Category: Flotsam and/or Jetsam

Catchall for whatever doesn’t fit elsewhere

Police story

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The great Ken Layne tells it as only he can, a personal reminiscence that provides a bracing look back at the kind of old-time cop we all used to respect, trust implicitly, and admire—a noble breed which has become all too rare in Amerika v2.0, alas. They used to be the norm rather than the exception in America That Was, but tragically for us all, America That Was is no more.

Ripley
Ripley was a Riverbank cop for a good long while until he went to work for the Sheriff’s Department around 1985 or so. He was one of those old skool small town cops, Officer Friendly if you will. Him being called out for something did not mean automatic arrests of everybody involved would be made “to let the courts sort it out”.

He was one of those cops that actually took the time to listen to both sides of a dispute, would pull over to help a motorist make minor repairs rather than just calling a tow truck, and would even give you a ride home instead of automatically arresting you if you had a little too much to drink provided you weren’t so fucked up you were driving on the sidewalk and giving whiney-ass sober citizens a reason to complain. On top of all that, he had a great sense of humor.

That’s not to say he took shit off of anybody. He treated people the way they treated him. 

Real Pancho was drinking at Sanchez’s Cantina one night and shooting the shit with Tony, the owner. Things got a little spirited between a couple of the customers, and the shit spilled out into the street. Rip was either called or was just driving by and stopped to break it up. After he got everything settled and turned to walk back to his patrol car, one of the drunks slapped at the back of his head. Rip spun around and dropped him with a hard right. Real Pancho told us later, “That motherfucker went from Andy Taylor to Buford Pusser in 1.5 seconds flat, homie.”

A bunch of us were sitting around drinking beer one Friday evening and his name came up, then everybody started throwing out theories on why he was so damned lenient, everything from compassion and understanding to being a local boy to whatever. George burped and said, “Y’all are overthinking this. Rip just hates paperwork with a passion, is all. He’d rather drive around in his patrol car than sitting in the station filling out arrest reports.”

Rip had a soft spot for anybody that worked out at the ammo plant, having worked there himself during the Vietnam war before enlisting in the Marines to go kill commies. As a matter of fact, on my very first day at work, the line boss I was working for told me to keep my work badge in my wallet with my driver’s license and if Officer Ripley pulled me over, hand him both and I’d probably get off with just a warning.

He wasn’t lying, either. A couple weeks after I started there, I rolled through a stop sign at about 10 mph and was pulled over by Rip, the first time I had ever laid eyes on him. As I was digging my license out of my wallet, he saw my work badge and forgot all about my traffic infraction. We spent the next 15-20 minutes talking about the plant and the mutual friends and acquaintances we had.

That’s not to say he didn’t write us tickets if we pushed it. We got a couple warnings but if we continued to misbehave, we got a ticket with him bitching about it so much we almost felt bad for putting him on the spot. “Now here I am trying to do my damnedest to be a decent human being by not holding y’all to the literal letter of the law, but do you appreciate my kindness and good will? Oh nooooo, you test my patience time and time again. I gave you a warning for speeding, then not a week later I see you blasting through town endangering law-abiding citizens and Mexicans. I’m gonna introduce you to my Maglight if you keep this shit up. Sign here.” It was hard to hold a straight face while he was ranting.

He was welcome out at my place and showed up quite a few times with his wife Jeri and sons. They fit in well anyway with about half my friends knowing him their entire lives. He wasn’t Rip the cop when he was there, he was just Rip the local guy. He left his job at work.

People smoking weed wasn’t an issue because he was usually gone by dusk along with others that brought their kids, and back then we didn’t smoke dope around kids. I doubt anybody would’ve put him on the spot by firing up a doobie anyway even if there were no kids around.

His youngest son pulled a trigger on a real gun for the first time out at my place, and him and his boys came out fairly regularly to hunt pheasant or dove when the seasons were open.

Rip’s story is a long ‘un, and also one of the best damned reads you’re ever going to see. It pains me no end to see my daughter’s terror and dread at every interaction I’ve had with po-lice in her presence—there’s been a fair few, none of them at all adversarial and/or confrontational, all of them relaxed, casual, even cordial.

True story: once, when we were pulled over for some piffling infraction or other (a busted taillight bulb, I believe it was), the poor kid actually burst into tears as I was talking with the cop—gasping for breath, shoulders heaving, great sobs racking her little body. The cop was horrified, and tried his dead-level best to calm her down, speaking directly to her in soothing Daddy-voice tones to assure her she didn’t need to be afraid, that he’d never dream of harming a beautiful little girl like her in any way, that his job was to help people like us, not to hurt them. Finally, he gave the effort up as a lost cause, apologized profusely to me, and we all went our separate ways. I felt sooo bad for the poor guy, I really did; it was perfectly obvious to me that he was a loving parent himself, the thought of any child actually being terrified of him just absolutely wrecked the man.

A few days later, I went so far as to go to the Belmont PD HQ and ask to see Officer Whateverhisnamewas (I had caught his name from his shield and jotted it down afterwards so’s I wouldn’t forget), whereupon the SGT on front-desk duty that day brought him out and I offered my thanks for his going so far above and beyond the call etc to be such a sweet, caring guy with my distraught daughter. He blushed to his roots at that, saying t’was nothing, he meant what he said about helping people like us being part of his job, the part he himself found most satisfying of all.

