Showing posts with label stupid ideas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stupid ideas. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

If I can be a boy OR a girl, can I be young OR old? (and other inane questions)


69-Year-Old Dutch Man Identifies As “Age Fluid” And Seeks To Legally Change His Age By 20 Years

By Bernadette Deron
Published November 12, 2018

He claims that his biological age does not reflect his emotional age, and is hurting his chances with women on Tinder.


69-year-old Dutch “positivity guru”, Emile Ratelband, has embarked on a legal battle in the Netherlands to legally make his age 20 years younger.

Born on March 11, 1949, Ratelband wishes to change his birth date to March 11, 1969.

Ratelband is a motivational speaker and trainer in neuro-linguistic programming. He said in a courtroom in the city of Arnhem in the eastern Dutch province of Gelderland recently that he doesn’t feel “comfortable” with his date of birth. Instead, Emile Ratelband wishes to be identified as 20 years his junior. He believes this age change will enable him to go back to work and to achieve more success in his personal life.



The guru feels that he is discriminated against on dating apps like Tinder because of his age. He continues that his advanced age is not reflective of either his character or physical well-being:

“I have done a check-up and what does it show? My biological age is 45 years. When I’m 69, I am limited. If I’m 49, then I can buy a new house, drive a different car. I can take up more work. When I’m on Tinder and it says I’m 69, I don’t get an answer. When I’m 49, with the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position.”




Emile Ratelband added that if transgender people are allowed to undergo a sex change operation and identify as a different gender, then if he identifies as a different age he should thus be allowed to change his date of birth:

“Transgenders can now have their gender changed on their birth certificate, and in the same spirit there should be room for an age change.”


The judge apparently seemed to be somewhat sympathetic to Ratelband’s cause. He noted that the concept of legally changing one’s gender was once completely unthinkable:

“I agree with you,” the judge said, “a lot of years ago we thought that was impossible.”


But the judge also recognized that there would ensue negative consequences from changing one’s date of birth, namely that the process would effectively delete a massive chunk of one’s life.

The judge asked Emile Ratelband what would happen to the early years of his life, from 1949 to 1969, should his request be granted: “For whom did your parents care? Who was that little boy then?”



"With the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position" - E. Ratelband

Emile Ratelband nullified this statement and responded that both his parents are dead. He argued that his legal age-change would actually be good for the government, as he would not seek his pension until he reaches the country’s retirement age again, 20 years down the line.

As ridiculous as the argument sounds, Ratelband’s court battle has actually tested the limits of individual human rights.

Indeed, at the end of the 45-minute court session, Emile Ratelband stated that his case is “really a question of free will.”

The court is scheduled to submit a written ruling in early December 2018.




BLOGGER'S BLOTTER. About this, I just don't know what to say. I'd rather say nothing and call it a day, but feel called upon to say something.

This guy is just squirrely enough to be taken seriously: that is, taken to mean that he means it. With his weaselly sense of influence, of entitlement, of agency, he might just pull this off.

It just means the Gabor sisters were around in the wrong era. Were they here today, they could just keep going back for more and more birth date changes, knocking off the decades, even if it meant having so many brow lifts they became airborne. But surely this is a sardonic view, written from the perspective of someone who has never experienced it.

We're in a position now where we can't say anything at all about any of this, however, which is the only reason I find this interesting at all. Is he really backhanding the whole transgender movement and trying to make it look ridiculous? Or is he - serious? Does he want to jam himself right in behind the thin edge of the wedge driven by transgender pioneers? Thus he'd reap all the rewards, without having to experience all that agony of soul.

If he has one.




Imagine seeing that face on Tinder. I don't care if he says he's 39 or 29 or even 19. He is a holy horror of a man. His website is hilarious: he claims to make "tailor-made presentations" to all sorts of businesses, meaning: look, pay me enough and I will say anything you want, even if I don't mean any of it at all.

A man for our times.

But really. Tinder, and such.  I'm too old for all that, but I hear it's a real meat market, and how fresh IS the meat of a man who is nearly 70?  For that matter, 50 is seriously pushing the best-before date.

No, it MUST be a joke. Or not? I heard about the first successful human head transplant on the news a few months ago, the item read straight, no horrors or commentary or anything. Just: here's what they're doing in the operating room, folks. My stomach dropped at the same time that my hair stood up. I was unable to look it up on the internet to see if it was true.

This guy may want some other organ transplanted. Or is it his brain, after all? Put that ugly pocked head on the body of a 29-year-old, and see how far he gets on Tinder. 



