Tag: Stupid people

Constitutional Lesson

Rights, Sports

All those English people who came over here and swooned about the United States — the freedom, the politeness, the hospitality, Buc-ees (and did I mention the freedom?) had a somewhat rude awakening after their team got beaten by the Argies in the semi-finals.

Seems as though some things are not easily forgotten, among them being the Margaret Thatcher-era beating dished out to the Argies when the latter tried to invade the Falkland Islands (a.k.a. the Malvinas).

So after beating England at their own game last week, the Argie football team had a little celebration in their dressing room, waving a banner which said “Malvinas are Argentina” (or something like that).

Well, the response was an outburst of “How dare they?” from the UKgov:

“It prompted a fierce response in London as Business Secretary Peter Kyle demanded a FIFA investigation into the matter before (then-BritPM) Sir Keir Starmer publicly backed those calls.”
A FIFA spokesman said: “As is standard procedure, FIFA’s independent Disciplinary Committee is currently assessing the match reports and considering the relevant circumstances before deciding on potential further steps based on the FIFA Disciplinary Code.'”

Yeah, well fuck FIFA, their disciplinary code and the UKgov.

You see, this particular World Cup match was played in the United States of America, where we have a First Amendment — basically guaranteeing the right of the Argies to be as rude and disrespectful as they want.  (I should point out that the Brits still mock the Krauts for having lost the last pair of World Wars, so their peevishness is somewhat ironic.)

So here’s the lesson for the Brits:  freedom of speech sometimes means putting up with stuff that you find offensive.  I know that BritLaw seems to have overridden that simple precept recently — where people can get arrested just for posting naughty things on Teh Intarwebz — but there ya go.  Deal with it.

As for FIFA:  your little disciplinary code doesn’t supersede our laws, so if you don’t want stuff like this to happen during your precious tournaments, feel free to hold your future World Cups in countries that don’t have a First Amendment.

Good luck in North Korea.

Footnote:  The Argies lost the final to Spain (0-1), in the most boring football match ever played.

As Written

Books & Movies

Finally, someone speaks up for what’s right (albeit on a fairly trivial issue):

James Bond casting director Debbie McWilliams has said 007 should remain white and male as auditions for Daniel Craig‘s replacement continue.

Amid speculation that the character could be reinvented as a woman or played by a black actor, McWilliams, who cast the previous 14 Bond films, said Ian Fleming ‘wrote a character, and that’s the character that stays’.

Well said, ma’am.

Unfortunately, that’s not chiseled in stone (although it should be).  Why so?

McWilliams retired from her casting career prior to Amazon MGM Studios acquiring creative control of the James Bond franchise in 2025. The job of finding the next Bond now falls to casting director Nina Gold and director Denis Villeneuve.

Which means that James Bond may soon be Jamal Bond (a reformed teetotaler fresh from an AA meeting), or Jamie Bond (Lesbian Extraordinaire, with a license to munch).

Netflix has done worse, in the past.

I am so fucking sick of moviemakers turning beloved characters into something they were never intended to be.  Netflix is the prime [sic] offender in this regard, having trampled all over traditional casting to be more “inclusive” and turning roles into travesties rather than just doing the simpler (and right) thing by sticking to the formula.  But they’ve all done it in recent years, whether with Marvel characters or other such icons.

Hey, let’s hear it for Ian Of Green Gables, which tells the story of how a young boy has to make his way in the world after having been mistakenly put up for adoption with two lesbian Satanists.

What the hell:  let’s have the whole story told in flashback (like Amadeus) after Ian is sent to a psychiatric ward for having murdered his adopted lesbian step-parents (because they molested him constantly), then blew up the offices of the government adoption agency which made the original screwup.

See how this plays out when you set out to be “creative” and change everything, just to make it more “eclectic”, more “relevant”, more “inclusive” or more “edgy”?

Never mind that you’ve just turned a beloved classic story into a near-parody.

I don’t know what the hell these people think they’re doing, or how they believe that they have the right to do this to our culture.

So let’s keep James Bond a white man, with sociopathic tendencies and a harsh, cynical outlook on life — just as Ian Fleming imagined him.  It worked unbelievably well for the novel series (a.k.a. “franchise”, another word I’ve come to detest), and it worked for the Sean Connery-era of Bond movies (reflected in poll after poll, where Sir Sean continues to outrank all his successors — emphasis on “suck” — when it comes to the “ideal” James Bond).

And if The Usual Suspects don’t like that paradigm, they are free to come up with a new character and a new storyline outside the existing canon.  It will fail, of course, just as the Bond “franchise” will fail when James is replaced with “alternative” versions.

You heard it here first.

Eschewing Technology

Science!

Well, if societal pressure and/or the Gummint all say that you can’t have air conditioning during one of the worst heatwaves in living memory, then you can always rely on !Science! to provide an alternative:

Scientists claim applying YOGHURT to the outside of your windows can cool your home by as much as 3.5°C

 

Oh wait…

The idea is that the yoghurt forms a thin film on the window, reflecting some of the incoming solar radiation, and preventing heat from passing through.

You know who’s really going to go for this idea?

[checks calendar]  Nope, it isn’t April 1st.

FFS.

The Four Idols

Deep Thoughts

I’m not sure that there’s a better podcast than Triggernometry, and this episode is one of the best.

  • Power
  • Money
  • Fame
  • Pleasure

Which two could you live without, or would actually push away?  Watch the episode, and see how it works.  (And unlike most things I talk about here, don’t feel you have to share your findings in Comments, because it’s intensely personal;  I’m not going to share mine, for that reason.)

And by the way, the expression “performative activism” explains just about everything I find irritating about today’s world.

Welcome Relief

Eco-Crap, Eco-Warriors, Watermelons

So now… wait, I thought it was Glueball Wormening that was going to cause catastrophe and WE’RE ALL GONNA DIEEEEE!

Apparently not.

While climatologists fear skyrocketing temperatures, scientists are now warning that a “cold blob” in the Atlantic could trigger a global cooling event, among other apocalyptic scenarios, per an alarming study in Geophysical Research Letters.

Located South of Greenland and Iceland, this anomalous patch of ocean has seen temps dip by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the 19th Century, Science News reported.

Coincidentally, this comes as the United Nations’ influential climate change committee has discarded dire temperature increase models spouted by doomsdayers on the Left.

Of course, now that Global Cooling Climate Warming Change© has been debunked, it’s time for Global Warming Climate Cooling Change© — warming or cooling, it’s important to keep us all in a state of climate-related panic, you see.

Speaking of states, we have Texas,  frying  basking in our typical July summer temperatures — and let me tell y’all, the idea of a little global cooling is not that unattractive a prospect right now.