FRIDAY MUSIC: Hogmanay Hangover Edition, by JD

Why do we do it? Simple really, we enjoy it. We enjoy losing ourselves in conviviality especially after this bad, mad year. For centuries, possibly millenia, it has been an important safety valve for society and a perfect example of this is the medieval Feast of the Fools -

'The Feast of Fools was a festival celebrated annually on January 1st throughout Europe and particularly France. It was a cherished day, for it was the one day where Christian morals were abandoned and replaced with ridiculous rites. Serious Christians were allowed to create parodies of church rituals.

'During the festival, performers wore animal masks and women's clothing, sang obscene and bawdy hymnal songs, drank excessively, hurled manure at bystanders, ran and leaped through the church, rolling dice at the alter, howling through the streets and other scurrilous acts that parodied the liturgy of the church. In addition, people would drive about on carts through the streets to rouse laughter from their fellows through performances that involved indecent gestures and language.'

http://medievaltimestheatre.weebly.com/the-feast-of-fools.html

Or, as Ringo puts it more succinctly in the first video -

'Here's to the nights we won't remember
with the friends we won't forget
May we think of them forever
as the days that were the best!'

 

 

"You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on." - Dean Martin

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." - Dorothy Parker

Freedom

Fighting Project Fear in 2016 - https://twitter.com/rhodri/status/745516827145441280

June 18th 1940: cartoon by David Low in the Evening Standard

Facebook: dumb and dumber

I tried today to share an interesting item with my brother, via a Facebook post; but a robot censor intervened and their complaint system has somehow failed.

Here is what I tried to say the second time, through the electronic muzzle strapped to my face by FB; this too was blocked:

__________________________________

I was going to preface this with an ironic comment* about recent allegations re these two countries but the moronic and totalitarian system of censorship at FB automatically interfered, saying 'Your post couldn't be shared, because this link goes against our Community Standards.'

When I explained, saying 'This is an historical essay showing how Russia prevented the breakup of the USA despite the enmity towards the latter of France and Great Britain. May I say I deeply deplore your system of automatic censorship,' it replied 'Your request couldn't be processed. There was a problem with this request. We're working on getting it fixed as soon as we can.'

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/12/25/why-russia-saved-the-united-states/

_______________________________________

*using the phrase 'Russia collusion'; but what's above was also blocked, so it's the link itself. Presumably FB is actually blocking certain websites or subjects. 

It's time high-handed monopolists like Zuckerberg were called to account. They have clearly become publishers rather than mere platforms.

Sex, cruelty and antisemitism; by Sackerson

Two more episodes from the 1946 autobiography of E L Grant Watson, looking back on a late-Victorian childhood.

(a) Grant Watson's mother sent him to a newly-established experimental school, Bedales. The headteacher seems to have hung back from imposing the discipline common in standard public schools but unfortunately this merely allowed a culture of bullying to develop among the boys. Attempting to rectify the situation indirectly, the head began to admit girls, but the conventional sexual restraints of the age dominated; the author (who later went through Freudian analysis) thought, harmfully:

'The headmaster, that highly cultured, idealistic and all too pure repressor of desires, was, of course, the father-substitute. He was the 'Old Man', and he, in the unconscious, possessed the girls who were forbidden to us. We, his sons, lived under the almighty power of Taboo. But we were allowed less outlet than were those suppositional sons of the First-father. His sons were driven out into the wilderness to practise homosexuality. But no such relief for us! Smut of any kind, even a hint of it, was the worst of sins, and our naturally developing sexual urges must find other expression: in cruelty, in an inflated idealism, in fantasies of superiority, and every kind of priggishness and prudishness, and in fact in any kind of high-tension absurdities...' (my emphasis)

Does this go some way to explain the rigidity and cruelty of seventeenth century English Puritans, and the modern Islamist Puritans? Perhaps; though human aggression and cruelty seem common anyway. Still, far less dangerous to see ourselves as sinners than as the Elect.

(b) In 1900, he was sent to Heidelberg for the summer/autumn, to learn science because it was not taught well in his English school (perhaps, in many English schools). A German he met on the sea-voyage 

'talked with great enthusiasm about the glories of Germany and the inferiority of England. Germany was going to rule the world. He was indeed a prophet of the Herrenvolk...'

In southern Germany he found the people punctiliously polite, friendly and hospitable, yet one day:

'I was in a restaurant with Fräulein Müller and Herr Burn [a Scottish student at Heidelberg University]. A group of German officers came in; there was something not to their liking; discussion and raised voices. A group of peoplewho were sitting at a table nearby got up abruptly and retired. What was the fuss about? I enquired. The officers had objected to the presence of some Jews. That the Jews had had to go set me wondering. I had not been Jew-conscious before, except in so far that I knew that Jews usually got bullied at school.' (my emphasis)

This was long before the little Austrian corporal made himself felt. I haven't read much about anti-Semitism in both countries during the nineteenth century, but clearly there was a deep and very nasty vein of it.

A very happy Christmas to all, from Wiggia

At the end of what can only be described as a horrible year on so many fronts, with pestilence and politicians vying for the top spot on most people's hate list there has been little to raise a smile and less to raise a glass to.

Of all those stories that have been swamped by the endless bad news and prediction one stood out for me; I suppose in a year when man buggered up almost everything he got involved with an animal story was the perfect antidote.

These elephants were originally said to have raided a corn wine store in southern China and got drunk. The story went viral and the picture above of them sleeping it off was shown world wide. Subsequent information claimed they were not drunk but just resting; by then no one cared, it was just such a good story true or otherwise, after all we have lived through a year of disinformation and all of it was doom and despair, this story was not.

So sleeping it off or just resting, either way the elephants showed the best way to beat the blues: find a nice spot lay down and forget about it all.

Cheers and a happy New Year!

FRIDAY MUSIC: Seven for Christmas Day, by JD

Nollaig Chridheil - Feliz Navidad - Merry Christmas !

No room at the inn, by Sackerson

Some things stick in the mind. 

London, c. 1890: having lost her two-year-old second son, the wife of a successful barrister has been sent on a long sea-voyage with her toddler first son to Australia to recuperate. While there she learns of the death of her husband from typhoid fever, leaving her with no savings and only a modest life insurance payout. She returns to England and the house lease and furniture have to be sold. What to do next?

Almost before my mother had become aware that she might be regarded as a poor, and consequently unwelcome relative, she had called on one of her elder brothers for advice and help. She was told that he was out; her sister-in-law did not ask her to come in, but sent her a verbal message to the door reminding her that her brother was a busy man. This was the only snub that my mother laid herself open to. From that time, she fought her battles alone.

From the autobiography of E. L. Grant Watson, 'But To What Purpose'