I then told him I honestly had no earthly inkling as to where her reflexive fear of cops might’ve come from, that I was working diligently to teach her otherwise. In my considered opinion, the blame for Madeleine’s mystifying breakdown couldn’t fairly be laid at his doorstep, I said, reassuring him that I bore him no ill will whatsoever over the episode.

After that, we chit-chatted idly about this, that, and the other for a few more minutes—turns out he was a drawling, born-and-bred scion of good ol’ Gaston County like I was, a natural kinship which gave us plenty to discuss—then shook hands warmly and again went our separate ways with a smile on our faces, a skip in our steps, and a song in our hearts.

I have this longtime habit, see, of going out of my way to talk to cops I cross paths with in my daily round, having had many friends, neighbors, and family members who served on one force or another since I was but a wee bairn. I’ve tried to instill in her from early on the idea that cops are not too terribly different from the rest of us workaday schlubs: some of them fine folks, some of them obnoxious pricks, but in the main just regular people who have a difficult job to do, about like anybody else is/does.

I want Madeleine not to shy from the police quaking with fright as if they were the Loch Ness Monster, Nosferatu, or the Wolfman with a badge and a gun, but to treat them just as she would anyone else, taking them as they come, reserving judgment unless and until they give cause to dislike and shun them as toxic assholes. In my extensive experience with them, act as if cops are actually, y’know, human beings and they’ll usually respond positively, granting you the same small courtesy in return.

This is just another of many thorny parental dilemmas every caring Mom and Dad worthy of the name must carefully consider, then choose the course of action that seems best for their child based on the information at hand, which is usually incomplete. As such, it greatly disturbs me to think that—what with today’s militarized police kitted out as soldiers in full combat gear including Level IV body armor, automatic battle rifles, and even tanks (!!!), faces concealed robot-like behind Next Generation Integrated Head Protection System helmets, NOD goggles, and opaque face shields, champing at the bit to engage their Enemy (to wit, US) and vanquish him utterly—by urging my kid not to fear, distrust, or abhor cops I might be doing her a serious disservice at best, possibly putting her in real danger at worst.

As I’ve said so many times, when we passively allowed marauding Lefty wreckers to take our country from us, many fine things were lost in the suicidal shuffle that were very much worth holding onto. Compassionate, dedicated cops of Ripley’s stripe who deem personal integrity, selflessness, and strict attentiveness to duty to be sacrosanct would definitely be one of those things. LESSON TO BE LEARNED: In the next iteration (if any) of the Former USA, after the grassroots uprising I call the Coming Unpleasantness© has concluded and the dust has settled, perhaps We The People will be more willing—better prepared mentally, physically, and materially—to fight, truly fight, to keep them.

Yes, that of necessity means violence, bloodshed, and war, and what of it? Real Americans realize that our freedom, our heritage, our traditions, our very society itself are all worth paying any price to maintain them. The simpering, pusillanimous wretches who preemptively foreswear violent action in defense of our unique American birthright have in effect surrendered already, mewling shamefully in favor of lawsuits, Congressional investigations, higher court decisions, and “elections” as if there was any credible hope in all that endless, proven-futile meat-beatery. So to hell with them then, sayeth I.

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Nuttin’ but the truth

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The peerless James Woods slices, dices, and fricassees ‘em.




Amen to ALLL that, James. If you ain’t following Woods on X, you’re missing out on something truly good.

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UNEXPECTED!

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Okay, so I’ve never been much of a Rod Stewart fan, I do admit it. Even his supposedly legendary stuff with the Faces was kind of, ummm, meh for me. As for the Disco Rod era…well, the less said about that, the better. “Maggie May,” “Hot Legs,” “You Wear It Well” I like, maybe a couple others. The rest of it, not so much, frankly.

But after tonight, Rod Stewart is a-okay with me.

See, there’s a local FM radio station, 95.7 (The Ride), which on Saturday nights plays recent “Live In Concert” recordings by two, sometimes three artists. It’s almost always a good listen, even when I don’t really care for the band or artist in question. So it was with this evening’s broadcast, featuring Rod Stewart as the “headline” performer. Not so much for the music itself, as for the between-songs patter.

First, Stewart brought his old Faces PiMC (Partner in Musical Crime), grizzled guitarist Ron Wood—now sharing guitarslinging duties with Keith Richards as a Rolling Stone—to the center-stage mic to be introduced to the howling throng. This tour was by way of being Old Home Week for the pair, reuniting them after many years of not playing together.

So Wood makes a crack about his and Stewart’s famously-oversized schnozzes, to which Stewart shot back brilliantly: “Yeah, you’ll notice tonight that we always stay on opposite sides of the stage from each other. That’s because when we stand back to back, we look like a pickaxe.”

Love Stewart or hate him, that’s pretty dang funny right there. But wait, it gets better still.

A few tunes later on, Rod’s stage patter went as follows:

“I’d like to dedicate this next song to our wonderful military personnel all over the world. Iraq, Afghanistan, anywhere else: whether you think they should be there or not, they’re out there fighting for all of us, risking everything for us and for our freedom. God bless them all!”

