Category: The Current Situation

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Stranger than Fiction The Current Situation

That’s ONE way to celebrate the king’s coronation…

The Tampax shelves in a UK drugstore aisle, marked with a sign that reads “Let’s celebrate the King’s coronation.”

In case you don’t remember 1992 or were too young to remember it, this is — if you’ll pardon the pun — a very inside joke.

(You can see a dramatized version of the story in the Netflix series The Crown, in season 5, episode 5, titled The Way Ahead.)

To be fair, it’s a terrible thing to have one’s private conversation with one’s lover broadcast to the world at large. But if it had to happen to two people, why not two terribly unpleasant people — who were both married, and not to each other — who now lead a luxurious life on taxpayer money?

And in case you were wondering, Charles III and Camilla will be crowned as king and queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms this Saturday, May 6th at Westminster Abbey. I suspect I will have better things to do than catch it on TV, but expect any English-themed pubs to be unbearable this weekend.

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America The Current Situation

Nothing says “FREEDOM” like forced patriotism and mandatory prayer

Yup, this really happened, and Penwell Knights Raceway in Odessa, Texas, does have a “stand for the anthem and prayer” policy.

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The Current Situation

Coming soon to LinkedIn…

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Slice of Life The Current Situation

Tesla accessory of the day

Rear of a Tesla, which has a badge bolted onto its bumper that reads “Bought it before we knew how awful he is.”
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America The Current Situation

“America is a Gun,” by Brian Bilston

England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is a gun.

Brazil is football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona’s hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun.

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America The Current Situation

A tale of two arrests

Two-panel comic. Panel 1: “When a poor Black man is arrested in America,” with Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck. Panel 2: “When a rich White man is arrested in America,” with Donald Trump speeding off in a limo as a police officer says “Sorry for interrupting your busy schedule...No need for handcuffs or mug shots...We’ll see you in eight months!”
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The Current Situation The Good Fight

What “anti-woke” REALLY means

The people who use “woke” as a term of derision are the same as those who used (or still use) the term “politically correct” for the same reason:

I think Mike Godwin — yes, the Godwin after whom “Godwin’s Law” is named — is right when he says this:

Or, to quote Neil Gaiman on “woke’s” predecessor, political correctness:

I was reading a book (about interjections, oddly enough) yesterday which included the phrase “In these days of political correctness…” talking about no longer making jokes that denigrated people for their culture or for the colour of their skin. And I thought, “That’s not actually anything to do with ‘political correctness’. That’s just treating other people with respect.”

Which made me oddly happy. I started imagining a world in which we replaced the phrase “politically correct” wherever we could with “treating other people with respect”, and it made me smile.

You should try it. It’s peculiarly enlightening.

I know what you’re thinking now. You’re thinking “Oh my god, that’s treating other people with respect gone mad!”