Archive for the ‘oddities’ Category

Again With the Cultural Appropriation

Posted: September 3, 2019 by julietteochieng in oddities
Tags: , , , , , ,

 

Boy choy kimchi

by baldilocks

I’ll stop eating if Leftists go first.

In the winter of 2016, Liz Connelly and Kali Wilgus took a road trip from their home in Portland, Oregon to Puerto Nuevo, Mexico.  They fell in love with the tortillas they ate on the beaches there.  Liz told a reporter from the Willamette Week, “I picked the brains of every tortilla lady there in the worst broken Spanish ever, and they showed me a little of what they did.”

Liz and Kali came back to Portland, and they opened a food cart from which they sold burritos comparable to what they had tasted in Puerto Nuevo.  Alas, Kali and Liz did not realize they were committing a great wrong in selling delicious burritos culturally appropriated from Mexico.  Fortunately, this wrong was halted (along with their food cart business) when some brave Portlanders went to battle on their computers and, with death threats and tweets, stopped this outrage. (…)

If selling food from other cultures is cultural appropriation, then isn’t eating it cultural appropriation as well?  I couldn’t sleep worrying about this.  I had been going to Indian restaurants and Chinese food trucks for years, not knowing I was committing a crime against foreign cultures.

The stress was too much.  I already was feeling guilty about my white privilege, and now this!  I flew all the way out to Seattle to take Laura Humpf’s Undoing Whiteness yoga class [hahaha] to reduce my stress and rid myself of my toxic whiteness.  Imagine how disturbed I became when I learned that yoga too is cultural appropriation.  I first realized this when a free yoga class was shut down in a college in Canada by students especially attuned to these issues.

I decided to stop going to ethnic restaurants and to live off the Israeli salad I make at home and the American hamburgers and corn I eat for dinner, along with cereal and milk for breakfast.  I figured that since I am Jewish, Israeli salad is OK…until the day that I passed a banner on the University of Pennsylvania campus.  That banner condemned Israel for appropriating Israeli salad from the Palestinians.

My neighbor is fantastically integrated; Hispanic- and Korean-Americans mostly, with good sprinkling of black and white. Within walking distance from my apartment is a small-chain restaurant whose fare is emblematic of the neighborhood. The food is best described as pseudo-Asian: rice bowls with meat. But they also serve hamburger or fried chicken with fries and quesadillas. The beef quesadillas have a teriyaki flavor to them.

It’s fast food using mostly real food.

The owners are Korean immigrants and will sometimes offer a side of store-bought cabbage kimchi. And something very sweet happened last week, one of the owners – Amy – had prepared homemade bok choy kimchi and gave me a big vat of it because she knows I like it. It was tasty.

Oh and fun fact: their main cook is a Hispanic dude named Omar.

My point?

Leftists will have to pry my cultural appropriation from my cold dead hands! Damn killjoys.

Let them eat nothing.

By the way, Leftists, did you know that watermelon and coffee are indigenous to Africa?

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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Remember when you’re feeling bad, sad or lonely…

Posted: September 1, 2019 by datechguy in oddities, Uncategorized

..that as an American living in 2019 you are living better that 99% of all the humans that ever lived.

And that includes the poor.

Monopoly Socialism, A Surprisingly Nuanced Game of Wits

Posted: August 24, 2019 by datechguy in economy, gaming, oddities
Tags: , , ,

There is a lot of talk about the game Monopoly Socialism from Hasbro. Leftists are upset and folks like me are delighted that the game pokes fun at Socialism, but let’s forget that for a moment as a gamer and ask the basic questions one might ask about a game, namely.

  1. Is it playable?
  2. Is it challenging?
  3. Is it fun
  4. Weaknesses
  5.  Is it worth your time?

1.  As to the first question the game is very easy to play, the setup is not complicated because only the community fund gets any cash, the mechanics of the game are relatively easy and it tends to move quickly, sometimes VERY quickly.  The one real issue with the game is that you’re a monopoly player you have to make sure you don’t use a monopoly mindset because that’s an easy way to lose.  Which brings us to question 2

2.  Is it Challenging.  I was quite surprised that this game take a lot of thought.  you are playing both against your opponents and the game itself.  the nature of the game means that you have to take advantage of community handouts early to get power,

but to rely too much on it leads to everybody losing.  In addition while wealth can help make a difference in winning, it’s not really the determining factor, particularly when there are so many cards that can counter you.  Furthermore if you are too far in the lead it’s an incentive for the others to let the community fund run dry and everyone loses.  Like socialism you have to boil the frog so to speak to make sure that those who can bring you down don’t understand how you are manipulating the system.  Against strong players it takes an awful lot of skill to come out ahead…just like in socialism.

3.  Is it fun?   Well this depends.  if you are a person of the right you will likely find it fun and funny right from the start simply because of the cards and effects like this one:

The fact that the game is challenging and requires wits is a bonus extra.

