Flotsam and/or Jetsam

Wherein Ye Olde Blogge Hoste shamelessly swipes another good idea

Posted on May 1, 2023May 1, 2023 by Mike

Just went over for the daily look-in at Bill’s place, and I note he’s had an idea I think well worth the stealing: putting the link to his own Substack column at the top of the main page, making it more noticeable and immediate. Since our Daily Donnybrook open-thread post is already made “sticky” when I put each new one up, what I think I’m a-gonna do is append an “Eyrie” notification to it as well; should serve the same promotional function as Bill’s notice, without impinging on the main page of the blog any more than I just absolutely have to.

Update! Done, and done. I removed the Eyrie image from the sidebar and stuck it into the DD post, which I think looks great, and modified the DD title slightly too. What say y’all, CF Lifers? Like it, or no?

Updated update! So again I got to thinking (a VERY dangerous thing), and began asking myself whether, with the sticky Eyrie notification up top, I should carry on with the “Eyrie up” biweekly notification posts also. What I’m thinking is that I should, and will; they don’t do any real harm, don’t eat much, and are doable at a relatively affordable price, namely free, so why the hell not?

Who owns what, anyway?

Posted on April 29, 2023April 30, 2023 by Mike

The right to repair.

John Deere Corporate Might Have Reason to Panic, But Farmers Will Love What’s Happening
Farmers have been battling the manufacturers of their high-tech farming machinery for years over the right to repair their equipment on their own.

Major companies in the space, including John Deere, began restricting products to manufacturer exclusive service contracts.

These contracts lock out the farmers who own tractors, for instance, from making even small repairs to their machines. Instead, when something breaks down, farmers have to call the manufacturer or dealer to schedule a repairman to come out and service the device, forcing the farmer to shut down his operations while waiting for the repairman to come out to the farm.

This is obviously a serious problem for farmers who are under strict time restrictions during planting and harvesting seasons.

Farmers have been contesting this situation for years, ever since some manufacturers of equipment have begun implementing such exclusionary practices. It has resulted in a campaign among farmers called the “right to repair” movement, where farmers are fighting for the right to make repairs to the tractors and other instruments they bought and own.

The farmers claim that they lose money and time while waiting for these repair men to show up. Not only that, but they contend that if a tractor maker holds the sole right to repair, then the farmers don’t really even own their tractors despite paying tens of thousands for the vehicles.

As the truck drivers always say, so it is for the farmers: if the wheels ain’t turning, they ain’t earning. Not that the corporate types at John Deere, in defense of their “right” to bleed hardworking farmers like a deer tick on a hound with those exorbitantly priced “maintenance contracts” of theirs, give a discernible damn about that.

Now, however, the state of Colorado has become the first to give farmers the legal right to repair their equipment without being forced to pay for a manufacturer’s repair teams. That law was passed on Tuesday.

For their part, companies such as John Deere say that farming equipment is now so highly technical and computer-driven that repairs are often beyond the skill of barn tinkerers. Even more importantly, manufacturers say that if just anyone can start tearing down and rebuilding their high-tech machinery, their proprietary technology will be all too easily open for corporate theft.

Well, which is it, then? Are those slackjawed yokels too stupid to comprehend all that tech, or are those sharpie-farmers looking to inflate their incomes via some sophisticated reverse-engineering and corporate espionage?

For what it may be worth, my Uncle Gene flatly refused to own anything his whole life but a Deere…right up until his last one, which he spent a lot more time cussing and spitting at than actually riding the piece of junk.

Manufacturers also say that allowing tractor owners to make any manner of repair also allows them to bypass emissions controls set by governments and to crank up horsepower or make other modifications that violate laws. This, they say, puts equipment operators at risk of injury, and in turn would unfairly place the manufacturers in a position to be sued for those injuries.

Ahhh, and there it is: the cold, dead hand of government. You knew it would figure into all this somehow. Now for a little compare-contrast.

“Forcing a business to disclose trade secrets, software, and jeopardize consumer safety is poor public policy,” said Colorado state Rep. Matt Soper, a Republican who opposed “right to repair” measures in the Centennial State.

The opposition was not enough to stall the legislation. Colorado’s Democrat Gov. Jared Polis happily signed the new bill into law last Tuesday, saying, “This bill will save farmers and ranchers time and money and support the free market in repair” before exclaiming, “first in the nation!’”

Against all odds and expectations, we’ve now reached the point where the GOPer argues for restricting the rights of hard-working American farmers to do what they wish with the property they nominally “own,” while the Democrat stands up for freedom, real ownership, independent repair shops, and non-interference with said rights. UNEXPECTED!™

When is a liberal not a liberal?

Posted on April 26, 2023 by Mike

The wit and wisdom of George Carlin, delving into why government schools suck.

George Carlin Warned us Why Public Education Sucks and Won’t Get Better
Carlin, despite his left-leaning tendencies, could also grasp certain concepts even his fellow liberals could not. For example, I recently came across an old clip of Carlin talking about education—and boy, was it spot on.

In the clip, Carlin talks about politicians who don’t want to improve education, despite always calling for more money to support it. Carlin also criticized the education system’s approach to addressing poor test scores by suggesting that instead of improving the quality of education, they lower the passing grades, a common practice in many schools.

“That’s what they do in a lot of these schools. Now they lower the passing grades so more kids can pass. More kids pass the school looks good, everybody’s happy. The IQ of the country slips another two or three points, and pretty soon, all you’ll need to get into college is a fucking pencil. ‘Got a pencil? Get the fuck in there.’ It’s physics. Then everyone wonders why 17 other countries graduate more scientists than we do. ‘Education.’ Politicians know that word, they use it on you.”