UPDATE. Or downdate or something. While trying to find a thing I posted on transgender regret, which it turned out I ALREADY re-posted in February, I found this ridiculous thing. Haven't heard anything about him since, so he likely either kept taking 20 years off until he turned into a zygote, or else he died of old age. Not nice to fool Mother Nature. She'll get you every time. (And does Tinder even exist any more?)


Monday, May 14, 2018

The RackTrap - As Seen on TV





I watched this video in disbelief, and then I watched it again (in disbelief). What's weird about it is that I can't find reference to this product anywhere else. Anywhere. I took Google by the heels and turned it upside-down and shook it, and nothing came out - and that almost never happens. So, like Perfect Polly the chirping plastic parrot and that stuffed laughing hyena thing, this looks like an idea that went straight down the sewer without a detour.

"The Rack Trap" itself is the wrong name. It's just. . . wrong. The whole product is "off", in that it's something that just could not work, period, but to call it The Rack Trap. . . what does it mean? I saw a couple of other things with that name on YouTube, but they had to do with deer antlers. You know. . . a rack.





I'm well aware "rack" can be used as slang for a woman's breasts, but it's kind of obscure. You're more likely to hear "boobs", "tits", or the more genteel "girls". "Rack" has the wrong sound to it - you should get some semblance of the product's purpose from its name. "Trap" means - what? It can mean a, well, a trap, but what else? 

This is, in case you don't want to sit through a pretty excruciating video, a little flat purse you stick in your bra. That's right. It has a zipper in it. There is a list of all the things you can "hide" in this little flat purse:

Money
Credit Cards
Bandaid
Mints
Gum
License
Tissues
Bus Pass
Flash Drive 
MP3  Player
Gym Card
Condoms
Business Card

In the video, there's no looking down your neckline and fishing around to find the top of your bra cup and sliding the "trap" in and jiggling it around to get it in the right place. The lady sort of slaps it on her chest, and that's it. It looks as if she isn't even wearing a bra, which would be kind of silly because then The Rack Trap would just fall on the floor.





Maybe it's like Snoopy's dog house or something, or a clown car, where you can't believe how much can fit in such a small space. More likely, if this is anything like even the most miniaturized version of a woman's purse, stuff would accumulate, makeup and keys and tampons and mirrors and sunscreen and earrings and hair scrunchies and press-on nails and - you get it, by now. 

It would be like trying to fit a bumpy baseball in your bra cup. Oh, great. Such a smart look! "Jesus, what's that lumpy thing under your shirt?" Soon it would weigh 20 pounds or more. And trying to get stuff out of it in public? Are you kidding? Here she is, head bent (in a dark restaurant, say), rummaging around in there, unable to find it, losing it down her front and having to lift up the bottom of her blouse to retrieve it . . . It's not a good look.




I think it's deliberate that the women in the ad are wearing thin, clingy fabrics instead of thick sweaters. The Rack Trap is supposed to just sort of melt into your body, I guess, so it doesn't show through silk or sheer tank tops. It does appear to vanish when the women slap it against their chests, but I just can't see it happening that way. When they pull them out, they do it so fast you can hardly follow it. It seems to just come out of the thin air, as if there's some sort of photographic trick going on.

I wonder who they hire for these infomercials, who they get to effuse and enthuse about this stuff. I am sure for the most part they haven't used the product, which gives those testimonials their hilariously fake quality. "It doesn't even show!" one woman cries, the assumption being that it certainly WOULD show, like any fat little zippered thing you crammed in your brassiere.






AFTER-THE-THOUGHT: One more thing that bothers me. Doesn't it sound like they're saying "rat trap"? Rat trap, rat trap, rat trap. The more I watch it, the more it sounds like that.


Tuesday, June 13, 2017

"The walrus was Paul": Beatles animations




It was fifty years ago today, or whenever it was, that this landmark album first came out, and the world is celebrating. I wish I remembered my first reaction to it. Since we lived in a small town, I am sure we didn't get around to buying it 'til maybe 1968. But there it was, and it was as if it had been part of our lives always. 

Though it was indescribably weird, at the same time, there was something familiar about Sgt. Pepper, and it fast became a friend, an album you'd go back to again and again, maybe for the next. . . fifty years. I've started dipping into it again, though I find the Beatles so "dense" (no, not stupid, just musically thick and layered and emotionally laden, not to mention dizzyingly brilliant technically) that I have to take it a few songs at a time. 

