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Memezapoppin’!

Posted on July 30, 2025 by Mike

Welcome to this week’s installment of our Wednesday meme feature, folks. Links to the “found via” sources will be attached to the specific MiQ’s (Memes in Question) whenever I can remember them, which likely won’t be very often. Only the first two memes will appear above the fold to save on bandwidth usage, since I assume not everybody who shows up at this here websty will want to see all of them. This intro will appear at the top of each week’s Memezapoppin’! post. Enjoy, funny-pitcher lovers.

Continue reading “Memezapoppin’!“ →

The Daily Donnybrook, and other fine things

Posted on July 29, 2025August 11, 2025 by Mike

Welcome to Ye Aulde Colde Furye Blogge’s shiny new open-comments thread, where y’all can have at it as you wish, on any topic you like. New posts will appear below this one. There will be blood…

Mike @Substack

New Eyrie posts go up every Monday and Friday, although the time of day may (and most likely will) vary. Mike’s latest Eyrie offering is available for perusal here: “Theodicy.” Links to archived Golden Oldies are findable down at the bottom of each post.

Please do consider subscribing to The Eyrie, gang; it’s free, unless you’re feeling big-hearted enough to pony up for a paid sub. Either way, paying customer or freeloading looky-loo, an Eyrie subscription is a bargain at any price, a move you’ll won’t ever regret making.

All subscribers receive email notification whenever each new post goes live, although CF management promises not to blow up your inbox with a bunch of junk mail. Latest Eyrie offering is getatable (yes, that’s really a word—trust me!) for one and all to read and enjoy totally free of charge, regardless of subscriber status. However, a paid sub is required to unlock commenting privileges—an almighty incentive to kick loose and chip in if ever there was one. Thanks, everybody!

FINALLY!

Posted on July 29, 2025July 29, 2025 by Mike

Mmmkay, as of right now, I believe…I think…I hopehopehopeHOPE that I have the Greatest Hits section unfucked—insofar as it’s ever gonna be, at any rate. Also, y’all might have noticed a new NavBar link to the right, yclept Miscellany. As that page’s intro blurb says, I intend it to be “A page for links to the things that need to be here, but just don’t seem to fit anywhere else.” Only two items therein at the moment, but I’ll find more stuff to populate it as time moves ever on.

Update! One thing you’ll see regarding the brand spanking new, bestest EVAR GH section is that all the old “Wayback Machine” links have been replaced with new Pages hosted rat-cheer at CF. Probably won’t make a huge difference to anybody but me, but still.

Big old can o’ worms

Posted on July 28, 2025July 28, 2025 by Mike

That’s what I opened for myself when I set out to add my “Digression” piece to the Greatest Hits page, as mentioned here. Turns out, the GH page was thoroughly and completely hosed, God only knows how or why, up to and including about half of the articles linked therein, which now no longer exist at all. Infuriatingly, the missing essays include one of my own personal favorites, “Frodo On Trial,” which was the first post of mine ever to be linked at NRO’s The Corner blog way back when.

Yep, “Frodo…” was a good ‘un alright, but along with several others, it appears to be gone for good; if there’s any kind of backup around out there, I sure haven’t been able to find it. Only thing I know to do at this point is to just delete all the GH pages I currently have, including the “Greatest Hits” parent page, create new ones, and just basically start setting up the whole “Greatest Hits” section again from scratch.

In fact, I spent the whole weekend doing exactly that, and am not done yet, although the end is in sight as of right this minute. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t; if the whole damned site goes off the rails at some point over the next day or two, well, you’ll know why.

Update! HAAAA!! Found the “Frodo On Trial” piece. It was hiding under a different title, namely “ICC and the Dark Lord.” THAT’s certainly a load off my mind! Now, back to work…

A thoughtful, heartfelt, tasteful, thoroughly moving tribute, near-perfectly put together by an unexpected source

Posted on July 26, 2025 by Mike

Vince McMahon, we hardly knew ye. Congrats, salutations, and humblest thanks for this beautiful commemoration, to everyone involved with its creation.

Triple H, WWE deliver emotional Hulk Hogan tribute at SmackDown
Hulk Hogan’s tribute to open WWE SmackDown on Friday night was nothing short of a tear-jerker.

The event in Cleveland was opened with loud applause and the crowd chanting “Hogan” in unison to honor the late wrestler who died at 71 years old on Thursday.

Fellow wrestler Triple H led the tribute for Hogan.

And with that, let’s go to the vid.

Tonight, WWE remembers the legendary Hulk Hogan with a 10-bell salute. pic.twitter.com/66vGLZv7bH

— WWE (@WWE)

July 26, 2025

Dammit, I don’t know who the blue blazes that guy might be that’s standing front and center and delivering the speech, but I know for sure and certain he can’t possibly be HHH. Man, no friggin’ way. Whoever that imposter really is, he’s much, MUCH too old to actually be the HHH I remember.

Best. Spam. EVAR!

Posted on July 25, 2025 by Mike

Of the thousands, perhaps even millions, of CF-related spam emails I’ve received, snarled at, and summarily deleted over lo, these many years, this one has to be my personal favorite. C&P’d in its entirety:

FROM: HR & Admin – Coldfury <james@prestouniversal.com>
TO: E-mail (CF)
SUBJECT: Coldfury Employees Performance Appraisals – June’25

Dear Gentlemen,

Please find below the link to the current month’s employee performance appraisals for June 2025.

https://staff.coldfury.com/inter-records/report-2025/

Note: All names highlighted in red indicate employees who are due for termination.

