August 30th, 2024
Scathing Online Schoolmarm, as you know, likes to single out instances of very good writing. Take a look at this.

The writer has managed to discipline his rage, to fight it down until it calms into precise and powerful prose.

That is, the rage still storms, but the writer has been able to channel effusion into eloquence. Like most people who write about Trump, he is at pains to find strong enough adjectives to express his disgust (insulting, repulsive, crass, vulgar, defiling, horrific, reckless), but, more importantly, in invoking the specific sacred nature of this section of Arlington Cemetery (the writer is a veteran of the wars in which these men died), he establishes a compelling opposition (sacred/profane; sacrificing/selfish) that he sustains throughout the piece.

August 6th, 2024
It’s a fine opinion piece, but its last paragraph drew the attention of Scathing Online Schoolmarm.

The outcome of saddling up for another four years with Trump is preordained to be cloaked in chaos, anger and vitriol, the same unproductive position as when he disgracefully left office last time. Trump’s obsession with power fuels head-scratching disappointments at unexplainable times and places. 

This writing demonstrates the problem of mixed metaphors. They’re not the worst problem in the world — the meaning of the sentences is clear. But if there are enough of them, they can muddle things. As in – if you’re going to start with the charming, all-American saddle up, your next bit of figurative language should probably not be cloaked, which comes from a place other than the stable. You could write preordained to be a bumpy ride, or something like that. Instead of fuels, I’d just forget figurative language there and write prompts, for instance.

July 24th, 2024
Scathing Online Schoolmarm scathes through the desperate auctioning of a house.

Harcourts Westside, under the visionary leadership of Ty Cueva, announces the auction of the unparalleled Somma Estate at 10697 Somma Way.

The house has gone unsold for over eight years, during which the asking price has plummeted from 100 million to 75 mill to 30 mill to ok how bout please rent it for 200 thou a month. Cueva auctioned it last March, and the current listing only says pending. The dude is some kinda visionary.

In an unprecedented move in the luxury real estate market, Ty Cueva, CEO of Westside Property Group and the driving force behind Harcourts Westside, has listed The Somma Estate for auction. 

Unprecedented used as a synonym for humiliating. Interesting.

The Somma Estate stands apart in its fusion of opulent amenities and homely elegance. 

The writer’s zeal to convince you that a 40,000 sq ft construction feels warm and homey leads her down a perilous path to homely, which means ugly.

[The house has] an extraordinary 21 bathrooms.

For the discerning billionaire with chronic explosive diarrhea. Extraordinary.

It’s a self-contained utopia offering a 25-meter indoor pool, steam room, sauna, fitness studio, and even a full-size indoor basketball court, all enveloped in the warmth of a family home.

LOLOLOLOL

 The Somma Estate is introduced to auction with a starting bid of $30,000,000, a pivot from its previously higher price points. This decision underscores Harcourts Auctions’ commitment to fostering competitive bidding while making the property accessible to a broader range of affluent buyers.

We’ll take anything! What can you pay?

July 2nd, 2024
SOS says: Let’s Scathe Through, shall we?

The question of whether or not Israel should recognize—and fund—the right of yeshiva students to pursue their Torah studies rather than join the army has been a political hot potato since at least the 1970s…

Given that tens of thousands of Haredi men do no Torah study of any actual meaning or value – they lack the motivation/intelligence/training to do little other than show up in a building occasionally and hang around open books – the writer misstates the problem. It’s sweet that he assumes that we assume that all male babies born into this population transform into Torah scholars. But since we have eyes in our heads, we do not assume this. Because we know it is not true.

[T]here are already 6,000 Haredi men serving in the army … hundreds of them are combat soldiers, and … they volunteer in such solid and consistent numbers … the IDF saw fit, in 1999, to establish an independent battalion just for Haredi soldiers, called Netzah Yehuda.

Netzah Yehuda is nothing to be proud of. The US gov has singled this unit out for sanctions, so atrocious has its conduct been in the West Bank. And who can be surprised? A subculture taught to consider pretty much everyone not an ultraorthodox Jew pretty close to subhuman can’t be trusted with serious weaponry. Unless you don’t care about the law of warfare.

And the IDF didn’t create a unit just for Haredim cuz it was wowed by their solidity and consistency: Haredim are so unassimilably weird and demanding in their general and specific orientation (no mixing with women ever!) that nothing short of total segregation will work with them.

Indeed, “fully integrating Haredim into its ranks would require a wide array of logistical challenges—providing strictly kosher food, for example, or addressing concerns rising from coed military service—it currently cannot and does not want to address.” And why is it only the IDF that has to address ways of being that allow this group of Israelis to contribute to the Israeli state’s existential crisis? How about the Haredim meeting the army halfway, and, say, suspending strict observances for the duration of their service? Suspending their inhumane attitudes toward everyone not a member of their religious group?

