#and neil does figs instead
Note
A corn dog (also spelled corndog) is a sausage (usually a hot dog) on a stick that has been coated in a thick layer of cornmeal batter and deep fried. It originated in the United States and is commonly found in American cuisine.
Newly arrived German immigrants in Texas, who were sausage-makers finding resistance to the sausages they used to make, have been credited with introducing the corn dog to the United States, though the serving stick came later.[1] A US patent filed in 1927, granted in 1929, for a Combined Dipping, Cooking, and Article Holding Apparatus, describes corn dogs, among other fried food impaled on a stick; it reads in part:[2][3]
I have discovered that articles of food such, for instance, as wieners, boiled ham, hard boiled eggs, cheese, sliced peaches, pineapples, bananas and like fruit, and cherries, dates, figs, strawberries, etc., when impaled on sticks and dipped in batter, which includes in its ingredients a self rising flour, and then deep fried in a vegetable oil at a temperature of about 390 °F [200 °C], the resultant food product on a stick for a handle is a clean, wholesome and tasty refreshment.
A "Krusty Korn Dog" baker machine appeared in the 1926 Albert PickL. Barth wholesale catalog of hotel and restaurant supplies.[4] The 'korn dogs' were baked in a corn batter and resembled ears of corn when cooked.[5]
A number of current corn dog vendors claim responsibility for the invention and/or popularization of the corn dog. Carl and Neil Fletcher lay such a claim, having introduced their "Corny Dogs" at the State Fair of Texas sometime between 1938 and 1942.[5] The Pronto Pup vendors at the Minnesota State Fair claim to have invented the corn dog in 1941.[5][6] Cozy Dog Drive-in, in Springfield, Illinois, claims to have been the first to serve corn dogs on sticks, on June 16, 1946.[7] Also in 1946, Dave Barham opened the first location of Hot Dog on a Stick at Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, California.[8]
Corn dogs are often served as street food or as fast food. For the best and freshest preparation, some vendors or restaurateurs dip and fry their corn dogs just before serving.[9] Some corn dog purveyors sell pre-made frozen corn dogs, which have been thawed and then fried again or browned in an oven.
Corn dogs can also be found at almost any supermarket in North America as frozen food that can be heated and served. Pre-made frozen corn dogs can also be heated in a microwave oven, but the cornbread coating will lack texture.[10][11]
One cheesy variation is prepared either with melted cheese between the hot dog and the breading or by using a cheese-filled hot dog.
Another version is the "cornbrat" (or "corn brat"), which is a corn dog made with bratwurst instead of a wiener or hot dog.[12][13] They are also sold using different meats in the dog, such as pork and turkey.[citation needed]
Small corn dogs, known as "corn puppies", "mini corn dogs", or "corn dog nuggets", are a variation served in some restaurants, generally on the children's menu or at fast food establishments. A serving includes multiple pieces, usually 10.[14] In contrast to their larger counterparts, corn puppies are normally served stickless as finger food.
A breakfast version of the corn dog features a breakfast sausage in place of the hot dog, and pancake batter in place of the cornmeal. This variation is commonly called a "pancake on a stick". It was formerly served by the drive-in restaurant Sonic,[15] but now is made by companies such as Jimmy Dean.[16]
Both vegetarian corn dogs and corn dog nuggets[clarification needed] are made as meatless alternatives by many of the same companies that produce vegetarian hot dogs.[17]
By country
Argentina
Panchukers in Argentina
A French fry-encrusted corn dog, as sold at the Heunginjimun in South Korea
In Argentina, a panchuker (or panchuque, pancho chino) is a hot snack that can be bought near some train stations and in some places of heavy pedestrian transit. They are more popular in the inner country cities. A panchuker consists of a sausage covered with a waffle-like pastry, and has a stick in it (like a corn dog) so that it can be easily consumed. Some versions contain cheese, and sauces may be served to accompany them. Some variations may be found in Uruguay and other South American countries. Generally, panchukers are offered as a low-price fast food and can only be seen at certain provinces of the inner country, like La Plata, Belgrano, Villa Albertina, Cipoletti, and in Buenos Aires they can be found in Barrio Chino. They are particularly popular in the province of Tucumán.[18]
Australia
In Australia, a hot dog sausage on a stick, deep fried in batter, is known as a Dagwood Dog, Pluto Pup, or Dippy Dog, depending on region.[19] Variants use wheat-based or corn-based batters.[20][citation needed] These are not to be confused with the Australian battered sav, a saveloy deep fried in a wheat flour-based batter, as used for fish and chips, which generally does not contain cornmeal.[21]
Canada
In Quebec, a battered hot dog on a stick is called a "pogo" and is traditionally eaten with ordinary, yellow mustard, sometimes referred to as "ballpark mustard". The rest of Canada refers to them by the non-trademarked term "corn dog"[22][23][24] It is named after the trademarked name of a Conagra inc. frozen product available in all of the country since the 1960s but whose main market is the province of Quebec.[22]
New Zealand
A New Zealand Hot Dog is invariably a deep fried battered sausage on a stick that is dipped in tomato ketchup. The sausage is thicker than a frankfurter, resulting in a thinner batter layer than American Corndogs. The batter can be cornmeal based or normal flour based. The distinction is not important.[25] The sausage in a bun that is called a hot dog in other countries is known as an "American" Hot Dog and is usually available at the same locations. If a further descriptor is needed to avoid confusion between the two, the New Zealand standard Hot Dog can be described as an Hot Dog "on-a-stick".
Japan
In Japan, the equivalent food is usually called an "American Dog" (アメリカンドッグ) based on the idea of where the food is believed to originate. It is also called "French Dog" in certain parts of Japan including Hokkaido.
South Korea
In South Korea, a corn dog is one of the most popular street foods. A corn dog is usually called "hot dog" in the Korean language (핫도그), creating confusion with a genuine hot dog. A French fry-encrusted corn dog, or "Kogo," has especially attracted the attention of Western visitors,[26] including vegans (using vegan hot dogs).[27]
National Corndog Day is a celebration of the corn dog, tater tots, and American beer that occurs on the first Saturday of March madness (NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship) of every year.[28][29]
yeah i know the new zealand one
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Kiss me like the final meal
Fandom: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens)
Crawly is in a garden. Not just any garden, but The Garden. The very first garden. Hell has sent him to do a quick temptation, and it was almost too easy. As though it was meant to happen. He slithers up the wall and at its apex is almost blinded by the view. The sun is glinting on the sand and searing his eyes, and beside him stands a being of the most intense light he’s ever witnessed. But he has been fooled by beauty and golden locks before, and he knows better than to trust an angel.
“Didn’t you used to have a sword?” Crawly asks, the first chapter in their story. The rest is history, though butchered by the words of mankind.
**
He meets Aziraphale again, having grown fond of his own human form, and now his name is Crowley. No longer bent and forced down in supplication, not grovelling on the floor for those who see themselves superior. He is Crowley, and he’s been waiting to see Aziraphale for years.
Their paths intersect in a crowd, animals and humans paired off two by two, and at the front of a barricade separating the species is a lone figure with glowing platinum hair. Crowley moves towards him, two by two, and slots himself at the Angel’s side. They wait for the storm.
**
Centuries pass before they run into each other again. Crowley sports a new haircut and his amber slit eyes are covered with dark lenses. It’s completely by chance, but Crowley gets this niggling feeling in his stomach at the thought of leaving. And then the Angel offers a temptation to him and his heart stutters in his chest. It’s quickly covered up and Aziraphale corrects himself, but Crowley feels drawn to him.
**
Crowley starts keeping tabs on Aziraphale - as much as he can without drawing suspicion from the Higher Ups and the Lower Downs. There is a revolution going on and it’s the perfect place for Crowley to find himself, amidst all the chaos, yet Aziraphale is there too and with his forked tongue he can taste that something has gone awry. He finds him in a cell awaiting execution, and that just won’t do.
He freezes time around them, and behind Aziraphale tries to make himself look as nonchalant as possible. The Angel turns and says his name, his name, the chosen one that not even hell honors, and it melts something inside of him. He scoffs at Aziraphale’s excuses, plays up the demon act just enough to deter questions about his conveniently timed appearance, and gives into the hope that this time an angel won’t hurt him.
**
The Arrangement is so organic between them, and their run-ins change from coincidence to a steady routine. Clandestine meetings in parks, on buses, and soon enough Aziraphale is inviting him to his bookshop.
Crowley feels his guard coming down, his walls caving, and after enough drinks he tests the waters and lets Aziraphale see his eyes again. It’s the most stark representation of his true nature, of what lurks within, and Aziraphale never shies away. Crowley realises that Aziraphale accepts him, wholly and without desire to change him.
