Yeah well, I have a few things to say about a few things sports fans, but so does everyone else, so what the hell. It’s like being at a party where everybody’s talking above everybody else while the music’s cranked to maximum and nobody knows what they’re saying and nobody’s listening anyway so why say a good goddamn thing? That’s all I’ve got to say for now except to mention the world’s on fire and the house is burning down. Cue David Byrne and the Talking Heads. Sheesh
.
Anti-vaxxers regularly point out that no vaccine on the CDC childhood schedule has had a randomized placebo study** showing it is safe.
ICAN has this chart detailing and sourcing this (1).
This is the “American Academy of Pediatrics” response (2).
First section “Claim in context”: calls the claim “false”. It then states that vaccines undergo “clinical trials that often use placebos or comparison groups”.
Second section “Key facts”:
The first fact sends us to another link.
The link states in step 4 that the placebos used in vaccine clinical trials are “usually” saline, another “substance” or an “older vaccine”.
The link says “placebos are always part of the process for vaccine clinical trials” The source it uses for this statement is literally the “American Academy of Pediatrics” article that sent us here.
Step 4 ends with “Some get a placebo or an older version of the vaccine”
The 3rd fact states that randomized clinical trials include “placebo or comparison groups” where “the placebo may be saline or another substance” and “the comparator group may
receive the older vaccine”
4th fact: States it is “unethical” to provide “the placebo group no protection” which is assumed to be a vaccine. Note: this –by definition– is not a fact
5th fact: “No child in a vaccine trial goes unprotected without a very clear scientific and ethical reason. That’s why comparison groups may use an existing vaccine”
Last section “Evidence snapshot”: This sends us to a link that does not ever mention placebos, clinical trials, or randomized studies.
Summary:
1- Not a single randomized placebo study was provided or even mentioned.
2- An “older vaccine” another “substance” and “comparator groups” are —by definition— not placebos.
3- If the vax experts truly believe that using a placebo is “unethical” then either the anti-vaxxers are correct or the vax experts are admitting to being unethical.
4- LOL at the first source supporting a claim by sending you to a second source which then supports the very same claim by sending you right back to the first source.
**4 of the 16 vaccines on the childhood schedule have had a randomized placebo study. All showed worse outcomes for the vaccine groups.
-In the HPV clinical trial 2.3% of children in the vaccine and the aluminum adjuvant group developed an autoimmune disease compared to 0% in the placebo. Luckily, this data can be hidden by combining the placebo group with the aluminum group(1). (All but a few vaccines contain aluminum).
-The Covid vaccine clinical trial showed the vaccine group with 4 times more serious adverse events. In this clinical trial Maddie De Garay was paralyzed by the vaccine and this was coded as “anxiety” and “functional abdominal pain”(1).
-In 2012 Cowling et al published a 9 month randomized flu vaccine study. The authors disclosed being paid by multiple vaccine manufacturers. The results were that children receiving the flu vaccine had increased rates of ARI (respiratory illness) and FARI (febrile respiratory illness) due to the vaccine group having a statistical significant 4.4 higher odds of developing non-influenza infections.
-A randomized study published in 2017 by Soren Wengel Morgensen et al found that children receiving the DTP vaccine had a 5 times increased rate of mortality compared to unvaccinated children. The study was funded by a pharmaceutical corporation. Three of the 5 authors worked for a different vaccine manufacturer (4).
mago, 100% agreed. The bane of my radio streaming life is Sports Broadcaster Losers, games on 2 of my 3 favorite College Stations during the sacred “Season”. Favorites are/were KALX Berkeley and KZSU Stanford (both NorCal obviously) and before that, WTUL New Orleans. Only the latter doesn’t broadcast this dreck, Tulane University being a more intellectual fount than a dumb sports competitor.
My distinct impression is that 80% of the nerds who stream sports are scrawny geeks, vicarious worship for and identification with the Jocks. Think the famous and respected Howard Cossell, can anyone imagine that dude competing even at the semi-pro level, even say at a fringe sport like rowing, or curling? But got a whole career out of this, obviously very talented.