Carlin continued, “There’s a reason for this. There’s a reason education sucks. And It’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never gonna get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that.”

“I’m talking about the real owners now. The real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. They get the politicians — politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies. So they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else.”

“But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking they’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.”

Imagine a liberal saying this today. I can’t.

Of course you can’t. There’s about a jillion and one things Carlin used to say that no shitlib today would, nor even could.

I’ve been an avid fan of George Carlin since I was just a kid—and I’m talking here like 13 years old or thereabouts—when I plunked down my entire weekly allowance at my Uncle Gene’s drugstore for a copy of his FM & AM album, brought it home, and put it on the turntable of my family’s big old console-stereo rig. Then, after no more than about five minutes of me and my brother giggling at all the funny cuss-words, my enraged father stormed into the living room, slapped the tonearm off the disk so viciously he dislodged the entire needle cartridge and sent it flying across the room, and ordered me to take that obscene thing straight back to wherever you got it from, he wasn’t about to tolerate having any such filth in HIS house!!!

Although yes, Carlin’s political leanings were Left-wards, when and if he spoke of such piffling things at all, what the man also was—always, quite rigorously, and above all else—was honest. Often brutally so, no matter where that honesty might lead him either professionally or intellectually.

Which, being so uncompromisingly honest had to be extremely painful for him at times, I should think. Then again though, perhaps not so much; as I continued to follow his career over the years, even going so far as to watch his middling-at-best TV series, I began to realize that Carlin wasn’t so much a Leftist as he was a true, bred-in-the-bone iconoclast. Clearly, the man despised official authority in all its forms; I can’t recall him ever mentioning politics at all in his routines other than glancingly, as in the above quotes, and always with searing contempt. Certainly he never endorsed any particular candidate, party, or platform, like all too many of his fellow comics so promiscuously do today.

Like almost every other born-and-raised New Yorker, he thought of himself as a liberal, I suppose. But he wasn’t a guy upon whom the silken fetters of liberalism would ever sit easily or comfortably. A genuine free spirit, he flatly rejected chains of every kind, which is exactly what those silken fetters in reality were, and still are.

There is no common ground to be found between 60s-70s liberalism and liberty, then or now. Those two things being so patently (and ironically, given the Latin root of both words) contradictory, though, I kinda doubt it set off any cognitive dissonance for Carlin just the same. Given the man’s visceral loathing for any sort of political encroachment on freedom, whether his own or anybody else’s, it’s obvious that his first loyalty was always to human liberty, and not to what liberalism had by the close of the 60s come to represent—another vile linguistic traducement I doubt George Carlin would have had any patience with.

Tales from the tour bus

Posted on April 26, 2023April 27, 2023 by Mike

Commenting on last night’s Junior Brown post, Skeptic said:

I’ve been fortunate enough to see Junior, the Reverend, and Big Sandy live (although not on the same bill). Great entertainers all.

Indeed they are, and excepting Brown, who I’ve never met, just really great guys as well. So I began my response to Skeptic thusly:

Man, Big Sandy (Robert Williams, actually, as you probably know), in addition to being enormously talented, is without doubt one of the sweetest, nicest human beings I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. When my wife was killed, he was one of the very first to call me. He had been friends with both her and her mom since way before I’d met them myself, and you could easily tell he was just heartbroken over it. I’ve never forgotten that act of kindness and open-hearted generosity, and I never will.

First time I ever did a show with him was out in LA, at Ronnie Mack’s Barn Dance. There was just all kinds of big rockabilly names on the bill that night; hell, even Brian Setzer showed up to make a surprise appearance to close out the evening. While Brian was on, me, James Intveld, Sandy, and a handful of others were brought onstage with him as well.

I got that far in, and that’s when it hit me: this story is just too damned good to let it languish in comment-section obscurity, it really merits a main-page post of its own. So here’s the rest of it, blockquoted just becuz.

Brian called out for us to do Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” to end the set, which the backing band launched into. Setzer sang the first verse, then frantically waved all his fellow frontmen into a midstage huddle before going on with the song–he had forgotten the rest of the lyrics, and wanted to know if any of the rest of us knew ’em!

Naturally, being under pressure like that, smack in the middle of actually PLAYING the song in front of a packed house, the spots circling us like hungry sharks, every damned one of us immediately lapsed into a total brain fart, failing to come up with so much as a single syllable of the blood-simple lyrics to one of the hoariest old RaB chestnuts known to man.

I mean, really, now. “Summertime Blues”? Hell, plenty of people who wouldn’t know rockabilly from Adam’s housecat probably know the words to that song! KNEW them? Of course we knew them! We’d all played and sung the blasted thing a million and one times; every one of us was a professional player, with years of onstage experience under our belts, so stage fright couldn’t have been an issue.

But still—there we all were, drawing a total blank, as the backing musicians went right on endlessly repeating the lead-in to the second verse whilst darting looks of confusion, wonderment, and dismay at our little stage-front conference as we all went right on NOT stepping up to the center mic to take charge and get the stalled-out show moving again.

Finally, I did so myself, just repeating the first verse Brian had already sung in hopes that it might jar something loose in my bourbon-addled brain which would bring the rest back to me again. But it’s what happened right before then that still makes me laugh to this very day.