And by then he’s forced to admit he’s falling in an entirely new way.
**
The fantasies started at least a thousand years ago, and not much about them has changed since they first came to him in the recesses of night, save for Aziraphale’s appearance and his latest gourmand proclivities. Crowley doesn’t hunger and doesn’t crave food. Not until he sees flecks of it dusting Aziraphale’s lips, rivulets of syrups and cocktails and other delightful concoctions dripping from him.
As a demon, you would expect his mind to be laced with sinful, lustful images in this moment. Aziraphale sits across from him, one hand neatly folded in his lap while the other dips a spoon into a shallow ceramic bowl filled with chilled cucumber soup. Aziraphale raises it to his rosy lips and purses them as the cold liquid slips in, satisfaction dripping from him with a pleased moan as he wiggles in his seat.
And Crowley is, as always, transfixed at the motion, the well-practiced puckering of his mouth. But instead of thoughts of ravishing, all he thinks of is Aziraphale's lips on his. Other demons would certainly laugh at him for wanting something so tender, almost holy in its nature, but he can't help it. And so he watches. It's become his favourite hobby, his obsession.
Crowley’s mind is consumed with tasting it all on Aziraphale’s skin, delving his tongue into Aziraphale’s mouth to lap up every last trace of flavour until all that’s left is Aziraphale himself. He wants to remove every unworthy morsel that gets to luxuriate in Aziraphale’s mouth. And then Aziraphale selfishly dabs the remnants away with a serviette.
**
It gets worse after the bomb drops, and then comes to a rolling stop. “You go too fast for me, Crowley.” He retreats. He feels disgusting, predatory, and doesn’t see Aziraphale again for a while.
**
It’s a Tuesday, which is nothing special in and of itself, but Crowley and Aziraphale are together again. Well, dining together, as they do for almost every meal lately with trouble looming on the horizon and who knows how much time they have left.
It’s the only time Crowley really humours that oh-so-mortal necessity, and if he’s being honest - which he compulsively is around Arizaphale (just not always out loud) - he still wouldn’t mind being together in other ways too.
Crowley sips gingerly from his own teacup, the closest he'll get to eating today. The noise of food distracts too much from Aziraphale, unsettling crunching and munching and saliva-slick chewing like cud. He drinks Aziraphale in with his eyes, and it's all the sustenance he needs.
The corners of Aziraphale's mouth quirk and Crowley watches his lips form his name, and then again, which sends a tingle up his curved spine. It takes a third concerned Crowley, dear for him to snap back to attention and look Aziraphale in the eyes.
"Hm? Sorry, what were you saying?"
"I was asking if you'd like to go for a stroll after lunch."
Walking makes it much harder for Crowley to watch Aziraphale, but it's closer than having a table between them and that's something he will always be amenable to. "Where to?" He asks, not that the destination matters because he would follow Aziraphale anywhere.
**
It’s a random Thursday after the not-Apocalypse and this time Crowley is alone in his vast apartment. Away from the forces of hell and their energy, his anger has dissipated. His plants grow just as well, as vibrant and luscious as ever. Though they still tremble out of muscle memory, Crowley hasn't yelled at them in weeks.
He waters them with flowing wrist movements, more akin to a barista making patterns in foam than a demon doing, well, anything. It’s methodical, meditative. And it’s the only thing keeping him sane right now.
Crowley is in a self-imposed exile. He feels on the verge of making a mistake, of slipping up in front of Aziraphale. His gaze has been too intense as of late and he needs these moments of privacy to centre himself before their meals, their jaunts, their too-late-in-the-night drinks in the bookshop.
He puts the watering can away and drapes himself over the charcoal sheets of his bed, smooth and slippery as his own true skin. Crowley drags his hands down his face, covering his eyes as he rubs the inner duct with his fingers, and then ghost over his mouth. His thoughts are back to Aziraphale. Damn it. (Bless it?)
He holds his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger, playing with the delicate, pliable skin, and wonders again what Aziraphale would be like. Crowley imagines carding his fingers through Aziraphale’s lamb-soft hair and capturing his mouth. He wants to feel teeth on his skin and to open the Angel’s mouth with his long tongue, to utterly devour him.
But his mind never strays from Aziraphale’s mouth, never ventures away from the plumpness of those lips. He wants to worship at the throne of them, lay offerings of decadence on an altar to them, and revel in the liturgies they spout. Aziraphale has been the only one to utter kindnesses to him without motive, not once in 6000 years has he demanded anything of Crowley or made him feel lesser than.
He might just die if he doesn’t kiss Aziraphale soon, and that would land him right back on Hell’s doorstep.
**
Mere hours later, Crowley finds himself back in Aziraphale’s sitting room behind the bookshop. The Angel is pulling out a slate tray piled high with pleasures for his senses: jams, candied walnuts, ripe figs, medjool dates, apple slices, brie, port salut, garlic and herb boursin, smoked gouda with a deep brown rind, ricotta smothered in local honey, and toasted slices of baguette, with a pomegranate, feta, and rocket salad.
He’s careful in his movements and glides effortlessly to place it on the low coffee table, not a single item shifting under his grasp. Crowley sits, restlessly shifting as red zinfandel swirls in his glass and stirs when Aziraphale sits down right next to him, sinking into the plush couch.
Aziraphale cuts a wedge of brie with a slotted knife, and lays it on a slice of toasted baguette with sour cherry jam, and offers it to Crowley who politely declines. It crunches under Aziraphale’s teeth and he breathes out a sigh of relief as he chews. His tongue darts out to collect the crumbs and Crowley is captivated by it.
Crowley waivers for a moment, then gives in. “Actually, can I-,” he’s surprised at himself for even considering it, but he needs the distraction and it would feed his fantasies for another decade. “I’d like to try a piece. Whichever is your favourite.” Whichever tastes most like you, he means.
Aziraphale inclines his head. Crowley rarely ever does more than drink in his presence, but ever the gracious host Aziraphale moves to select the proper cheese. “I dare say I can’t really pick a favourite of these,” his eyes flicker back to Crowley, curious, and ultimately he decides to play it safe with a cube of the smoked gouda. “This, um, this is a Dutch cheese, wonderful for snacking on if I do say so myself. Sturdy but creamy enough to break away in your mouth, and the darker the rind is the better.” Aziraphale had spent several years in the last century hopping from country to country on the Continent, sampling various wares between bestowing virtues, and became himself quite the connoisseur.
Aziraphale plucks up a cube of the smoked gouda and with a slight tremor raises it up for Crowley to take from him. Instead, Crowley is already leaning forward with his eyes closed and lips parted, patiently waiting, and Aziraphale freezes. He’s never seen Crowley like this before, so exposed and vulnerable to him, at least not while inhabiting a body. Then he continues, afraid he might startle Crowley if he moves too fast.
Crowley’s forked tongue pokes out as though he’s about to receive holy communion, and Aziraphale gently places it down. Crowley is tugging it into his mouth, wrapping his lips around it, but Aziraphale hasn’t let go yet, and suddenly two of his fingers find themselves tucked into a wet heat. The tongue swirls around them and Crowley is astonished that he enjoys the flavour, letting out a shocked moan. Then confusion is crossing his brow at the size and shape of the intrusion, and he opens his eyes wide. Crowley’s jaw goes slack, the forgotten cheese tumbling into his lap, and sputters.
“A- Ange-- Aziraphale, I…” And Crowley doesn’t know what to say, he can’t think. Well no, that’s not true. He can’t think about anything else but the taste of Aziraphale and his mind has stammered as much as his voice. “I’m sorry,” he finally manages in panic.
Aziraphale feels just as nervous, and confused, and… and then his eyes are locked on Crowley’s lips, glistening with saliva, and his own breath starts coming fast. The world fades away and a puzzle piece clicks in his head. This act, this behaviour, he recognises it from all the times he has spent with Crowley, being watched like he is the centre of the universe. “Don’t go,” he asks, pleads, wants.
And Crowley stops.
And Crowley feels himself hoping at the expression he sees mirrored on Aziraphale’s face.
And Crowley waits.
“Why?”
“I love you, Crowley.”
“You’re an Angel,” he says matter-of-factly. “You love everything.”
“But I choose you.”
They meet somewhere in the middle. Aziraphale’s hands are cradling Crowley’s face, and Crowley’s hands are split between Aziraphale’s hair and the top of his shoulder. Their noses touch as they share the same breaths of air, hesitating at the all-too-real feeling of it under their palms.
Crowley’s bottom lip is starting to quiver as he tilts his head, and he fights fights fights against the voice in his head and replaces its words with Aziraphale’s. I love you. He loves you. Not Crawly the underling, the traitor to Heaven, but Crowley the self-named being, the friend.
