Their moving routine sent across a meaningful message of communication in this digital age—a beautiful reminder to disconnect to connect: The couple also left a message in the comments section: “Funny thing is you’re probably watching this on your phone somewhere. Just a reminder that within this beautiful age of technology and innovation, we are mostly connected when disconnected. Thank you everyone for your love and support.” This video is one shot and uncut. Keone & Mari Madrid are world-renowned dancers, award-winning choreographers, directors, global instructors, and most importantly husband, wife & parents.
Hey Everybody. Im Zak the coincidence theorist. Here is a little about me and how my mind works:
I believe that it was a coincidence that building 7 fell down without anything hitting it. I believe it was a coincidence that the media reported that it fell down 15 minutes before it fell down. I believe it was a coincidence that the terrorists passports remained unscathed in all the rubble so we could find the evil terrorists who did it.
These coincidences led us to bombing the crap out of afganistan to get the terrorists that the US coincidentally funded decades before. And it was a coincidence that terrorism exploded ever since then. It was just a coincidence that equally absurd justifications (later exposed as lies) were used to bomb the shit out of Iraq, Libya, Syria and all the rest. Oh but not Saudi Arabia who western governments coincidentally sell tons of weapons to. Its a coincidence that all the terrorists came from there and helped destabilize and radicalize the middle east and create far more extremists and terrorists.
It is also a coincidence that most mass shooters have links to the government. And its a coincidence that governments have been so obsessed with trying to disarm the population the last couple decades (almost like they knew something was coming and didn’t want us to be able to resist it?). And it was a coincidence that during this period of time we’ve experienced the greatest authoritarian push to take away all our other rights and militarize the police, using the excuse that its to stop the terrorists that they coincidentally funded.
Which coincidentally has happened alongside the biggest worldwide debt bubble in world history, created courtesy of central banks. Which were coincidentally created by a bunch of rich bankers who profit time and time again from the chaos they create. And which have been used coincidentally in other countries to create huge bubbles and then hyperinflate the currency. So that bankers could buy up everything for pennies while the populations starve.
Coincidentally, the mainstream media has been telling people how great the economy is this entire time and to put all our savings in the stock market. Also coincidentally, we are right on the cusp of a major retirement wave where people are heavily invested in their retirement funds. Very coincidental timing!
And it was a coincidence that right before the economy was going to implode anyway, a ‘pandemic’ happened to explain away the economic collapse. And it was a coincidence that the hardest hitting flu in my lifetime hit tons of people this year, months before this supposed virus even left china. And it was a coincidence that the symptoms so closely resembled those of corona virus.
It was a coincidence that every countries government engaged in unprecedented extreme social distancing and lockdown measures over something that was clearly not nearly the big deal it was made out to be. It was a coincidence that non-essential businesses all happened to be small ones that don’t have the funds to survive forced closures. Its also a coincidence that rolling out 5G networks was still essential during this time. Because that’s what we really need during a pandemic; instant fast porn downloads. Don’t even get me started on the 5G coincidences.
Its also a coincidence that the corona virus happened right before the food shortages began due to the super grand solar minimum, so that it could be blamed on the virus. On that note, its also a coincidence that the CO2 caused global warming narrative changed to the CO2 caused ‘extreme weather’ narrative, right before the super grand solar minimum. So that weather events could be blamed on cows farting and people living their lives rather than well documented natural cycles.
Its a coincidence that this virus provides the perfect excuse for tyrants to do exactly what they said they’d do for decades; microchip and track us in an orwellian nightmare society. Everything they’ve written is in fact a coincidence despite so much of it happening now. The fact that conspiracy researchers like David Icke have been truly prophetic in their multi-decade predictions about the authoritarian takeover is also… you guessed it: A coincidence.
Its a coincidence that yet another black person was killed by yet another cop in an outrageous and on video execution. Right when there was a lull in this corona virus nonsense. And all the strange things about the relationship between that black guy and the cop and how that murder went down? Also a coincidence.
You see, I believe anything and everything that has ever happened in this world has been a coincidence. It has to be. Because that nice belief allows me to feel safe and secure. To admit that any of these things were in fact, not a coincidence, would open up pandoras box. I’d then have to question every single thing I’ve ever believed since I was born. History. Science. Politics. Nature of Reality. Religion. I can’t handle that.
But what I can handle is putting my mask on every day, to help save the world from the sniffles as I play videogames and masturbate to 5G porn while receiving free government cheques until the currency hyperinflates. So that’s exactly what I will do until Bill Gates’ vaccine comes out. I trust vaccines, and believe its just a coincidence that so many babies have seizures and die or regress shortly after having one. And its a coincidence that I had 50 vaccines and a yearly flu shot and keep getting all these new autoimmune diseases and get the flu every year. And when I finally die a painful and disease ridden death after a lifetime of vaccines, GMOs, fluoridated water, processed chemical laden food, and emf exposure, I will go peacefully, knowing it was all just a big coincidence.