See, Big Sandy was absolutely high-school drunk at that point, drunk as a boiled owl—or, as my friend Joe used to say, fucked up as a nine-eyed nigger. The guy had this goofy, vacant grin smeared loosely all over his slaphappy mug, the look of a man totally at peace with the entire world, delighted to be where he was in that golden moment—wherethehellever THAT might have been.

One of the other players, can’t remember who, nodded me over to where he was struggling to hold Sandy more or less upright by his right arm, in an unmistakable plea for assistance—Sandy is a big, heavy dude, see, and whoever-it-was, well…wasn’t.

So I got myself over there straightaway, latched onto Sandy’s free left arm, and our two-man rescue squad proceeded to walk/stagger/drag our cheerfully-inebriated charge over to the area of the stage known amongst showbiz types as the backline—ie, the row of guitar/bass amps and drum kit prepositioned for all the night’s bands to use, standard practice when a big venue has an unusually large number of groups booked, so as to shorten the time needed to break down the stage and set up for the next act.

And the backline is where we dumped Sandy, gently lowering him to sit atop a tweed Fender Bassman amp, his back against the rear stage wall. He was a sight: that same smile on his face, tapping both feet to the music, his body precariously swaying, a bottle of Heineken clutched tightly in each hand. Years later, I asked him if he remembered that auspicious evening, to which he replied, “YES! Ummm, maybe. Well, okay, parts of it.”

Too, too funny. I told him if he ever needed help remembering any of the more lurid details, I’d be glad to remind him, because I was never gonna forget it. We both laughed, and then headed on back to the bar.

Big Sandy was by no means the only one deep in his cups that night, mind; it was also the night I hung out after the show with a cripplingly-blasted Janeane Garofalo, which I told all about here. An auspicious occasion indeed, all the way ‘round.

Update! Added a green-room pic from after the Horton’s Holiday Hayride show to the Junior Brown post, in case any of y’all might be interested in such piffling trivialities.

Fox News commits hara-kiri!

Posted on April 24, 2023April 24, 2023 by Mike

The end of an era, and a network. From America’s most reliable news source:

Fox News Fires The Only Reason People Watch Fox News
NEW YORK, NY — After months of controversy, Fox News has decided to part ways with the only reason anyone watches Fox News.

“Yes, we realize he delivered the most successful cable news program of all time, but we felt embarrassed by him at our Manhatten cocktail parties,” said Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. “When we tried to get invited to fancy, sophisticated gatherings, people said: ‘Ewwww, aren’t you the Tucker Carlson people?’ and that made us feel sad. Curse you, Tucker, for making us feel sad!”

When reached for a reaction, Tucker simply stared dumbfoundedly at our reporter for several minutes.

Industry experts believe there are other factors that contributed to the alleged firing, including the fact that the company is too broke to pay him after settling a lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems.

Progressives are reportedly overjoyed by the move, although many are saying Fox didn’t go far enough by not killing Carlson in addition to firing him. “You mean he’s still alive?” said Congresswoman AOC. “Tucker being alive is fascism!”

At publishing time, producers were seen looking through files for another hot blonde to replace him with.

The Bee, of course, establishing a new record for how close their satire can come to actual reality: Tucker is indeed gone, although no one really seems to know why, or is admitting to it at least. Glenn sums up the rampant speculation out there:

Rumors have swirled that he was looking to leave since they stopped him airing more January 6 video after just a couple of nights, but I don’t know if that’s why he’s leaving or not.

The stock’s falling, leading an acquaintance to comment “$800m settlement for the vote fraud stuff with Dominion, and FOX just zapped $1bil from its market cap in the last 10 min.”

I wonder if Tucker will go to Newsmax or somewhere, or whether he’ll start his own Rumble program.

UPDATE: Lots of speculation that it involved the Dominion settlement, too. Maybe so. And Jim Bennett writes: “I wonder if Fox was getting significant pushback from the part of its viewership that were appalled by his stand on Ukraine. Most Americans of Eastern European descent are conservative, many of those I know are strongly pro-Ukrainian. And many were Fox viewers.” I dunno. I doubt that would be enough to end such a profitable association, but it may have been a factor.

Could be, who knows. Most likely, it will all come out eventually, as tends to happens with these things. But one thing we can be sure about: whatever the reason(s) behind it may have been, Fox News will be going the way of the dodo. Or does anyone out there think the moronic Sean Hannity can carry them on his strong, broad shoulders…?

Update! Apparently, t’was Rupert Murdoch himself who slew the Fox beast.

Tucker Carlson departs Fox News, pushed out by Rupert Murdoch
“Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways,” the network said in a statement. “We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.”

A Fox News representative had no other details on Carlson’s exit. People familiar with the situation who were not authorized to comment publicly said the decision to fire Carlson came straight from Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch.

Carlson’s exit is related to the discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, the producer fired by the network last month, the people said. Carlson’s senior executive producer Justin Wells has also been terminated, according to people familiar with the matter. A Fox News representative would not comment.

Murdoch is also said to be concerned over Carlson’s coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which the host has promoted the conspiracy theory simple, obvious fact, confirmed in several different ways, that it was provoked by government agents.

ADMISSION: I may have adjusted that last line slightly, in the interests of truth and accuracy. Be all that as it may, Ace administers the last rites.

Goodbye, Fox. You will die alone and unloved and unremembered.

Indeed so. In a conversation with my brother just now, we were speculating on a possibility I’d consider the most awesome denouement imaginable: Elon Musk and Tucker are even now on the phone hammering out the details of their new entry into the TeeWee news game, which will be called the Foxecutioner network.

