No Miss Piggies! Unattractive!

Let’s take a look at Mr. No Unattractive Fatties:

Via Twitter.

We should all know that looks aren’t all that, and most people aren’t obscenely rich and have the option to completely remold their faces and figures, and to attempt to offput aging through various methods, some very questionable, like that of vampire wannabe Thiel. Apparently, President Pinchpork seems to think he’s devastatingly attractive as he is. Whether or not a person is intellectually engaging, has a sense a humour, is kind, and so on, those things matter. Looks? Not so much. Not that eye candy isn’t nice, what’s not to enjoy? There are plenty of people who make a living being eye candy, for everyone’s enjoyment. If that’s not your job though, then looks should not have jack shit to do with anything, while your actual abilities to do your job competently, that should matter.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES (CBSLA.com) — Trump’s exclusive Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles perched in picturesque Rancho Palos Verdes is now at the center of bias accusations. In legal documents first published by the LA Times, former staffers here unleashed a slew of ugly allegations against Trump in a lawsuit that has since been settled.

Among the accusations: Trump fat shamed employees at the golf club’s restaurant and demanded they be given the boot because of their weight.

A former catering director said this about the billionaire real estate mogul:

“I had witnessed Donald Trump tell managers many times while he was visiting the club that restaurant hostesses were not ‘pretty enough’ and that they should be fired and be replaced with more attractive women.’

Another staffer also said she was told to fire someone because they were too heavy:

“Mr. Stellio told me that I should do this because Mr. Trump doesn’t like fat people and that he would not like seeing (her) when he was on the premises.”

Staffers also reported fearing Trump’s wrath, so they replaced middle-aged hostesses at the restaurant with younger, more attractive women when Trump was visiting.

I wonder, given President Pinchpork’s hatred of fat, what the hell he sees when he looks in the mirror.

Trump’s organization called the claims totally bogus in the following statement:

“The allegations in the lawsuit were meritless. We do not engage in discrimination of any kind. The statements made by a group of former disgruntled employees are far from an accurate portrayal of what it is like to work at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles.”

Let’s go back to the recent past for a moment:

Alicia Machado, who won the Miss Universe pageant in 1996, was photographed in May of this year in Los Angeles. Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times.

Alicia Machado, who won the Miss Universe pageant in 1996, was photographed in May of this year in Los Angeles. Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times.

This is the woman Trump called “Miss Piggy” “Miss Housekeeping” and “Miss Eating Machine”.  Wanting women to be walking skeletons is in no way reasonable, especially when those making such demands tend to be more than a bit well padded. It’s not as though President Pinchpork is demanding all the men who work for him be model level attractive and to be of sufficient thinness. So as far as the statement goes, I’ll issue an unequivocal bullshit. Pinchpork is a walking, talking horror show when it comes to womens’ bodies and clothing choices, and it’s not as though girls don’t have enough shit hurled at them from day one on that level. Men don’t need this sort of crap either, nor do they need anyone encouraging them to be judgmental assholes of shallowness. All my hopes to those suing.

Full story here.

Scent of Geranium.

Scent of Geranium from Naghmeh Farzaneh on Vimeo.

Absolutely wonderful.

Immigration is a new chapter in one’s life, a chapter with unexpected events that can take one’s life down paths different from the one imagined. This film is an autobiographical account of the director’s experience with immigration.

‘Scent of Geranium’ is this week’s Staff Pick Premiere! Read more about it here: vimeo.com/blog/post/staff-pick-premiere-scent-of-geranium

Fetuses for Ba’al!

The stele of Baal with Thunderbolt found in the ruins of Ugarit.

Mark “can’t be too lurid” Taylor, self-styled prophet, is at it again. How does this man manage to do anything like eat? He never shuts up. This time, it’s Baal (Ba’al). Well, Ba’al and people who believe in bodily autonomy and reproductive choice. On to the lurid idiocy!

After repeating his prophecy that God is going to supernaturally remove five Supreme Court justices so that President Trump can replace them and overturn Roe v. Wade, Taylor warned viewers not to be fooled by those who claim they support a woman’s right to choose.

“People have to realize the strongman over America is Baal,” he said. “Baal is a very violent entity, he is the second in Satan’s triune, he is the second in command, he is the counterfeit Christ. It feeds off the blood of the innocent, which is the aborted babies. This is why Baal is the strongman, because the aborted babies are the food source that is empowering Baal.”

Sigh. What a fucktonne of nonsense. In the first place, Ba’al is a placeholder, much like god, in this case, meaning Lord. The actual god was Hadad, a storm and weather god. Things changed over the years, and Ba’al became the name rather than the epithet. Ba’al is mentioned in the bible, more than once, as a rival god to young Yahweh/Jehovah. Ba’al’s worshipers got right up Jehovah’s nose, and he called for them all to be slaughtered, more than once. Ba’al never had anything to do with Lucifer, or his triune, whatever that might comprise. Lucifer wasn’t the convenient fall guy of Ba’al. Different gods, Mr. Taylor. Try reading something, like, oh, the bible. Now, Ba’al is a fertility god, with a particular enmity toward snakes, so I think if he was going to feast on blood, it would most likely be snakes or the local river god. Ba’al was also the patron of sailors and sea going merchants. Not such a bad god. He certainly didn’t hate his worshipers and everyone else like Jehovah. Oh yes, Ba’al’s conflict with Yammu is now generally regarded as the prototype of the vision recorded in the 7th chapter of the Biblical Book of Daniel. Yet another god the bible writers happily thieved.