In August, 1968, the country was still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. four months earlier, and the race riots that followed on its heels. Nightly news showed burning cities, radicals and reactionaries snarling at each other across the cultural divide. A brand new children’s show out of Pittsburgh, which had gone national the previous year, took a different approach. Fred Rogers had met François Clemmons at a church service after hearing him sing, and asked him to join the show. Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood introduced Officer Clemmons, a black police officer who was a kindly, responsible authority figure, kept his neighborhood safe, and was Mr. Roger’s equal, colleague and neighbor. A year later in 1969 when black Americans were still prevented from swimming alongside whites, Mr. Rogers invited Officer Clemmons to join him and cool his feet in a plastic wading pool, breaking a well-known color barrier. And there they were, brown feet and white feet, side by side in the water, silently, contemplatively, without comment. The episode culminated with Rogers drying off Clemmons’ feet. Most young kids were probably unaware of the real weight the episode carried, its scriptural overtones, but the image of a white man tending to the needs of a black man was seared in their minds nonetheless. 25 years later, when François Clemmons retired, his last scene on the show revisited that same wading pool, this time reminiscing. Officer Clemmons asked Mr. Rogers what he’d been thinking during their silent interlude a quarter century before. Fred Rogers’ answer was that he’d been thinking of the many ways people say “I love you.”
Carl Aveni
In a world screaming out for tolerance, acceptance, kindness, and love – choose to be a Fred Rogers – because if more people could find a way to love others the way he did, without barriers, this world would be a much better place…
(Tom: Brilliant! Loved it. Brought back fond memories of a youth spent more reading such (and Biggles) than doing homework.)
In our latest essay in which a critic reflects on a cultural work that brings them joy, Nicholas Barber pays tribute to the blissfully escapist comic novels of PG Wodehouse.
If we’re talking about culture that makes people happy, we have to start with the works of PG Wodehouse. There are two reasons why. One reason is that making people happy was Wodehouse’s overriding ambition. The other reason is that he was better at it than any other writer in history.
Some authors may want to expose the world’s injustices, or elevate us with their psychological insights. Wodehouse, in his words, preferred to spread “sweetness and light”. Just look at those titles: Nothing Serious, Laughing Gas, Joy in the Morning. With every sparkling joke, every well-meaning and innocent character, every farcical tussle with angry swans and pet Pekingese, every utopian description of a stroll around the grounds of a pal’s stately home or a flutter on the choir boys’ hundred yards handicap at a summer village fete, he wanted to whisk us far away from our worries. Writing about being a humourist in his autobiography Over Seventy, Wodehouse quoted two people in the Talmud who had earnt their place in Heaven: “We are merrymakers. When we see a person who is downhearted, we cheer him up.”
As P G Wodehouse himself said, his primary aim was to spread “sweetness and light” (Credit: Alamy)
My own introduction to this supreme merrymaker came via Jeeves and Wooster, the television series adapted from some of his most beloved stories about a young toff and his unflappable manservant. Hugh Laurie starred as Bertie Wooster, the moneyed bachelor who seemed to care about nothing except food, drink and fashionable socks, but who always came to the aid of the numerous old schoolmates who were even more stupid than he was. Stephen Fry co-starred as Jeeves, who had the brains that his young master lacked. As an undernourished, overworked student, stressed by essays and exams, I was always relieved when I could nip down to the college’s TV room (yes, it was a long time ago) for my weekly escape into a jazz-age wonderland of art-deco flats and panelled gentlemen’s clubs, “tissue-restoring” cocktails and buffet breakfasts served on silver platters.
A crafter of perfect sentences
Nearly three decades on, I’m currently rewatching the DVDs with my daughter, and Jeeves and Wooster is still pretty much flawless. When I interviewed Laurie in 2000, I gushed about the series, and he cited what was, at the time, his favourite Wodehouse line: “The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like GK Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin.”
There are so many other lines he could have gone for. How about this one?
“It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.”
Or this?
“It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.”
Or this?
“Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.”
The one that has me chuckling to myself on a regular basis is this Bertie Wooster gem from the novel Right Ho, Jeeves: “‘Very good,” I said coldly. ‘In that case, tinkerty tonk.’ And I meant it to sting.”
We could keep listing zingers like that all day: there were 96 Wodehouse books published in his lifetime, and he was drafting another when he died in 1975 at the age of 93. What these excerpts prove is that, however much we may cherish the bumbling aristocratic characters and their convoluted escapades, what really makes Wodehouse so addictive is the prose: the phrases which appear to float along so effortlessly, but which came about because he would, he said, “write every sentence 10 times”.
He is the greatest musician of the English language, and exploring variations of familiar material is what musicians do all day – Douglas Adams
To read any of those sentences is to marvel at the elaborate but elegant route it takes to a perfect punchline; to delight in how it glides between Shakespeare and race-track slang, between understatement and exaggeration, between gentle humour and stinging wit. “What Wodehouse writes is pure word music,” said Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. “It matters not one whit that he writes endless variations on a theme of pig kidnappings, lofty butlers, and ludicrous impostures. He is the greatest musician of the English language, and exploring variations of familiar material is what musicians do all day.”