Updated update! Ace’s post also includes the verified, 100% for-real video of Tucker’s final farewell to FNC:

Video of Tucker’s exit interview just leaked too! pic.twitter.com/Dc1iEco0Hi

— Vandelay ₿TC Industries ⚡ (@VandelayBTC)

April 24, 2023

What can one say but: heh. Indeed.

Oh noooes, Evel crashes AGAIN

Posted on April 22, 2023April 22, 2023 by Mike

What a pluperfect asshole.

Heyyyyyy! Party Crasher!! Evel had that! #send #besttoyever #partycrasher #evelknieveltoys #stuntcycle #evelknievel
Get yours👉🏼 https://t.co/N8cxxkhCic

Thanks @ogdp TikTok for the great jump 🙌🏼 pic.twitter.com/itfZpCAU3I

— Evel Knievel (@evelknievel)

April 22, 2023

See what I mean? What kind of weapons-grade dick-with-ears would jump in to bat around a vintage toy like that, chancing busting the thing all to smithereens on the asphalt? I had one of those myself back when I was but a wee sprat, and I can damned sure tell ya what woulda happened to this dude if he’da dared do that to mine. He’da wound up with a gaggle of the neighborhood rugrats latched onto his ankles, chawing on his ears and kicking him in his tiny, withered nutsack, that’s what. Hell, I had a scruffy, mean-ass pitbull pup back then, yclept Heinz, that woulda made mincemeat of his sorry ass, just on principle alone.

I mean, okay, I checked, and they DO still sell ‘em, for the low, low price of…40 smackers? Jeez. That said, at least it isn’t irreplaceable or anything.

But still. Jerkwad.

(((JOOOO JOOOO JOOOOO!!!)))

Posted on April 22, 2023April 22, 2023 by Mike

The Jew confession.

Maybe It’s Time To Fess Up, We Jews DO Run The World
As an American Jew whose family immigrated to the United States from Russia and Ukraine, the anti-Semitic words by people like Kanye initially horrified me. Still, I now realize that the time to be horrified is over. It is high time to fess up and tell the world the truth:

We Jews do run the world. And we’ve been running things for a very long time, manipulating world events for our own needs. It’s time to reveal the truth that many famous people now and throughout history were actually Jewish — part of the plot to perpetuate the myth and keep us in charge.

Martin Luther – yep, a Jew! But that one was pretty obvious. After all, he is famous for quitting his church to form a new one. Ever talk to a Jew about where he prays? He will tell you about the Synagogue he goes to and the one he would rather die than set foot in.

George Washington? Jewish, of course. James Monroe and Abe Lincoln also (take a look at their noses), So was John Adams (a short obnoxious guy whose real name was Ruby).

Napoleon was a Jew — no wonder he wanted to reconvene the historic Jewish court, the Sanhedrin. The French Emperor had this nervous habit of always playing with the Star of David hanging on a chain around his neck. The guy would look ridiculous, always sticking his hand in his shirt to play with the Star.

Most people don’t realize this but the Pope and all the Catholic Cardinals…members of the Tribe! You ever notice what they wear on their heads? Red Yarmulkes!

You know that famous picture of Bigfoot walking through the forest? I hate to disappoint people but it was a Jew in a costume. He was on the way to the international convention of the Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy (WWJC) and put on an Ape costume so people wouldn’t know about the convention.

See, I knew it, dammit, I KNEW it all along!

Note ye well though, folks, that I’ve been kicking around the ol’ blogosphere long enough now to remember back when The Lid blog was called “Yid With Lid.” So, y’know, you just can’t trust anything those Heebs say. Including the above jewa culpa.

All joking around aside, CF Lifers know by now that I have little to no patience with all that “the international Jew conspiracy is the cause of all our problems” schtuff out there. For one thing, it smacks too much to me of the selfsame thing the nig-nogs are constantly whining at Whitey about to ever ring true to these ears. For another, at least some of those Jew-under-every-bed folks insist that we’d be far better off to dump the treacherous, scheming, greedy Israelis and align ourselves with our True Allies™ over in the ME Sandbox—Iran, Saudi Arabia, et al.

Really, I ain’t kidding, I’ve seen ’em do it myself. To which I can only say…

Ummm, yeah, no.

As I’ve so often screamed at this impenetrable brick wall, it ain’t Jews you gotta worry about
—it’s liberals, be they Jewish, Episcopalian, Catholic, or what the hell ever else. We got plenty enough to be going on with dealing with the real menace to be frittering away any time or effort on made-up ones, that’s what I believe. But YMMV, I suppose.

Do you Kipple?

Posted on April 22, 2023 by Mike

Our friend KT—she of the much-beloved AoSHQ Saturday Pet and Gardening threads, among other fine and notable things—posts an excellent deep-dive analysis into one of the great Bard’s very best pomes.

Rudyard Kipling first published The Gods of the Copybook Headings in 1919, soon after the War To End All Wars. And it has been a decade since Bill Whittle slightly revised Kipling’s poem “for modern ears”, replacing “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” in the poem with The Gods of Wisdom and Virtue. He also replaced “The Gods of the Market Place” with The Gods of the Here and the Now.

The word choice of “The Gods of the Here and the Now” seems to me to be especially relevant to our culture and politics at the present moment. Some gods, especially the human ones, seem to fall out of favor in just a news cycle or two. Sometimes the descriptions of the non-human gods will be transformed in a news cycle or two.

So, what and who are the Gods of the Here and the Now, at this moment?