I was gobsmacked. Also highly, highly impressed. IMNSHO, Rod Stewart expressed it about as perfectly as anyone possibly could have, without the sentiment either coming across as mindlessly jingoistic, condescending, or in any way just an obsequious pander to Mark-1 Mod-0 shitlib pseudo-peacenick pacifism, with which his concert audience just about had to be packed to the rafters.

A welcome change from the obnoxious Leftist sermonizing we’ve come to expect from entertainers these days, rock stars especially. Perhaps I’m full of shit, perhaps not, but the feeling I got from his words was sincere and heartfelt gratitude, and I gained a new respect for Rod Stewart as a result. So hats off to the man, I say. I still ain’t crazy about most of his musical output, but from here on out Rod’s all right as far as I’m concerned.

No Tune Damage embed, though; I got big plans for that later on, or mebbe tomorrow, we’ll see.

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Adapt and conquer

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I seem to be saying this more and more lately, and it’s perfectly true: we live in an age of miracles.

21-year-old student from Pune and the curious case of her changing hands
Globally, less than 200 hand transplants have been conducted, and no scientific evidence exists to record changes in skin tone or shape of the hand. Doctors say this is the first such case, perhaps.

“Sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall together,” was the first sentence Shreya Siddanagowder wrote in her notebook a year after her hand transplant.

Today, her handwriting almost matches her original, but what has left doctors surprised is how the colour of Shreya’s hands, which once belonged to a 20-year-old man from Kerala until his death in August 2017, had changed to match the rest of her skin tone.

“I don’t know how the transformation occurred. But it feels like my own hands now. The skin colour was very dark after the transplant, not that it was ever my concern, but now it matches my tone,” says 21-year-old Shreya, who underwent Asia’s first inter-gender hand transplant.

Back in Kochi, where she underwent the double-hand transplant at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS), surgeons are researching whether female hormones could hold the key to such changes.

“We are hoping to publish two cases of hand transplant in a scientific journal. It will take time. We are recording the colour change in (Shreya’s) case, but we need more evidence to understand the change in shape of the fingers and hands. An Afghan soldier, who received a double-hand transplant from a male donor here, had also noticed a slight change in skin tone but he died in Afghanistan last week. We could not document much,” says Dr Subramania Iyer, head of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Amrita Institute.

Yes, there are pics documenting the change in both size/shape and skin color, and they’re nothing short of remarkable—as if having near-fully-functional transplanted hands wasn’t remarkable enough to begin with. The article is paywalled, but good ol’ 12ft Ladder worked just fine for me. I have a few other handy-dandy de-paywalling links which I really need to put up over in the sidebar, I’m thinking, although there’s always the option of just disabling Javascript temporarily in your web browser too.

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Turncoat turns back again?

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Gotta admit, I did NOT see this coming.

Bill Barr says he’s backing Trump 2024 because ‘far left’ is a greater threat: ‘Heavy-handed bunch of thugs’
Former Attorney General Bill Barr is backing his old boss in the November election despite their very public fallout — because he believes the “far left” is an even greater threat to the US.

Barr, 73, disputed the notion that former President Donald Trump will be worse for democracy than President Biden, and warned about the rise of the “far left.”

“The Biden administration is in fact the greater threat to democracy,” Barr told Fox News’ “Cavuto Live” on Saturday.

“I think that they have a totalitarian temper. They have bought into the progressive movement. And they’re trying to squelch opposition and freedom of speech.”

“It’s a heavy-handed bunch of thugs in my opinion, and that’s where the threat is,” Barr said at another point about the far-left.

Meh, can’t say I give much of a shit about this development, anymore than I do about the 24 “elections” generally. That said, Barr is right as rain about the Goosesteppin’ Left, however surprising it may be to hear the likes of him saying it. In the final analysis, though, the real “threat to democracy” isn’t the Biden marionette or his White House junta; it’s the sinister, shadowy FederalGovCo Grey Men behind the curtain.

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Words of wisdom

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Okay, this is great stuff rat cheer.

One of the hats I wore before I retired was that of resident conscience. I had a whiteboard. I started recording bits of wisdom when I started the job. I took a photo when I left. My boss used to bring people in to read the wisdom contained thereon.

I have taken the time to transcribe the contents in case the picture is hard to read:

All of the carefully thought out and intelligent plans in the world from the beginning of time to the present day tremble in the presence of ONE motivated idiot.

There are three kinds of people in the world, those who can count and those who can’t.

You should really do some research instead of just listening to the voices in your head.

BOGSAT (Bunch of guys sitting around a table)

In a just universe, stupid should hurt. IT often does, and it hurts the wrong people

Exhaustipated – too tired to give a shit.

Silence is golden. Duct tape is silver.

We have enough ‘youth’. How about a fountain of ‘smart’?

Roman Engineer’s Law: The engineer must sleep under the bridge he designed.

I’ve got to stop saying “How stupid can you be?” Too many people are taking it as a challenge.

Lots more at the link, of which you should read the all.

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“A devastatin’ blow to our antiquated systems”

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One of the all-time greatest scenes in the history of the cinematic art.

A blazing campfire way out in the boonies; a handheld camera shooting from the back seat of a scarlet 68 Chevy Impala ragtop purchased specifically for the purpose, rolling along at no more than 25mph so as not to jostle the cameraman overmuch; gorgeous, gleaming, one-of-a-kind Harley Panhead choppers; joints with actual, no-shit weed in ‘em for purposes of artistic verisimilitude; three immensely talented, daring actors improvising the dialogue in real-time, as they went, unscripted and unrehearsed.