When I was about 23, house-painting, mind-crushingly boring, my coworkers tried to recruit me to their rugby team. I was like, No thanks, I value my bones (not broken) & teeth (not knocked out.) Over a decade later the only substantive sport I got involved with was a regular Sunday volleyball group with friends from my summer temp job and some drop-ins in the nice Berkeley park we’d play in. Never cut off from the net, it was always available. It was very informal, we even let my buddy’s 6 year old kid, Jaffee play, though think he may’ve returned 3 balls to our side only, to send over the net. This lasted 6-9 months, made some new friends, then got busy with other stuff.
Since the ancient Greeks formed the idea that “Man is a political animal,” Sports which they were also big on with neighboring cultures, fair enough, stronger people are better sword- & spear-fodder for battles over land and riches. But the sports-obsessed divert their intelligence and interests away from political life and their own material self-interest.
It’s rare to see sports greats who don’t become insane with their celebrity, the dope who dropped his loaded gun in a nightclub, it fired off but didn’t kill anybody, flushed his millions $$ career down the Crapper. Kobe Bryant so “great” such a “humanitarian” until he lures an attractive hotel concierge to his room and rapes her. Never prosecuted by the Injustice System, he’s above that, but big payout to the victim in Civil Court. He still gets billion $$ Nike sponsorships etc., a “hero” to so many.
I’m not saying spectator sports should be abolished, they do have a place in human society, probably produce nearly as much good as bad. But let’s not forget things like Israeli Soccer Thugs, yobs attacking Arab taxi-drivers in the Netherlands, tearing down Palestinian flags outside people’s homes, not observing a Minute of Silence for many Spaniards drowned in a flash flood, instead chanting “Why are there no schools in Gaza!! Because there are no children in Gaza”, and then playing the victim, “Those who fought back against us are anti-Semites, Nazis!!” Uhm, 93% of the World knows who the Nazis are, functionally and openly.
So my complaining about having to jump around between streaming radio choices is a “first-world problem”, I admit. It hasn’t ruined my life, which since retirement is mostly pretty chill. But Sports is something for dumb people to make themselves dumber with, like corporate music is as well. Think of people dumb enough to shell out hundreds or thousands to see a dumb plasticine Barbie Doll whose “brilliance” is entirely manufactured by smart, manipulative producers, like Taylor Swift. And of course the Love of her Life is an athlete, I can’t say he’s dumb I wouldn’t invest time or energy trying to find out.
It has been widely reported that 80% or more of audiences at Taylor Swift concerts “forget the entire thing” immediately after, live intensely in the moment, but no short-term memory of it. But that’s okay, they were likely recording the whole thing on their phones so they can re-live their deep hypnosis, fill the part of their brain emptied out, wiped, artificially with a device that also surveilles them 24/7!!
A win-win for Late Capitalist Degeneracy, generates lots of economic activity, tickets, travel, hotels, and rebuilding after team Victory or Loss Riots, cars and buildings burned down, smashed, etc. AND best of all keeps a meaningful # of people from fighting back against their own oppression and immiseration, reinforces the Social Hierarchy and social, civilizational decay.
Errrr…mmm…well. Your statistics seem to be developed from a study done in Guinea-Bissau in 1981.
The study from 2012 three out of five doctors from a competing company … WTF?
I received the Salk vaccine at the age of 7 in 1955. I’ve never had polio and neither did anybody in my class or in my school. I obviously didn’t die from the vaccine or any of the other shots I’ve had.
Based on my very anecdotal evidence, vaccines on the whole are safe and effective.
I would expect to find the mortality rate in Guinea-Bissau from 45 years ago to reflect quite a bit of an effect reflecting political and socio-economic factors over time.
Perhaps a broader study is called for? Jes’ sayin’.
We would think that before injecting every child with a vaccine —let alone 16— it would call for at least one causative study showing it is beneficial. But we live in a world where the only randomized studies on the topic show vaccines are harmful.