Safe to say that answering that question will automagickally provide the answers to a whole lot of other ones into the bargain. Read all of it. Then, from there, browse through my “Kipling” section, linked in Ye Olde CF Menuebarre up top yonder. There’s bound to be something in there that will be new to you, I’d bet. If you’re not a Kipling fan yet, then it’s high time you became one.

Gee, some wisdom, it turns out, truly IS eternal. Whodathunkit?

DANGER, DANGER, YOUNG WILL ROBINSON!

Posted on April 22, 2023April 22, 2023 by Mike

On the list of things that will kill ya, turns out AR15s aren’t all that high up.

ABC News Accidently Admits AR-15s Aren’t as Dangerous as the Dems Pretend They Are
In their latest hit piece on Long Island’s GOP Rep. George Santos, ABC News let a little fact slip about the AR-15.

Santos co-sponsored a bill to name the AR-15 the “national gun of the United States.” ABC News stroked an article about voters protesters showing up at Santos’s office to protest the bill.

The ABC article states, “Research shows an AR-15-style rifle has been used to kill at least 226 people in mass shootings since 2012.”

If my calculator is accurate, that’s roughly 22.6 people per year, or 1.8 people per month, who have been killed by AR-15s in mass shootings.

Perspective
Let’s take a look at ways in which more Americans die every year than by AR-15s used in mass shootings:

Twenty-eight people are killed every year by lightning.

Roughly 2,167 Americans die annually from constipation.

On average, 951 people are killed by their lawnmowers while another 4,193 are killed by farm tractors and other agricultural equipment.

Murderous toasters kill 45 people per year.

Eleven teenagers die every day while texting and driving.

An estimated 40 people die every year while skateboarding.

Roughly 10,206 are accidentally strangled to death while they sleep, and for those who survive the night, another 10,386 will die every year falling out of bed.

As per the FBI, rifles of every variation — including but not limited to the scary AR-15 — killed 215 Americans in 2019. But another 1,533 were killed by knives, and 651 people were beaten to death by hands, fists, feet, etc.

In 2015, 5,051 people choked to death while eating.

Americans average 62 deaths per year by bees, wasps, and hornets.

What Have We Learned?
We’ve learned that if you want to cut down on needless deaths, you’re better off handing out prune juice than trying to purloin AR-15s, as we Americans are roughly 10 times more likely to die as Elvis did — on the toilet — than by an AR-15 in a mass shooting. We’re 50 times more likely to be beaten to death. We’re roughly 1,000 times more likely to be killed — either by accidental strangulation or falling — from our beds than by an AR-15.

“As Elvis did.” Sigh. I tire of having to point it out again and again, but the truth is Elvis did NOT “die on the toilet.” That story was manufactured by Vernon for a press conference in the immediate wake of The King’s demise. Being an old-school sort of backcountry coot, Papa Vern considered it much more of an embarrassment and a disgrace that his son might have died from lethal-level amounts of at least five different drugs coursing through his system than of a heart attack induced by straining unproductively on the crapper, and assumed most ordinary folks would feel the same way as he did about it.

As recounted in the second volume of Peter Guralnick’s masterful Elvis bio, Careless Love, the master bathroom at Graceland, see, had a separate-but-attached ante-room with a comfy sofa and a LaZBoy recliner therein. And that’s where Elvis was actually found crumpled dead on the floor, fully clothed in his silken jammies, with a magazine in hand. Elvis had for years been known to sit in the master-bath lounge area reading at any hour of the day or night, just relaxing, so it’s no big surprise that it might be where he expired.

Vernon’s grim fairy tale, intended to preserve some shred of dignity for his son after his death, actually had quite the opposite effect, having lingered on to haunt E’s memory as a topic of disdain and mockery ever since. Funny how our attitudes and assumptions have so radically shifted since Vernon Presley’s day, innit? Would that hoplophobic shitlibs’ knee-jerk loathing for the venerable AR15 might someday undergo a similar shift, I’m thinkin’.

OH NOOOOES!

Posted on April 19, 2023April 19, 2023 by Mike

Looking for something else to worry about? Look no further, then.

Oh Dear, There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Ocean
That can’t be good.

I’d think not, no. Perfect hed/sub-hed combo though, I gotta admit. The bullet-point summary of the article’s main analytical thrust oughta suffice to keep you awake nights, or at least motivate you to click on through and read the whole thing.

The floor of the ocean off the coast of the Pacific Northwest has sprung a leak.

The spring, known as Pythia’s Oasis, is likely venting water from beneath local tectonic plates through a fault called the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

This liquid is likely acting as a lubricant between the two plates colliding at the fault, and losing too much of it could increase the likelihood of a damaging earthquake.

“Damaging earthquake,” you say? And just how damaging might we be talking about here?

“The megathrust fault zone is like an air hockey table,” Solomon said in a news release. “If the fluid pressure is high, it’s like the air is turned on, meaning there’s less friction and the two plates can slip. If the fluid pressure is lower, the two plates will lock – that’s when stress can build up.”

And therein lies the issue. If stress starts to build up, it eventually has to go somewhere. When the stress is too much and the system has to jerk into a new position, the jerk triggers an earthquake. Most likely, a big one. Scientists believe a release of stress in the Cascadia Subduction Zone could trigger a magnitude-9 earthquake that would affect many of those living in the Northwestern U.S.

Magnitude-9? Oof. Well, hey, at least it’s the Pacific Northwest, anyway, meaning Portland and Seattle. So if it rids us of those two pestilential liberal shitholes, it might turn out to be worth it at that; I’m perfectly willing to lose them, plus a whole slew of others like ’em, for the advancement of The Greater Good. T’is an ill wind indeed that blows NO man any good, right?

