The Golden Calf Still Stands

 

I'd argue that it has become even worse now. At least, at the time when this opera was composed many folks were still genuinely poor and there was little if any done to provide some sort of safety net so they tried to gather wealth as a form of insurance against disease and old age.

While nowadays when hardly anyone in the West goes without, even churches don't preach against consumerism and often encourage abandoning babies in the care of others as long as it's "to have a nice semi-detached" in the suburbs, away from these icky sinful city inhabitants (and by the way, here in Western Europe cities are perfectly safe, with some exceptions) or to be able to afford multiple vacations...

P.S. If the subtitles don't appear automatically, just click on cc

Energy Tax

Some good news for a change.Yesterday I got an email from our energy company informing us that the government is temporarily lowering the taxes from 21% to 9%, to offset the rising prices. I hope they'll do something about high benzine prices next!

Summer Solstice

Today is the longest day of the year. When I went to bed at 11.30 p.m. yesterday, the sky was still light grey. It's never really dark around here in June, and at 4 a.m. it's getting light again. The nights are very short, like 4-5 hours total, but it will soon be over.

We had a Viking market last week, to celebrate Midsummer. It wasn't very big, but still fun. Congratulations on the 1st day of summer!

Happy Father's Day!

 

Father's Day Prayer

Let us praise those fathers who have striven to balance the demands of work, marriage, and children with an honest awareness of both joy and sacrifice. Let us praise those fathers who, lacking a good model for a father, have worked to become a good father.

Let us praise those fathers who by their own account were not always there for their children, but who continue to offer those children, now grown, their love and support. Let us pray for those fathers who have been wounded by the neglect and hostility of their children.

Let us praise those fathers who, despite divorce, have remained in their children's lives. Let us praise those fathers whose children are adopted, and whose love and support has offered healing.

Let us praise those fathers who, as stepfathers, freely choose the obligation of fatherhood and earned their step children's love and respect. Let us praise those fathers who have lost a child to death, and continue to hold the child in their heart.

Let us praise those men who have no children, but cherish the next generation as if they were their own.

Let us praise those men who have "fathered" us in their role as mentors and guides.

Let us praise those men who are about to become fathers; may they openly delight in their children.

And let us praise those fathers who have died, but live on in our memory and whose love continues to nurture us.

~ Kirk Loadman

Courtesy of this website

 

Deep Down The Rabbit Hole

 I'm really tired of those on the Right who keep pushing conspiracy theories. It doesn't help to improve society, it doesn't "own the libs" and it just makes our side look stupid. Yes, the MSM often lie and use propaganda and the powers that be do the same, but they are hardly omnipotent like some folks seem to believe. In, fact, they are getting increasingly incompetent due to the positive discrimination. 

Whenever something bad happens, a big segment of the Right will tell you that it's just "fake news" or "crisis actors" or a psy-op of some sort. It became especially bad with the coronavirus epidemic. Did the governments make mistakes and use it for their own nefarious ends, like limiting rights and freedoms? They sure did. But the disease itself exists. 

We all had it in March and no, it's not the same as flu or common cold, though similar in many ways. I've known people, my personal friends who wouldn't lie to me, getting pretty sick with it. I've also heard about some death cases. Granted, those were mostly elderly people with comorbidities, but it wasn't fake, neither do I believe that it was "planned".

Also, many who call themselves conservatives are obsessing about small details while missing the bigger picture. Take Covid, again. While I disliked masks just as much as anyone, there were a minor inconvenience compared to the threat of losing your job for not being vaxxed, and yet there were many more complaints about the former than about the latter.

Now we have monkeypox. According to some not-very-bright individuals, it's again a conspiracy by Western governments, presumably to make g**s look bad? Does it even make sense to you? Instead of using the situation to discourage certain lifestyles, conservatives once again choose to go deep down the rabbit hole of denying the obvious reality and promoting paranoia instead.

Infectious diseases totally don't exist any more, all these historical accounts of people dying are obviously fake, history is fake, too, etc etc.

Last year we had floods in Europe. I was close to one of the flooded towns and went there and took pictures and yet, some expressed unbelief about it. Just because the MSM used it to promote global climate change narrative in some places, doesn't mean it didn't happen! This year we visited another village that had been flooded, in Germany, guess what, its centre is still totally destroyed. But, it was absolutely a psy-op...Well, I guess it's easy to fall for these stories when you live in the middle of nowhere.