He could certainly have written darker, more soul-searching books if he hadn’t been so naturally jovial: he had plenty of raw material to draw on. Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was born in 1881. (Perhaps he was thinking of his own names when he had Bertie commenting that “there’s some raw work pulled at the font from time to time”.) His Victorian colonial parents were rarely in the same country as he was, according to his biographer, Robert McCrum. “In total, Wodehouse saw his parents for barely six months between the ages of three and 15, which is by any standards a shattering emotional deprivation,” he noted in 2005’s Wodehouse: A Life. Nonetheless, “Plum” relished his Dulwich College schooldays, and was looking forward to his university years when the next blow fell: his father announced that he had to go straight to a job in a bank instead.
There were 96 Wodehouse books published in his lifetime, with his Jeeves and Wooster novels remaining his most celebrated legacy (Credit: Alamy)
The disappointment didn’t stop him. He always knew that he wanted to be a writer, and so he sold short stories at a superhuman rate until he could make a living from them. Soon he graduated to anthologies and novels, some featuring Jeeves and Wooster (who debuted in 1915), others featuring the canny Psmith or the garrulous Mr Mulliner, some set at mossy Blandings Castle, others set at Marvis Bay Golf and Country Club. Beyond these, there were Broadway musicals and Hollywood screenplays, and a long and harmonious marriage. (He made the money and his wife spent it, an arrangement which suited them both.)
But while his professional and personal lives were blessed, they included episodes which could have been turned into sombre literature. During World War Two, his adored stepdaughter Leonora died unexpectedly, aged 40, after a minor operation, and Wodehouse himself was arrested in northern France, where he was living at the time, and sent to a German internment camp for almost a year. Even there, he kept writing, and polished off a novel in captivity, the appropriately titled Money in the Bank. He was then moved to a hotel in Berlin, where he was invited by German radio to broadcast a series of comic accounts of his internment. Naively, he agreed, keen as he was to assure his fans that he was in good health and good spirits. What he didn’t realise was that he was playing into the hands of the Nazi government, which could claim to be treating its illustrious guest well. In Britain, he was accused of colluding with the enemy, and his reputation never quite recovered, but there was hardly a trace of anger or self-recrimination in his work. He stuck to prelapsarian yarns in which everyone was essentially comfortable and fortunate – except, of course, when they found themselves briefly engaged to a woman who believed in healthy eating and gainful employment.
Whatever was going on in his life, Wodehouse stayed buoyant; and whatever is going on in the reader’s life, he keeps us buoyant, too. “I was clinically depressed for most of 1999,” said Jay McInerney, the author of Bright Lights, Big City in a 2016 interview “and I would turn to Wodehouse, possibly the funniest writer in the English language. It seemed to be more effective at warding off despair than the antidepressants that I was taking.”
Despite his gaiety, Wodehouse endured a number of dark chapters, including the unexpected death of his much-loved stepdaughter Leonora aged 40 (Credit: Alamy)
Maybe you can spot some deeper themes in his books if you look hard enough. At times I can persuade myself that there is something subversive in Bertie’s lack of interest in the conventional status markers of a career and a marriage, and something instructive in his insistence on helping his lovestruck friends, however ungrateful they may be. I can even argue that Wodehouse was revolutionary because his characters didn’t defeat villains in fist fights or shootouts (although they sometimes stole policemen’s helmets on Boat Race night). Perhaps he was teaching us that we can’t all be high achievers, let alone rugged action heroes, but that we can all be kind and generous. In other words, we can live according to the code of the Woosters. But I admit that this is a stretch. As Stephen Fry put it, “You don’t analyse such sunlit perfection: you just bask in its warmth and splendour.”
Evelyn Waugh might have agreed. “Mr. Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale,” he said in 1961. “He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own.” Captivity doesn’t get much more irksome than the one we’re enduring now, but Wodehouse can still release us from it.
The lack of peace in certain regions is proof positive that these principles are actually valid and needed, more than ever. Please promote the Youth for Human Rights videos so more people are aware of and insist upon their rights so that we can live in a peaceful society.
Watch the video and if you think so too, please share it!
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò warns the president that the current crises over the coronavirus pandemic and the George Floyd riots are a part of the eternal spiritual struggle between the forces of good and evil.
The lack of peace in certain regions is proof positive that these principles are actually valid and needed, more than ever. Please promote the Youth for Human Rights videos so more people are aware of and insist upon their rights so that we can live in a peaceful society.
Watch the video and if you think so too, please share it!
“Our theoretical framework reproduces the recent explosive growth in anti-vaccination views, and predicts that these views will dominate in a decade,” the study, published in journal Nature, found. (Tom: Yay! Truth is seeping through the society! And may it continue at an even greater speed!)
The lack of peace in certain regions is proof positive that these principles are actually valid and needed, more than ever. Please promote the Youth for Human Rights videos so more people are aware of and insist upon their rights so that we can live in a peaceful society.
Watch the video and if you think so too, please share it!