Don’t worry though injecting infants and kids 70+ times with heavy metal based vaccines cannot possibly be responsible for the ever increasing rates of autoimmune diseases, neurological diseases and chronic illnesses.
Just ignore that in the vaccine package inserts produced by the vaccine manufacturers, and approved by the FDA, and provided with every vaccine administered lists potential side effects such as coma, arthritis, autoimmune diseases of the nervous system, organs, skin, heart, bones, and brain, loss of consciousness, death, brain damage, seizures, inflammation of blood vessels, muscles, brain, spinal cord, , paralysis, stroke, and so on.
“How Green Naked Gyms Build Real Athletes While Modern Gyms Build Fake Strength”
And immediately my BS detectors went off.
I don’t know why in this age there’s this tendency to romanticize the past, when all the data we have would indicate that we moderns (in most places of the world) live longer and are healthier than at any time in human history. My former college landlady was a physical anthropology grad student and she was well aware of the pathologies you see in human skeletal remains.
The chief argument made by this Youtube seemed to be “the statues of their athletes were so muscular and beautiful” to which I say “yeah, because they are ideal bodies, not real ones.” The Greek sculptor Polyclitus even published a treatise on the ideal body proportions of a male nude which should be followed for public statues! Ditto with those sculptures of Roman emperors, does anyone really think that they were buff too? There is a long history of painters and sculptors making their subject look more handsome or beautiful than they ever were in real life; artistic depictions are often not reliable guides.
And about moderns ‘building fake strength’ — the history of athletic records sure wouldn’t indicate that. I was looking up marathon records; the current record holder has run 26.2 miles in 1:59:30, the first sub-two hour finish just this year. But when modern marathons were started, the first two winners won with times of 3:11:30 and 3:18:00—but these were shorter races, 24.85 miles instead of the current distance of 26.2 miles. My best marathon time was 3:24:07 over the longer current distance (and I stopped twice to use port-a-johns during the race).
Normalizing for the distance, I WOULD HAVE BEEN AN ‘ELITE’ RUNNER BACK THEN. I would have either won the race outright or would have been a few minutes behind the winner. And these were world championship times!
We’ve seen the same phenonmena in almost every sport during our lifetimes. I recall as a kid reading a Sports Illustrated Article back in 1971, written by a member of the NFL 1951 champion Los Angeles Rams. He compared his championship team to the current team, the 1971 Dallas Cowboys, position-by-position.
His analysis? “We had a great team for our era, but the Cowboys would have destroyed us by at least five touchdowns”. HoF defensive tackle Bob Lilly (6-5, 265) would have been blocked by a 215-lb guard; and that was similarly the case up and down both offensive and defensive lines. No one in the Rams’ secondary could run a 100-year dash in faster than 10.6 seconds, while Dallas’s receiving corps had Bob Hayes (9.1 second 100-yard dash time). “We couldn’t have blocked them, we couldn’t have covered them, it would have been a massacre Our QB (Norm Van Brocklin) wouldn’t have had time to throw while they would have scored on us at will”. And that’s just how the sport evolved in just 20 years!
This was a combination of funny and painful to watch—especially the ‘romance meeting’ setup where eligible women introduce themselves to a small crowd of eligible men. At the end of the introductions, the men were to give the woman who had elicited their interest an orange.
Then the shoe changed feet; the men faced backwards while the women were asked “What man are you interested in?” Nobody said, much, and then one of the women laughed and broke out “Bring in the next bunch!” There are about 3 eligible men for every 1 woman in these areas, so it’s the women who have the choosing power.
(Also, marrying has gotten really expensive–about $170,000 one person priced it thusly. Having a condo and a car seems to be a necessity even to get any attention).
US holidays mean squat to me, although they kinda sorta did once upon a time when I was in the restaurant world. Like this Memorial Day weekend when the clueless who know jack go out to eat. Good god.
Pretty sure I relayed this anecdote once before, but here goes again, because memories are short and who cares given distractions and the prevalent insanity.