And Crowley falls, overcome with a love he can at last show. His lips part and he closes the distance between them, melting into Aziraphale and shedding his past. Aziraphale is his future, his present, his everything, and he will devote lifetimes to showing him that.
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Doctor Who (?) Episode Review: Mrs. Bradley Mysteries
There is nothing I like better than spotting Doctor Who alumn out in the wild. Whether it’s sitting down for a BBC cozy mystery (and they usually are with me) and seeing Davison (it usually is), or watching a bad movie with no idea I’d be smacked in the face with Eccleston (Gone in 60 Seconds. We’ll get to it) it’s always a unique joy. Which is why this little series, because if it exists, why not talk about it?
The show in question? The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries. A sadly short lived series of a woman of a certain age in the 1920’s, running around solving crimes. Think of it as Phryne Fisher in advanced middle age. It also co-stars Neil Dudgeon who played DCI John Barnaby in Midsomer Murders (which I watched all seventeen seasons of when it was on Netflix. You may say I have a problem, I say I have a solution)
The episode in question? A Death At the Opera (which is listed as S1E1 elsewhere, but S1E2 on Amazon Prime where I watched it.) The titular Mrs. Bradley visits her old finishing school to give a lecture and murder most foul happens. As it does. The opera is, of course, the Mikado. (the opera is always the Mikado) and the Who alumn we are here for?
Max Valentine.
/joins the other fangirls in heaving a collective sigh.
Oh, baby Tennant, why are you so lithe and pretty? And looks particularly good in just a shirt and bracers! (aka suspenders. Which apparently means something entirely different over the pond. Go fig)
Max Valentine is the singing instructor and also, it seems, the general art instructor of the young ladies on the premises. It’s quite entertaining to see him directing the opera (what little of it he does) and the art class was a pretty great scene as well; as at one point the dialogue went something like:
Student: This is supposed to be a life drawing class.
Valentine: Well we’d need a live model for that.
Student: /looks pointedly at baby!Tennant.
Me:
Alas, Valentine does not pose, and that honor instead is left to George Moon aka Neil Dudgeon. Which is no great loss as yowza. (I love the BBC)
Throughout the episode, Valentine is a joy to watch. Even if he’s not the focus in the scene, if he’s there, you can see him looking concerned and slightly tense in the background. You also get to see him fairly angry with his business being pried into. There was also a teased ménage a trois with him and two other ladies. Though, teased in the sense that I’m not actually sure whether it happened or it was just suggested by Mrs. Bradley. You get to see various shades of Tennant here. Angry Tennant, broody Tennant, mischievous Tennant, and in a really cute scene, happy to be with someone he cares about Tennent.
Look at this snarky bastard.
Unfortunately, however, though his character has great buildup, his actual plot line (and the plot line of the episode) fizzled out near the end and was pretty weak. I wasn’t really that satisfied by it. There were various clues that didn’t seem to go anywhere… and there was an odd scene with Tennant being reflected in a mirror as if he was listening to something, being concerned and heading away that had no follow up.
Now, the Mrs. Bradley Mysteries ran from 1998-2000 (with a whole five episodes! Oh, BBC), which of course means this is well before the tenth Doctor made an appearance. It must have been hard for Who fans at that time. The last DW thing that had aired was in 1996. But, for anyone who tuned in to this particular episode, they got to see an old familiar face.
And let me tell you, fam, I squee’d like a banshee. (see: not problems, solutions). It didn’t help that I had just been surprised by his appearance in Vera (another BBC mystery, more on that episode later), but here he was, acting alongside Tennant
Or in this case, in front of and slightly to the left. Also you see Tennant over his shoulder almost this entire scene which is just hilarious.
and (briefly) acting with him.
This is brilliant for three reasons.
1] A Two for One Who Alumn! Pretty rare to see. Not to mention to see it with two Doctors at once.
2] The fact that future father-in-law was in a show with future son-in-law and just knowing what would eventually happen made the context even greater. Though I told myself if Georgia Tennant showed up I was quitting. (spoilers: she didn’t. :c)
3] Tennant’s Doctor is the fifth Doctor so in that brief two seconds I imagined a lot of inner fanboy glee. Granted, Tennant had probably met Davison before and maybe loads of times. But squee does not end where familiarity begins.
Sadly, Davison has a very short (and pretty abrupt) cameo here as Inspector Christmas. (Also, Christmas? Valentine? That is just gold). He came, he fanboyed over Mrs. Bradley. He left. He does appear in subsequent episodes (at least one so far) and seems to have the hots for her and that’s nice to see. But in this episode, he is criminally underused. Not that I am suggesting he have a starring role or anything, but make the transition a little less jarring.
So, is this episode good? Eh, debatable. But it’s certainly not bad either. It’s a middle of the road episode with squee-worthy talent. And well worth watching if you enjoy Tennant. If you prefer Davison, however, I’d wait for the next episode to see him well utilized.
#doctor who alumn review#doctor who episode review#doctor who#david tennant#peter davison#readers i squeed#entirely too much#but it was a great night#the mrs bradley mysteries
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How are you? I wish I had something more incisive to greet you with, but the speed with which everything occurs means it would be irrelevant, distasteful or a viral punchline a few hours later.
I have been to the cinema for the first time in six months, and continued my regular habit exactly where I’d left it by attending a first-thing-in-the-morning screening of Tenet with only one other person in the cinema, sitting miles away and also on their own (the only way to watch a film, I say). Fucking Tenet, though. I mean, I have really missed going to the cinema, partly because I love films and partly because there’s such a small-scale decadence to occasionally going there solo at 10am on a Tuesday morning, and those tiny pleasures (which, of course, are currently no longer tiny) are just the things to keep me going.
But the film. Oh god, the film. I wish… I wish I could collate my thoughts into something which doesn’t just rapidly descend into a frustrated scream. I wish success didn’t mean people couldn’t say no to you. I wish I liked Nolan’s Batman films, for a start, since so many seem to get so much from them (see also: Breaking Bad, Killing Eve and Line of Duty), but I’ve always found them silly, really dumbly written, and badly made — I can’t hear much of the dialogue, and the action sequences are frequently shot with so many cuts and movement that’s it’s impossible to follow, something George Miller could teach him about so beautifully — and they’re so bloody solemn. Gotham is a grim place, but there’s a boring pomposity in fetishing that one-note grimness, and Nolan has it nailed. Having a character genuinely laugh at something doesn’t render your film light-weight; it creates contrast, and human engagement, something these serious (but sci-fi)/serious (but fantasy)/serious (but adult man dresses in a cape) films too often lack, as if a strained, one-note way of speaking will cancel out the frivolous, actually enjoyable genre aspect of the film.
That lack of humanity is shared by Tenet. After a certain point, I simply don’t care. Is the nuke going to explode before Batman can something something something? *shrugs* Will the Tenet team manage to stop some sort of bad thing happening? Yes? No? Don’t mind, fine either way. Is Tenet nice to look at? Yes, but in a sort of “Christ, are we still holding up billionaire oligarch lifestyles as an aspirational thing at the moment?” very pre-2020 mood. Does it make sense? No, but that alone doesn’t mean it isn’t good — some great films, and some great Nolan films, take several goes to fully enjoy, and some are more enjoyable with every watch. Do I give a single fig about the outcome of the film or for any character after 20 minutes? Nope.
One major issue is that Nolan has made Inception, a masterpiece of film-making meta-commentary. How, once you’ve watched Cobb and Ariadne discuss the leaping-about way of conversations in films/dreams (stopping and starting in completely new locations) can you take the same thing seriously between Neil (Neil. Neil.) and The Protagonist? (I would like to see how many women read this screenplay along the way and just gave a small, inner sigh at the main character being named 'The Protagonist’.) As their boring expositional chats chop between pavement and public transport and plaza, one can’t help remembering how well Nolan previously pointed this out, yet has reverted to that self-conscious device to no benefit at all. It’s like he’s never seen his own films.
Similarly, the much-lauded aeroplane scene is completely without the necessary ingredient of tension because we’ve already been shown what happens, not just in other films but in this one, about fifteen minutes before. It’s like Bill & Ted promising they’d do whatever it was they needed right now, but in the future, and their momentary problem being solved by a loose sense of timey-wimey future self-ness. There’s nothing at stake at the airport, and between us being shown what happens and the scene beginning, nothing has happened for us to even hope the mission isn’t completed. It felt like the criminally underused Himesh Patel was in an instructional video for fuss-free plane-borrowing; compare it to the similar scene in Casino Royale (perhaps the only modern Bond film worth bothering with) and the flatness and mechanical nature of Tenet is all too apparent. The twists of the film, such as they are, are likewise foreseeable for even the least Pauline Kael among us. Who could it be under the mask? WHO COULD IT POSSIBLY BE?