When I listen to Pepper now, I hear George Martin. His musicality and influence permeates every song. Along with the less-brilliant Magical Mystery Tour, Pepper is one of the Beatles' most highly-produced (some would say overproduced) albums, meaning that it is just thick with the bells and whistles that spawned the stoned, psychedelic, signature '60s sound. They could not have done this on their own. They were a gear group, man, and as they matured as songwriters, they could tear off a masterwork like Blackbird backed by a single guitar. But right there they were in an uncharted musical wilderness, breaking ground like crazy, and badly needed a guide. 

I love finding snippets of interviews with George Martin. His love for the group is palpable, as is their trust of him and openhearted willingness to apply his complex arrangements to songs that, let's face it, were still pretty scouse around the edges. Though Ringo retained more skiffle than the rest of them, the fact that they remained working class lads probably kept them from flying off the edge of the world from the insane pressures of fame. 




Please forgive these strange animations. I got making them today, and couldn't stop. What happened is,  I decided to see if I could animate (if you can call it that) the legendary Sgt. Pepper album cover. Of course I could not go near the front. That would be plain foolish. So I tackled the back instead, though in its own way it is no less complex. All the song lyrics are superimposed on top of the four lads, creating an eerie 3D effect. (By the way, I used to be on the front cover myself: I clipped out my face from one of those godawful class photos - I was wearing a pink velvet dress with a ruffle down the front - and scotch-taped it next to Laurel and Hardy. Or was it Marilyn Monroe.)




As I poked around in all this 50th anniversary stuff, noticing the approximately ten billion YouTube videos on the subject, I inevitably ran into the stupidest conspiracy theory in human history:  "Paul Is Dead" (as of 1966, when he was replaced by a double). I was amazed to see that the rumor, poisonous lie, or whatever it is, is still around and has so many viciously enthusiastic proponents. There are comparisons of eyes, noses, lips, even teeth, insisting that the Paul of today (indeed, the Paul of 1966 - God, I can't believe I just wrote "indeed") is a mere stand-in. Some even call him, inexplicably, Faul.

Apparently, the Beatles' music is rife with clues as to Paul's demise/replacement. Since he died in a car crash, John wrote, "He blew his mind out in a car/He didn't notice that the lights had changed." Never mind that John specifically stated that the song was about the death of Guinness heir Tara Browne. 

I could go on. "Dying to take you away." "Turn me on, dead man." "I buried Paul." Bare feet, black carnations, "the walrus was Paul" (and by the way, conspiracy people see all sorts of omens and portents where there aren't any. Walruses are NOT a sign of death, people. They are large marine mammals. John's use of them was pure surrealism.) 






This album has been analyzed and written about to death. Each song has brought forth PhD theses and books and more albums and all manner of things. My favorite Pepper story - and this may even be true - is about Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, the circus poster come to life. George Martin wanted something special to illustrate the surrealism of Henry the Horse dancing the waltz, so he had a technician find an old tape of calliope music, cut it up into one-second pieces, throw them up in the air, then splice them back together as they landed. This led to a lot of snippets of backwards music that was, like, weird, man, it was just incredible. I don't know for sure if the Beatles invented backwards music/messages, but I do remember that in 1965 the end of Rain sounded a lot like "nair".

I always assumed Paul was alive, but then it hit me, as I was mucking around trying to make these silly animations: hey, why is he facing backwards? This was 1967, and though the conspiracy theory didn't really come out until two years later, the Paul-is-dead zealots would claim that he had died already and they were trying to cover up the fact that his "double" (Billy Shears? William Campbell? - whatever) looked nothing like him.




I was determined to get Paul (Faul?) to turn around here, and found an image of a guy in a blue Pepper uniform. I don't know who he is, nor do I care. He was the right size and shape for my purposes, Beatlish in a generic sort of way. I keep thinking he looks a bit like Dave Thomas of SCTV wearing a Sonny Bono wig.

I don't know. It is odd as hell, when you think about it. I am not sure if all the people on the cover were dead, or just most of them. I can't remember, and I don't want to look it up because I am getting bloody sick of the topic. If they were all dead, then Paul was "facing" them by looking backwards like that.

But wait, wait, no, JOHN is dead - we know that much. We know George is dead. Good old scouse working-class Ringo is still around, and he is SO COOL and hip now, it's a real transformation. It's really just stupid, because it means Paul never did Blackbird, and - screw it, it's all a load of crap! Who else could have done Blackbird? No other human being, living or dead.