Tag: Stupid people

Okay, Wait

Entertainment, Freaks & Loonies, Wokism

Here’s a headline which literally stopped me in my tracks — twice.  See if you can see where:

Actress cast as Richard III?  I thought casting men as women went out in the seventeenth century, but since when did casting women as men become a thing?  (As an aside, how will Dickless III play the seduction of Lady Anne in Act I Scene 2 without the audience breaking into uncontrollable laughter?)

And no, by all means play the hunchbacked king as a non-impaired man, which will make the “poisonous bunch-backed toad” line (among many other such insults in the play) completely meaningless.  Fucking hell;  why not just play Richard III as a frog, and have done with it?

Then again, this is Britishland, home of The Bard, where I once walked out of a dreadful performance of Macbeth (at the Barbican Theatre, by the Royal Shakespeare Company) at the halfway point.

So anything’s possible.  Expect to see a guest appearance by Willy Wonka or David Beckham in footballer kit during the final battle scene, where “Richard” utters the immortal line:

“A purse!  A purse!  My queendom for a purse!”

 

“More” EU?

Eco-Crap, Economics, Mocking Furriners

Well now, looks like that Zero Emissions or whatever is getting a little pushback in, of all places, Europe:

Farmers across Europe are rising up against the EU, with angry agricultural workers in Spain being the latest who are set to join the growing tractor protest movement.

By using their heavy machinery to block roads in and around major capitals on the continent, farmers in Germany, France and other EU nations have expressed their anger over rising costs, EU environmental policies and cheap food imports which they say are leading to a deterioration in working and living conditions.

…as Jeremy Clarkson discovered on the TV show about his farm in Britishland (which, by the way, has inspired his European counterparts).  Then this:

But as farmers in France, Belgium and Italy staged protests on Monday and Tuesday, and as Spain’s three main agriculture unions said they would soon join them, French president Emmanuel Macron risked inciting further fury by brazenly telling the disgruntled growers: ‘You need more Europe, not less.’

Just another globalist woke asshole who needs to be tossed out on his ear (cf. Fidel Trudeau, FJ Biden, etc.).

In the meantime, I’m watching the whole thing unfold…

See Ya

Corporate Fuckery, Sports

Looks as though Sports Illustrated has decided to cut the fat:

No, not that fat.  This fat:

The owner of Sports Illustrated has ended the employment of the publication’s entire staff, leaving the very existence of the nearly 70-year-old magazine in doubt.

Then follows a while bunch of publishing industry gobbledegook (good luck trying to understand this nonsense — it reads like the article’s author didn’t understand it either):

The licensing group that owns the sports mag has terminated its agreement with The Arena Group to continue publishing the magazine three weeks after Arena missed a $2.8 million payment, a deficit that breached the magazine’s licensing deal, according to Front Office Sports.

Authentic bought SI out from Meredith in 2019 for $10 million. If it continues publishing, the magazine will turn 70 years old this August.

An email announcing the decision says in part, “We were notified by Authentic Brands Group (ABG) that the license under which the Arena Group operates the Sports Illustrated (SI) brand and SI-related properties had been officially revoked by ABG.”

Got all that?  There will be a test.  Not that it matters, because here’s the crux of it:

“As a result of this license revocation, we will be laying off staff that work on the SI brand.”

Crap magazine, terrible writing, stupid stories, and let’s not forget the idiotic decision to put fatties in the Swimsuit Issue instead of hotties like oh, Leryn Franco.  Ergo, from this:

…to this:

“Oh noes… why did people stop buying our magazine?  They must all be Christianist Trumpists!”  or some such twaddle.

SI  never recovered from the loss of writers like Pete King, Frank DeFord and Rick Telander, to name just some.  And the arrival of Internet reportage shot them in the gut, just as what happened to many print magazines in other industries.

Won’t be missed.  Mediocrity and crap hardly ever is.

Immaculate Conception?

The Worst

For those who scoff at the concept of “immaculate conception”, please explain this little situation:

A party-loving student had no idea she was pregnant, believing she had simply ‘become a bit fat’ at university by drinking ‘almost every night’ – until she suddenly gave birth.

Niamh Hearn’s life turned upside down in August 2022 when the then 20-year-old was admitted to hospital with suspected appendicitis – and left hospital with a newborn baby.

The now 21-year-old, who lives in York, admitted to binge drinking and smoking throughout her pregnancy — attending a festival and a pub crawl all while unknowingly pregnant with her son.

So far, so good;  until you see the pics of said totty.  (warning:  extreme foulness in link, you have been warned)

I know that some (okay, lots of) guys will make the old flesh insertion into pretty much anything, especially after a few shots of tequila etc.

But seriously?

The only good thing is that Mummy Dearest is unlikely to go after child support, because she won’t be able to narrow the field, so to speak — but if she does, and Daddy is exposed, his punishment will be a lot more than financial.

Yikes.

Carnies and Hucksters

Marketing / Advertising

Longtime Reader GT3ted sent me an email of the latest Sotheby’s auction catalog — the topic of this coming Saturday’s post, by the way — and when I commented that the prices seemed unusually-astronomical, even by Sotheby’s standards, he replied:

Yes, I thought the suggested bid ranges were high as well, But remember these are the the typical auction company’s “Projected” bid ranges which are often optimistic. And Sotheby’s does seem to have a better-than-usual lineup this year. The whole point of the catalog is to bring in as many Big Dollar buyers as possible since they need multiple buyers to run up the prices. Or at least the appearance of multiple bidders.

The Winter Arizona / Scottsdale Hype is strong thanks to “Bidenomics” / a soaring stock market and nervous investors looking for a place to park some equity before the possible collapse of the more traditional equities market place.

The world of high-end auctions is still just smoke and mirrors run by used car salesmen and ex-carnies all looking for the next greater fool, just at a much higher level.

It’s a very cogent statement.  But even among them what has more money than common sense, this (for example) seems egregiously overpriced:

Now let it be known that I loves me some 70s-era Bronco, but I would humbly suggest that even a handbuilt-from-the-ground-up item such as this isn’t worth anything like two hundred big ones.

It’s not an original — it’s a Kincer creation — and there’s another outfit that handmakes “classic” Toyota FJ45s, at similar nosebleed prices, and still another that does likewise with 1970s-era Mercedes G-wagens.  While I understand that hand-built cars involve an astonishing amount of labor — in some cases, hundreds of hours — I would suggest that it’s a fool’s gambit to try to recoup (and even profit from) the job.  As any amateur restorer will tell you, one never recoups the cost of restoration, and I just can’t see that restoring old cars as a production enterprise makes it worth the work and expense…

…unless, of course, the target market is not the brand’s loyal devotees but (as Ted puts it) Big-Dollar Buyers (“whales”, as the casino industry derisively calls them), for whom the car is not an object of desire but an investment.

And all investments, as any fule kno, carry risk.

Caveat emptor imprudens.

All that said, there are some juicy cars indeed in the Sotheby’s catalogue, but you’ll have to wait until Saturday to see them.  Just ignore the prices, and drool.