Folks, it just don’t get much better than this.

The Captain America and Billy bikes were designed and built by the somewhat unlikely team of Cliff Vaughs and Ben Hardy, which is a great story in its own right.

When The Easy Rider concept was quickly made into form, Peter Fonda set out to get him a couple of bikes for the movie. There’s lots of controversy about who built these bikes. Some say Dan Haggerty, who was in the movie. The guy who painted the bikes, his son says it was him (his dad, that is). Some say it was Peter Fonda.

But the guy who built them was a guy named Ben Hardy. Ben was an African american man who knew Harleys, and knew what he was doing. When Cliff Vaughs was asked by Fonda to oversee the building of the bikes, Vaugh’s turned to Hardy who was well known (if you were black) in Los Angeles as the go to guy to build a killer bike, and do it right.

Peter had only one thing he wanted on the bike. He wanted Captain America to have a flag on his gas tank. Beyond that, the design was left to Vaughs. I gotta think tho…Peter was an experienced rider, and Dennis hopper wasn’t. That had to have come up in the conversation somewhere, because the Billy bike was a much easier bike to ride. I had a fat boy that was really close to the same configuration, and my brother has a friend with a Billy Bike replica. They’re easy bikes to ride. The captain America bike? Cut that steering head off and rake that bitch out like it is, throw in those long forks with no front brake and see how you fare. You don’t give that kind of bike to a beginner.

It was Cliff who actually first offered the name “Easy Rider” to Fonda. It was a term he used in the day. Whats an Easy Rider? that depends on who you ask. In the 1900s it meant a freeloader. A guy who mooched off you. To Dennis hopper, it meant a man who lived off the money of a whore. He got it from an old Mae West movie. Whatever cliff meant by it, I’m not sure. All I know is he redefined the word. To this day I think it is associated to Harley riders. Maybe because of cliff, but most definitely because of the movie. When you say Easy Rider, I think of the movie. I think of Harley’s.

Vaugh’s quickly took the idea to Ben Hardy. Peter bought four 1950’s panhead police bikes from auction, and got them to Hardy and Vaughs. Jim Buchanan fabricated the frames, the engines were built by Hardy, Dean Lanza did the paint (his son is adamant he built the entire bikes). 2 bikes were for filming, 2 were for the final sequence of the movie, which I’m fucking assuming you know about, otherwise you wouldn’t be here reading this. Hardy went to work, and the rest is history.

It is at that, it surely is, and not just biker history alone. A pic of Hardy, and of his LA shop.

Ben hardy Easy Rider Bike.

Ben hardy shop-1.

The shop is still there as of the writing of the above article (mid-2012, that would be), in the same location, albeit with a new name and under different ownership, seeing as how the great Ben Hardy passed away in 1994. Betcha didn’t see all that coming, now did ya? And I truly hope you didn’t think for a moment I’d leave out one last cultural lodestone immortalized in the film.

For whatever it’s worth, I always dug the minimalistic, cut-down lines of the Billy-bike bobjob way more than the near-parodically stretched, raked, and extended 60s chopper archetype represented by the Captain America machine. Two beautiful bikes, two completely different stylistic approaches, brought together in one unforgettable movie masterpiece. Taken for all in all, Easy Rider is as 100% all-American as apple pie, hot dogs, and hog-leg Colt .45 wheelguns; it could never have happened in any other time or place.

Nitpicking update! One decidedly trivial flub-up from the early part of the movie that has always irked me disproportionately is when Billy chides Captain America for being incautious about gassing up his bike, saying “Man, all the money we have is riding inside that peanut tank.” No, gawddammit, it is NOT a “peanut tank,” Billy boy. That’s the nickname for the original Sportster gas tanks, like thus:

As any fool can see without half trying, the American-flagged receptacle adorning Wyatt’s bike is actually a Mustang tank, to wit:

The Mustang tank is so-monikered because of its origin—namely, on the pioneering Mustang mini-motorcycle, a cute li’l thang that went the way of the dodo back in 1965 after a tragically abbreviated nineteen-year run during which it somehow never found its market niche, despite a plethora of innovative technical advances such as being the first American motorcycle of any size or type to feature the now-ubiquitous telescopic-fork front suspension.

The noble Mustang name lives on in its beautifully understated fuel tank, an unforeseen legacy that’s still available for most makes of big bikes from various aftermarket companies today. It’s been a go-to favorite with more discriminating and tasteful Harley customizers since the 60s. Myself, I’ve run a Mustang tank on every Sporty I’ve owned except for the first and last ones—what is that, three of ’em, four? Whatever, I absolutely adore the things, have ever since I first got hipped to their existence by an ad in the once-glorious Easyriders magazine.

For one thing, the Mustang has a much higher capacity than the stock Sporty “peanut” go-juice tank, which holds a measly gallon or so—some .9, others 1.3, depending on the year. That translates to no more than ninety miles or so before you have to make a stop for a refill. Which, actually, was just jake with me, since an hour and a half of having your teeth rattled and your bones jarred by those old Ironheads on a daylong putt with your local wolfpack was quite enough for anybody, thanks. By the time you’d gone through your peanut tank’s capacity and switched the petcock (Pingel Power-Flo, of course; no shoddy stock PoS will suffice) over to reserve (14-15 more miles at best), you were good and READY to climb off and unkink your aching legs and back a little.

