Just in case any of you were still thinking of Sweden as a paradise of progress and equality
WTF is this supposed to mean.
Exactly. This is clearly the result of pernicious French influence.
I just remember that Werdna was the villain from Wizardry, one of the first digital role playing games.
I always though of Sweden as a paradise of alcohol stoves for hiking and very expensive food.
This whole story is so odd and inexplicable to me.
I have so many questions but to start somewhere -- "the man who currently controls the rump of the Swedish Academy" - I understand that Engahl is a member of the Academy, but what do you mean by "controls the rump"?
That sounds like a euphemism for "groping".
WHEN I WENT THERE, PEEP, I DID NOT THINK TO HAVE DONE THIS. BUT PERCEIVING THE SPIRIT OF GOD SO STRONG UPON ME, I WOULD NOT CONSULT FLESH AND BLOOD.
"rump" meaning what's left of the Academy after several people have left and not been replaced.
"Penetration is always a defeat for the woman and a victory for the man," is one of the aphorisms that Engdahl, the son of a military officer, published in one of his books. Here's another: "There is a chamber inside every man where there is only room for one thing: he himself. There is also a chamber inside every woman. But it is empty. Not even she herself is inside. The woman waits for someone to fill this chamber."
Engdahl seems like an enlightened man.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/behind-the-scandal-at-the-swedish-academy-a-1207928.html
NO ONE RISES SO HIGH AS HE WHO KNOWS NOT WHITHER HE IS GOING.
"I still remember that day very clearly," says Witt-Brattström, whose marriage with Engdahl, with whom she has three grown sons, came to an end in 2014. "I came home from a lecture on the history of female resistance. Horace looked as though he had taken heroin. He was dancing around. He had just accepted his election to the worst bastion of the cultural patriarchy."
taken from the same Spiegel article. I guess it answers my questions.
Especially if your question is how many grown sons do Engdahl and Witt-Brattström have.
"There is a chamber inside every man where there is only room for one thing: he himself. There is also a chamber inside every woman. But it is empty. Not even she herself is inside. The woman waits for someone to fill this chamber."
Not really the same, but I was struck by the word "partly" in these Drake lyrics at the gym this morning:
She said, "Do you love me?" I tell her, "Only partly. I only love my bed and my momma, I'm sorry."
It just seemed such a forthright description of what it's like for (some) young adults - no real capacity to care for this other person, not like the deep love he has for his mother. And his bed.
I just figured out that one of the annoying songs where the guy raps in a barely audible mumble is Drake. Before I only knew who he was from the meme with the orange jacket.
There is a chamber inside every man where there is only room for one thing: he himself.
That seems like a very roundabout way to say men are shit.
There are 18 members of the Academy. Or supposed to be.
Three resigned - or rather stopped turning up, because until this year you couldn't resign, membership was for life - in 1989 because the Academy refused to issue a statement in support of Salman Rushdie. One has since died and was replaced.
Another one stepped down in 2005 because he didn't think Elfriede Jelinek should have won the Nobel. He has since died and been replaced by a woman called Sara Danius, who subsequently became secretary of the academy.
So the academy was two short at the start of this year.
Then the sexual assault allegations about Arnault (whose wife Katarina Frostenson is an academy member) came out. The Academy investigated (because some of the assaults may have been on Academy property) and passed their report on to the authorities, who charged Arnault with rape the week before last.
Some members of the Academy wanted to respond by kicking Frostenson out of the Academy, but the vote went against them.
Following that, three academy members (who wanted Frostenson kicked out) and Danius (who seems to have wanted Frostenson kicked out as well, but ) have all resigned. As has Frostenson herself.
So now the Academy is down to 11 members.
The BBC's coverage has been good on this, if you want to know more. The Guardian coverage is really only good if you already know what has been happening from somewhere else.
It's been all downhill for Sweden since the battle of Lutzen.
I BESEECH YOU, IN THE BOWELS OF CHRIST, THINK IT POSSIBLE YOU MAY BE A SHIT.
18: Queen Kristina had some good times. Weird, but good.
Just in case any of you were still thinking of Sweden as a paradise of progress and equality.
Honestly, I'm mostly just envious of not having to maintain employer-based health coverage to avoid being bankrupted if me or someone in my family gets sick.
Speaking of the Swedish cultural scene, I highly recommend Ruben Östlund's The Square which is a hilarious and devastating satire. There's this set piece which is one of the most powerful scenes I've ever seen on film and could come straight out of Buñuel.
Trump's going to win a Nobel now, isn't he?
23: Bob Dylan won it for his song lyrics, so the logical next step is for Trump to win for his tweets.
iThere's this set piece which is one of the most powerful scenes I've ever seen on film and could come straight out of Buñuel.
The scene with Terry Notary, right? Can't say I enjoyed it, but then I don't know that I've ever enjoyed any Bunuel either.
