Category: Flotsam and/or Jetsam

Catchall for whatever doesn’t fit elsewhere

Pure GENIUS

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Who says good old American ingenuity, know-how, and the can-do spirit is dead? ‘Cause clearly, they’re wrong about that.


What can one possibly say but: Heh.

Update! Another excellent example from the same ONT post.


I repeat: heh. Weird Dave has a shit-ton more of them over at the Ace place, too.

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Both kinds, country AND western

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In the course of a discussion on country music both trad and *ugh* contemporary over at Sido’s place, I was moved to respond to Outlaws Forever’s comment thusly:

SidoCountryComments

This in turn got me headed over to YewToob to reacquaint myself with a few Ray Price songs, when up popped a BPs cover of his classic “Crazy Arms” amongst the rest of the flawless tunage.

Pretty decent homage if you ask me, which of course nobody did.

Update! Moar country-music rebellion.

Another Anti-Woke Country Anthem Is Shooting Up The Charts
As Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town” continues to top country music charts in the face of backlash from left-wing entities, another anti-woke country anthem is also enjoying its own surge to the top.

“I’m Just Sayin’” by Nashville-based artist Austin Moody — a song that critiques radical positions on crime, gender ideology and college indoctrination — currently holds the number seven slot on iTunes’ top 40 country chart. “I’m just sayin’, have we all lost our minds?” reads the chorus of the song meant to reflect what many think in private, but feel unable to say in the face of pressure from powerful groups and institutions.

“I am absolutely floored by the response I’ve gotten on the song,” Moody told Breitbart News. “It just proves to me there’s still a strong moral compass in this country, and it means that honesty and freedom cannot be independent. You have to be honest even if it costs you.”

In a previous interview, Moody told Breitbart that he felt compelled to write the song due to the creeping influence of woke ideology in popular country music circles. Those sentiments were immediately validated just days after the interview, as Country Music TV (CMT) opted to remove Jason Aldean’s viral “Try That In A Small Town” music video from its lineup.

“Over the past couple years, I’ve been convicted. Seeing a lot of things happening in this country that I don’t agree with. You sit back and think, ‘what can I do about this?’” Moody said. “All I could hope for is when people hear ‘I’m Just Sayin,’’ they just know it was written to say we’ve had enough. We live in a society bent on the destruction of the individual. If you don’t fall in line you’ll be cancelled or destroyed.”

The Tennessee native went on to add that the birth of his daughter was another massive inspiration to write the song. “In today’s world, what we’re dealing with, it’s not just about politics. It’s about a darkness that’s now coming for our children. I’ve got a 15-month-old daughter. I don’t want her growing up in a liberal-run America,” he said.

Well said, sir. May I say, you have the right idea: jumping on these Woke fucksticks before they can infiltrate the House of Country Music like the termites they are and bring it crashing down on all your heads is definitely the way to go. The rest of the country failed to do so, and just look where THAT got us.

Still no big fan of contemporary country music, and I certainly mean no insult to Jason Aldean, but I gotta say I like Moody’s song better than I do Aldean’s.

I sincerely wish both Jason Aldean and Austin Moody nothing but the best. May you both enjoy all the success in the world, fellas. For courageously taking your stand and standing your ground in such parlous, trying times, you richly deserve it.

Inside-baseball addendum: Lest anyone think this is a hurry-up job by Moody hoping to jump on a bandwagon which Aldean had already gotten rolling, y’all should know that that is NOT the way things work in the music biz. Or at least, not that quickly, anyhow. The song being released just recently means that Moody has almost certainly been working on it for at least a year, if not longer.

He would have to have been, what with composing and editing, bringing it to the band for rehearsals, then booking studio time for tracking and overdubs, mixing, and final mastering all needing to take place before the first CD is even pressed and shipped—a very time-intensive process in and of its own self. Cover art; decisions on the J-card layout, track-listing order, and credits; running it all by the label people for their approval—nosirreebob, don’t think for a second that all this gets done in the blink of an eye.

Getting your music out there to the public, whatever genre you may be working in, is in fact a long, laborious, painstaking process, involving a whole lot of gears that have to mesh before anything happens, IF it happens. There’s a blue million ways it can all fall apart and come to naught, too.