So the house was packed, every table filled, cooking for around 120 peeps, just me and my trusty sous chef who was also a student of mine, but that’s an aside. We’re busting it out like monkeys with our tails on fire and a waitress who’s a friend, brings back a sirloin steak (Americans love their Memorial Day steaks) and says the customer says her steak is overcooked. She wanted it medium rare. I’m like ok. I press my thumb on it (that’s one way chefs judge the temperature) and I know it’s medium rare. Plus I did a visual. Jesus. Put it aside and start cooking another one in the middle of busting out fifteen other orders. Send it out again and again it comes back deemed overcooked. I’m losing patience, but am an accommodating guy, so cook a third. Steaks cost mucho dinero btw. That third steak comes back, and I lose my shit. Throw off my apron, grab the plate and storm into the packed dining room with a steak knife. Slam the plate down in front of the woman, cut the steak and say that’s fucking medium rare. Total silence and shock. I storm back to the kitchen satisfied with my performance.
I’ve got lotsa restaurant war stories, should maybe write a book, but I won’t.
Anyway, my intention was to write about Bolton and Graham and other loud talking war hawk pussies, but got distracted thinking about this holiday weekend, and that’s all she wrote.
Buen provecho.
So today is the actual holiday, anniversary of the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago where peaceful union marchers who’d been picnicking with wives and children were attacked by police and factory goons, beaten with truncheons and steel bars and fired upon with live ammunition. At least ten killed and a hundred injured with everyone traumatized. This is the history omitted from text books.
Ain’t that America for you and me, land of the free and home of the brave.
Livin in the USA
Gimme a cheeseburger, medium rare with a side of freedumb fries and I’ll be alright.
Salud!
mago
Yeah well, I have a few things to say about a few things sports fans, but so does everyone else, so what the hell. It’s like being at a party where everybody’s talking above everybody else while the music’s cranked to maximum and nobody knows what they’re saying and nobody’s listening anyway so why say a good goddamn thing? That’s all I’ve got to say for now except to mention the world’s on fire and the house is burning down. Cue David Byrne and the Talking Heads. Sheesh
.
Oakchair
Anti-vaxxers regularly point out that no vaccine on the CDC childhood schedule has had a randomized placebo study** showing it is safe.
ICAN has this chart detailing and sourcing this (1).
This is the “American Academy of Pediatrics” response (2).
First section “Claim in context”: calls the claim “false”. It then states that vaccines undergo “clinical trials that often use placebos or comparison groups”.
Second section “Key facts”:
The first fact sends us to another link.
The link states in step 4 that the placebos used in vaccine clinical trials are “usually” saline, another “substance” or an “older vaccine”.
The link says “placebos are always part of the process for vaccine clinical trials” The source it uses for this statement is literally the “American Academy of Pediatrics” article that sent us here.
Step 4 ends with “Some get a placebo or an older version of the vaccine”
The 3rd fact states that randomized clinical trials include “placebo or comparison groups” where “the placebo may be saline or another substance” and “the comparator group may
receive the older vaccine”
4th fact: States it is “unethical” to provide “the placebo group no protection” which is assumed to be a vaccine. Note: this –by definition– is not a fact
5th fact: “No child in a vaccine trial goes unprotected without a very clear scientific and ethical reason. That’s why comparison groups may use an existing vaccine”
Last section “Evidence snapshot”: This sends us to a link that does not ever mention placebos, clinical trials, or randomized studies.
Summary:
1- Not a single randomized placebo study was provided or even mentioned.
2- An “older vaccine” another “substance” and “comparator groups” are —by definition— not placebos.
3- If the vax experts truly believe that using a placebo is “unethical” then either the anti-vaxxers are correct or the vax experts are admitting to being unethical.
4- LOL at the first source supporting a claim by sending you to a second source which then supports the very same claim by sending you right back to the first source.
**4 of the 16 vaccines on the childhood schedule have had a randomized placebo study. All showed worse outcomes for the vaccine groups.