Yeah, while you glided to the nearest pump sucking fumes the Big Twin ironbutts’ unwieldy 5-gallon fatbobs would still be well over half full, so you could count on catching the usual ration of good-natured shit for your “dirt bike” or “woman’s” bike’s short legs from them. But who the hell cares what those Geezer Glide pricks think anyway? Let ‘em snigger, let ‘em chortle to their hearts’ content; their ol’ ladies will be pestering you at the bar later on for a leg-wettin’ thrill-hop packing on the p-pad (“p” for pillion, although some mischievous wags swear it actually stands for pussy, and as all Sportster riders know, neither side is entirely wrong) of your fleet little speed-demon, and everybody knows it too. When some horny, sexy biker bitch is reaching around from behind you to fondle your throbbing erection through the thin fabric of your worn, grease-stained jeans as you rip down a lonely back road, the last laugh will be yours.

Ask me how I know. Never mind, don’t, I ain’t gonna tell ya.

For another, the Mustang tank’s curvaceous good looks simultaneously offset and complement the rest of the Sportster’s no-frills, bareknuckle-brawler savagery, making what was for me a perfectly irresistible aesthetic combination. Plus, back when I bolted on my very first prized Mustang the tanks had fallen so far out of contemporary vogue as to be downright rare; almost nobody who saw mine in those days—be they old-school scooter trash or cake-eating-civilian cager—even knew what the hell it was, although they all liked it. Or they said they did, at any rate, which was good enough to suit me. I certainly did, and as the builder, owner, and rider, my opinion was the only one that mattered.

It still is, I still do, and if I had a Sporty today there would almost certainly be a Mustang tank, in flat-black rattlecan sprayed on by yrs trly etc, perched saucily on the upper frame rail between the top triple-clamp and the stiff, uncomfortable nut-buster of a seat. Or there soon would be, you betcher. Even though I’m too old for that sort of thing nowadays, hey, that’s just how I roll, people.

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Yeah, NO

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Oh, I freely concede there’s some killing needs to be done right enough. Plenty and to spare of it, in fact. But not the kind that’s done with any silly switch, by God.

The Kill Switch
Soon the government might shut down your car.

President Joe Biden’s new infrastructure gives bureaucrats that power.

You probably didn’t hear about that because when media covered it, few mentioned the requirement that by 2026, every American car must “monitor” the driver, determine if he is impaired and, if so, “limit vehicle operation.”

Rep. Thomas Massie objected, complaining that the law makes government “judge, jury and executioner on such a fundamental right!”

Congress approved the law anyway.

A USA Today “fact check” told readers, don’t worry, “There’s no kill switch in Biden’s bill.”

“They didn’t read it, because it’s there!” says automotive engineer and former vintage race car driver Lauren Fix in my new video. The clause is buried under Section 24220 of the law.

USA Today’s “fact” check didn’t lie, exactly. It acknowledged that the law requires “new cars to have technology that identifies if a driver is impaired and prevents operation.” Apparently, they just didn’t like the term “kill switch.”

No, they wouldn’t, would they? But a kill switch by any other name is still a kill switch, and I say it’s the bunk.

The kill switch is just one of several ways the government proposes to control how we drive.

California lawmakers want new cars to have a speed governor that prevents you from going more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.

That would reduce speeding. But not being able to speed is dangerous, too, says Fix. If “something’s coming at you, you have to make an adjustment.”

New cars will have a special button on the dash. If you suddenly need to speed and manage to find the button when trying to drive out of some bad situation, and it lets you speed for 15 seconds.

For all these new safety devices to work, cars need to spy on drivers. Before I researched this, I didn’t realize that they already do.

The Mozilla Foundation reports that car makers “Collect things like your age, gender, ethnicity, driver’s license number, your purchase history and tendencies.” Nissan and Kia “collect information about your sex life.”

How? Cars aim video cameras at passengers. Other devices listen to conversations and intercept text messages.

Then, says Mozilla, 76% of the car companies “sell your data.”

Finally, Biden’s infrastructure bill also includes a pilot program to tax you based on how far we drive.

 “A mileage charge seems fair,” I say to Fix. “You pay for your damage to the road.”

Oh sure, “fair”—as long as you leave the road-use taxes FederalGovCo (and states as well) rakes in on every gallon of gasoline you buy out of your calculations. Jackass.

One thing you can be sure of: if our Masters are letting the word get around about these supposedly “new” spy-snitch-and-control devices get around, then they’re already in place and functioning, likely have been for a good-ish while now.

Speaking strictly for myself, I’d never even dream of buying, owning, or operating a new(er) car. Not that I could afford to anyhow, natch. But still. At present, the Hendrix automotive stable consists of

1) An extremely rare 2012 Focus SE hatchback skinned in Blaze Yellow Metallic* with some minor performance mods to the peppy little 2.0L i4 under the hood, which mill I’ve personally clocked at an honest 39 mpg. Low-slung, stable, almost shockingly responsive and nimble, the Focus corners like it was on rails, betraying its race-car design heritage at every least twitch of the leather-wrapped steering wheel. The schweet little Focus has never failed to leave a huge grin on my face every time I’ve driven her, she’s hands-down the most just plain fun automobile I’ve ever owned; and

2) A battered, raggedy but dead-reliable old 1994 Burick Century and a Half** Grampamobile for backup

Both of which cars, to the best of my knowledge, predate all that goobermint jiggery-pokery. I’ll stick with my two strugglebuggies until I find out otherwise, thanks, at which juncture I’ma have to either get cracking on some serious uninstalling, or unload ‘em for something older and less personally intrusive.

