wearing pink instead of their normal blue scrubs, so of course I had to ask the (stupid) question: “Why are you all wearing pink?” and met with the obvious response: “To raise awareness of breast cancer.”

FFS: is there a sentient human being living on this planet who isn’t aware of breast cancer?

The PGA golfers (male and female) wore those silly little lapel ribbons; the NFL players, back before they became unpatriotic little shits, also wore them; and the entire South African (male) cricket team wore all-pink uniforms during an international competition a couple years back. It looked like a Mary fucking Kay convention with cricket bats and helmets, not to mention gay.

By now, I think that if you wanted to raise awareness of breast cancer, you’d have to charter a skywriting aircraft to fly over the jungles of Borneo or the Amazon, because those poor ignorant savages don’t play golf or watch football and probably don’t know the first thing about cricket (thus joining 99% of Americans, but that’s a topic for another time).

What Americans do know a great deal about is breast cancer — but basically, that awareness is worth exactly diddly, because as with so much doubleplus feel-goody bullshit, you can’t do anything with that information — other than to give money to the American Cancer Society, which already has more money than the average Central European nation, but which always seems to need more for… what, exactly? It’s not like the ACS owns cancer hospitals (like the Shriners); no, it seems as though the ACS needs more money to “make people aware” of a disease which everybody fucking knows about already. So basically, raising awareness really means “raising money”. I don’t have a problem with this, I just want people to be honest about their motives.

Oh, and get this: death rates from breast cancer are down 39% since 1989 (from the ACS website, no less). No doubt it’s because of increased awareness of cancer, not vastly improved medications and treatment. (And yes, I know the ACS funds research into the thing — I just think that they could fund even more if they stopped all these timewasting “awareness” drives.)

Cancer is a horrible, lousy, terrible disease. We all know this — some of us, like me, from first-hand or immediate second-hand experience of it — and honestly, I think we can stop with the childish pink ribbons and such because we run the risk of trivializing it.

And by the way: death rates from breast cancer among women are about 21.2 per 100,000.

For men, the death rate from prostate cancer is about 20.1 per 100,000 — statistically about the same as female breast cancer — yet I’ll bet that more people are “aware” of breast cancer than of prostate cancer. I wonder why that is?

Not Going To Go There

Every so often a headline will stop me in my tracks. This is one of them:

Not hitting the link nor, as a public service, am I going to post it so that others can. I think we can see all we need to know right there.

I have standards.

Moving on, here’s another:

This one, however, does get a link because fuckem.

Neither Here Nor There

Okay, remember how some study or other said that 21 orgasms a month lowers prostate cancer rates? Surprise, surprise, nobody knows the truth:

According to a 2016 study in European Eurology, men who ejaculate more frequently are less likely to develop prostate cancer, compared to those who ejaculate less often.
The research from 2016 was a follow-up to a 2004 study, which came to a similar conclusion. Both studies found that the risk of prostate cancer may be reduced for men who ejaculate 21 times or more per month. This was compared with men who only ejaculated 4-7 times a month.
Other studies uncovered some conflicting evidence. Researchers disagree whether ejaculating more often makes men of all ages less likely to get prostate cancer.
A 2008 study found that frequent masturbation was only linked with a decreased risk of prostate cancer in men over 50. Researchers in this study found that men in their 20s and 30s who ejaculated more often were actually at an increased risk of prostate cancer.
In contrast, a 2003 study from Australia found that men who frequently ejaculated as young men had a reduced rate of prostate cancer.

In other words, nobody knows what the fuck [sic] is going on. So in the absence of any other alternatives:

Of course, if you can have 21 orgasms per month with a woman, then by all means go ahead, you lucky dog. Me, I’m going with the 2008 study because it gives me an excuse, so to speak.

And now, if you’ll excuse me…