Alas, Poor ONT. I Knew Him, Horatio

Hello Horde! Welcome to Thursday night. Little light on content tonight, I've been on vacation and just got back this afternoon. Yesterday I played a round of golf. It went well, considering I haven't played yet this year. I hit the first seven fairways, which means I didn't even lose a ball until I put one in the drink on 8. I finished the round 4 over. Over 18 holes, I found 9 balls and only lost 5, so I'm counting that as a good day. So how have things been going in the real world?

Oh.

Good Gag

I like this one. Harmless, and it's funny as hell.

Yankee Go Home

‘You’re A F*cking Plague’: Mexico City Residents Want Americans To Leave

This is a short Daily Caller story that links to a longer LA Times article, but the Times article is paywalled and I don't feel like spending the effort to get around the paywall, and I'm sure as hell not going to subscribe. The gist of it is that tens of thousands of Americans who can now work remotely are flooding Mexico City where their salaries allow them to live in a very grandiose style.

“We’re just seeing Americans flooding in. It’s people who maybe have their own business, or maybe they’re thinking of starting some consulting or freelance work. They don’t even know how long they’re going to stay. They’re completely picking up their entire lives and just moving down here,” The head of Welcome Home Mexico, an organization that helps with relocation, Alexandra Demou said, adding that she gets 50 calls a week from people considering making the move, the LA Times reported.

The locals are not happy.

Posters reading “New to the city? Working remotely? You’re a f—ing plague and the locals f—ing hate you. Leave.” were also recently posted around the city

I would say the shoe is on the other foot, but the majority of illegal aliens flooding our country are A ) not white collar folks who already have jobs and B ) pass throughs from south of Mexico, so screw 'em.

A Simpler Time

Not really. “Simpler times” are always as complex as current times, we just tend to look back on them with rose colored glasses and societal expectations and responses were different.

Looking at Distant Water and Thinking About What Kids Do

The author recalls a time when he took his father's car in the middle of the night and set out to “rescue” his girl friend. I'm guessing this happened sometime in the 80s. Anyhow, he got in a wreck (nobody was hurt) and the police left his fate up to his parents, who were not pleased. Frankly, I can't see the scenario playing out quite the same today, and that both is and isn't a shame. It's a shame because I think that's the right response in traditional American society. He did something foolish, was caught, and everyone knew the parents would take care of him appropriately. It's not a shame because we, unfortunately, don't live in that society anymore. These days it's no sure thing that “parent(s)” would show up, or that they would discipline the child if they did.

Table For Two, Please. Only One Of Us Will Be Eating

A Taste for Cannibalism?

Now, much of this article is the kind of crap that we had to endure in high school, waxing about the pathos of modern society and what the motivations of John Knowles' protagonist were in A Separate Peace (He was an asshole who pushed his friend out of a tree, end of story).

According to Ms. Summers, cannibalism is always symbolic. For her novel’s protagonist, eating human flesh can be seen as a way of holding on to a relationship that ended. For Ms. Summers herself, the plot of “A Certain Hunger” can’t be uncoupled “from my own personal experiences with disordered eating, with the tamping down of feminine appetites, the way the media chews up and spits out writers, bougie consumption — and bougie lady consumption,” she said.

More generally, Ms. Summers thinks that the recent spate of cannibalistic plots could also be commentaries on capitalism. “Cannibalism is about consumption and it’s about burning up from the inside in order to exist,” she said. “Burnout is essentially over-consuming yourself, your own energy, your own will to survive, your sleep schedule, your eating schedule, your body.”

Ms. Moshfegh said her theory was “that it might be an antidote to the actual horror of what’s happening to the planet.” Like Ms. Summers, Ms. Moshfegh at times couldn’t stomach her own work, describing the process of writing about cannibalism in “Lapvona” as “a bit disturbing.”

“I had to think about what part of the body would be an interesting place to start,” she said, “and how it would feel to hold someone’s severed hand in yours.”

Garbage. But taking a slightly wider view, beyond cannibalism as a plot device to titillate and horrify, I do wonder if this is just another symptom of a society that has decided that because there were some traditional mores that were wrong (primarily racism), that the solution is to get rid of all of them. The Twitter thread Ace posted a few days ago about the guy recounting how he got monkeypox from a homosexual piss orgy is not indicative of a healthy society. I wonder if future historians will recount the progression from Elmer Fudd's “Eat Bugs Bunny” to today's “eat the bugs” on the road to...what? Eat Bugs Meany? (Encyclopedia Brown And The Case Of The Barbecued Bully, Dante Press, © 2043)

Clickbait Content!

U.S. Census Data Reveals the Most Miserable Cities In America

Did your city make it? Or do you have a nominee that was left off the list?

These Strange Products Had Us Asking “Why Would Anyone Invent This”?

“Spinal tape” is pretty funny, IMO.

Reddit Users Share Cautionary Tales of Incompetent Coworkers

I link this one because I want y'all to pitch in. In the comments, please tell us about the most incompetent person you ever worked with.

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by Ted Roosevelt:

Click through and read the thread, it's worth it.

posted by WeirdDave at 10:00 PM

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