From my cold, dead hands, you perfidious bastards.

* Factory paint color, 2012 model year only, obtainable exclusively via custom-order through a duly-licensed Ford dealership. I have it from an impeccable authority that there were just over 400 Focus hatchbacks in that color with the also custom-order-only 17 inch alloy wheels delivered across the entire Southeastern US that year. Who knows how many are still on the road or in driveable condition today; a great many Focii get converted into race cars and run on the flourishing, popular Compact-class circuit. So yeah, rare as hen’s teeth. Unfortunately, it’s still only a Ford Focus, of which type there’s a blue million out there, so not all that valuable or collectible, then

** Equipped with the rock-solid Burick L82 3.1L v6 renowned among mechanics as “the Indestructible Six,” and for very good reason; a smidge over 155k on the odometer, which is damned low for a car that age. The two previous owners are close, close friends and/or family, so the Burick’s entire history is known to me, which is always nice. That said, though, the piss-poor 17-18 mpg the big battlewagon clocks in at is a bona fide lifestyle-changer, sadly enough, especially at these vampiric Bidenflated petrol prices…which, cushy, plush, and mechanically solid though the car is, fortunate as I’ve been to have the use of it while the Focus has been down for extensive repair/refurbishment, nonetheless explains why I’ll always think of it as the backup ride

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BURNED

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Stephen says, “I’m trying to think of a bad decision she missed but I’m coming up short. The implied supposition that the car dealer has the shopper’s best interest at heart might be the biggest though.” Agreed, one hunnerd percent.

Mom, 28, forced to sell her dream car after forking out $40,000 in INTEREST alone over three years – as America’s auto debt spirals to $1.6 TRILLION
Three years ago, 28-year-old Blaisey Arnold entered a local auto dealership and came away with the keys to an $84,000 Chevy Tahoe.

Despite paying $1,400 a month in payments totaling more than $50,000, she still owes a balance of $74,000 to her lender – GM Financial.

Not only did she not make a down payment, she said she traded in a previous car on which she had fallen into negative equity.

Negative equity occurs when a driver owes more on their car loan than the vehicle is now worth. Sometimes, a dealer or lender can offer to roll the balance of an existing auto loan onto a new one, making it more expensive.

While rolling over debt into a new loan can seem convenient, it can be very dangerous and dealers have been known to not properly inform buyers that they will still be responsible for the remaining balance.

‘Honestly, it blows my mind that I have paid $50,000 into this car and only paid off $10,000,’ Arnold said. 

She told DailyMail.com the loan was issued to her on the very day she visited the dealer – and that had an APR of 10.2 percent.

‘I did not go with my husband and as a female I feel they took advantage of me. They knew I really wanted the car and that I was by myself,’ she said.

Oh believe me, Bimbelina, they didn’t take advantage of you “as a female.” Not at all. They took advantage of you as a goddamn dumbass, is what they did. I strongly suspect that your husband isn’t any smarter than you clearly are—otherwise, how could he stand being married to you?—and the dealership would have given him the exact same reaming you got.

All car salesmen LIVE to see people like you walk into the showroom; as artillerymen have long described troops in the open, you’re their meat—a wet dream come true.

Some of us always say that stupidity should be painful, and know what? Sometimes, it actually is.

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John Cougar Melonhead upbraids concert audience, hilarity ensues

Posted on      by     

Just in case y’all were wondering what a dick with ears looks like, here ya go.


What a pissy, smug bitch the little runt is. Jack and Diane, my chapped ass. Whether they know it or not, he did the audience a favor by walking off in a snit, sparing them from having to endure any more of his shitty music.

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New car club

Posted on      by     

The Wylde Blogger Wrecking Crew CC, perhaps?

I turned eight in 1954, but I was no different than Randy Honkala, (and is that a mid-western car kid’s name or what?) maddened like every other boy I knew (except for the suspicious weirdos), breathlessly counting the days before the sheets covering the main windows of the major local car dealerships came down in the fall to reveal their glittering trove of chrome and jewel-painted treasure.

I never really got over it, either, and by the middle 1960s my lust for the splendors roaring out from Detroit reached an apotheosis just about simultaneously with Detroit’s own steel climax. You might say we came and went together.

Ten years later, all was rust and ruin, shitbox VeeDubs and Jappo tinfoil cars ruled the American roads, and guys my age were more concerned with whether we’d make it through until Nixon extracted us from Vietnam (the Ukraine meat grinder of its day, although not a patch on our current slavic murderfest).

But those cars. Most of my most beloved vehicles were built in the period from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s. And like Randy, I too Have A List, although not nearly as extensive as his.