Several years ago there were several terror attacks in France and Belgium, and again, we were told that it was all "crisis actors", "hired by the gov-t", the very same government which promotes multiculturalism. Well, someone I know had family living in one of the affected areas, who witnessed the shootout between the police and the terrorists. They got bullet holes in one of their walls. Folks just don't realise how interconnected and close by everything is here in the Old World.

In my opinion, it's just the cope mechanism for those who can't accept the reality that the society is changing, and not in a good way. Just pretend that bad things aren't really happening.

That's why the Right keeps losing, they are always reactive, not pro-active and then reactive in the worst possible ways. Cows died somewhere in the desert. The MSM say it's due to climate change, so we'll react and deny they died from heat, they must have been poisoned by the special agents, or killed by 5G or whatever, or may be, didn't even die at all, the evidence was photo-shopped. Because natural disasters and (probably) neglect never ever happen, either.

Well, whatever keeps one happy, I guess, but personally I think that denying the reality is hardly helpful.

The Last Of The Vacation Pictures

 For now:)

 

Were Hippies Really That Bad?

From a discussion on Gab about why older generations weren't fat:

Rice and veggies was standard fare in every hippy abode. Herbal tea. Fruit for desert, if the trees were producing. Alcohol was not that socially acceptable. And a lot of us were luddites who walked a lot because we didn't own cars. Most people I knew who were mobile had vans that they slept in. We all did yoga, which we learned from each other. We all breastfed our babies. We didn't use disposable diapers, or disposable anything, for that matter. People my age who lived the "subculture" were by no means the majority of Boomers, but the healthy back-to-the-land lifestyle seeped into the mainstream culture eventually.

SuzettaAnne@SuzettaAnne

·

·48m

@Wilderlurker @josefbosch I lived in a commune for a couple of months. Not what people think. We all worked, shared responsibility and grew/farmed as much of our food as possible. Spent more time outside and moving around doing things. Had a lot less stuff, just what you needed. It wasn’t like some think, a life filled with drugs alcohol and sex. Quiet the opposite, never drugs or alcohol or sex and the focus was always healthy living physically and mentally.

Wilderlurker@Wilderlurker

·37m

@SuzettaAnne @josefbosch Yes, I agree. It was going on all over the place. Here in BC there was a huge family spread out over the islands that all knew each other, and word somehow got out about craft fairs where most of us generated enough money to carry on. By the way, we made our own music, too. "Canned music" was regarded as inferior to the music we made ourselves. I always tell everybody that I missed the "seventies", the music, the clothes styles, the movies... I was busy with raising three babies the old fashioned way. We were homegrown and happy with simple living and high thinking.

 

Sounds quite wholesome to me.

BTW, once again it proves that there is no "secret ingredient" in modern food which makes you fat. They avoided simple carbs, were physically active and their diets were (oh horror!) chiefly plant-based (rice, veggies and fruit). I keep wondering if their movement was co-opted because powers that be saw their rejection of consumerism as a threat...

Truth Stranger Than Fiction

You've probably heard by now about 2 Britons sentenced to death which, interestingly enough is very much like the situation in one of my books featured on this blog, which describes a proxy war by a fictional country in a "galaxy far far away" that bears a resemblance to what UK once used to be long ago (the country, not the galaxy:).

Strange how these things turn out in the real world sometimes, isn't it? in any case, it proves that my book is still relevant and up-to-date and I highly recommend it!

For the new readers, here is a review:

The Long Way Home

 Also available on Amazon:

The Long Way Home

Speaking Of Incels

Calling someone an incel to insult him is so typically American, I have never seen it used as a slur in my own country, probably because we don't judge a man's worth by his capability of getting laid. Of course, with pr*stitution legalised, every man can technically get laid whenever he wishes to, and yet, most men without a girlfriend don't spend all of their free time running after wh*res as they prefer more meaningful relationships.

One thing I don't get is why so many American men are so fearful of mean words some witch is throwing at them in an online discussion. They fall all over themselves trying to prove that they aren't, in fact, incels and are happily married or have a girlfriend or whatever to some internet harpy.

 She isn't trying to have an intellectual discussion with you any more than a man who calls a woman a sl*t is trying to make a compliment. She is out there trying to shame you back into deference whenever you try to criticise female behaviour which is very typical of internet feminists.

Honestly, guys, your women are often so annoying because you keep indulging them, not even the real ones in your life, but some stranger on the web. I guess this is an example of toxic chivalry a certain blogger kept talking about...Real chivalry should be reserved for ladies only.