Category Archives: Social Commentary

Humor, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

On Shaving

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Meditations from Lileks:

I’m just tired of making the sink look like a scene from Hellraiser.

I know it’s my fault; I should prep the beard, swaddle my puss with scalding towels, use better cream, better razors. I was perfectly happy with the multi-blade razor that vibrated like it was full of bees; either on or off it did the trick, more or less, but I began to balk at laying out a double sawbuck for four refills, and slunk back to disposables. Didn’t get the store brands, because those things are like shaving with a garden rake. I wasn’t going to go for the two-blades; no man likes to think his beard can be tamed with a mere two blades, not when science is working as we speak on a razor with more blades than a Chinese acrobat pyramid has levels. Three blades seemed right, with a “lubricating strip” that deposited a stratum of imaginary soothing-agents on your face. The first shave was always good, unless you cut yourself making a turn on the jaw, in which case you had to have the razor put down immediately. Once they go rogue, taste blood, they’re useless. I usually managed to cut myself once a week, though – the side of the lip, or one of those absolutely unstanchable disasters on the top of the philtrum, or around the chin-dimple hillocks. Once you’ve opened a new account, so to speak, you’ve no choice but to scrape it open the next day, unless you shave around it and cultivate a small plot of beard to go with the conspicuous blot of clotted blood. If you have two going at once, well, you look like you shaved by dragging an angry parakeet over your face.

One of the reasons I have a mustache is to avoid the philtrum.

As an added bonus, Jack The Ripper.

Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Beginning Of The End?

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…of multi-culturalism in the Netherlands?

Labor’s line seems to stand on its head the old equation of jobs-plus-education equals integration. Conforming to Dutch society’s social standards now comes first. Strikingly, it turns its back on cultural relativism and uses the word emancipation in discussing the process of outsiders’ becoming Dutch.

For the Netherlands’ Arab and Turkish population (about 6 percent of a total of 16 million) it refers to jobs and educational opportunities as “machines of emancipation.” Yet it also suggests that employment and advancement will not come in full measure until there is a consciousness engagement in Dutch life by immigrants that goes far beyond the present level.

Indeed, Ploumen says, “Integration calls on the greatest effort from the new Dutch. Let go of where you come from; choose the Netherlands unconditionally.” Immigrants must “take responsibility for this country” and cherish and protect its Dutch essence.

Not clear enough? Ploumen insists, “The success of the integration process is hindered by the disproportionate number of non-natives involved in criminality and trouble-making, by men who refuse to shake hands with women, by burqas and separate courses for women on citizenship.

“We have to stop the existence of parallel societies within our society.”

Better late than never. And what’s amazing is that this is coming from the left.

When is the UK going to figure it out?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Pack, Not Herd, Part Two

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This sort of thing is the consequence of intentionally disarming ourselves, and frightening people with nonsensical scare stories about guns:

Lt. Mitchell said that, apart from Alandis’ denial that he made any threats, investigators quickly realized that the only gun Alandis had was his cap gun.

“In this day and time, we do not take anything lightly, whether it’s a toy gun or a real weapon, for the safety of the kids and everyone involved, the safety of the school. That’s our main concern.”

Tosha Ford agrees that Alandis should not have brought the toy gun to school, and did not know that he did, but she said the reaction that unfolded was overblown, due to rumors that school children quickly spread.

“Someone heard that Alandis had a toy gun in his bookbag and said, ‘Oh, Alandis is going to bring a gun, he’s going to shoot everybody.’ He [Alandis] was wrong, he should never have taken it to school. And I told him that. And he’s being punished” at home. “But also on the other side of the coin, I think it’s a travesty what’s happened to him…. For them to say that’s he’s made terroristic threats is just ridiculous. We’ve taken it and changed what ‘terroristic threats’ was meant to be for. And with children saying that ‘he’s got a gun, he’s got a gun,’ it’s gotten blown out of proportion…. I don’t think they handled it very well. I know it’s their job, but I think they took it to the extreme.”

I had lots of cap guns when I was a kid, as did most of my friends. I thought that individual caps were too tame, though. I used to like to hit a whole roll on the sidewalk with a hammer for a much more satisfying bang.

I don’t recall whether or not I ever took one to school, but if I had, neither pupils or teachers would have been so clueless and naive as to have confused it with a real gun. And the worst penalty for doing so that I can imagine would have been confiscation by the teacher. Until the end of the school day, that is, at which point it would probably have been returned. The notion that the decision about this kid is whether or not he should be put in juvenile detention, or merely on probation, shows the insane depths of anti-gun (and with butter knives being confiscated and wielders suspended, anti-weapons-in-general) paranoia to which our society has descended.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

A Pack, Not A Herd

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Some sense from across the pond, on the policy foolishness of disarming the citizenry. As Mumbai showed, it only makes people helpless victims against the enemy. And in broad terms, the enemy is anyone who worships entropy and mayhem. As Alfred said in Dark Knight, “Some men just want to see the world burn.” And they will get their wish if we don’t defend ourselves against them.

Rhetoric about standing firm against terrorists aside, in Britain we have no more legal deterrent to prevent an armed assault than did the people of Mumbai, and individually we would be just as helpless as victims. The Mumbai massacre could happen in London tomorrow; but probably it could not have happened to Londoners 100 years ago.

In January 1909 two such anarchists, lately come from an attempt to blow up the president of France, tried to commit a robbery in north London, armed with automatic pistols. Edwardian Londoners, however, shot back – and the anarchists were pursued through the streets by a spontaneous hue-and-cry. The police, who could not find the key to their own gun cupboard, borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by, while other citizens armed with revolvers and shotguns preferred to use their weapons themselves to bring the assailants down.

Today we are probably more shocked at the idea of so many ordinary Londoners carrying guns in the street than we are at the idea of an armed robbery. But the world of Conan Doyle’s Dr Watson, pocketing his revolver before he walked the London streets, was real. The arming of the populace guaranteed rather than disturbed the peace.

Nineteenth-century London (and India) was much better suited for civil defense against monsters like this than the twenty-first century version.