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Patrick W. Reed

@patrickwreed.bsky.social

660 followers 240 following 4.8K posts

Writer, historian & occasional wrestling commentator/referee/oddjobsman Host of the Bunkum & Ballyhoo podcast (@bunkumballyhoo.bsky.social) "Kayfabe: A Mostly True History of Professional Wrestling", out now: bit.ly/3N1Q73b www.patrickwreed.com

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Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 2h

My suspicion is she's probably not Japanese at all, and you're probably right about taking Miyake's name. And she also probably wasn't 18 either. Which doesn't leave much to go on!

Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 2h

I haven't managed to find her anywhere, and have been searching through the various English wives and daughters of Japanese jiu-jitsu music hall performers hoping for a clue!

Edith Garrud was running music hall performances built around jiu-jitsu around then, that might be a starting point.

Reposted by Patrick W. Reed

Jana H-S (they/she) @jana-aych-ess.bsky.social · 3d

hell yeah I'm LGBTQ (Losing Ground in my Battle against the Tarantula Queen)

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Reposted by Patrick W. Reed

Moose Allain @mooseallain.bsky.social · 13h

You don't need to have read it to get the joke

www.worldofmoose.com/products/tri...

Cartoon. Venn diagram of two circles intersecting. The left circle contains the text 'Tristram Beer', the right circle contains the text 'Tristram lemonade'. There is no text in the intersection, leaving the reader to fill in the gap.

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Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 13h

I find stupid pseudo-words the funniest thing ever, and I hate how the one thing AI can reliably do is churn out ones that make me laugh myself silly.

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Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 13h

RAIN
RAIN
BARKELS

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Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 13h

year 7 studens today don't even know their slightly simpliced bisic ilcomations.

Luke Plunkett @lukeplunkett.com · 15h

kids teacher just sent this home as part of an assignment he's doing and i want to smash every computer at the school

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Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 13h

But during his Christian period, his lyrics are *incredibly* straightforward, and not at all open to interpretation. Because the moment he decided that his calling was to communicate the message of Christianity in music, that *by necessity* made his writing more of a blunt instrument.

Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 13h

Bethany's point on right-wing art giving answers while left-wing art provides questions is interesting too; it reminds me of a critique of Bob Dylan's regrettable Christian period. Dylan's most celebrated lyrics, previously, had been cryptic and open to interpretation, they made the listener think.

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Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 13h

...character had been a straight white male, that requires the exact same number of conscious decisions as if they had been black, queer, and non-binary. They don't exist, someone wrote them into being. Everything about them. This is obvious, yet too many people fail to intellectually understand it.

Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 13h

...hidden meaning, it's about recognising that every text is constructed out of a patchwork of conscious choices, and realising that is just as important a lesson. When people complain of a character being queer or non-white as "forced diversity", it's because they fail to recognise that if the...

Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 13h

...curtains being blue was still a conscious choice. There *are* no curtains, the author wrote them into existence. They chose to mention the curtains, chose to imagine them as blue, and decided that was a piece of information relevant to the text. These things aren't always a matter of finding...

Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 13h

...engage with it. It was the impotent anger of a schoolchild, inexplicably held on to into adult life. And it fundamentally misses the point.

Maybe the author *didn't* mean anything deeper by choosing to make the curtains blue. Maybe the blue curtains aren't representative of anything. But the...

Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 13h

on those last reposts - and the brilliant phrase "thought terminating cliché" - one of the most common tropes online used to be, "maybe the curtains are just blue". It was used to suggest that literary analysis was silly or unnecessary, that looking for deeper meaning in a text was a *bad* way to...

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Reposted by Patrick W. Reed

Bethany Black @bethanyblack.bsky.social · 13h

Left wing art gets you to ask questions, right wing art gives you answers. The reason that Ron Swanson joke works is because Ron is a conservative libertarian, and as a type we know that plain-talking, intelligent, but seemingly oblivious archetype. Someone who sees simple cause and effect only

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Reposted by Patrick W. Reed

Bethany Black @bethanyblack.bsky.social · 13h

When they say the average reading age in the UK is 11 it’s because on average most people can read the words but not understand a deeper meaning. “It’s not that deep” is the thought terminating cliché of the functionally illiterate.

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Reposted by Patrick W. Reed

Bethany Black @bethanyblack.bsky.social · 13h

Right, so, someone saying immigrants should have “A-level English” is someone who doesn’t know what the subject “English” is, which is learning to recognise and understand deeper meaning and symbolism in a text, to be able to analyse and deconstruct and get their own reading on a text

Ron Swanson ignoring the symbolism in Moby Dick which he thinks is a book about a guy who hates an animal

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Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 1d

I can't believe Iain has the time to learn how to make such a good meringue given how busy he must be indominatably defending his small Gaulish village against the Roman invaders.

Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 1d

I keep forgetting to do this thing that only I committed myself to in the first place. Yes, I could just be using Goodreads/StoryGraph and Untappd. What of it?

Reading 📖:
Bless Me Father by Kevin Rowland

Drinking 🍺:
Northdown Brewery - Hopalong Green Ale @ The Shirker's Rest

Reposted by Patrick W. Reed

Bunkum & Ballyhoo @bunkumballyhoo.bsky.social · 2d

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Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 2d

Bruno Sammartino

Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · 2d

name an italian more worthy of an american holiday than columbus

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Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 2d

Forever an insufferable little fancyman.

Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 2d

I appeared in the Hull Daily Mail a few times, and never less than unnecessarily dramatic, be that posing too excessively in the FRONT PAGE news story about our village pond getting some swans, or wearing a little fireman's helmet at Twins Group.

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Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 2d

increasingly convinced that "I'm sorry, I love you" is the worst thing to ever happen to storytelling in professional wrestling.

Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 3d

Catching up with my favourite neighbour.