-In the HPV clinical trial 2.3% of children in the vaccine and the aluminum adjuvant group developed an autoimmune disease compared to 0% in the placebo. Luckily, this data can be hidden by combining the placebo group with the aluminum group(1). (All but a few vaccines contain aluminum).
-The Covid vaccine clinical trial showed the vaccine group with 4 times more serious adverse events. In this clinical trial Maddie De Garay was paralyzed by the vaccine and this was coded as “anxiety” and “functional abdominal pain”(1).
-In 2012 Cowling et al published a 9 month randomized flu vaccine study. The authors disclosed being paid by multiple vaccine manufacturers. The results were that children receiving the flu vaccine had increased rates of ARI (respiratory illness) and FARI (febrile respiratory illness) due to the vaccine group having a statistical significant 4.4 higher odds of developing non-influenza infections.
-A randomized study published in 2017 by Soren Wengel Morgensen et al found that children receiving the DTP vaccine had a 5 times increased rate of mortality compared to unvaccinated children. The study was funded by a pharmaceutical corporation. Three of the 5 authors worked for a different vaccine manufacturer (4).
(1) https://icandecide.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/no-placebo-101823.pdf
(2) https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/fact-checked/fact-checked-childhood-vaccines-are-carefully-studiedincluding-with-placebosto-ensure-theyre-safe-and-effective/
(3) https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/54/12/1778/455098
(4) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28188123/
Mark Level
mago, 100% agreed. The bane of my radio streaming life is Sports Broadcaster Losers, games on 2 of my 3 favorite College Stations during the sacred “Season”. Favorites are/were KALX Berkeley and KZSU Stanford (both NorCal obviously) and before that, WTUL New Orleans. Only the latter doesn’t broadcast this dreck, Tulane University being a more intellectual fount than a dumb sports competitor.
My distinct impression is that 80% of the nerds who stream sports are scrawny geeks, vicarious worship for and identification with the Jocks. Think the famous and respected Howard Cossell, can anyone imagine that dude competing even at the semi-pro level, even say at a fringe sport like rowing, or curling? But got a whole career out of this, obviously very talented.
When I was about 23, house-painting, mind-crushingly boring, my coworkers tried to recruit me to their rugby team. I was like, No thanks, I value my bones (not broken) & teeth (not knocked out.) Over a decade later the only substantive sport I got involved with was a regular Sunday volleyball group with friends from my summer temp job and some drop-ins in the nice Berkeley park we’d play in. Never cut off from the net, it was always available. It was very informal, we even let my buddy’s 6 year old kid, Jaffee play, though think he may’ve returned 3 balls to our side only, to send over the net. This lasted 6-9 months, made some new friends, then got busy with other stuff.
Since the ancient Greeks formed the idea that “Man is a political animal,” Sports which they were also big on with neighboring cultures, fair enough, stronger people are better sword- & spear-fodder for battles over land and riches. But the sports-obsessed divert their intelligence and interests away from political life and their own material self-interest.
It’s rare to see sports greats who don’t become insane with their celebrity, the dope who dropped his loaded gun in a nightclub, it fired off but didn’t kill anybody, flushed his millions $$ career down the Crapper. Kobe Bryant so “great” such a “humanitarian” until he lures an attractive hotel concierge to his room and rapes her. Never prosecuted by the Injustice System, he’s above that, but big payout to the victim in Civil Court. He still gets billion $$ Nike sponsorships etc., a “hero” to so many.
I’m not saying spectator sports should be abolished, they do have a place in human society, probably produce nearly as much good as bad. But let’s not forget things like Israeli Soccer Thugs, yobs attacking Arab taxi-drivers in the Netherlands, tearing down Palestinian flags outside people’s homes, not observing a Minute of Silence for many Spaniards drowned in a flash flood, instead chanting “Why are there no schools in Gaza!! Because there are no children in Gaza”, and then playing the victim, “Those who fought back against us are anti-Semites, Nazis!!” Uhm, 93% of the World knows who the Nazis are, functionally and openly.