The Prestige, an earlier film of Nolan’s, is such a contrast to this that I’m stunned I didn’t watch it the moment I came home to clear my brain out. It’s smart, logical, moving, tense, engaging, and if there are plot holes (probably) I didn’t care because a) I really, really cared about what happened to each person, each of whom spoke and behaved like humans, not AI script-bots, and b) it gave this household a v useful shorthand nickname for anyone who wanted something one day but completely inexplicably changed their mind or denied it the next. I recommend it. I do not recommend Tenet.
Of course, I feel guilty for caring so much about this, and writing about some fucking multi-squillion-dollar film with everything else happening. I am feeling extremely, crushingly ineffectual presently, and have completely come off all social media which from time to time would remind me of the efficacy of protest, of letter-writing and petition-signing and contacting one’s MP, so change feels hopeless and November’s blows seem inevitable. I am trying to knit my mind back together before then with small acts of body-work: cooking and running, drawing and swimming. I worry that I will drown in guilt and fear if I stop for a moment. It is pathetic, but I am still breathing, for now.
My cynicism-filter is also at its finest mesh, because it cannot cope with the reality of our leaders and the UK’s political discourse: only small-fry stuff gets through, the Sali Hugheses and Jack Monroes, small-time fantasists who manipulate and virtue-signal to build lives of back-slapping consumerist celebration and Twitter Power Leader Boards. I’ve listened again to The Purity Spiral, and also to Desperately Seeking Sympathy, and wondered how many intelligent, kind-hearted people waste time supporting these innocent, victimised mini-Trumps just because they use the right buzzwords and also appear to hate the Tories.
I wish I could give you some of the lights in my heart that keep me going — the occasional pure moon-eating delight of the people I live with — but here are more feasible treats instead.
Mike Birbiglia’s podcast Working It Out is a treasure, particularly the first episode with Ira Glass, which I think everyone who works in a creative field will listen to and wish they had an Ira Glass to critique their work. I like the idea of documenting works in progress, and not carrying any shame when things don’t work yet.
The Rose Matafeo episode of The Horne Section podcast, because I love her and I love stupid and brilliant songs. Several housemates have discovered Taskmaster too, which makes this a nice bridge.
Sarah & Duck, the BBC programme for tiny children. We never really used kids’ TV when they were little, but this now functions as a salve for when we’ve watched something truly terrifying like Poirot or a Marvel film, and besides the fact that Duck is absolutely fucking hilarious, the animation is staggeringly beautiful. The Islamic geometric patterns of the garden hedge; the soft blue-green hum of the “glow” section of the library, filled with lamps and luminescent books; the motes of dust caught in the sun-rays of Scarf Lady’s window. It’s a balm.
Thanks to two housemates becoming great cooks over lockdown, I’ve rediscovered lots of my cookbooks and found 2015’s Simply Nigella to be a real corker. The rice with sprouts, chilli and pineapple, the drunken noodles and the Thai noodles with cinnamon and prawn are worth the entry fee alone. It’s quite chicken- and pomegranate seed-heavy, but even if you don’t like those, it’s extremely nice to be eating something that isn’t on our usual five-meal rota (and is also extremely delicious).
I was solo for some of the summer, and managed to watch a few excellent films, including BlacKkKlansman, The Peanut Butter Falcon and Love & Friendship. Cannot recommend these highly enough (*whispers* particularly the latter because it’s as painfully sharp as Austen should be, and we’d made the mistake of watching Emma. and I’m still so cross I’m not sure I’m ready to discuss everything that was wrong with it publicly yet).
I read Esther Williams’ memoir, The Million Dollar Mermaid. Perfect for anyone who loves that period of Hollywood, and full of juicy (as well as some pretty traumatic) episodes from the swimmer and actress’s amazing life. To give you a sense of it, chapter one is called “Esther Williams, Cary Grant, and LSD”. Super good.
I hope you all keep well, pals x
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Happy Hellidays
We have many holidays in the west that seem to serve no other purpose than to sell consumer trinkets for the enrichment of companies. This is not the purpose of the holidays, so I set out with a co-author to research the origin and practice of the various holidays. The result was the book Happy Hellidays.
[More Details and Links]
Here is an excerpt from Happy Hellidays
The Baals of Today
God takes His law seriously, and though He has not directly addressed the consumer culture of the west, the Scriptures offer plenty of advice about how we should interact with the societies in which we find ourselves residing. In this chapter we examine the commands regarding covetousness, contentment, and even learn the Devil’s occupation (at least according to us). Let us examine in detail the Baals of today’s world.
You Shall Not Covet
Attached to the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) is the final proclamation regarding covetousness:
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything else that belongs to your neighbor (verse 17).
Covetousness at its core means desire, specifically such desire leading to temptation to break a variety of God’s moral laws. Covetousness is to see something we want and seek an occasion of illegitimately gaining it. Coveting is not seeing a nice watch, desiring to get one like it, and working toward the goal, saving up to buy it. Notice the specific command is in regard to your neighbor’s wife, or servant, or animal. This means we must not flirt with our neighbor’s wife in the hopes to separate her from her husband unto your own service. Same with the animals. It was not wrong to desire another ox to plow the fields, but to steal our neighbor’s ox was to act on covetous desires, and that is what God condemns. Likewise in our modern world, we ought to live moderately and not let “the Jones’s” new car inflame us to upgrade our own perfectly functioning vehicle.
God knows the emotions which could easily follow covetousness: greed, envy, and even theft or murder. In His command regarding the people, He was safeguarding them against these sins, though many violations were displayed in scripture because the people did not heed His warning. Not long after Moses died the people were destroying Jericho under Joshua’s leadership. The command was easy enough: Destroy everything (Joshua 6:17-18)! But one man, Achan, was unfaithful. He saw gold, silver, and a coat and took them, obeying his covetous thoughts over the command from God. Joshua 7:21 records in his confession: he coveted the items devoted to destruction and took them instead for himself thinking he could hide his actions from God. Had he just wanted them without succumbing to temptation, all would have been well, but following through his act of covetousness led to his death by stoning.
David also succumbed to covetousness as he was walking along the palace roof one night. He looked down and saw a beautiful woman bathing and coveted her. He inquired of his servants who she was, and the answer came back: she was another man’s wife. This was not just some random man, however, David would have known Uriah because he was actually one of David’s thirty-seven mighty men (2 Samuel 23:39)! He had the opportunity to come to his senses, but instead he sent word through his servants to bring her up to him, and as king, she could not refuse. They committed adultery, got pregnant, and then David killed Uriah by sending him to the front of the battle. These sins became not only a stain on David’s character, but also the beginning of the downfall of his very dynasty. All this because David coveted a woman who was not his (2 Samuel 11:2-5).
The New Testament also records an incident worthy of discussion. Simon was a Samaritan sorcerer, probably not unlike many religious charlatans of today. He used his religion to gain money (Acts 8:9-13). When it was reported to the Apostles the Samaritans were being baptized they sent Peter and John to pray for the people and instruct them in the Lord. Simon was among those whom Philip had baptized but when he saw the Holy Spirit descending on people at the mere touch from Peter and John, he showed his true heart when he offered the Apostles money to give him the same power (Acts 8:14-19). Peter saw right through Simon admonishing him to repent, for coveting the power of the Apostles was not trusting God in faith.
The Lord knew what He was doing when he added the commandments against coveting into the Ten Com-mandments. Wickedness is bound up with covetousness whether it be desiring power, wealth, or sexual gratification. God has declared how He will handle those who live a covetous life:
Woe to those who scheme iniquity,
Who work out evil on their beds!
When morning comes, they do it,
For it is in the power of their hands.
They covet fields and then seize them,
And houses, and take them away.
They rob a man and his house,
A man and his inheritance.
Therefore thus says the Lord,
“Behold, I am planning against this family a calamity
From which you cannot remove your necks;
And you will not walk haughtily,
For it will be an evil time.
(Micah 2:1-3)
Proverbs also warns that covetousness leads us to despair:
The desire of the sluggard puts him to death,
For his hands refuse to work;
All day long he is craving,
While the righteous gives and does not hold back.
Proverbs 21:25-26
The problem with covetousness is for many people who get used to acquiring ‘stuff’, the desire is never full. We try to accumulate more and more hoping to find the one purchase truly making us happy, only to find that happiness is fleeting. We will discuss the folly of happiness later in this chapter on the section regarding the thrill of the purchase. For now, suffice it to say gaining material goods does not bring fulfillment, and Jesus Himself talked about such a person desiring wealth:
For what will it profit a man if he gains the world and forfeits his soul (Matthew 16:26)?