On the upside, though, the day when you finally do get your hands on that first CD and rush down to your favorite watering hole to show off the long-awaited fruits of your labor to all your friends is a frabjous one indeed. All the horizonless hours of frustration, weariness, and self-doubt wash right away like dirt down a shower drain; you open that first box of what the record-label maggots, in their deadened-soul unmindfulness, refer to as “product” with your hands literally a-tremble and the hair on the back of your neck standing straight up, no fooling. There’s no feeling like it in all the world, there truly isn’t.

Updated update! Just checked out the above-referenced Breitbart piece, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but this:

“I’m going to use what God gave me to try to say the right thing. So far, the response has been positive,” Moody says. He also understands what a blessing (it is) to have his wife — Jennifer Wayne, granddaughter of the late film icon John Wayne — as an occasional writing partner.

Because of COURSE she’s the Duke’s granddaughter. A one hundred percent all-American family unit for sure and certain. Bold mine, natch.

4

Warp factor 7, Mr Data!

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Another from PopMech, this one of far more practical use than that last one. Well, at some point further on down the line. Maybe.

By Meddling With Spacetime Dimensions, We Could Finally Reach Warp Speed
New research shows that the “superluminal observer” needs three separate time dimensions for a warp-speed math trick that would please even Galileo.

The secret to faster-than-light physics could be to double down on the number of dimensions, according to new research published last month in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity. Specifically, the solution may lie in three dimensions of time, with just one representing space. The math is deep and complicated, but the ideas may be within our grasp after all. And there’s one math trick at superspeeds that may just “flip” your lid.

The key idea at play here is that of a “superluminal observer.” “Superluminal” means faster than light, from super– meaning “more” or “most,” and –luminal like, well, Lumière from Beauty and the Beast, and the lumens that power your home movie projector. The superluminal observer is a hypothetical thing that is looking at the universe while traveling faster than light. It’s you in your Star Trek warp-speed shuttle.

Ha! Shows what you know, dipshit. Most shuttles, excepting certain of the Type 7 shuttlecraft, had only impulse engines and were thus incapable of attaining warp velocity/FTL travel, as every Trekkie worthy of the name knows full well. It’s a bit like comparing, say, a deuce-and-a-half with an F16 in terms of power and speed.

The research team—led by theoretical physicist Andrzej Dragan of the University of Warsaw and the National University of Singapore—has theorized that many parts of quantum physics, like indeterminism and superposition, can be explained if you take general relativity and apply its principles to the superluminal observer. In other words, how messy does spacetime get if we take our shuttle up to warp speed? Is everything suddenly in multiple places at once?

Dragan’s new work indicates that it’s at least a possibility. Perhaps more interestingly, the way general relativity becomes quantum phenomena at speeds greater than light doesn’t seem to introduce any causal paradoxes. In earlier work, published in the New Journal of Physics in March 2020, Dragan and his coauthor studied “just” one space dimension and one time dimension, known as 1+1. In the new paper, the researchers upped the ante to include one space dimension and three time dimensions, or 1+3.

Why do we need three time dimensions? To understand, we have to talk about some math.

Annnnd that lets me out. I’ve always been a complete dumbass when it comes to math; being just barely capable of totting up a restaurant tip in my frazzled old noggin, mathematics any more involved or complex than that leaves me stammering and stumbling like Too Old Jaux. The last word here can only be Picard’s.

Memezapoppin’

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Over the past week or two, I’ve been collecting memes, downloading like a fiend every time I see a good ‘un and adding them to the hoard against some far-off future day when they might come in useful around here. Thus, the following meme-dump. No links back to where I originally found them, because pain in the fecking ass, that’s why. Also, I don’t recall where most of ‘em came from anyway. Enjoy.

JustBeThere

MorpheusDisneyIrony

ObeyOrdersObeyGunLaws

Sharting

TuckerTheReaper

WillNotComply

Man, if I keep this up I’m gonna need to buy an external hard drive just to store these things.

Update! Just found an absolutely brilliant one over at Ken Lane’s joint.

ZZPaul

HAAA! I never woulda imagined Paul could be so self-aware and humble.

Hellacious update! Dammit dammit DAMMIT, meant to include this one originally, then in the course of putting the post together I forgot it. No worries though, it’ll be worth the wait.

SatanStoryHour

Heh.

3

DIY, or don’t

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PopMech asks a silly question.

How to Make a Bluetooth Speaker Out of Just About Anything
Why buy a Bluetooth speaker when you can make one that perfectly fits your style?

