Today, I learned a new word. The regular morning strong dose of caffeine was just about starting to kick in when I chanced upon a discussion of the moon landings. The basic conspiracy theory here is that billions were spent on developing technologies and engineering to send a man to the moon but they realized they wouldn’t work, or tried it and it didn’t work, and so they mocked it all up in some studio.
Fun speculation, and if you delve into it you’ll have to think about (and hopefully learn) lots of interesting physics - so it’s a very worthwhile diversion; a relatively harmless conspiracy.
One of the more useful yardsticks when thinking about the viability of conspiracy theories is to think about the number of people you’d have to hush up in order to make it ‘work’. This helps to shift the dial on your plausibility meter if the ‘science’ hasn’t already done that for you.
Anyway, in the course of that discussion the term FLERF was bandied about which, I learned, was a term for a Flat Earther. Personally, I prefer the explanation of one Twittee who generated this meme
I know this is (adapted) from American Pie but it makes me want to watch Buffy again - one of the best TV shows ever made, in my view.
Those were the days. Back when men were men and had this strange inkling to focus on the female flute section of the orchestra and wonder if it was possible to play one of Mozart’s flute sonatas in an alternative way, and how much more fun a classical concert would be if they did, particularly if the flautist was as cute as Alyson Hannigan1.
Here we are coming to the end of 2024 and the notion of fluting with your flerf doesn’t seem all that outrageous given the kind of things we regularly see shoved into various orifices during Pride Year Month.
I know I should be more disciplined and actually write down links and things, but I was reading (somewhere, probably Substack) about some footballers in the UK who had gotten into a spot of bother for not going along with some directive to ‘celebrate’ LGBTQQIP2SAQZPVKGODTDJHV*$%OIYF&%$URXHJCPIHKGCTYESYREAWH+people by not wearing rainbow laces in their boots.
How much more “celebration” do these folks actually need? And why?
And, more to the point, what am I actually supposed to be “celebrating”? This?
I suppose one must compare this kind of thing to something like the Rio Carnival which has been going since 1723 and is a celebration - although I’m not sure what of - that is an exuberant display of music and costume. It seems to be just a celebration of life. There are plenty of costumes in evidence which are more flesh than costume there and, yet, it doesn’t seem to quite descend to the level of tawdry that your average Pride march does.
For one thing, the festival in Rio goes on for about a week instead of a whole month. It’s more in the nature of a ‘show’ than to make some kind of political or moral point - or to force acceptance of certain lifestyles.
But this LGBWTF stuff has gone way beyond mere ‘acceptance’ - there seems to be a requirement to positively revel in it, to ‘celebrate’ it, and if you aren’t waving your rainbow flag like some demented muppet then you’re a bigot.
Do what you like - provided you’re not harming someone - that’s all good with me. Stick your bits into whatsoever bits you so desire - no problems. But don’t expect me to enjoy or relish stuff I don’t, or to have to pretend that I do.
I certainly have no interest in promoting it all. Stick an artificial dog’s tail up your rear end, if that’s your thing, but why do I have to view this as a good thing? Why do I have to pretend like this is some perfectly normal thing to do? Why do I have to pretend like this is just some activity that is entirely the equivalent of others?
It may seem that the tide is turning. It certainly seems to have been a factor in the US election that people associated the Democrats with crazy weird shit like this and voted accordingly
But there’s life in the old dog yet, so to speak.
Where did this surface this week? Women’s changing rooms? Rape crisis centres? Maybe in some classroom? Perhaps in some revelation about the harms of puberty blockers and the like?
No, it arose from that part of the commercial world that is utterly dependent on trans ideology; the car rental business.
I’ve lost count of the number of times gender ideology was an integral part of me renting a car. It’s the first thing I look for when choosing a vehicle for the week. If the person at the desk hasn’t got their pronouns proudly displayed then that’s it, I’m off to find a car rental business that isn’t staffed by bigots.
Enter Enterprise.
Fuck me sideways on a Sunday with a six-foot pole. Although you may not express your amazement quite as, erm, colourfully as me, I’m fairly confident you will have a similar reaction to this article:
In it we learn that Enterprise are all gung-ho about GenderWoo and want their staff to be similarly enthusiastic. It’s important to be able to hire out cars in the right way, you see.
We see that the Enterprise management team want their workers to be aware of that crucial day on the calendar; Omnisexual Visibility Day. I had to look this one up - apparently an omnisexual is someone attracted to all sexes, genders, and orientations. It seems to be a fancy modern term for “super horny bugger”.
Not content with celebrating the shag-anything-that-moves brigade we go on to learn that there’s a whole flag (but not yet a special day) for lithromantic people. These folk, according to the article, are
a person only attracted to people who cannot or have not shown a responding interest
Sounds like a ready-made defence for a charge of stalking - “Your Honour, my client is lithromantic and belongs to a marginalized identity group”.
According to Enterprise, sexual orientation is no longer a thing. They tell their staff that
Someone who identifies as male who is sexually attracted to someone who identifies as female would be heterosexual or straight, regardless of if those genders were assigned at birth or not
Guys, if you’re straight and have ever wondered what it would be like to be gay, then just get the missus to identify as male for a day and you’ll get the whole experience.
Workers are warned threatened encouraged to use the correct pronouns. And here we devolve into pure farce. Included in Enterprise’s list is the co/co pronoun.
Yes - that’s a new one on me too.
What is it with cars these days? Is Top Gear going to become an item on your dating profile? Are we going to see Gland Rovers? Will Rolls Royce be more of a description of a sexual activity than an uber-luxury brand? And who even knows what Jaguar are selling these days? A whole bunch of miserable-looking fuckers dressed in silly costumes, or cars?
I was going to say that all of this will impact their bottom line - but that may be not quite the right way to phrase it. Is it too much to ask that companies just focus on selling the stuff they’re supposed to?
“Certainly Sir. We have those brake discs in stock, and would you like to add a rainbow-coloured dildo to your order?”
One can only imagine what the boards of these companies look like these days
If you’ve never seen American Pie, then you will probably need to look up the full famous quote. Type the words “one time at band camp” into your favourite search engine.
It's too bad the loonies don't accept that the Lunar Orbiter can take photos of the landing sites and that the tracks from the Lunar Vehicles are visible in those.
But each to their own psychosis I guess.
Funny the rental is named "Enterprise". It sure fits with Star Trek - to boldly go where no man has gone before. Probably needs changing to "where no ma'am has blobbed before".
We actually had to rent an EV once - all the real cars where already hired out. My experience? "Now I know how a Swiss Army Knife feels"
Ideally, a Pride-parade would be forced to end at a mosque. Just to, you know, prove a point or two. Some people do need to learn first hand what happens when you pour water into acid, so to speak.
Here’s another scam “that A LOT of people would have to be in on”
Does that make it any less real?
(h/t to @Etienne de la Boetie2 for the image)