I did crack up at the viral ad for "The Square" exhibit.
Probably repeating 10, but "There is a chamber inside every man where there is only room for one thing" sounds like a desperate cry from a man who is afraid to admit to himself that he needs some fulfilling anal sex. And what a reprehensible view of women.
I assume the whole Swedish Academy is into pegging.
25 That's the scene. Astonishing. Great film. One of my favorites from last year.
If the Swedish Academy can't function, is there a Norwegian one that could pick the Nobel?
Hmm. I was initially keen on seeing The Square because I liked Force Majeure so much but just the cut of the scene in question that was in the trailer was so off-putting that I never got around to it. I guess I will reconsider.
Now that I've looked him up, though, Terry Notary seems very interesting.
I just finished one of the several tour-of-the-Nordics books that's come out in the past few years since everybody discovered Danish tv and in a little over 300 pages the author managed to kill the crush I had on Scandinavia+ and convince me that it's full of the least fun people on Earth, of which the Swedish were meant to be the most dour of all. I really enjoyed the crush while it lasted, though.
|| My wife may have found her next profession in this article. Barry probably has a leg up though.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2018/06/22/a-shopping-mall-wanted-to-evict-its-pigeons-so-it-hired-a-hawk/?utm_term=.3b7fc88d18db |>
Pfff. I bet Barry can't eat a raw pigeon half as well as your wife.
I hate pigeons and I'm so glad I moved to a new apartment away from that lot where someone is raising a couple hundred of them. Also my windows have no outside ledges for them to sit and coo and poo on.
And he's never going to get better with that attitude.
33: Ha! Though the article does say that they scare the pigeons rather than eating them...
34: I thought of you, Barry, because of your flying with falconers story. Though I suppose that RH has also been a big hunting with birds fan too.
36 - I'm just a falconry enthusiast at a distance and have never tried it, but I did meet one of the Hawk Pros falconers once. Total dream job.
Imagine: a world without seagulls at the beach. A world without pigeons at the mall. This is a world we can have -- thanks to birds that are more awesome, other birds and scare and eat them. and people who put cool-looking medieval hoods over the awesome birds and then unleash them for total avian mastery.
36.2 I definitely need to do some more falconry when the weather cools down.
31. Never been to Scandinavia myself, but a friend of mine (of Swedish descent) learned the language and studied up on the place and was planning to spend months or even years there. Verdict, returning after a month?: "A nation of policemen."
38. The larger raptors will also take cats and small dogs. YMMV whether this is a plus or a minus.
40.1 - I am 100% ABSOLUTELY in favor of raptors getting rid of cats, especially stray cats. A fucking army of eagles eating every stray cat in Southern California wouldn't be enough vengeance for what the cats have already done to the birds.
I'm also in favor of coyotes eating stray cats and small wandering dogs. In fairness, though, I haven't put a lot of effort into my "Coyote Van" side hustle business where I drive coyotes from the parts of the city where they are numerous to other parts of the city where there are lots of stray cats has yet to get off the ground.
Could we volunteer to take over the Nobel Prize in Literature awarding? Who could possibly be more qualified than a bunch of random people on the internet?
42: Without the stray cats, won't the rat population near you explode again?
45: Don't feel bad. Other then that it was a great plan.
There is a semi-large group of people who care for stray cats and I seem them on NextDoor in the winter. Apparently, they put out shelters made from old coolers fill with straw so that cats can survive the winter. Except that cats were surviving winters here before Styrofoam was invented. Maybe they weren't surviving very well?
They don't talk about feeding them, I assume because they know somebody will call animal control to stop piles of food from attracting rats.
Even if they can get a nice juicy cat?
Anyway, there may be more to urban ecology that my hasty theorizing indicates.
My favorite neighbor is the one who wanted to call somebody to rescue the raccoon on the shoulder of the parkway.
I'm sure there's some sort of extended Lotka-Volterra equation that tells you the optimal number of coyotes and cats to have so that the population of rats and cats are both minimized.
I don't recall that I've seen a coyote in Pennsylvania. Which, I guess, isn't unexpected since they keep hidden.
Had a run-in with two coyotes at the river the other morning. My good big dog was unphased, kept the calm, uninterested manner he generally uses with any other dog. I was glad he wasn't any smaller. I am all for coyotes, but did not find them at all endearing in reality.
Bread bread
(How do we gently break it to Halford that predators depend on prey continuing to exist?)
Bread bread
Well for starters you can't be wrapping the bad news in grains.
55 - Don't underestimate me. Don't think there's not a plan. The cats will kill the rats. The eagles and coyotes will kill the cats. The songbirds the cats killed will come back to feed the eagles. The coyotes who ate the cats will have no more cats to eat and can't catch songbirds so will eat the rats. At the top of the pyramid, mountain lions will eat the coyotes. It's the circle of life, shifted towards favoring more awesome and less annoying animals.