Update! Via VP Stephen.

Portland’s first Shake Shack hasn’t even opened yet, and it’s already been smashed up
Crime is so rampant in the city that on Monday REI announced it was closing its only Portland location after almost two decades in the Rose City.

What is to be Portland’s first Shake Shack was hit by vandals before it even opened.

According to KGW8, someone broke a window in the brand-new restaurant but did not appear to get inside.

Yup, looking more and more as if a thorough, vigorous shaking might be just the thing for these vicious lackwits.

Get me rewrite!

Posted on April 19, 2023April 19, 2023 by Mike

A hilarious story of cultural re-appropriation.

Egyptians complain over Netflix depiction of Cleopatra as black

A Netflix docudrama series that depicts Queen Cleopatra VII as a black African has sparked controversy in Egypt.

A lawyer has filed a complaint that accuses African Queens: Queen Cleopatra of violating media laws and aiming to “erase the Egyptian identity”.

A top archaeologist insisted Cleopatra was “light-skinned, not black”.

But the producer said “her heritage is highly debated” and the actress playing her told critics: “If you don’t like the casting, don’t watch the show.”

Adele James made the comment in a Twitter post featuring screengrabs of abusive comments that included racist slurs.

Cleopatra was born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 69 BC and became the last queen of a Greek-speaking dynasty founded by Alexander the Great’s Macedonian general Ptolemy.

She succeeded her father Ptolemy XII in 51 BC and ruled until her death in 30 BC. Afterwards, Egypt fell under Roman domination.

Macedonians being, y’know, Greeks, and Greeks being, y’know, decidedly not black. But hey, nig-nogs gotta nig-nog, amIright?

Jada Pinkett Smith, the American actress who was executive producer and narrator, was meanwhile quoted as saying: “We don’t often get to see or hear stories about black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them!”

Fuckin’ Jada Pinkett Smith. Groan. I mighta known. Poor old Will badly needs to get that saucy ho’ of his under some kind of control; she’s causing chaos and doing damage everywhere she goes.

But when the trailer was released last week many Egyptians condemned the depiction of Cleopatra.

Zahi Hawass, a prominent Egyptologist and former antiquities minister, told the al-Masry al-Youm newspaper: “This is completely fake. Cleopatra was Greek, meaning that she was light-skinned, not black.”

Mr Hawass said the only rulers of Egypt known to have been black were the Kushite kings of the 25th Dynasty (747-656 BC).

“Netflix is trying to provoke confusion by spreading false and deceptive facts that the origin of the Egyptian civilisation is black,” he added and called on Egyptians to take a stand against the streaming giant.

Okay, turnabout being fair play, then, I very much look forward to another upcoming release.

Ace says fans are calling it “the role Ryan Gosling was BORN to play,” and not even knowing who the hell Ryan Gosling might be, I surely can’t dispute that. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the same about whoever that melanin-challenged chick is that’s playing Moo’ch’elle in the trailer, also.

As for Will Smith, I’ll never forgive the punk-ass bitch for ruining Wild Wild West forever by hijacking Robert Conrad’s classic Jim West character, no good reason for the usurpation ever offered. I lovedlovedLOVED that show as a kid, and never missed a rerun for years afterward as an, um, alleged “adult.” So as far as I’m concerned, he and Pinkett Smith purely deserve each other, and may they have joy of their choice.

Update! Unrelated, yes, but it all put me in mind of another fine old Robert Conrad vehicle: namely, the mighty F4U Corsair.

Heh. What a great show that was. If Jada Pinkett Smith, or anybody else for that matter, ever decides to redo Pappy Boyington as a Nee-grow PoC (actually, COL Boyington was part Sioux Injun, but still), I’ma have a real problem with it.

April 19th

Posted on April 19, 2023April 19, 2023 by Mike

A big, big day, historically speaking, for all sorts of reasons.

The 24 hour period that begins with sunrise on April 19 is a very busy day in history.

1775—American Revolutionary War: The war begins at the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

1782—The Netherlands becomes the first nation to officially recognize the United States as being an independent nation

1861—First Union soldier of the Civil War is killed by rioters in Baltimore while quelling pro-secession riot

1865—Abraham Lincoln’s Funeral is held

1943—World War II: In Poland, German troops enter the Warsaw ghetto to round up the remaining Jews, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

1989—A gun turret of the USS Iowa explodes. I was nearby on another ship. Had friends on the crew. The Navy tried to make one of the dead sailors into a patsy.

1993—The Government kills 76 people in Waco, TX in revenge for the killing of 4 ATF agents. The original raid was due to the failure to pay taxes on rifles.

1995—Murrah Building is bombed by Tim McVeigh in revenge for the Waco killings.

Coincidence? I think n…uhh, well, actually, it’s hard to know quite WHAT to think about this. Believe it or not—and it’s equally hard to—there’s even more yet.

Headless body in topless bar

Posted on April 17, 2023April 18, 2023 by Mike

The backstory of “the most anatomically evocative headline in the history of American journalism.“

This month marks the 40th anniversary of a watershed moment in journalism: the publication of the “Headless Body in Topless Bar” headline on the front page of the New York Post.

Headlines sell newspapers — at least, they sell the print newspapers offered via those relics known as newsstands. In 1983, almost all of the 965,000 daily newspapers that rolled out of the Post’s building in Lower Manhattan were sold on newsstands.