Now if you are a person on the left who has made socialism and politics their religion then you are likely going to be so pissed off that no amount of challenge and nuance will compensate for the great insult to your religion, however if you are a person with an open mind who likes a skillful challenge then you might still enjoy this game as it takes quite a bit of wits to win.

4.  Weaknesses.  Three come to mind, firstly it’s actually fairly easy to rumble the game in one respect.   If the players right from the start decide not to take advantage of the system to get ahead in theory you can build up the community fund to a point where it might possible to advance on your own.  However that might take a half hour of not trying to win, so depending on who you are playing with that doesn’t work.

There are some ambiguities in the rules, ,for example, while it suggest that all should contribute to the general fund it’s not clear that people can do it voluntarily.  If you are a rich player it might be worth while to pay off the debts of the community to keep the game going and I think there should be a mechanism to do that.

We have also added a house rule that would be a good addition to the game in general.  There are cards that remove your chits from project due to offenses against socialism, however in real life what tends to happen in real life that such a person commuting such an offense can usually be shaken down to buy forgiveness, so we added a rule where a person can buy forgiveness from the community with a contribution to the community fund and a partial payment to the person playing the card.  Basically it’s the Al Sharpton rule and it adds another aspect to the game, both interesting and real.

Finally I’d like it if  you could play with six rather than just four, because my gut tells me a larger group would be more interesting but much harder to win.

5.  Finally is it worth your time.  I think so, it’s a challenging game that can be finished in under an hour, even quicker if people aren’t careful.  I don’t know if I’d pay the prices I’m seeing on Amazon right now but if you want a game that is fun to play, well designed, requires some wits and has just enough luck to not make it a forgone conclusion this game is it.

My congratulations to the design team, well done  4 1/2 out of five.

Report from Louisiana: Fete Dieu du Teche

Posted: August 19, 2019 by Pat Austin in catholic, Church doctrine, oddities
Tags:

By: Pat Austin

ARNAUDVILLE, LA – I’m not Catholic by faith, but this is the coolest thing I’ve seen lately. Just beautiful.

Each year on August 15, Acadians participate in Fete-Dieu du Teche, which is “a 38-mile, all-day boat procession down the Bayou Teche that celebrates the arrival of the Acadians more than 250 years ago.” This year was the fifth year for the procession to travel Bayou Teche. While many communities host the feast of the Assumption procession by foot, this boat procession is believe to be fairly unique.
It is something to see.

As reported by the Lafayette Daily Advertiser:

“The procession of dozens of boats memorializes the Acadian’s exile from Canada and migration to south Louisiana.The feast is also important for Catholics, as the Blessed Virgin Mary is the patroness of Acadiana and its people.

Thursday morning began with a French Mass at St. Leo the Great Catholic Church in Leonville. Along the way were four stops — behind St. Francis Regis in Arnaudville, behind St. Joseph Church in Cecilia, the Pavilion behind St. Bernard Church in Breaux Bridge and the park behind St. Joseph Church in Parks, before ending at the Old Market Street in St. Martinville.”

There is a Facebook page for the event where folks could watch live videos of the procession all day.

The day began at 8:00 a.m. with a Mass in French at St. Leo the Great Catholic Church in Leonville and then proceeded down Bayou Teche with stops along the way with stops in designated towns for Rosary and Benediction.

The Catholic News Service explains:

“Having a Eucharistic procession by boat on the waters of the Teche rather than by foot in the streets makes a lot of sense,” said Father Michael Champagne, a priest of the Community of Jesus Crucified, who is the organizer of the event. “Fete-Dieu du Teche on the feast of the Assumption recalls our rich Acadian history and, in a way, reenacts the journey made by the Acadians 250 years ago.”

“The Acadians were persecuted for their Catholic faith and sent into exile from Nova Scotia. Many ended up settling in Louisiana. Champagne explained that having a boat procession with the Blessed Sacrament and a statue of the Assumption involving priests, religious and laity is basically what happened in 1765.”

As the boats move down the river one can see the statue of Mary in front and priests and laity members in their vestments kneeling in the boats as they proceed from one town to the next, stopping to disembark and minister to crowds gathered on the banks.

It’s a powerful and moving thing to see.

I’m Episcopal by faith, (my husband calls it “Catholic-lite”) but no matter what faith you are, you can’t help but be moved by the sights and sounds of this procession.

Raw links for this post:
Photos of the procession: https://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/multimedia/photos/collection_88635440-bf89-11e9-9d1e-d3bd1ca3c33f.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=user-share&fbclid=IwAR0ZUWt-1my401cPWnqQjGgIeJoVUQZ9Uzyi9Vjq2bS-FZYWx2UUj2ueac8#1

Lafayette Daily Advertiser: https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/2019/08/15/acadians-and-blessed-virgin-mary-celebrated/2003527001/?fbclid=IwAR2xpTPHHv0YVmiVLohUyeS9qIPIRV92PDC8JIoNGUIXUIaMqmm9-3KTolU

Crux: Catholic News Service: https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2019/08/03/eucharistic-boat-procession-to-mark-assumption-acadiana-history-faith/

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