December, 2015 archive
The War on “Happy Holidays” 0
Its heritage might surprise you. A bit:
It then lay dormant until around 2004, when Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and a handful of Christian conservatives created the war on Christmas that we know today. They spun corporate America’s profit-driven tendency to wish consumers an inclusive “happy holidays” into a plot by godless liberals to banish Christianity from our holy shopping malls.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness is a family affair.
The girl’s mother told officers she had brought home two .50-caliber muzzleloaded guns from a cabin.
Butler County sheriff’s investigator Randle Huddleston said the girl’s father thought they were unloaded.
He picked one of them up, and while handling the firearm, he inadvertently squeezed the trigger, and it went off.
She has politeness all over her shoulder, face, and chest.
Aside:
Methinks the writer inadvertently misplet “negligently.”
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
Never would I have predicted that the leading candidate for word of the year would be “schlonged.”
Making a Hashtag of It 0
Elie Mystal comments on the Mall of America’s attempt to prevent a #BlackLivesMatters protest. A snippet (emphasis added):
And Mall of America certainly can’t ban black people from coming into it. They can’t restrict the activity of protesting until, at the very least, people actually start doing it. Otherwise you are just banning black people for something they might do, which is pretty damn racist.
Of course, Mall of America doesn’t want to ban black people. Black people can spend money too! They just don’t want black people to voice… anything of substance inside the mall, or disrupt other people’s attempts to spend money in the mall.
The concept that a mall is private space is morally, if not legally, flawed. In many communities, malls are for all practical purposes the downtowns of yesteryear, at least in the relatively few places where they have not yet been supplanted by big boxes. They want to be seen as public spaces, with shops and restaurants and recreation sometimes even exhibits of various types, as long as the public remains docile and compliant. Otherwise, otherwise.
And now for the rest of the story.
In Which I Commend Jeb Bush 0
Jeb Bush spoke some truth (granted, he left out the part about the Civil War being about slavery and nothing else, but the whole damn country has left that out for 150 years).
His chances for the Republican nomination likely ended yesterday, but I must tip my hat to him. In today’s Republican Party, confronting the New Secesh takes guts.
“What’s Christmas without Air Conditioning?” 0
That was my brother’s reply when I texted him that it was so hot and humid here that I had turned on the A/C.
Meanwhile, the NOAA tells me that the temperature in Lost Wages, Nevada, is 50 Fahrenheits.
Hearts Two Sizes Too Small 0
Dan Simpson tries to choose between Grinch One and Grinch Two.
“Nobody Ever Expects the Spanish Inquisition” 0
Virginia Tech Professor Matthew Gabriele points out that it’s happened before. Here’s a snippet from his piece on the recent panic over a calligraphy assignment in Augusta County, Virginia (emphasis added).
There is not so much distance between Bernard Gui’s 14th-century Manual for Inquisitors and the “indoctrination” that Herndon and others are, still, so worried about in Augusta County, Virginia.
Follow the link for the full discussion.
The Cycle of “Sharing” 0
Yes, there is such a thing, and it doesn’t have to be–er–improper photographs.
Mark Leigh, 54, of Failsworth, said his two bicycles – worth £500 ($750) and £1,000 ($1,500) – were nicked shortly after he made his address and details of his bikes public on the popular biking app Strava, the Manchester Evening News reports.
The app includes an optional privacy setting that conceals the exact location of your home, but Leigh was not aware of this switch when he shared details of his bike rides via the software.
There’s a reason I keep the GPS in my cell phone turned off. Putting aside outlying possibilities such as the above, it’s nobody’s business which grocery stores I use.
“Just Get Her Drunk” 0
If you question the existence of “rape culture,” I commend your attention to an advertisement, which I see before me as I write this, for a new brand of rum* featuring the advertising slogan,
Seduction in a bottle.
No, I won’t name the brand.
_______________
*The world needs a new brand of rum like it needs flavored vodka.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Don ye now ye polite apparel . . . .
The 71-year-old man told officers he went to get his .38-caliber pistol when the clothing he was wearing became entangled in the trigger and it discharged, Chief Deputy Shawn Burns said Monday.