When it comes to Bluetooth speakers, there are hundreds of options ranging in price from around twelve dollars to more than a thousand. But why buy one when you can build one that not only blends in with your décor but also will impress your friends?

Ummm…counterquestion: why go to all the hassle of building one when you can buy one for twelve bucks that will work just as well?

Understand: as an inveterate tinkerer and customizer, it pains me to utter such blasphemy, it truly does. Throughout my entire life, I’ve always been all about building it myself, tweaking it, making it better or cooler or more functional according to my own personal definition of those words. But at a certain point, the practical considerations come into play. To wit:

The parts for this 50-watt Bluetooth speaker project aren’t expensive and the process isn’t very difficult. If you have basic supplies like speaker wire and solder, it’ll cost just under $100.

Uh huh. Yeah, no.

When I was locked up in hospital durance vile all those months after getting various body parts chopped off, a close friend of mine bought me a little Bluetooth speaker to connect to my phone so’s I could listen to the classical radio station all day without having to keep the phone right by my pillow so that I could hear its tiny, tinny little speakers struggling away with the sweeping, swooping dynamics and frequency ranges of classical music. It even had a fancy psychedelic light show built in, which was customizable in all sorts of different ways at the press of a button. Price: about twenty bucks.

And THAT’S when I stopped reading the article and clicked on through to someplace else.

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1

Try that in a small town

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A tip of the CF Stetson (not that I actually HAVE one, unnerstand) to country crooner Jason Aldean, for telling it like it is.

Jason Aldean’s Rocking Country Song ‘Try That in a Small Town’ Makes Liberal Heads Explode, He Claps Back
Country music star Jason Aldean dropped a song in May, but it seems like a memo went out among the liberal press because they’re suddenly freaking out that it slams woke blue violent cities and the 2020 George Floyd riots while daring to honor gun ownership and small-town values. Ooh, can’t do that.

Here are the lyrics for the first two verses (all caps are his from his YouTube posting. Read the rest there):

SUCKER PUNCH SOMEBODY ON A SIDEWALK
CAR JACK AN OLD LADY AT A RED LIGHT
PULL A GUN ON THE OWNER OF A LIQUOR STORE
YA THINK IT’S COOL WELL ACT A FOOL IF YA LIKE
CUSS OUT A COP SPIT IN HIS FACE
STOMP ON THE FLAG AND LIGHT IT UP
YEAH YA THINK YOU’RE TOUGH

WELL TRY THAT IN A SMALL TOWN
SEE HOW FAR YA MAKE IT DOWN THE ROAD
‘ROUND HERE WE TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN
YOU CROSS THAT LINE IT WON’T TAKE LONG
FOR YOU TO FIND OUT
I RECOMMEND YOU DON’T
TRY THAT IN A SMALL TOWN

Predictably, the left has gone nuts, accusing Aldean of racism and any other of the usual buzzwords they can come up with…Aldean issued a lengthy response to critics Tuesday afternoon:

In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous. There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it- and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage -and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music- this one goes too far.

As so many pointed out, I was present at Route 91-where so many lost their lives- and our community recently suffered another heartbreaking tragedy. NO ONE, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart.

Try That In A Small Town, for me, refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief. Because they were our neighbors, and that was above any differences. My political views have never been something I’ve hidden from, and I know that a lot of us in this Country don’t agree on how we get back to a sense of normalcy where we go at least a day without a headline that keeps us up at night. But the desire for it to- that’s what this song is about.

These days, the Left considers virtually everything they don’t like to be racist or related to White Supremacy. In my view, this rocking song is pointing out that the lawlessness happening in our big cities is simply unacceptable and un-American, and owning a firearm is a First Amendment right. And guess what, folks—he’s allowed to like small-town living; it isn’t a crime.

Well, not yet, anyway. There’s a vid of Aldean’s instant classic at the link if you’re so inclined. Not being a fan of contemporary rock-flavored country music myself it really isn’t my cup of tea, but as always YMMV. What the hell, anything that makes Sniveling Shitlibs weep and wail so lugubriously is a-okay with moi.

4

Tripwires and telltales in the runup to war

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BCE runs through some of ‘em, which list includes one of our most beloved warbirds around these h’yar parts. So naturally, despite my near-total disinterest in Biden’s Needless and Futile War against Russia via the Ukraine, I couldn’t possibly restrain myself from mentioning it here.