Furthermore, the accumulation of possessions will not help to clarify who we are, rather it muddles our own understanding about ourselves.
Polluted by Marketing
Many have speculated on the Devil’s occupation in our modern world. Some Hollywood productions like Devil’s Advocate suggest he is a lawyer because they are into everything. Truly, what business market is not in need of a good lawyer for settling disputes and writing contracts? Others in the same establishment have said through the television program Lucifer that he would run a bar as they are a hub of sin in our culture. This could make sense in light of the sin so often accompanying the flow of alcohol. We suggest neither occupation clearly reflects what the Devil does in his daily work and that is part of his deception. Though sin is certainly present in both those environments, sin is present everywhere in our world, but the Devil is not just about practicing sin, but rather he wants to get other people to practice sin. Let’s look at his Biblical début:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’” The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings (Genesis 3:1-7).
We see from this scripture the Devil is crafty. That is to say he is smooth in speech, calculated, and speaks to induce behavior in his listeners. He started this dialog by getting Eve to question the only command God gave the two humans. He then gave her a different message informing her she would not die, but instead God was trying to restrict her, but he was trying to make her free. All this caused Eve to question God’s word and do an act she otherwise would not have done. In short, the Devil marketed to Eve a different plan.
The Devil is a marketer, always probing and tempting to engage his subjects in behavior they may not otherwise do. Such is the case of marketers in our world. Their goal is not to inform us of their products, it is to convince us to buy their products. Modern day marketing approaches have demonstrated they will do absolutely everything to get a person to buy their goods whether it is in the subject’s best interest or not. Thus, the Devil is employed in the marketing business.
Some would say the objective of marketing is to inform consumers of new products. We do not believe, however, this is a matter of education, but of subversion. If the purpose of commercials were exclusively to inform, we would have objective, fact-based commercials. But the reality is we see emotional appeals designed to make us discontented. Modern commercials teach us desire for their product as the solution to our woes…for now. They want us to covet the gizmos and gadgets we see so much we will spend every dollar we have in the pursuit of our own happiness or to avoid the social stigma of not having the latest car, phone, or smart device. Neil Postman wrote of commercials in The Disappearance of Childhood[i]:
“The TV commercial does not present products in a form that calls upon analytical skills or what we customarily think of as rational and mature judgment. It is not facts that are offered to the consumer but idols, to which both adults and children can attach themselves with equal devotion and without the burden of logic or verification. It is, therefore, misleading even to call this form of communication “commercials,” since they disdain the rhetoric of business and do their work largely with the symbols and rhetoric of religion.”
Postman continues to describe commercials as modern day parables where the structure consists of sin, a solution, and a vision of heaven for those smart enough to follow the advice of the perfect informants of the proper way. Taken together with our topic on holidays, how could your children possibly have a good Easter or Christmas without new toys and gifts created in the image of popular television characters. It is sad that even cheap knock-off gifts are presented in buying bins designed to match the accepted colors of seasonal events.
Marketing seeks to breed covetousness, which is not enduring. The idea is to convince us our lives are not complete without their new solutions. Like a child anticipating Christmas morning, we flock to stores in droves at the release of a new iPhone or the latest video game franchise expansion giving more of our hard-earned money for the same thing we already have. But the feeling does not last. We have forgotten that in Him we live and breathe and have our being.
The Thrill of the Purchase
Consider again our child during the hours preceding Christmas. The evening of the holy grail of kid-dom is a long and painful night as he anticipates the overindulgence of new toys. Adults get those feelings when the prospect of a new phone, video game, movie, or other trinket seeks our attention. If we have the willpower to fight the feelings we risk going back to purchase the item in the next few days. We justify when we will pay for it, how we will pay for it, and our culture generally goes further into debt on credit cards or making payments to finance large purchases. We do this for the thrill of the purchase, believing that buying trinkets fills the hole in our heart and makes our life complete. This is folly.
He who loves pleasure will become a poor man;
He who loves wine and oil will not become rich.
Proverbs 21:17
Not only will the misguided purchase of products fail to satisfy, but the money we spend on them will lead us wanting for more, failing to meet our retirement goals, and preventing us from helping our neighbors when times become tough. We become slaves to the marketers who seek to extract our funds. We become choked by the goods of the material world, and if we are not careful, we may become counted as those thrown among the thorns:
Others were the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful (Mark 4:18-19).
This is precisely what has been occurring in the western culture of late and the influence is both inside and outside the church. American Christians, in general, have allowed marketing to breed covetousness in our hearts, growing the desire to buy the latest gizmos and gadgets. We spend money that could go to other endeavors on streaming services, monthly payments, and empty stuff, all because we have bought into a cultural idea that having material goods means we are better people, and the belief that having pleasure will give us relaxation. We are being choked by the thorns and if the parable is true, we will become unfruitful…perhaps we have already withered.
We have to learn that wealth and material possessions are fleeting. They are not entirely bad, and like Paul, I (Tom) have lived in abundance and I have lived in poverty; both have their advantages and their pitfalls. Belongings are just things and we have no right to judge our neighbors hearts merely by his possessions, but the question remains ours to answer. Are we placing our trust in things? Are we placing our trust in wealth? Consider what Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 5:10:
He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with its income. This too is vanity.
We leave this section by clarifying we are not against material belongings. Our objection here is how marketing lends to covetousness and tries to tell us our life will be complete when we buy a product or service. The present American model of consumerism gives us idols to worship as people or products and distractions to keep us focused on the world rather than God. It seeks to takes all our money before we can decide how best to use the resources God entrusted to us for His ultimate glory. Truly the thrill of the sale will not last, and the purchase of fleeting merchandise captures those resources from going into Kingdom purposes.
Consumerism and Contentment
We have already looked at a verse from Solomon about riches, but let us examine a few more verses in Ecclesiastes 5:
There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun: riches being hoarded by their owner to his hurt. When those riches were lost through a bad investment and he had fathered a son, then there was nothing to support him. As he had come naked from his mother’s womb, so will he return as he came. He will take nothing from the fruit of his labor that he can carry in his hand. This also is a grievous evil—exactly as a man is born, thus will he die. So what is the advantage to him who toils for the wind? (13-16)
Consumerism directs us toward consumption, and like evil, consumption is never full. Solomon warns about hording money, because such hording tends to make us covetous. We will take nothing with us out of this world. Jesus illustrates the same principle in Luke 12:16-21:
And He told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’ So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
Jesus was not saying money and wealth is bad, in fact the scripture uses many examples of wealth being used in positive ways and even calling it a blessing (Luke 6:38). The problem here is the storing up of wealth made this foolish man want to trust in his possessions as his security. It is easy for us to fall into the trap of trusting our wealth and acquisitions. Paul addressed the wealthy people in the church specifically in 1 Timothy 6:17-19:
Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.
The rich were not commanded to give everything to the church, but to use their money to bless the community around them. The ultimate command is to not look to our money as our source of trust or decline, but that we would instead we dwell richly on the power of Christ no matter our financial situation. Paul says in Philippians 4:8:
Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
Paul continues the next few verses talking about contentment in whatever situation he finds himself. If we have extra money, praise God that we have some. If we do not have extra money and times are tight, praise God for the power to fight another day. A content person can learn not to worry in the tough times and he does not dwell on his wealth during the times of abundance. Thus, we should all learn not to think of things as a means to our happiness.
The Rich Young Ruler (Matthew 19:16-22) seemed to trust in his possessions. He asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, which Christ first replied to obey the commands. The young man was clearly not content with the answer considering he believed he followed all of those commands from his youth. Like an affluent person who collects stuff, joy escapes this young man, and he still seeks more. Jesus tested him on the first command: sell your possessions and follow Him. The young man demonstrated very clearly he had truly not obeyed even the first of the commands, placing his possessions before his service to God.
God knows our things and affluence do not guide us to happiness, but in contrast, they often lead to our downfall. Moses’s words recorded in Deuteronomy demonstrate just how well God knew his people, and about the future affluence in the land flowing with milk and honey. He had this to say:
Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; otherwise when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and have lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (Deuteronomy 8:11-14).
We fail to become content when we start focusing on worldly things being thrown at us in marketing. To contrast this point, the Israelites were told to keep the commandments and ordinances passed down through Moses. In the New Testament we find general principles to help us focus on God over riches. The author of Hebrews says to be free from the love of money, contrasting that desire with contentment (Hebrews 13:5). Paul echoes the same sentiment in Philippians 4:11-12:
Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstance I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.
Paul’s disposition of heart was not dependent on his stuff and circumstances. We need to take this lesson from our heads into our hearts, learning things do not have the power to bring us joy, and that lacking material goods cannot bring us to sorrow. Riches are fleeting, and we are given so many warnings about wealth because of the ease by which money can be lost.