Well as I’ve known my old friend and colleague Bill Quick, for as many years as I have, I’ve never really thought of him as a car nut. His taste in lead sleds is impeccable, starting with this shot of a 1959 Impala like the 58 he owned in his misspent youth:

Now as y’all know, I’m a diehard Ford man from a long line of Ford men on my dad’s side. That said, the 59 Impala is one of a handful of exemplary Chevy iron I always really dug, others being the 58 Bel-Air:

And basically, every model of Corvette ever made, up to and including the criminally underappreciated early-mid 80s body styles, known to automotive historians as the Third and Fourth Generation ‘Vettes. Shown below: the breathtaking 1954 Corvette C1.

Ahh, those swooping, curvy lines; the vivid paint in some other color besides nondescript gray, silver, or charcoal; that toothy chrome grill, the stainless body trim! Folks, they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore, and that’s a crying shame if you ask me.

What with anonymous plastic eggmobiles and graceless, chunky SUVs ruling the road nowadays, no wonder America’s long love affair with their automobiles has finally guttered out, except among a steadily dwindling number of mulishly unevolved fans of the vintage Detroit steel who still bitterly cling to the old ways. No esthetics; no gut appeal to anything besides pure utilitarian practicality; no soul, no spark, no romance: seriously, who could possibly fall in love with and take pride in such uninspiring machines as are on offer these days?

Bill’s post moved me to leave one of my infrequent comments in response, to wit:

Gawd DAMN, but that Impala is gorgeous! One of the small handful of Bowties I do actually like. The death of the car culture—premeditated murder, more like—has robbed American youth of a hell of a lot of cross-generational tradition, joie de vivre, and good, old-fashioned fun.

I’ve lamented that grievous loss here before more than once or twice, so no need to belabor the point further right now, I don’t think. To be perfectly honest, I just wanted an excuse to run a few cool car pics, really. My thanks to Bill for providing me with one.

Update! Man, I’m thinking in my munificent spare time I might just try to Gimp up a patch design for our notional blogger CC cutoff, maybe. We’ll see about that; I know at least Bill and Phil over at Bustednuckles would find such a project interesting, if nobody else did. Too bad Randy Herring is gone; if he was still with us, I could get him to draw me a really good ‘un up in a heartbeat. In fact, knowing Randy he very well might’ve done one on his own hook a long time ago, without ever being asked.

Updated update! For Barry, whose comment-section contribution brought it to mind.

Great tune, great cars, even if they are fuckin’ Bowties.

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Boeing: What happened?

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From a half-century as one of the world’s premier, most respected aircraft manufacturers to…well…

Meme purloined from the awesome Ken Lane. Now to the who, what, how, and why of it.

Suicide Mission
What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

John Barnett had one of those bosses who seemed to spend most of his waking hours scheming to inflict humiliation upon him. He mocked him in weekly meetings whenever he dared contribute a thought, assigned a fellow manager to spy on him and spread rumors that he did not play nicely with others, and disciplined him for things like “using email to communicate” and pushing for flaws he found on planes to be fixed.

“John is very knowledgeable almost to a fault, as it gets in the way at times when issues arise,” the boss wrote in one of his withering performance reviews, downgrading Barnett’s rating from a 40 all the way to a 15 in an assessment that cast the 26-year quality manager, who was known as “Swampy” for his easy Louisiana drawl, as an anal-retentive prick whose pedantry was antagonizing his colleagues. The truth, by contrast, was self-evident to anyone who spent five minutes in his presence: John Barnett, who raced cars in his spare time and seemed “high on life” according to one former colleague, was a “great, fun boss that loved Boeing and was willing to share his knowledge with everyone,” as one of his former quality technicians would later recall.

But Swampy was mired in an institution that was in a perpetual state of unlearning all the lessons it had absorbed over a 90-year ascent to the pinnacle of global manufacturing. Like most neoliberal institutions, Boeing had come under the spell of a seductive new theory of “knowledge” that essentially reduced the whole concept to a combination of intellectual property, trade secrets, and data, discarding “thought” and “understanding” and “complex reasoning” possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce as essentially not worth the increased health care costs. CEO Jim McNerney, who joined Boeing in 2005, had last helmed 3M, where management as he saw it had “overvalued experience and undervalued leadership” before he purged the veterans into early retirement.

“Prince Jim”—as some long-timers used to call him—repeatedly invoked a slur for longtime engineers and skilled machinists in the obligatory vanity “leadership” book he co-wrote. Those who cared too much about the integrity of the planes and not enough about the stock price were “phenomenally talented assholes,” and he encouraged his deputies to ostracize them into leaving the company. He initially refused to let nearly any of these talented assholes work on the 787 Dreamliner, instead outsourcing the vast majority of the development and engineering design of the brand-new, revolutionary wide-body jet to suppliers, many of which lacked engineering departments. The plan would save money while busting unions, a win-win, he promised investors. Instead, McNerney’s plan burned some $50 billion in excess of its budget and went three and a half years behind schedule.

Swampy belonged to one of the cleanup crews that Boeing detailed to McNerney’s disaster area. The supplier to which Boeing had outsourced part of the 787 fuselage had in turn outsourced the design to an Israeli firm that had botched the job, leaving the supplier strapped for cash in the midst of a global credit crunch. Boeing would have to bail out—and buy out—the private equity firm that controlled the supplier. In 2009, Boeing began recruiting managers from Washington state to move east to the supplier’s non-union plant in Charleston, South Carolina, to train the workforce to properly put together a plane.