Now that the wars are over, the majority of NG units are back to the trash they were BEFORE Iraq and Affy ‘went live’ so, in this case, my guess? Ass and Trash Mission to support bringing in MOAR trigger-pullers…My guess? A Battalion or Two of Heavy Armor (M1A2s in 1st Armored Division) as this Krainian ‘thang’ is almost a pure Armor fight…the fucked up thing is that we haven’t heard shit about any A-10s being moved

THATS the TRUE ‘tripwire’. Even tho the zoomies FINALLY got the A-10 kil’t off, they’ll still be in use, in the ANG/Reserves until 2029, but they’re RUSHING to get rid of them, even tho the Flying Turducken ain’t anywhere CLOSE to being a capable substitute. You hear/see/RUMINT the A-10s moving and sure AF war is coming ‘cos besides CAS (Close Air Support) Anti-Armor War is what the A-10 was literally designed for.

Now, the aforementioned A-10?

Yep…well….

Seems that they have 2 Full Squadrons of A-10s

Attached to the Army Reserve

Not for nuthin’ BUT

IF you hear of ANY Air-Notional Guard Units at Moody AB in Georgia or any Army Reserve (Air) Units of A-10s getting activated, THAT is the ‘tripwire’ IMHEO (In My Highly Edjamahcated Opinion) then it’s now ‘off to the races’ in the Kraine. The F-35 Flying Turducken, despite the claims, is utterly incapable of CAS (Close Air Support) never mind ackchully –doing– REAL anti-armor shit like the A-10 was like, oh, I dunno…specifically designed to do during the Cold War!?!

Myself, I’da put “Flying” in sneer quotes before “Turducken,” but that’s a quibble, a mere bagatelle—a matter of style, not substance, as such only barely worth even mentioning. Anyways. Onwards.

SO Long Story Short:

You hear about A-10 Movements, it means it’s on like Donkey Kong. There’s ONLY 281 +/- A-10s left, and literally nothing in our inventory that can do what it does. So WHEN they start moving, prep for fecal oscillation storm inbound.

Big Country carries on from there with more analysis of what’s really going on with all this shite, beginning with US armor (in)capabilites—a gruesome sit-rep enlivened by plenty of been-there-done-that-WAY-too-many-times insider know-how—to arrive at a conclusion most gruesome, but nonetheless inescapable:

We go? Lots of body bags are going to be needed, and as someone earlier mentioned on Gab, we’re going to need a LOT of Graves Registration folks…Never mind a slug fest at 500 meters with NO air support…Air Support IMO is going to be ‘spotty’ at best as even OUR Air Farce hasn’t had a peer-to-peer challenge since the 60’s, and even then, the North Vietnamese and SOME of the Russians flying like the ‘Flying Tigers’ (contract gigs for experience points) shot a LOT of our guys down, which is actually why ‘the Top Gun’ school got set up…and the Rus these days purely own the skies over the Kraine.

If anything Ivan now knows HOW WE FIGHT as we trained the fucking tard-Krainians in OUR BATTLE TACTICS for use AGAINST THE RUSSIANS. And apparently, ‘the Book’ we used was dated from the “Time of Stalin” ‘cos man, they sure as fuck have adapted, improvised and kicked the fucking toofuses in of the Krainians stupid enough to utilize OUR book on the implementation of war against the Russians…And we keep crossing lines without impact…Note to our Leadershit:

Wir sind soooooooooo tot

(Look it up)

Having gleaned a VERY small smattering of Churman words and phrases from Brack back in our schoolboy days, I could readily recollect (to my own astonishment) what wir meant, but was at sea completely with the rest. So I did as duly and lawfully instructed and looked it up, and the translation is as follows:

We are soooooooooo dead.

That’s the fact, Jack. Not that the politicos, punditry, and sundry other shitlib bags of reeking shit—rabidly, unalterably antiwar, each and every last one of ‘em, until they maneuvered Their Boy into the White (bag) House—will be in the least troubled by it. Hell, for those evil schweinhundfickers, that only makes Bribem’s Unwinnable War proposition even more attractive.mjnk

MOAR NUKES, PLEASE!

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Stat.