The Balance
Keep deception and lies far from me,
Give me neither poverty nor riches;
Feed me with the food that is my portion,
That I not be full and deny You and say,
“Who is the Lord?”
Or that I not be in want and steal,
And profane the name of my God.
Proverbs 30:8-9
Agur, son of Jakeh wrote this proverb about neither wanting wealth nor poverty. He acknowledges some wealthy people begin trusting their riches but he also recognizes the multitude of challenges among the impoverished. Both financial states have their own trials and temptations, but neither are holier states than the other. This is a balance we need to keep in mind. It is common in our divided nation to pit wealthy against poor. Many will decry the poor as being merely lazy sluggards. Likewise, those poor and lazy sluggards know for a fact they have been oppressed by evil wealthy people. The proverbs are full of people who fell to ruin for spending more than they had by leveraging credit, and other proverbs tell how sluggards will fall to ruin because sleep was more important than the harvest. But the penning of James 5 gives us examples of ways some wealthy people do indeed oppress the poor.
As we dive into this controversial topic we need to embrace the understanding we cannot determine the state of a person’s heart by the presence or absence of material possessions. It is easy to get envious of a person more materially blessed then us, but that does not mean they have accumulated their wealth maliciously. In short, it is our duty to measure our own hearts, not the hearts of others. Reflect on this portion of scripture from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:19-21):
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
It is our own duty to define our treasure. We all have sentimental belongings and we have material goods that are important to us whether it be time saving devices or just things which bring us joy. That is OK so long as we do not focus on those things to the detriment of Christ in our hearts. Let us examine our own hearts to make sure we are not placing our treasure in material things; rather our focus should be on the Kingdom of Heaven.
The next concept in our balance is one of debt and credit. America has become a debtor’s nation not only on the federal level, but also on a personal level. Credit is so aggressively marketed to us that our youth begin receiving credit card advertisements before graduating high school. In addition, we are trained that we will become homeless bums if we do not attend college, but the costs are so high, we must take out student loans…don’t worry! It will be worth it! In fact, I (Tom) remember my college graduation when the university president was talking about the value of our education. He said, “The average person will leave here with a student loan costing $200 per month for the next ten years. That is a good price to pay.” I actually thought that very moment, “If this education is so valuable, why will it take so long to pay off?” Of course, we need a car, and a car payment is just a way of life, so let’s just buy a car we like and suffer through the payments! As of this writing, the average car payment in America is about $500 per month and the average student loan repayment is way higher than $200 per month! Don’t forget your house. And of course, you need to enjoy your life, so sign up for one (or more) streaming services so you can have movies to watch with your expensive, financed television as you relax from the hard day of work while you are trying to pay off everything!
Contrary to the average American life, the scriptures give us a lot of warnings about debt. Some of the more modern translations are comically accurate in saying, It’s stupid to guarantee someone else’s loan! (Proverbs 17:18, CEV). In keeping with our trend of not jumping versions, here are a few warnings from the NASB Bible about credit: The rich rules over the poor and the borrower becomes the lender’s slave (Proverbs 22:7). Many verses in Proverbs deal specifically with the concept of co-signing, which is promising to pay a loan for another in the event they cannot pay. If your own debts are a problem to you, certainly never take on a pledge to pay for someone else. You will generally end up paying in the end, but you will only be notified when your credit has already been damaged for non-payment of a loan. Consider these Proverbs:
My son, if you have become surety for your neighbor,
Have given a pledge for a stranger,
If you have been snared with the words of your mouth,
Have been caught with the words of your mouth,
Do this then, my son, and deliver yourself;
Since you have come into the hand of your neighbor,
Go, humble yourself, and importune your neighbor.
Give no sleep to your eyes,
Nor slumber to your eyelids;
Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hunter’s hand
And like a bird from the hand of the fowler.
Proverbs 6:1-5
If you find yourself as a co-signer of a loan, or even in debt of any kind, do not just let it be because you can ‘make the payments’. Do what you can to remove the debt from your life. Work extra jobs, go without pleasure spending, cut your life back, become a hermit to things of pleasure until you have paid every cent. Trust us that without debt hanging over our heads we will be a lot happier and even more productive in life. Another proverb reminds us that people who hate borrowing money are more secure (Proverbs 11:15). Truly, debt can bind us and it can prevent us from following the path God desires us to walk in.
While debt is a major problem in our world today, it is not the only problem. We have become people who spend without a plan. Often times, spending without a plan is spending on debt, but other times, it is spending money that we do have on things we really do not need or intend to have. This means spending impulsively. Proverbs 21:5 speaks to this:
The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage,
But everyone who is hasty comes surely to poverty.
We should plan our spending and stick to that plan, but of course, that is contrary to what marketers want. They want to get us emotionally stirred up so we spend money we intended to keep. They want us to stop at the upcoming fast food restaurant, or even worse, with tracking included on mobile phones, to give us ads, texts, and notifications when we are in the vicinity of their stores. All this drives us to become more impulsive, and impulsiveness is counter to the balance by which we should live our lives to the glory of God.
While the Israelites settled easily into the worship of false gods like Baal and Moloch, we in the west are equally susceptible to Baal in the form of consumer marketing. We worship iPhones enough to stand in line for days in anticipation only to sign up for a monthly payment plan on a device worth more than our first car. The devices we seek to buy, or sign up for free service, turn us into the product bought and sold. The companies build up psychological profiles on all of us users and use the data to more effectively target their marketing. But the error is not in their court, they are merely providing temptation. We follow through, extend our credit, justify our payments, and sink lower into the stupor of cool consumer entertainment while the still, small voice of God eludes us. It is better to seek Him first and not get involved with the consumer push for the latest thought-children of executives seeking to merely gain profits.
[i]The Disappearance of Childhood, Neil Postman, 1994, Vintage Books
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History is written by the winners, or so goes the old aphorism.
You know why it rings true?
Because at the end of a lot of wars the victors are the only ones left standing to write it.
You can’t embellish if you’re dead and gone, and if you’ve won you don’t have to.
Like most aphorisms it’s both partly true and grossly simplistic, and in Scottish football it’s been turned on its head because the victors didn’t write the history; a bunch of charlatans wrote an alternative version of it and, shamefully, the media tried to pass that off as truth.
I have long argued that we – the victors, the fans, the people who won some measure of justice, however small, for the sins at Ibrox – would eventually write the history, and I still believe that, firmly, and fully. We’re the only ones who can.
I hope that in the fullness of time all of the bloggers will write their own books about this period; I know I’ve got one in me and the desire to write it.
I’m not daunted by the task but by the nagging feeling that the story isn’t finished yet, that there’s one, perhaps more than one, major denouement still to come. That we might be only part of the way through this. I want to see how the story ends first.
That’s a personal taste.
There are a handful of books – and I mean a small handful – about where we are right now and how we got here, and they are important books. Every Celtic fan should be reading those books, but more important than that is that every Celtic fan should be trying to get every non-Celtic fan they know to read them too.
Phil wrote the first of them, of course, with Downfall and it is, like Stephen’s book, a sobering look at how football in this country was completely failed by the governing bodies and the media. Phil has the advantage of being a professional journalist, and that echoes in his work.
Paul Larkin has produced some of the most noteworthy books, and they are special and required reading for everyone who wants to learn about this stuff.
Paul is not a professional journalist in the way Phil is, but he is an accomplished author and documentary maker.
Paul puts a lot of himself into his books and writes them unashamedly from a Celtic perspective. He writes for his own audience without equivocation. He will never write a coffee table book for the chattering classes … he writes for us and he does it exceptionally well.
Pat Anderson needs to be mentioned here; how can he not be?
He is probably the most prolific of all the authors in our circle who writes about these events, and he does so brilliantly, with irreverence and great humour. But his books are not supposed to be read as serious histories, although an awful lot of work and research goes into each one.
Stephen is a Celtic fan, but his book is written as a serious history, as a serious journalistic examination of these matters and that requires that a writer leave his personal feelings out of the story and simply records the facts and the events as they happened, with a little backstory and supporting information to provide context.
What I’m saying is that Stephen’s book is a genuine effort to present this story, and the facts about what happened here, to a mainstream audience out-with the confines of just the Celtic support … and this is what makes his book, and the one Phil wrote before him, so dangerous and different.
This is why there has been a backlash against it.
There are people who want the alternative version of this history to prevail, the one that endorses the Victim and Survival lies.
The one that says Rangers survived and was then brutalised and beaten down by a conspiracy of people who hate them.
This bears no resemblance whatsoever to what actually took place; they weren’t victims. Their club lied and cheated for over a decade. They had concealed registration documents. They had spent money they didn’t have. They had evaded tax and in the end decided to simply stop paying it.