No one on the Post’s news desk debated the news value of the story: A Brooklyn man named Charles Dingle shot Queens bar owner Herbert Cummings to death and held patrons hostage. When Dingle learned that one was a mortician, he ordered her to behead the victim. Dingle, a box containing the head next to him, was arrested in an unlicensed cab in Manhattan. (Dingle died in prison in 2012, according to New York state records.)

The New York Times also covered the story, stuffing it on Page 2 of the Metropolitan section under the headline, “Owner of a Bar Shot to Death; Suspect Is Held.”

There would have been no Post headline without the gory story. Reporter Jim Norman wrote in a 2012 recollection that the police teletype in the newsroom had two items — one about the discovery in Manhattan of a cardboard box containing a head and the other about the discovery in a Queens bar of a mutilated torso. Norman said he helped to connect the dots as the “headless body” angle riveted the newsroom.

The headline went viral, by 20th-century standards. (then-NYPost managing editor Vincent) Musetto was on David Letterman’s show. It also was the title of a black comedy in the mid-1990s.

In this digital age, when search engine optimization rewards literal headlines and punishes wordplay, “Headless Body in Topless Bar” could perform well online. Was it too over the top? When veteran editor Steve Dunleavy heard criticism at the time, he supposedly replied, “What should we have said? Decapitated cerebellum in tavern of ill repute?”

Musetto always said his favorite headline was “Granny Executed in Her Pink Pajamas” over the 1984 story about the execution of Margie Velma Barfield, who killed her husband in North Carolina. (Musetto seemed to get all the good stories. My own favorite from my year at the Post was “Art thieves take the Monet and run.”)

Heh. Good stuff, that is, from a lost era before the qualities of wry, frisky humor; convention-straining wordplay; hard-boiled iconoclasm; and an above-all-else dedication to Getting The Story encoded in the DNA of crusty, old-school reporters with the de rigeur pint of whiskey tucked away in the bottom desk drawer had all been exorcised in favor of today’s fear-mongering; obeisance to Big Government and the urgenturgentURGENT!!! blandishments of “experts”; and lickspittle fealty to the PC/Woke/Hard Left agenda entire—a noxious hell-brew that poisoned bona-fide American journalism as it had previously been known fatally, and for all time.

Back in the 90s when I was living in NYC, the Post was the only daily I cared much about purchasing and perusing. NY Newsday plainly and simply sucked, on those occasions when it wasn’t infuriating; then again, it was an offshoot of Long Island-centric Newsday, and what sophisticated, urbane Manhattanite such as moi cared a whit about what those yokels might get themselves up to way out there in the boonies, anyway?

The WSJ was meh, boring, and still is. The Old Grey Whore (a/k/a the NYT) had nearly completed her long, slow slide into total hyperpartisan irrelevance and rank dishonesty; the NY Daily News was middle-of-the-road bland, making it a small cut above the rest of the shitlib propaganda broadsheets.

Later, 2002 would see a short-lived stab at reviving the old NY Sun, but despite the sly, self-deprecating insider-witticism of being printed on piss-yellow paper early on (because yellow journalism, get it?), the Sun failed to distinguish itself otherwise and thus quickly died the death, at least in its print version. Maybe it was good, who knows; although I was still spending a lot of my time in NYC, I still can’t remember ever even reading the thing, honestly.

As for the rest of NYC’s then-crowded field of news outlets: weekly radical-Left alternarag The Village Voice…well, most of the people I hung out with bought it exclusively for the voluminous rock-show and apartment-for-rent listings; amusing if frequently scandalous, even pornographic, personal ads; and maybe Nat Hentoff, among the small handful of my punk-rocker pals who cared about topical affairs.

When it came along, Russ Smith’s NY Press felt like a welcome breath of fresh air to NYC’s minuscule minority of RightWingNaziDeathBeasts like me, but it was short on the aforementioned Voice features New Yorkers had come to rely on. Even though I bought a copy every week the minute it appeared at the bodega down the street and read it cover to cover, I never for a minute thought it could ever amount to serious, credible competition for the Voice. And that’s pretty much how it went, eventually.

Maybe the best thing about this noteworthy anniversary of an unforgettable tabloid headline is that The Power hasn’t gotten around to outlawing any remembrance or remark upon such lighthearted, entertaining mass-media insouciance yet. You can bet they’re probably working on it, though.

Harbingers of doom

Posted on April 16, 2023 by Mike

That would be shitlibs, whose endless, depthless misery is just begging to be shared with the entire world.

From the ‘Everything Enjoyable Is Bad for You’ Files: New Car Smell Gives You Cancer
The famed fictional advertising wizard Don Draper said it in Mad Men: “You know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car.” But that TV series was a long time ago and the time it depicts even farther from ours. Now we live in a sadder, more fragile age, in which even the smallest pleasures are to be denied us. The new car smell is no longer the smell of happiness; it is the stench of cancer, decay, and death. Welcome, Don Draper, to the enlightened twenty-first century.

The UK’s Daily Mail reported Friday that a new study has made a grim discovery: “The much-loved smell of a new car is caused by cancer-causing chemicals.” Well, of course! What pleasure, large or small, hasn’t been touched by the Left’s obsession with doom? Take weather reports. On warm, sunny days even just a few years ago, TV weather maps were green and pleasant, studded with images of smiling suns and blooming flowers. Now, for exactly the same temperatures, they are full of oranges and reds and images of extreme heat, working hard to sell climate change hysteria.