During the recent power outages and denial of interweb service, I took up reading a book I picked up a while back on a subject I have always had questions: The Case for Nukes: How We Can Beat Global Warming and Create a Free, Open, and Magnificent Future by Robert Zubrin (Polaris Books 2023). It’s a very thoughtful argument that debunks the toxic falsehoods that have been spread to dissuade us from using it by the ignorant, the fearful, and the fanatical from returning to the use of Nuclear power as a remedy to our festering Twenty First Century problems. Here’s a quick synopsis of what I culled from his book.

In a very literal sense, energy technologies have molded humanity. The invention of cooking with fire by those small brained Homo Habilis dudes cut the metabolic energy needed to digest meat, making it safer to consume and allowing the primates to eat more small animals or their enemies. Evolution directed some of these surplus calories to their brains, enabling the hungry organ to grow in size and ability, leading to the industrious little guys, Homo Erectus, the forerunner (to) us, the Bozo Sapien.

Over the millennia, humans learned to harness fire to smoke meats, craft pottery, bend metal, and more, forming much of the material basis of the pre-fossil fuel world. Wood power (or what is now called “biomass”) was such a good deal that parts of Europe started running out of forests in the 1700s. Britain was the first nation to innovate itself out of this dilemma, which they did by burning coal.

Mastering coal and other fossil fuels prevented energy scarcity, but also led to an unforeseen revolution in human life. Synthetic fertilizer, electricity, cars, plastics, smart phones, x-rays, ChatGPT—nearly all elements of modern life—exist because of fossil fuels. Today billions of people enjoy a prosperity that would be unimaginable to their ancestors.

This history of energy begins The Case for Nukes. Robert Zubrin, an American aerospace engineer of three decades tells the history of energy to set the stage for one of his core arguments, that humanity should use more energy. Over 700 million people languish in extreme poverty today and billions have not reached a standard of living equivalent to that of a developed country.

In contrast, radical environmentalists urge people to use less energy, which they believe is necessary to avert climate and ecological apocalypse. Zubrin contends that slashing energy use would be so harmful as to be borderline genocidal, but he does recognizes that the environmental harms of fossil fuels are unsustainable. Thus he endorses nuclear energy, asserting that only atomic energy can lift all people out of poverty while conserving the environment.

The fabulously talented and visually stunning Diogenes Sarcastica™ closes her post by gleefully declaring, “I say let’s start smashing some fucking atoms and keep the lights on,” a proposal with which I must enthusiastically agree; by gum, those fucking atoms have it coming. Before that beautiful, beautiful dream can hope to become a reality, though, it will be necessary to dispense with a great many Luddite shitlibs, which requirement I consider to be more plus than minus—a side benefit, shall we say, making the whole thing a win-win for everyone that matters.

2

Burn the Transgender coal, pay the Transgender toll

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Or: If you Transgenderize it, it will fall.

Not Just Bud Light: Anheuser-Busch’s Other Beer Brands See Sales Crash
As Bud Light continues to face plummeting sales amid a conservative boycott over its collaboration with a transgender influencer, other brands made by parent company Anheuser-Busch are also taking a hit.

Sales of Michelob Ultra fell by 4.3 percent in the week that ended July 1 compared with last year, and Busch Light was down 8.5 percent, the New York Post reported. Both brands are, like Bud Light, owned by the Anheuser-Busch brewing company.

Bud Light this year lost its position as America’s top selling beer. It was the second-best-selling beer in the four weeks leading up to June 3, making up 7.3 percent of U.S. retail-store beer purchases. Bud Light is now no longer one of America’s 10 most popular beers.

Bud Light’s problems come after months of boycotting by conservatives. The brand’s troubles began in April, when its partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney became public. Mulvaney revealed the collaboration on social media on April 1, showing a Bud Light can featuring the influencer’s face. Mulvaney also posted a video drinking Bud Light in a bathtub.

As if an effete über-hipster doofus like Dylan ”Dirk” Mulvaney would’ve ever been caught dead drinking a common-plebe brand like Bumblaster Light anyway, unless he/she/it was getting paid to.

This is the first instance I know of where one of these boycotts has actually accomplished a damned thing other than to make participants feel all smug and righteous, and I must say it’s a beautiful thing indeed. Keep the skeer on ‘em, people; these WokesterCorp™ shitheels really do despise you, so you absolutely ought to give it right back to ‘em, measure for measure and to the very last bitter drop. Kick ‘em in the yarbles, bring the pain, and make them pay, each and every single chance you get. If nothing else, you’ll be drinking much better beer for your trouble.