That's only some of the problem animals though. I can't really figure out what gets rid of the ants besides ant poison, though. Maybe a shit-ton of aardvarks.
And checking on Wikipedia, I'm starting to really like using the aardvark in this scheme. It hoovers up annoying creatures (ants). It's an awesome animal itself. Its only predators are other awesome animals like lions, leopards, hyenas, and humans. If my management scheme leads to tons of aardvarks, great, who wouldn't want to live around tons of aardvarks. If they can't sustain a big population because they ate most of the ants, that's good too, fewer ants. And we can use the aardvarks to help feed other awesome animals like lions.
Aardvarks are the answer.
a shit-ton of aardvarks
That was the name of my garage band in high school.
¦¦
Hey Barry if you're up, have you signed up for Fandor/Filmstruck trials while you're in country? I'm really curious what you think of Kaili Blues. If you need credentials, I think I can hook you up, email me at pseud numeral zero at yahoo.
¦>
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Today, after a very long, long wait (partly my fault, for making a mistake in the paperwork and having the forms returned to me to start all over again...), I got something in the mail that makes me very happy, and that also gives me an enormous sense of relief. My son now has a Certificate of Canadian Citizenship, which "certifies and declares that [he] is a Canadian citizen, and, as such, is entitled to all the rights and privileges and bears all the responsibilities, duties and obligations of a Canadian subject."
His response? Yawn. Yeah, whatever, Mom. O callow youth! But he now has a real exit option, which he may want to use at some point in the future. And he is now eligible for a Canadian passport, which is a handy little document to have.
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61 Thanks fm. I've been dying to see it. I've also heard great things about Gan Bi's latest film Long Day's Journey Into Night. Filmstruck isn't licensed for Arrakis and I don't think Fandor is either but I will try to watch it while I'm still in NY. I'll send an email in the morning or hit me up at the email below if you're still up.
59. Don't aardvarks dig big holes while looking for ants to hoover up? That would mess up our landscaping. On the other hand, we have coyotes (sometimes in our back yard) and outdoor cats don't last long around here.
48. Some people feed feral cats, some capture them, get them spayed, and release them. In our neighborhood, some people feed the wild turkeys, which I think is a step too far.
51. I'd call the police over a stranded raccoon. On the other hand, we don't have much actual crime here; it would give the police something to do.
How the raccoon got between you and the phone, I'll never know.
My friend (who is a vet) brought a (young) raccoon to our exercise class last week. I was so bummed to discover that she brought it out for cuddles after I'd left.
That's what you get for not remembering "two fingers only."
Black Panther is very good so far. Somebody should have mentioned this.
Bilbo has a perfect American accent.
The internet is terrrible but it brought us the concept of "trash panda" so it's not all bad
Doesn't one catch terrible diseases from raccoons?
Yes. A horrible brain disease. Stay away from their stools.
If one can see raccoon sofas presumably it's already too late.
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I'm having tattoo indigestion on Daddy Cat. The four kittens turned out wonderful, and they were my primary concern, so I feel a little bit like this is the cost - if I had to choose, I'd choose the kittens to look great, so this is what I get.
That said, it bothers me, and I'm not sure how much she'll be able to fix it, and on top of that, I have to have a very clear idea of how to tell her to fix it, because I don't trust her as an artist anymore. Whenever she's left to her own devices, instead of just straight copying, things go off the rails.
It's hard to balance trying to figure out how it should be fixed with trying to relax and accept that it might not get fixed. It's making me increasingly upset instead of relaxed.
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Daddy Raccoon instead? They're all black, so she can just ink over everything while you whimper in agony.
No wait, that's panthers. Daddy Panther. Much better than a raccoon, actually.
75: Can't you just take a break and until you have an exact thing she can copy?
Yes, definitely. We have an appointment tomorrow for mama cat, which is strict copying and should be okay.
The thing is, the variable I can't determine without her help is how much she's able to lighten things using white ink. I was considering asking her to just lighten things without adding any replacement lines so I could see how much it can be lightened.
My mom and I each have attempted a face-fix, painting over a photo of the tattoo, but I don't know if they're too ambitious.
Also I imagine a better artist could do better than me, at least.
My son just got a "satisfactory" for his behavior in art class. I could ask him.
Some people have higher standards.
Art is the worst, but everyone who wants kids to not learn it seems to be an asshole, so I insist he participate attentively.
I was just thinking that heebie might like the ink that is to be irreversibly drilled into her skin to be better than just satisfactory.
If Nero Wolfe got a sweet tat of a fire-breathing dragon clutching a Cattleya, he would say, "Satisfactory", and mean it.
We don't have any electricity, so tattooing will be slow until it comes back on.
I think Texas has its own grid?
Aardvarke is die antwoord, natuurlik.
Halford's love for the aardvark is overdetermined.