That move, also, didn’t work out so well for the now-floundering aerospace company. The story details a toxic mish-mash of Wokesterism, the rise of a know-nothing MBA class, and a creeping, not-my-problem/not-my-fault corporate blame-shifting culture that replaced the former all-American can-do, git-er-done spirit which may well prove fatal to the once-mighty Boeing…and probably should, frankly.

It’s a sign o’ the times in Amerika v2.0, by no means unique but an increasingly commonplace story—and an extremely sad one.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

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Drool-drool-drooling on Guitar Heaven’s floor

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I couldn’t help myself, I simply HAD to save this image from my daily Guitar Center email, if only for posterity’s sake.

Row after row after row of sundry Les Pauls, SGs, and Strats (plus what looks to be a random Guild Brian May model at lower right), all dangling succulently in front of a ceiling-high wall o’ Marshalls. I ask you: what’s not to fall hopelessly in love with here? I answer: not a single damned thing, that’s what. That right there is what people mean when they speak of “an embarrassment of riches,” folks.

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Crime control ain’t no joke

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She appears to be serious, as incredible as it seems.

Black Mayors’ Coalition on Crime wraps up first set of meetings
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) – All eyes are on Memphis as leaders from states across the country meet in the Bluff City for the first-ever Black Mayors’ Coalition on Crime.

That coalition, created by Memphis Mayor Paul Young in partnership with the African American Mayors Association, is looking for discussion and solutions around public safety.

“We are solidified and resolved in the fact that we are stronger together. The national crime data may show some decreases in overall crime stats, but what we discussed today is that if people don’t feel safe, then the statistics don’t matter,” said Mayor Young.

Whether you’re walking the streets of Memphis and Shelby County, pumping gas, or just sitting in your home, you deserve to feel safe wherever you go.

St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones says she’s taking back strategies used in Atlanta for nightclub owners and eyeing ways to reduce crimes around convenience stores.

“We have a lot of violence around convenience stores and gas stations,” said St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones. “So how can we hold those business owners accountable and also bring down crime? Some of the things are already doing, we’re finding other mayors are doing as well.”

Bold mine, and completely batshit insane. “Hold business owners accountable”…for WHAT, exactly? “Accountable” for being victimized by ghetto ferals with their pants down around their ankles

  • Robbing them and/or their customers
  • Vandalizing their premises
  • Terrorizing every white woman within leering distance—regardless of age, physical attractiveness, or attitude—via sexually-explicit taunts, bodily gyrations, direct threats, and overtly aggressive behavior
  • Loitering outside the store in large groups chugging quarts of OE, huffing cheeba, tossing the wrappers of their shoplifted food, spent roaches, and/or empty malt-liquor bottles on the parking lot
  • Generally menacing said customers to the point they’re actually afraid to so much as pull into the lot, sensibly opting instead to just drive on by to another store possessed of a bit less “urban” ambience and inner-city “charm”

Years ago, there was a convenience store just like this near my house. My wife would happily drive miles out of her way to avoid passing the place late at night, and I couldn’t blame her either. I wasn’t any too comfortable driving by the horrible place late my own self, honestly; the coppery funk of predation, chaos, and imminent danger fairly wafted off the place in great waves. Bayou Peter puts it to ‘em straight, no chaser.

If you’re going to go after business owners for crimes committed by others, pretty soon you won’t have any business owners within your city limits. Then your citizens won’t be able to buy food, get their vehicles serviced, or do anything else that requires a business to provide the service. Then where will your precious city be???

I repeatedly think that we’ve plumbed the absolute depths of human stupidity…only to be proved wrong again and again by doofi such as Mayor Jones.

Nah, not quite yet we haven’t. That doesn’t truly kick in until the selfsame pig-ign’ant NICs (Niggers In Charge) start in bitching, pissing, and moaning about “food deserts” and such-like affronts. “Food deserts” which, mind, they created themselves, the inevitable by-product of their own rank stupidity.

Well, that, and RAYCISSISMS ’n’ sheeit, natch.

One last incredible no-joke factoid from the above-cited article: The Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, appears to be named (checks notes, checks again, shakes head in awe-struck disbelief) Chokwe Antar Lumumba. No, seriously, I swear I am NOT making this up.

Wait, you mean to tell me it’s NOT made of green cheese?

Posted on      by     

Q: Is Sheila Jackass Lee (Dumbass, TX) the stupidest Congresscritter EVAR?

A: Probably, yes.

Democrat congresswoman incorrectly tells schoolchildren that moon is “made up mostly of gases”
During an eclipse event at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston, Texas Monday, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee made puzzling remarks about the moon’s composition, incorrectly suggesting it was “made up mostly of gases.” This statement diverged sharply from established astronomical facts, sparking both amusement and concern over public understanding of basic space science.

Key Details:

  • The comments were made as Jackson Lee participated in a community event focused on Monday’s eclipse, aiming to engage and educate attendees about astronomical phenomena.
  • Lee, a former member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, described the moon as a “complete rounded circle, which is made up mostly of gases,” a description that inaccurately represents the moon’s solid, rocky nature.
  • The incident underscores the importance of accurate scientific communication, especially by public figures, in educational settings where misconceptions can significantly impact public understanding and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Another Q that springs immediately to mind: How is it that this chowderhead isn’t doing a job she’s better suited for: cleaning hotel rooms, say, or manning a drive-thru window?

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