So my complaining about having to jump around between streaming radio choices is a “first-world problem”, I admit. It hasn’t ruined my life, which since retirement is mostly pretty chill. But Sports is something for dumb people to make themselves dumber with, like corporate music is as well. Think of people dumb enough to shell out hundreds or thousands to see a dumb plasticine Barbie Doll whose “brilliance” is entirely manufactured by smart, manipulative producers, like Taylor Swift. And of course the Love of her Life is an athlete, I can’t say he’s dumb I wouldn’t invest time or energy trying to find out.
It has been widely reported that 80% or more of audiences at Taylor Swift concerts “forget the entire thing” immediately after, live intensely in the moment, but no short-term memory of it. But that’s okay, they were likely recording the whole thing on their phones so they can re-live their deep hypnosis, fill the part of their brain emptied out, wiped, artificially with a device that also surveilles them 24/7!!
A win-win for Late Capitalist Degeneracy, generates lots of economic activity, tickets, travel, hotels, and rebuilding after team Victory or Loss Riots, cars and buildings burned down, smashed, etc. AND best of all keeps a meaningful # of people from fighting back against their own oppression and immiseration, reinforces the Social Hierarchy and social, civilizational decay.
Geoffrey Dewan
Errrr…mmm…well. Your statistics seem to be developed from a study done in Guinea-Bissau in 1981.
The study from 2012 three out of five doctors from a competing company … WTF?
I received the Salk vaccine at the age of 7 in 1955. I’ve never had polio and neither did anybody in my class or in my school. I obviously didn’t die from the vaccine or any of the other shots I’ve had.
Based on my very anecdotal evidence, vaccines on the whole are safe and effective.
I would expect to find the mortality rate in Guinea-Bissau from 45 years ago to reflect quite a bit of an effect reflecting political and socio-economic factors over time.
Perhaps a broader study is called for? Jes’ sayin’.
Oakchair
Geoffrey Dewan
We would think that before injecting every child with a vaccine —let alone 16— it would call for at least one causative study showing it is beneficial. But we live in a world where the only randomized studies on the topic show vaccines are harmful.
Don’t worry though injecting infants and kids 70+ times with heavy metal based vaccines cannot possibly be responsible for the ever increasing rates of autoimmune diseases, neurological diseases and chronic illnesses.
Just ignore that in the vaccine package inserts produced by the vaccine manufacturers, and approved by the FDA, and provided with every vaccine administered lists potential side effects such as coma, arthritis, autoimmune diseases of the nervous system, organs, skin, heart, bones, and brain, loss of consciousness, death, brain damage, seizures, inflammation of blood vessels, muscles, brain, spinal cord, , paralysis, stroke, and so on.
StewartM
Geoffrey Dewan
On a Youtube Channel, I ran across this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVDY3c_ul60&t=3s
“How Green Naked Gyms Build Real Athletes While Modern Gyms Build Fake Strength”
And immediately my BS detectors went off.
I don’t know why in this age there’s this tendency to romanticize the past, when all the data we have would indicate that we moderns (in most places of the world) live longer and are healthier than at any time in human history. My former college landlady was a physical anthropology grad student and she was well aware of the pathologies you see in human skeletal remains.
The chief argument made by this Youtube seemed to be “the statues of their athletes were so muscular and beautiful” to which I say “yeah, because they are ideal bodies, not real ones.” The Greek sculptor Polyclitus even published a treatise on the ideal body proportions of a male nude which should be followed for public statues! Ditto with those sculptures of Roman emperors, does anyone really think that they were buff too? There is a long history of painters and sculptors making their subject look more handsome or beautiful than they ever were in real life; artistic depictions are often not reliable guides.
And about moderns ‘building fake strength’ — the history of athletic records sure wouldn’t indicate that. I was looking up marathon records; the current record holder has run 26.2 miles in 1:59:30, the first sub-two hour finish just this year. But when modern marathons were started, the first two winners won with times of 3:11:30 and 3:18:00—but these were shorter races, 24.85 miles instead of the current distance of 26.2 miles. My best marathon time was 3:24:07 over the longer current distance (and I stopped twice to use port-a-johns during the race).