Major sports have not only been thoroughly politicized, but they have also become the vehicles for the same buzz-killing hysteria. Were you excited about the beginning of a new baseball season? Not so fast: AccuWeather wanted you to know that “MLB season is here: Experts warn lightning is a danger at games.” Now, maybe it really was true that “upwards of 90% of the lightning that happens in the United States, specifically the lower 48, occurs during baseball season,” but life is fraught with risks. Do the guardians of acceptable opinion want us to live in fear, cowering in terror at the prospect of a sunny day and forgoing a happy outing to a baseball game for fear of being struck by lightning? Why, yes. Yes, they do.

In line with the overall atmosphere of fear and gloom, the Daily Mail explains that “a cocktail of leather and plastics creates a gasoline-like odor which becomes more intense in the heat — due to an increase in energy available to odor-causing molecules.” And so if you’re enjoying your brand new car, pull over, stop, and get out of the vehicle. Quickly: “Sitting for just 30 minutes every day in a car exposes you to dangerous levels of carcinogens formaldehyde and acetaldehyde. These chemicals are linked to myeloid leukemia and rare cancers such as in the nose.” And so one day soon, when you step into your new electric car, you may find that the fabled new car smell has been relegated to the odiferous dustbin of history.

OH NOOOES WE’RE ALL GONNA DIIIIEEE!!!, they all ree-ree-reeeed. Which, to me, amounts to the best imaginable argument that, instead of wallowing in pointless agony along with the killjoys of the Gehenna-obsessed Left, we should all strive to wring every last ounce of enjoyment and happiness out of every single day that we possibly can.

And yet the weak, weepy Sad Sacks wonder why any intelligent person would reject the idea of living like they do. As if their neverending search for new sources of anguish, new and ever-more-fearful threats to life and limb, acts as some kind of lure and/or enticement to join them in their misery. As if the sound of kvelling, kvetching, and complaining rings at all appealing in our ears.

Sorry, idiots, not even slightly tempted over here. Life’s tough enough as it is, without your pathetic ilk going well out of your way to make it worse.

DeSantis’ popularity cratering among FLA Repugnicunts

Posted on April 16, 2023April 16, 2023 by Mike

Says “several”anonymous GOPe legislators, one anonymous lobbyist, and…a FLA Senate D卐M☭CRAT.

Florida Republican Lawmakers ‘Frustrated’ With DeSantis
Everything in the 2023 legislative session is going as Gov. Ron DeSantis has planned, as the Republican-led legislature is solely pushing through the Governor’s agenda prior to his announcement that he will run for President in 2024.

As we stated before, this is DeSantis’s world and lobbyists, lawmakers, media reporters, and state employees are just living in it.

But just as supporters of Gov.DeSantis’s soon-to-be-announced presidential campaign

Which, despite having been touted as “soon-to-be-announced” for many months now, still hasn’t been, I can’t help but notice.

continue to promote his accomplishments of the past four years, more and more DeSantis-friendly supporters, who have to work with the Florida Legislature, and lawmakers themselves, are starting to expose what could be a chink in the Governor’s armor—his alleged lack of loyalty and selfish legislative agenda.

According to several Republican lawmakers, DeSantis’s push to get his entire agenda passed through the legislature has left the caucus “exhausted” and “frustrated,” echoing the growing sentiment of lobbyists that DeSantis’s specific agenda has allegedly left many issues on the table, not to be heard because they did not conform with his overall agenda.

How unfair, having to buckle down and, y’know, do your fucking jobs. That sound you may be hearing is me playing “Hearts and Flowers” on the world’s tiniest violin, to express my sympathy for your suffering such an awful injustice under this thuggish DeSantis despot.

All of the Republican lawmakers spoke to The Floridian on the basis of anonymity for fear of retribution by the Governor and/or his executive office, but State Senator Jason Pizzo (D!!!) gave a very candid take on the growing concerns within Republican circles.

“It’s all about DeSantis. This place is run by his iron fist,” said Lobbyist X. ” And Didn’t we just elect him to govern for four more years?”

A very “colorful” Pizzo then pivoted his frustration for DeSantis to the state budget, where he claims he “successfully sued DeSantis on the budget, saying that the DeSantis Administration in the “midnight hour” created new policy on immigration.

“Where the f-ck are they? But where are they? You couldn’t find 49 people somewhere in Florida. And while yours and my property insurance is f0-cking exploding, we have $12 million to go blow for private jets,” questioned Pizzo. We don’t fly military vets in private jets from the state of Florida coming back from deployment, but it continues.”

Pizzo is referring to the $12 million dollars allocated in the Florida budget to transport illegal immigrants, and the aforementioned 49 illegals who were flown from the Texas border to Martha’s Vineyard. When he filed the complaint, which was dismissed on technicalities, Florida had already spent $1.56 million on the flights.

Cry me a river, little open-borders D卐M☭CRAT bitch. Then go take yourself a flying fuck at a plate glass window, you and all the rest of your fellow whining, over-entitled ProPol remoras. Shipping a planeload of border-jumping wetbacks to the very heart of Rich Shitlib Playground so as to acquaint the snobbish robber-barons who disport themselves thereabouts with the harsh realities of the policies they so stridently pimp was a genius move, the very epitome of poetic justice.

Admittedly, Ron DeSantis may yet turn out to not be the All-That-And-A-Hot-Fudge-Sundae his more rabid supporters purport him to be; we’re a long way from any final verdict being reached on that one. But crying in your craft beer about his upsetting of the Uniparty applecart to pursue his own agenda probably isn’t a very effective means of rallying Real Americans to your cause, I’m thinking. The people of Florida recently re-elected him—overwhelmingly—to do exactly that, after all.

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