OOOH, say their rabbis, that would be the first step to secularization.

So?

The author goes on to argue that the war is going desperately badly — a position rather at odds with his initial argument that the Israeli court should leave an enormous population of unemployed young men alone.

*********************

UPDATE:

At least 22 percent of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students under the age of 26 are illegally employed, in violation of the terms of their exemption from military service, a new study has found, appearing to undercut the community’s argument that its members do not enlist due to their total immersion in Torah study.

June 28th, 2024
Scathing Online Schoolmarm says Wow.

‘Kamala Harris … would lose by an even bigger margin than the ambling cadaver.

Andrew Sullivan

May 21st, 2024
Poseur Alert

The preeminent German poet-philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe famously described architecture as “frozen music,” opining that “the state of mind produced by architecture is similar to the effect of music.” Over 150 years later, Frank Zappa—a somewhat less august personage, perhaps, but nevertheless prescient—reframed Goethe’s meditation on the corporeal and the ethereal: “Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance space is sculpted into something,” Zappa professed. One wonders what type of music might be frozen in the bold volumes and interwoven planes of the Jamaican pleasure dome created by Grammy-winning celebrity DJ and producer Thomas Wesley Pentz, better known as Diplo. 

May 16th, 2024
Everyone’s got WHAT to say about Christ’s Kicker…

Including Dave Zirin.

Yes, the NFL wants female fans, and yes, they want fans of color, and yes, going soft on Butker risks that. But above all else, NFL executives exist to appease the whims of billionaires in the owners’ boxes most of whom—judging by their bankrolling of Donald Trump—agree with Butker. The destruction of Black bodies for white consumption and profit is an ugly business. Normally the NFL wants to keep the underlying ideology of its owners under wraps. The biggest problem with Butker is that he vomited it up for everyone to see.

************

SOS grudgingly concedes that Butker’s speech displayed, Zirin notes, impressive concision.

Butker managed, in just a few minutes, to be homophobic, anti-abortion … and racist… He cried out against, “Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values and media, all stem[ming] from the pervasiveness of disorder.”

Given the size of Butker’s … vomit, you’d expect a great deal of difficulty coughing up a few tidy paragraphs, but he did the deed. He got it done. And now all of America is talking about it.

May 15th, 2024
Just kidding about the not business!

A sign in Rehoboth Beach. Scathing Online Schoolmarm remains fascinated by the idiotic things people do with quotation marks.

May 6th, 2024
‘Despite being made of metal, Dr Foyle also points out the object is surprisingly fragile.’

SOS says: Good on Dr Foyle for being able to point out anything.

May 3rd, 2024
‘Kristi Noem’s damage control tour is in full swing. It appears destined for the same fate as her late dog Cricket: dead in a gravel pit somewhere near Pierre.’

Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: Good writing!

March 21st, 2024
Exuberant/Exorbitant

For the second time, Scathing Online Schoolmarm has caught someone using exuberant when they mean exorbitant. The first one was

Rehoboth Beach is Delaware’s most overrated destination mainly due to the cost of parking and its exuberant enforcement of parking meters.  

I think the writer probably had excessive in mind along with exorbitant. Whatever.

And there’s this.

Ball told him that was “a felony,” but she wouldn’t report it. She just kept prescribing him exuberant amounts of oxycodone. 

February 29th, 2024
ugh

“It is dismantling white epistemic logic, removing the centering of the oppressor’s historical lens, and lifting the Black perspective voices. To be clear, I am not arguing for an essentialization of African culture and Blackness; Blackness and Black people are complex and multifaceted, but I am interested in the historical narratives that throw away the Eurocentric ways we think about Black people throughout history.” 

It’s not that this has been plagiarized. It’s that it was ever written in the first place. The worst thing about the ongoing march of DEI plagiarism stories is toppling undefended into this prose. Reader, beware.

February 27th, 2024
‘Florida health officials flaunt CDC public health guidelines as measles outbreak spreads’

Datz right. The headline writer meant FLOUT, not flaunt.

February 4th, 2024
‘After sitting empty for several decades, the current owners bought the property…’

Took them a long time to decide to buy. But they were feeling empty.

October 18th, 2023
Rep Jim Jordan and the Absolutely Fucking Flaming Triple Asshole …

problem.

**************

[R]arely are [politicians] as instantly and unambiguously repellent as the odious Jordan. He’s so unlikable that even ideologically radical Republicans like Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) who have no meaningful policy beefs with him are lining up to torpedo his bid. [SOS SOS: Beef and torpedo? Really?] He would be, in every possible way, a gift for Democrats to run against next year, not just because of his sordid antics but also because of the insanely unpopular policies he backs, like a national abortion ban.

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