Update! Lamont the Big Dummy, of course and as usual, has the right of it.

At Instapundit, Steven Green says they should just apologize.

I don’t know if I want a forced apology, which would of course be insincere. And anyway, forced apologies are kind of creepy.

I think I want more: For Anheuser-Busch to declare that men are men, and women are women.

Is that too much? I don’t think so. I don’t want every company to weigh in on contentious social issues. But I would like the precedent set that if a corporation weighs in on a culture war issue, they are now Fair Game to be mau-maued by the right into being forced to weigh in on our side of the culture war issue. Which of course is absolutely hateful to our leftwing corporate “friends.”

Let us make an object lesson out of Tranheuser-Busch, so that other corporations understand: Either avoid weighing in on political issues altogether, or we will fucking force you to propagandize for the social and cultural right.

Which we know you hate. And which will cost you your precious ESG ratings.

You’re advertising your “corporate values”? Well then I insist that your “corporate values” match my conservative values. How you like them apples?

Maybe you better just stay out of it altogether, huh?

Exactly, precisely so. As is so often said of stupidity, “liberalism” too should be literally, physically painful. That only happens if we make it happen, there’s simply no other way. Show them that there will be a cost involved, and perhaps one day corporate America will remember what business it was that they were originally supposed to be in.

4

How gunslinging is DONE

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A primer from American legend Wyatt Earp, who is renowned for having a little experience (a-HENH!) in the field.

I was a fair hand with pistol, rifle, or shotgun, but I learned more about gunfighting from Tom Speer’s cronies during the summer of ’71 than I had dreamed was in the book. Those old-timers took their gunplay seriously, which was natural under the conditions in which they lived. Shooting, to them, was considerably more than aiming at a mark and pulling a trigger. Models of weapons, methods of wearing them, means of getting them into action and operating them, all to the one end of combining high speed with absolute accuracy, contributed to the frontiersman’s shooting skill.

The sought-after degree of proficiency was that which could turn to most effective account the split-second between life and death. Hours upon hours of practice, and wide experience in actualities supported their arguments over style.

When I say that I learned to take my time in a gunfight, I do not wish to be misunderstood, for the time to be taken was only that split fraction of a second that means the difference between deadly accuracy with a sixgun and a miss. It is hard to make this clear to a man who has never been in a gunfight.

I imagine it would be, yeah. When the two-way shooting range goes hot, maintaining the requisite mental calm is gonna be pretty damned tough for a man who hasn’t ever stared down a gun-muzzle to look imminent death straight in the eye.

Perhaps I can best describe such time taking as going into action with the greatest speed of which a man’s muscles are capable, but mentally unflustered by an urge to hurry or the need for complicated nervous and muscular actions which trick-shooting involves. Mentally deliberate, but muscularly faster than thought, is what I mean. (What Wyatt meant is that he made the decision to shoot a long time before the trigger was pulled.)

In all my life as a frontier police officer, I did not know a really proficient gunfighter who had anything but contempt for the gun-fanner, or the man who literally shot from the hip. In later years I read a great deal about this type of gunplay, supposedly employed by men noted for skill with a forty-five.

From personal experience and numerous six-gun battles which I witnessed, I can only support the opinion advanced by the men who gave me my most valuable instruction in fast and accurate shooting, which was that the gun-fanner and hip-shooter stood small chance to live against a man who, as old Jack Gallagher always put it, took his time and pulled the trigger once.

TONS more fascinating stuff here, which will be of intense interest to shooters and history buffs alike. What better time to run another clip from one the very best movies EVAR.

“You nerve-wrackin’ sonsabitches.” “Skin that smoke-wagon and see what happens.” “Oh. Johnny, I apologize, I forgot you were there. You may go now.” Heh. So many great, unforgettable lines in that movie—up to and including a brief Latin-dialogue exchange between Johnny Ringo and Doc Holliday, no less—it almost beggars belief.

(Via Insty)

1

Mike’s Iron Laws

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A while back I threatened to collect all the ones I’ve mentioned so far into one handy-dandy post, just to be funny. Then, at BMNT last night (Begin Morning Nautical Twilight, the witching hour when the US military likes to initiate an attack, for all sorts of very good reasons) when I had been forced out of bed to take a(nother) leak, I remembered that pledge, and decided to just go ahead and do this thing already.