Whyte had intended to put the club into administration and then find a way to dump all the debts, football, social, personal and business, and emerge on the other side “cleansed” as if that’s a word that belongs anywhere near a discussion about such a scenario.
And our governing body, who knew about it four months before Whyte put the first part of that plan into effect, had every intention of helping him do it. Was it even legal? The club was trading whilst insolvent and the SFA knew all about it. Neil Doncaster went on television at one point and said that football clubs using administration and pre-pack insolvency to dump debt and carry on regardless was part and parcel of the football business … a disgraceful suggestion.
When people get in a flap because sponsorship deals are hard to come by for Scottish football’s competitions, perhaps the reason is that the events of 2012 scorched its credibility and we’ve not yet fully recovered it. In addition, those diabolical words from Doncaster are still on the record and have never been retracted or even clarified.
Debt dumping is normal in football. Scottish football has no problem with it. When that’s the stated view of those actually running the game here then we’re a banana republic, and they wonder why we can’t attract serious investment into our national sport.
These are just some of the reasons why we can’t leave this shameful narrative on the record as the last word. It needs to be challenged and the truth put front and centre and the history of this thing presented as it happened and not merely as some wish it had.
Stephen has recently announced that mainstream outlets are not going to review the book. He says his publisher has been told they are worried about a backlash from the Peepul. That’s undoubtedly true, as Phil can attest.
A national newspaper was supposed to review Downfall, but under pressure changed their minds and attacked him instead … that’s how gutless our media actually is. So it’s not a great surprise to find out that Stephen’s book is causing the same palpitations in the newsrooms, and as I’ve said on this site before we are not their natural audience anyway.
Paul Larkin’s outstanding documentaries were finding a mass audience … but when he hired a Celtic Park suite to screen one of them not that long ago, the mainstream media attacked him and the club for giving him the space to do it.
Don’t ever forget this stuff.
Stephen’s book is already being attacked on Amazon, where people who haven’t bought it and who couldn’t get the past the first page even if they did, are leaving semi-literate one star reviews. Think about that for a minute; you have to be really disengaged from reality to attack someone on the grounds of their literary merit in an incoherent, misspelled rant … yet there they are, the Peepul at their finest, proving that it really is about the schools after all.
But think about the damage those reviews can do to the idea of breaking that book out and getting in front of those whose “understanding” of what took place here is built around the version the media chose to sell back in 2012. In order that the two big lies be challenged properly we all need to find the widest possible audience … and Stephen’s book, one of the very few historical records, one of the very few publications grounded in the truth, is being held back.
Don’t ever think that’s just out of fear.
Journalists in Scotland are a pretty supine bunch and we know that for a fact already, but don’t believe for one minute that this is why Stephen’s book can’t find a mainstream title willing to at least give it a proper look. Fear is the fig-leaf the media would put up to cover what it’s really concerned about.
The trouble our press has with that book is that it challenges their own narrative, their own version of events.
This is about protecting their turf, and in doing so protecting the lies.
They do not want to acknowledge past mistakes or especially that they are still making them even now.
But more than that, this book, as with Phil’s, and with Paul’s books and documentaries, and all the others which come after them, represents a clear and present danger to the alternative history that our media has relentlessly promoted for a full seven years.
This isn’t over yet. Those books and those films are still out there, and the audience for them is as large as it ever was. Alternative history never endures. Because sooner or later some inquisitive little sod comes along and starts to pick holes in it, and especially when there are different interpretations of what actually happened available to study.
And that’s why this book is really important; it’s important because whether or not it gets reviewed, whether or not it gets ratings and sales or wins awards and makes it so Stephen never has to put anything down on his CV again but the word “writer” … none of that is half as significant as the mere fact it exists at all, that it is out there waiting to be found … and that’s a victory in itself because I don’t believe the two big lies will hold up forever.
But in the meantime we owe it to Stephen, as we owe it to the others, to support his book and not only to buy it and leave our reviews so that we bury those ridiculous one star jokes, but to push that book – and Phil’s, and Paul’s and Pat’s – on everyone who thinks they know what really happened here. Because I suspect most of them don’t have a clue.
This time, the history that many “accept” wasn’t written by the winners.
Not yet anyway. But it will be.
Stephen O’Donnell’s book “Tangled Up In Blue” can be bought at this link.
Michaela Rodger is a budding writer and photographer. She spent much of her young life in the East End of Glasgow and has supported Celtic since her Dad took her to her first match as a young teenager.
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Why Bitcoin is Stupid
Well, shit. I’ve been watching this situation for a few years, and assuming it would just blow over so we wouldn’t have to talk about it here in this place where we are supposed to be busy improving our lives.
But a collective insanity has sprouted around the new field of ‘cryptocurrencies’, causing a totally irrational worldwide gold rush. It has reached the point that a big percentage of stories in the financial news and questions in Mr. Money Mustache’s email inbox are about whether or not we should all ‘invest’ in BitCoin.
We’ll start with the answer: No, you should not invest in Bitcoin. The reason is that it’s not an investment. Just like gold, tulip bulbs, Beanie Babies, 1999 dotcoms without any hope of a product plan, “pre-construction pricing” Toronto condominiums you have no intent to occupy or rent out, and rare baseball cards are not investments.
These are all things that people have bought in the past, and driven to completely irrational prices, not because they did anything useful or produced any money and value to society, but solely because they thought they would be able to sell them to someone else for more in the future.
When you make this kind of purchase, which you should never do, you are speculating, which is not a useful activity. You’re playing a psychological, win-lose battle against other humans with money as the only objective. Even if you win some money through dumb luck, you have lost some time and life energy, which means you have lost.
Noticed this ad on the corner of a website recently … because we ALL need daily updates on an obscure piece of niche software technology!
Investing means buying an asset that actually creates products and services and cashflow for an extended period of time. Like a piece of a profitable business or a rentable piece of real estate. An investment is something that has intrinsic value – that is, it would be worth owning from a financial perspective, even if you could never sell it.
Now, with that moral sermon out of the way, we might as well talk about why Bitcoin has become such a big thing, so we can separate the usefulness of the underlying technology called “Blockchain”, from the mania about how people have turned Bitcoin it into a big dumb lottery.
This separation is important because the usefulness of Blockchain is the primary justification people use for the big dumb Bitcoin lottery.
Once you make this separation in your mind, you can see that Blockchain is a simply a nifty new software invention (which is open-source and free for anyone to use), whereas Bitcoin is just one well-known way to use it.
Blockchain is just a computer protocol, which allows two people (or machines) to do transactions even if they don’t trust each other or the network between them. It can have applications in the monetary system, contracts, and even as a component in higher level protocols like sharing files. But it’s not some spectacular Instant Trillionaire piece of magic.
As a real world comparison, I quote this nifty piece from a reader named The Unassuming Banker:
… imagine that someone had found a cure for cancer and posted the step-by-step instructions on how to make it on-line, freely available for anyone to use.
Now imagine that the same person also created a product called Cancer-Pill using their own instructions, trade marked it, and started selling it to the highest bidders.
I think we can all agree a cure for cancer is immensely valuable to society (blockchain may or may not be, we still have to see), however, how much is a Cancer-Pill worth?
Our Banker friend goes on to explain that the first Cancer-Pill might initially see some great sales. Prices would rise, especially if the supply of these pills was limited (just as an artificial supply limit is built right into the Bitcoin algorithm.)
But since the formula is open and free, other companies would quickly come out with their own cancer pills. Cancer-Away, CancerBgone, CancEthereum, and any other number of competitors would spring up. Anybody can make a pill, and it costs only a few cents per dose.
And yet imagine everybody started bidding up Cancer-Pills, to the point that they cost $17,000 each and fluctuate widely in price, seemingly for no reason. Because of this, newspapers start reporting on prices daily, triggering so many tales of instant riches that you notice even your barber and your massage therapist are offering tips on how to invest in this new “asset class”.
But instead of seeing how ridiculous this is, even more people start piling in and bidding up every new variety of pills (cryptocurrency), over and over and on and on, until they are some of the most “valuable” things on the planet.
NO, right?
And yet this is exactly what’s happening with Bitcoin. And if you haven’t been digging into the cryptocurrency world much, it gets way weirder than this. Take a look at this shot from the website coinmarketcap.com, and observe the preposterous herd behavior in real life:
Fig.1: Various cryptocurrencies, ranked by how many people have been fooled.
“Holy Shit!” is the only reasonable reaction. You’ve got Bitcoin with a market value of $234 Billion Dollars, then Ripple at $92 billion with Ethereum right behind at $85,792,800,592.