Normalizing for the distance, I WOULD HAVE BEEN AN ‘ELITE’ RUNNER BACK THEN. I would have either won the race outright or would have been a few minutes behind the winner. And these were world championship times!
We’ve seen the same phenonmena in almost every sport during our lifetimes. I recall as a kid reading a Sports Illustrated Article back in 1971, written by a member of the NFL 1951 champion Los Angeles Rams. He compared his championship team to the current team, the 1971 Dallas Cowboys, position-by-position.
His analysis? “We had a great team for our era, but the Cowboys would have destroyed us by at least five touchdowns”. HoF defensive tackle Bob Lilly (6-5, 265) would have been blocked by a 215-lb guard; and that was similarly the case up and down both offensive and defensive lines. No one in the Rams’ secondary could run a 100-year dash in faster than 10.6 seconds, while Dallas’s receiving corps had Bob Hayes (9.1 second 100-yard dash time). “We couldn’t have blocked them, we couldn’t have covered them, it would have been a massacre Our QB (Norm Van Brocklin) wouldn’t have had time to throw while they would have scored on us at will”. And that’s just how the sport evolved in just 20 years!
StewartM
The Unmarriageable Men: Woes in China’s Farming Villages – Asia Insight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42js6YULg5A
This was a combination of funny and painful to watch—especially the ‘romance meeting’ setup where eligible women introduce themselves to a small crowd of eligible men. At the end of the introductions, the men were to give the woman who had elicited their interest an orange.
Then the shoe changed feet; the men faced backwards while the women were asked “What man are you interested in?” Nobody said, much, and then one of the women laughed and broke out “Bring in the next bunch!” There are about 3 eligible men for every 1 woman in these areas, so it’s the women who have the choosing power.
(Also, marrying has gotten really expensive–about $170,000 one person priced it thusly. Having a condo and a car seems to be a necessity even to get any attention).
mago
US holidays mean squat to me, although they kinda sorta did once upon a time when I was in the restaurant world. Like this Memorial Day weekend when the clueless who know jack go out to eat. Good god.
Pretty sure I relayed this anecdote once before, but here goes again, because memories are short and who cares given distractions and the prevalent insanity.
So the house was packed, every table filled, cooking for around 120 peeps, just me and my trusty sous chef who was also a student of mine, but that’s an aside. We’re busting it out like monkeys with our tails on fire and a waitress who’s a friend, brings back a sirloin steak (Americans love their Memorial Day steaks) and says the customer says her steak is overcooked. She wanted it medium rare. I’m like ok. I press my thumb on it (that’s one way chefs judge the temperature) and I know it’s medium rare. Plus I did a visual. Jesus. Put it aside and start cooking another one in the middle of busting out fifteen other orders. Send it out again and again it comes back deemed overcooked. I’m losing patience, but am an accommodating guy, so cook a third. Steaks cost mucho dinero btw. That third steak comes back, and I lose my shit. Throw off my apron, grab the plate and storm into the packed dining room with a steak knife. Slam the plate down in front of the woman, cut the steak and say that’s fucking medium rare. Total silence and shock. I storm back to the kitchen satisfied with my performance.
I’ve got lotsa restaurant war stories, should maybe write a book, but I won’t.
Anyway, my intention was to write about Bolton and Graham and other loud talking war hawk pussies, but got distracted thinking about this holiday weekend, and that’s all she wrote.
Buen provecho.
mago
So today is the actual holiday, anniversary of the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago where peaceful union marchers who’d been picnicking with wives and children were attacked by police and factory goons, beaten with truncheons and steel bars and fired upon with live ammunition. At least ten killed and a hundred injured with everyone traumatized. This is the history omitted from text books.
Ain’t that America for you and me, land of the free and home of the brave.
Livin in the USA
Gimme a cheeseburger, medium rare with a side of freedumb fries and I’ll be alright.
Salud!