After the results of a local CF search were in, I was a bit surprised at how many times I had deployed this schtick of mine; sometimes the MILs had been given a number designation, sometimes they hadn’t. Heck, somewhere back in the deepest mists of time I even established a separate category for the things, in preparation for the day when I’d finally get around to creating this compendium.

So without further mucking about, I present to you all the MILs I could scavenge—directly quoted from the post they originally appeared in, in no particular order, with a link to the post of origin.

And that’s a wrap, kids—for now. Looking back over this list, it’s a thing of wonder and amazement to me that, even though I was just making the whole danged thing up as I went along, I somehow avoided repeating any of the numbers except for Number One/Numero Uno. Not sure how I managed to pull that one off.

Update! I think I’m gonna create a new WP Page, which will show up as a navbar link at the top, so’s I can add new MILs as they occur to me. That’ll archive all of them in one convenient place, for posterity’s sake.

6

Poesy

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In comments to the Horatius/Trump post SteveF mentions a certain pome with which I was heretofore unfamiliar. So I looked it up and MY, but it’s a dandy, albeit long as an afternoon suffering all the tortures of the dentist’s art. A bit more of it, then.

XXVI
But the Consul’s brow was sad,
    And the Consul’s speech was low,
And darkly looked he at the wall,
    And darkly at the foe.
‘Their van will be upon us
    Before the bridge goes down;
And if they once may win the bridge,
    What hope to save the town?’

XXVII
Then out spake brave Horatius,
    The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
    Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
    Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
    And the temples of his Gods,

XXVIII
‘And for the tender mother
    Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
    His baby at her breast,
And for the holy maidens
    Who feed the eternal flame,
To save them from false Sextus
    That wrought the deed of shame?

XXIX
‘Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul,
    With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me,
    Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
    May well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand on either hand,
    And keep the bridge with me?’

XXX
Then out spake Spurius Lartius;
    A Ramnian proud was he:
‘Lo, I will stand at thy right hand,
    And keep the bridge with thee.’
And out spake strong Herminius;
    Of Titian blood was he:
‘I will abide on thy left side,
    And keep the bridge with thee.’

XXXI
‘Horatius,’ quoth the Consul,
    ‘As thou sayest, so let it be.’
And straight against that great array
    Forth went the dauntless Three.
For Romans in Rome’s quarrel
    Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
    In the brave days of old.

XXXII
Then none was for a party;
    Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
    And the poor man loved the great:
Then lands were fairly portioned;
    Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers
    In the brave days of old.

XXXIII
Now Roman is to Roman
    More hateful than a foe,
And the Tribunes beard the high,
    And the Fathers grind the low.
As we wax hot in faction,
    In battle we wax cold:
Wherefore men fight not as they fought
    In the brave days of old.

Rings all too familiar in the modern ear, no? Especially those last two stanzas, which encapsulate the current situation in Amerika v2.0 pretty thoroughly. Proving once again that, in art as in life itself, some things really never DO change, and that the same can truly be said of eternally-immutable human nature—the shitlib conceit of malleable, perfectible Progressivist Man notwithstanding.

Much, much more rich, buttery epic-poetic goodness at the link, incredibly enough, which you should read if you’re inclined in that direction, finally clocking out at an eye-bulging Stanza LXX. Pity the poor shoolkids who had to memorize the entire pome way back in the Aulden Thymes, if Pournelle’s claim is to be believed.

Inside baseball side note: Man. A. LIVE, but what a right royal pain in the ass formatting that was! Thanks to the abject failure of the MarsEdit find-and-replace function to do its ONE FUCKING JOB, replacing all the paragraph HTML tags with line-breaks throughout the above excerpt of the pome by hand was a most arduous task indeed. Necessary though, to keep things all clean, tidy, and looking as they should around here. I swear, the things I do for you people…

Ahem. And now, to get cracking on tomorrow’s Substackery.

3
1

The Four Big Things

Posted on      by     

Which, according to Mike’s Iron Law #4,689, one should never, ever try to bargain-shop for, looking for the cheapest possible alternative: shoes, meat, doctors, and tattoos*. Free? Thanks, but…NO.

FourThings

Wouldn’t work anyhow, the target audience isn’t the least bit interested in showering.

(Via Arthur Sido)

* That first one, shoes, I can’t honestly claim as my own; that one was an Iron Law of my dad’s

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