These are preposterous numbers. The imaginary value of these valueless bits of computer data represents enough money to change the course of the entire human race, for example eliminating all poverty or replacing the entire world’s 800 gigawatts of coal power plants with solar generation. Why? WHY???
An Aside: Why should we listen to you, Mustache?
I’m only a mediocre computer scientist. But coincidentally, after I got my computer engineering degree I ended up specializing in security and encryption technologies for most of my career. So I did learn a bit about locking and unlocking information, hacking, and ensuring that independent brains (whether they are two adjacent CPUs on a circuit board or two companies negotiating across the Pacific) can trust each other and coordinate their actions in lockstep. I even read about these things for fun, with Simon Singh’s The Code Book and the Neil Stephenson novel Cryptonomicon being particularly fun shortcuts to pick up some of the workings and the context of cryptography.
But that’s just the software side (Blockchain). Bitcoin (aka CancerPills) has become an investment bubble, with the complementary forces of Human herd behavior, greed, fear of missing out, and a lack of understanding of past financial bubbles amplifying it.
Mustachianism – the mental training that gets you to very early financial freedom – requires you to evaluate inefficiencies in our culture and call bullshit upon them. Even if you are the only one in the room willing to do it.
In the field of personal wealth, this means walking your children past the idling lineup of your neighbors’ Mercedes SUVs, over the snowy grass and up to the door of the school – and being confident that you are doing the right thing. Even if you’re the only one doing it.
When evaluating investment bubbles, it means looking at where everyone is throwing their money – no matter how many billions – and being willing to say “Bull. Shit. Guys. Not going to do this with you.”
So I also read a lot about investment bubbles and fundamentals and how to tell those apart. One book that I found very useful in understanding the greed-fear cycle (and Central Banking and the Federal Reserve system to boot) is the 2001 classic Towards Rational Exuberance by Mark Smith. For a shortcut to understanding good investing, you can also simply look up Warren Buffet’s thinking on almost any topic – he’s careful enough about offering opinions that by the time he makes a statement on something, you can be pretty sure it will be among the best answers out there.
And of course, the purpose of this whole aside is that I want to establish credibility with you, so you will give this article some consideration. I believe the current Cryptocurrency “investment” mania is a huge waste of human energy, and our rate of waste has been growing exponentially.
The sooner we debunk the myth and come to our senses, the richer our world will be. So we need more credible people to speak out against it. If you’re one of these credible people, please do so in the comments or in a blog post on Medium that we can all read.
Why was Bitcoin Even Invented?
Understanding the motivation is a big part of understanding Bitcoin. As the legend goes, an anonymous developer published this whitepaper in 2008 under the fake name Satoshi Nakamoto. It’s well written and pretty obviously by a real software and math person. But it also has some ideology built in – the assumption that giving national governments the ability to monitor flows of money in the financial system and use it as a form of law enforcement is wrong.
This financial libertarian streak is at the core of Bitcoin, and you’ll hear echoes of that sentiment in all the pro-crypto blogs and podcasts. The sensible-sounding ones will say, “Sure the G20 nations all have stable financial systems, but Bitcoin is a lifesaver in places like Venezuela where the government can vaporize your wealth when you sleep.”
The harder-core pundits say “Even the US Federal Reserve is a bunch ‘a’ CROOKS, stealing your money via INFLATION, and that nasty Fiat Currency they issue is nothing but TOILET PAPER!!”
It’s all the same stuff that people say about Gold, which is also a totally irrational waste of human investment energy.
Government-issued currencies have value because they represent human trust and cooperation. There is no wealth and no trade without these two things, so you might as well go all-in and trust people. There are no financial instruments that will protect you from a world where we no longer trust each other.
So, Bitcoin is a protocol invented to solve a money problem that simply does not exist in the rich countries, which is where most of the money is. Sure, an anonymous way to exchange money and escape the eyes of a corrupt government is a good thing for human rights. But at least 98% of MMM readers do not live in countries where this is an issue.
So just relax, lean into it, and grow rich with me.
OK, But What if Bitcoin Becomes the World Currency?
The other argument for Bitcoin’s “value” is that there will only ever be 21 million of them, and they will eventually replace all other world currencies, or at least become the “new gold”, so the fundamental value is either the entire world’s GDP or at least the total value of all gold, divided by 21 million.
People then go on to say, “If there’s even a ONE PERCENT CHANCE that this happens, Bitcoins are severely undervalued and they should really be worth, like, at least a quadrillion dollars each!!”
This is not going to happen. After all, you could make the same argument about Mr. Money Mustache’s fingernail clippings: they may have no intrinsic value, but at least they are in limited supply so let’s use them as the new world currency!
Why not somebody else’s fingernail clippings? Why not one of the other 1500 cryptocurrencies? Shut up, just send me $100 via PayPal and I’ll send you a bag of my fingernail clippings.
Let’s get this straight: in order for Bitcoin to be a real currency, it needs several things:
easy and frictionless trading between people
to be widely accepted as legal tender for all debts, public and private
a stable value that does not fluctuate (otherwise it’s impossible to set prices)
Bitcoin has none of these things, and even safely storing it is difficult (see Mt. Gox, Bitfinex, and the various wallets and exchanges that have been hacked)
The second point is also critical: Bitcoin is only valuable if it truly becomes a critical world currency. In other words, if you truly need it to buy stuff, and thus you need to buy coins from some other person in order to conduct important bits of world commerce that you can’t do any other way. Right now, the only people driving up the price are other speculators. The bitcoin price isn’t rising because people are buying the coins to conduct real business. It’s rising because people are buying it up, hoping someone else will buy it at an even higher price later. It’s only valuable when you cash it out to a real currency again, like the US dollar, and use it to buy something useful like a nice house or a business. When the supply of foolish speculators dries up, the value evaporates – often very quickly.
Also, a currency should not be artificially sparse. It needs to expand with the supply of goods and services in the world, otherwise we end up with deflation and hoarding. It also helps to have wise, centralized humans (the Federal Reserve system and other central banks) guiding the system. In a world of human trust, putting the wisest and most respected people in a position of Adult Supervision is a useful tactic.
Finally, nothing becomes a good investment just because “it’s been going up in price lately.”
If you disagree with me on that point, the price of my fingernails has just increased by 70,000% and they are now $70,000 per bag. Quick, get me that money on PayPal before you miss out on any more of this incredible “performance!”
Figure 2: Random people on Twitter doing some deep, useful Investment Analysis on Bitcoin.
The world’s governments are not going to let everyone start trading money anonymously and evading taxes using Bitcoin. If cryptocurrency does take off, it will be in a government-backed form, like a new “Fedcoin” or “G20coin.” Full anonymity and government evasion will not be one of its features.
And you don’t want it for this purpose anyway – after all, do you currently hide your money in offshore tax havens and transact your business on black markets? Do you practice illegal tax evasion as your primary wealth strategy? Probably not, because life is better and wealthier when you aren’t living a life of crime.
The Cryptocurrency bubble is really a replay of the past: A good percentage of Humans are prone to mass delusions which lead to irrational behavior. This is a known bug in our operating system, and we have designed some parts of our society to protect us against it.
These days, stocks are regulated by the SEC, precisely because in the olden days, there were many, many stocks issued that were much like Bitcoin. Marketed to unsophisticated investors as a get-rich-quick scheme. The very definition of an unsophisticated investor is “Being more willing to buy something, the more its price goes up.”
Don’t be one of these fools.
Further Notes
This YouTube Video is one of the best shortcuts I found for explaining how Blockchain works.
This Vice article explains yet another ridiculous aspect of Cryptocurrency: running the transaction network (called “Mining”) involves a deliberate computer-intensive crypto challenge syetem called “proof of work”. This inefficient design is now wasting more electricity than many entire countries. Doing one transaction burns 215 kilowatt-hours of electricity, enough to run the entire MMM household for more than a full month, or to power an electric car for more than 800 miles of driving.
Another interesting side-effect of bitcoin mining: big sales of computer graphics cards, and theft of electricity and cloud computer services. One of my coworkers at MMM-HQ works for Nvidia, and part of his job is hunting down the mining thieves. Some of my conversations with him inspired the research in this article.
I enjoyed this analysis by Aswath Damodaran, a thoughtful investor and Professor at NYU school of business
Another intelligent case by highly experienced crypto business lawyer Preston Byrne. Favorite quote:
“Bitcoin’s growth is not based on its technology alone (which, while powerful, is open-source and therefore easily replicable) but rather on the strength of virality, encouraged by the vested interests who held early and invested in marketing it; with no genuine business underlying it, it acquires its (very substantial) memetic potency only from the evangelism of those who hodl and preach.”
from Finance http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/01/02/why-bitcoin-is-stupid/
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