I’m pretty sure that medical waste incinerators are not made in the form of Ba’al, with all medical personnel and people who are pro-choice suddenly Ba’al worshipers.

Taylor said that “if you’re listening to these politicians and they’re telling you, ‘Oh, we’re pro-choice, it’s all about a woman’s right to choose, it’s all about women’s health,’ you’re being duped, you’re being lied to.”

“They don’t care anything about you,” he said. “All they want from you, as a woman, is to be a breeder for that food source, for you to abort that baby to feed their god called Baal. They don’t care anything about your right to choose, they don’t care anything about your health, all they want is that baby aborted as a sacrifice because every time you abort a baby, it’s a sacrifice to their god called Baal.”

Oh. Apparently, Mr. Taylor does think we’re all worshipers of Ba’al. Well, there are worse gods, to be sure. Topping the list would be that psychopathic monster Mr. Taylor worships, who has a most serious problem with women, along with his followers. Terminating a pregnancy is about not breeding, Mr. Taylor. You want women to be forced to breed and birth, with nary a thought for any woman’s health or welfare, and we all know you couldn’t give a shit about the children, either.

Via RWW.

Freezing The Tiny Tyrant’s Words.

John Roach, Aaron Moore, Brian Chase, Victoria Keddie, Alexander Rosenberg, Ben Wright, “Frozen Words Hot Air” (2017) (courtesy the artists).

Many of us probably feel the urge, at least once each day, to smash the hateful things President Trump has said (or tweeted). On Friday, September 8, the artists John Roach, Aaron Moore, Brian Chase, Victoria Keddie, Alexander Rosenberg, and Ben Wright will use those overblown and grammatically incoherent groups of words as the basis for a multidisciplinary, poetic, satiric performance at UrbanGlass titled “Frozen Words Hot Air.” Handpainted glass objects emblazoned with words from Trump’s speeches will be blown live by Wright and Liesl Schubel, then played by Chase and Moore, while audio snippets of those same speeches are remixed and manipulated by Keddie.

John Roach, Aaron Moore, Brian Chase, Victoria Keddie, Alexander Rosenberg, Ben Wright, Frozen Words newspaper (2017) (courtesy the artists).

Inspired by the 16th-century French satirist François Rabelais’s The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel (ca 1532–64), the performance references a particular scene from that tome. In it, the heroic giant Pantagruel crosses a sea of thawing ice that, as it melts, releases the ghostly sounds of a gruesome battle that took place there during the winter. On Friday, all the hot air blown by President Trump will be symbolically frozen, manipulated, and smashed. An accompanying artists’ newspaper to be distributed at the performance, Frozen Words, will gather the jumbled and rearranged speeches for posterity.

When: Friday, September 8, 7–8pm
Where:UrbanGlass (647 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn)

This sounds like a fabulous show, it’s certainly a well-inspired one, and I’d love to see this in person. If you have the opportunity, take it! Via Hyperallergic.

The quest for medievalism in ‘The Witcher 3’.

I realize that not everyone finds Medievalism to be as fascinating as I do, but this is really, um, fascinating!

Introduction: In the fictive landscape of the Northern Kingdoms, the character Geralt of Rivia rides on his chestnut mare clad in chainmail armour whilst sporting two-handed swords comparable to a zweihander or longsword of the late 15th century. As I encounter my second village through the third-person view of my protagonist, a short observation leaves me with the impression of a plausible society taken from the Middle Ages. Such a historically detailed environment within a fantasy game of the 21st century should be no surprise to the avid gamer, however, it raised the question of the representation of history within computer games.

[…]

This study seeks to investigate the medieval thematic in computer gaming and pursue what historical elements that persist through this relatively new medium. More distinctly, the many missions and quests experienced in the ‘The Witcher 3’ is the main object of study as they work in concert, providing both enhanced purpose for the player as well as constricting the freedom given in the open world of the Northern Kingdoms. Quests – a task or mission given by non-playable characters (NPCs) or during certain interaction with objects in the game – present a variety of impressions through participatory segments that the player encounters in the game. It is the potent meaning of said quests that this study seek to delve into in order to find, not only the historical features, but also the fascination that seems to propagate itself in games.

You can read Christer Lidén’s full thesis here. (.pdf)

Via Medievalists.net.

Word Wednesday.

Zeugma

Noun.

The use of a word to modify or govern two or more words usually in such a manner that it applies to each in a different sense or makes sense with only one (as in “opened the door and her heart to the homeless boy”).

[Origin: Middle English zeuma, from Medieval Latin, from Latin zeugma, from Greek, literally, joining, from zeugnynai to join; akin to Latin jungere to join.]

(15th Century)

“Elinor smiled. ‘Ooh, extended metaphors.’ ‘It’ll be zeugma next.’ ‘I love it when you talk dirty to me.’ – Splinter the Silence, Val McDermid.