Happy Friday, Gentle Readers,
I pray this missive finds you well. Our business has a busy weekend ahead, and I will be lucky to see the inside of my eyelids between Friday morning and Sunday night. But such is the price of entrepreneurship. Hopefully, we will weather the storm of a Harris-Walz administration, but at this point, all bets are off. I could try to pull a Mark Zuckerberg and pretend to move to the middle of the road with the smashed skunks and possums, but I just can't bring myself to compromise. So keep us in your prayers for the next five years. Starting a business is hard.
Oh, knock it off, already.
You have to hand it to the intersectional mob. They have mastered the subtle art of never running out of reasons to complain. Someone should really send our colleges and universities a memo and let them know that, by and large, academics are only slightly less useless than TV and movie stars and CNN anchors.
What is the impetus for their latest dirge in which they b***h, whine, moan, gripe, nag, kvetch, cry, hold forth, froth, foam, and expectorate? White people and Shakespeare.
According to The College Fix, two faculty members at Arizona State University are angry about "white ownership" of Shakespeare, who incidentally was white. And even if you subscribe to the idea that Christopher Marlowe wrote some of Shakespeare's plays, it is worth noting that Marlowe was also white.
English Professor Ruben Espinosa argued that Shakespeare’s legacy has been manipulated for purposes of exclusion and viewed through a lens of “white superiority.”
He said that for the Jan. 6 “insurrectionists” at the U.S. capitol, Shakespeare represents a symbol of “white exceptionalism” and “racial hierarchy.”
The organizers sent a letter to the Folger Shakespeare Library, the world’s largest Shakespeare collection located one block from the U.S. Capitol, and not to other institutions like the Library of Congress to notify them of the protest beforehand, he said.
Espinosa said this act reflects the insurrectionists’ perception of Shakespeare as an emblem of “white superiority,” which is why they deemed it important to protect the library during the protest.
“Shakespeare sits atop of that racial hierarchy. He is the epitome of what they consider white exceptionalism…and this is why he’s valuable,” the English professor said.
Espinosa also argued that the Shakespeare Library has a historical legacy tied to anti-immigrant and white exceptionalist sentiments, reflected in its founding leadership and early rhetoric.
It doesn't just stop at J6; the professor goes on to tie the problem to John Quincy Adams.
It takes a special kind of deranged intellect to connect a series of non-existent dots to make every bad thing that has existed since the Big Bang, a direct result of white men. Still, somehow our intellectual class always manages to do so. Hey, it beats working for a living.
The irony here is that these people, whether in institutions of higher learning (emphasis on the word "institutions"), the media, and all of the rest of the progressive jackanapes, produce nothing. They create nothing. Their sole purpose in life is to keen about white men. Do they not realize that white men such as me and many of you reading this give them their only reason to exist? Were all of the white men (and many white women) to board a spaceship tomorrow for the Planet Patriarchy, most of the people on the Left would lose their raison d'être. They might actually have to go out and get real jobs. Don't tick us off, Lefties; you need us. We're the only thing standing between you and the deep fryer at Jack-in-the-Box.
Do you want to talk about privilege? This is one of the few countries in the world where someone can sit around on their overpaid posteriors all day and make bank by complaining about white people. You, dear Leftists, are the essence of privilege. And deep down, you know that. That is why you sodomized Star Wars, wrecked The Lord of the Rings, and ruined comic books for the foreseeable future. You only destroy because you cannot create. You vent your own frustrations with your intellectual inadequacy by looking for Caucasian boogeymen wherever you can pretend to find them.
Allow me to illustrate. If you were a kid in the '70s, you probably came across the book "Arrow to the Sun" in your school or public library. It was a 1973 short film which was made into a book in 1974. It recounts an Acoma Pueblo tale of a boy traveling to the spirit world to seek out his true father. It is a charming and engaging story which is wonderfully illustrated.
Of course, years later, it became an issue that the author and creator, Gerald McDermott, was white. This, in turn, became a controversy. McDermott was attacked for inaccuracies in his work and for incorrectly portraying the Pueblo people and their beliefs. But no one else made the movie.If that is the case, fine. This is 2024. There is no shortage of funds and support for black, brown, or native people to make their own movies. Let us have a new version of "Arrow to the Sun" made by a Native American. There is no shortage of stories in the Native American tradition, including the Coyote trickster tales that would make for fascinating viewing. Likewise, there are a plethora of West African stories, such as the trickster spider Anansi, waiting for black filmmakers to tell them. Let Latino filmmakers take a crack at the legends from the Popol Vuh; I am sure they would make one hell of a series of movies. You know, folx, it's possible to celebrate one thing without destroying another.
And if Hollywood or academia does not want to fund your outing because it is not woke enough, maybe you are mad at the wrong racists.
What a boob.
Newsweek notes that unregistered idiot Kate Goodwin of London was scheduled to take a cruise with Virgin Voyages. Cruise lines issue travelers a photo ID. Many cruise lines take your picture when you board, which becomes your ID. Virgin requested that Kate send in a photo prior to her voyage. So one fine day, she stepped out of the shower and snapped a photo of herself. The instructions were to make sure her head was within the oval outline. It was, and Kate was under the impression that the oval outline had captured her image. It had, but so had the rest of the photo. As a result, her ID picture was everything that is Kate Goodwin above the waistline. She was taken aback to get a notification from Virgin Voyages that her photo was unacceptable because it contained nudity. She commented:
I thought it was being used as AI to verify me against my passport photo—not for human viewing or other use on the ship. I was naked because I had just showered and laying around on my phone as you do—but didn't think it mattered because that part of the photo was not inside the guideline frame; and only my face was.
I will not take the time to dissect that paragraph. I will only say that one day, Skynet will kill us all.
Wine recommendation
Because it's not every day that you get to try a wine from Slovenia.
I was walking through the liquor store, looking at the inventory, and saying to myself, "Reviewed it, reviewed it, crap, crap, reviewed it, crap, reviewed it, crap," when I happened upon the 2022 Stekar Sivi Pinot (Pinot Grigio).
I had never had Slovenian wine and could not pass up the chance. This wine was a delightful surprise. It was light, clean, crisp, and had a balanced attack on the palate, resonating on the back and sides of the tongue and terminating in the upper sinuses for a surprisingly refreshing, relaxing, and extremely drinkable wine. It hits exactly the right note between dryness and sweetness to appeal to drinkers across the spectrum.
Look for a strong infusion of peach and enough citrus to be interesting but not enough to override the taste buds. There was a small hint of alcohol in the taste, but it was not a distraction. This is a fine bottle, which will go nicely with some hors d'oeuvres or will do perfectly fine on its own. If for no other reason, buy it for the label, which offers an English translation of the warning which reminds you to be careful consuming "alcoholics."
All kidding aside, this is an exceptional wine at a very reasonable price that will not disappoint. When I get a minute, I am going to squirrel away a few bottles for the future, and I suggest you do the same. You'll thank me later — as in tomorrow.
That's it for me. Have a great weekend, and I'll see you next time.
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