Your prompt attention to this matter is highly appreciated.

Best regards,

HR Manager
Human Resource Department
hr.director@coldfury.com | Headquarter

Wow, turns out I have not only an HR department but also an HQ, even an unspecified number of “employees” who can actually be “terminated” at the discretion of my (nonexistent) HR Manager, whose actual name I can’t seem to recall right now for some reason. Better still, my phantasmagorical “HR Manager” refers to me as a “Gentlemen” in interoffice correspondence. Who knew?

No, of course I didn’t click on the link to view the “employee performance appraisals” report, but I confess I’m mighty tempted to, if only to giggle like a delighted little girl at the no doubt voluminous “names highlighted in red.” That’s bound to be as epic a tale as has ever been told throughout the annals of creative writing. Lord knows I’ve taken a few stabs at composing fiction, only to find that, although I know I’m not completely bereft of writing talent, I don’t have it in me to create good fiction; somehow, I just can’t make it work.

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Asses in seats, gals

Posted on July 25, 2025July 25, 2025 by Mike

The worst thing that could possibly happen to these WNBA broads would be to pay them what they’re actually worth.

Minnesota Lynx All-Stars reflect on wearing ‘Pay us what you owe us’ shirts
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) – The WNBA had its All-Star Game over the weekend in Indianapolis, and players sent a message to the league before a basket was ever scored.

During pregame warm-ups, players, including Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier, wore “Pay us what you owe us” shirts. Last week, more than 40 players met with league officials as the WNBA negotiates a new collective bargaining agreement. Talks have not gone well as an October deadline looms.

Collier accepted the MVP award for the game, with “Pay them!” chants coming from the crowd as WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert handed her the trophy. Collier talked about it after the game. Collier signed a three-year contract with the Lynx back in 2022. She’s making about $214,000 this season, the final year of her current deal.

Not too shabby a salary just to run like a gimp, jump like an overweight elephant seal, dribble like a retard, and shoot like a grrrrl, before an audience so scant any normal schmendrick could tally up the house using their fingers and toes. And that’s on a GOOD night, mind. My personal favorite bit from the article is this sub-hed:

Why you should care

“Why. I. Should…” Say WHAT again, now? See, that is really just…uhhh, errr, mmph. Mmmmph. *snort, snorfle, gack, giggle* BWAAAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

I’d like to interject a Zen kind of question at this point, if I may:

If there’s nobody watching ‘em play, either in the stands or on the TeeWee, do they keep score? SHOULD they be? If you answered yes to the last question, please give at least three (3) good reasons why you think so.

The gals of the WNBA seem totally unaware of a simple, basic rule governing pro sports, entertainment media, and the arts in toto, namely: If you aren’t putting asses in the seats, it’s not only you as an individual athlete that is doomed to fail; it’s also your team, and eventually, the entire league itself. Doesn’t matter one whit how talented, how charming, how good-looking, how smart, how financially responsible you might (or might NOT) be your own self—try as they might to ignore this fundamental truth, nobody but nobody gets to do so for very long.

Serendipitous spinoff update! Late last night, I ginned up a barely-related addendum to the above post, positing a tenuous connection betwixt suicide and Phillip Sudo’s incredibly awesome Zen Guitar. Really, it amounted to yet another of those annoying, interminable 50-kajillion-word digressions I’ve become so renowned for (rightly so, I must admit). As such, I snipped the OT jabberwock from the above post, plopped it whole, raw, and unexpurgated into a brand new ME draft, and saved the resultant pile to MarsEdit’s handy-dandy “Local drafts” folder, after which I happily yielded the CF podium and went to bed in hopes of getting perhaps an hour or two’s uninterrupted slumber.

I just now remembered the aforementioned digression (mostly over-garrulous logorrhea; entirely too personal to be of much interest to anyone who ain’t me; just meandering with no particular plan or destination in mind, a regrettable tendency I’m increasingly subject to in my dotage) and felt it was really just too damned bad the directionless mess would be an in no wise perfect fit as a CF index-page item.

BUT….

What I can do, probably should do—rather than just wastefully toss some perfectly valid albeit stupefyingly dull ruminations on both these subjects altogether—is dump the whole steaming pile into a fresh new WP Page of its very own, maybe under the “Greatest Hits” header purely as a Navbar space-saving measure.

Yep, I believe I’m gonna get cracking on this minor project straightaway. Notification, as ever, to appear in a later update here once I’ve gotten this rhetorical jalopy cranked up and running smooth as the proverbial baby’s butt—keep watching this space so’s you won’t miss nuttin’. Who knows, it’s barely possible that, contra my earlier discouraging words, you might even find you enjoy reading the dadblame thing.

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“Hulkamania is DEAD!!!”

Posted on July 24, 2025July 24, 2025 by Mike

Took a while, but Randy “Macho Man” Savage was proved right in the end.

I saw this pre-match rant back when it first ran in the run-up to Wrestlemania V, and always felt the spittle flooding down his chin was truly an Oscar-worthy touch. Macho Man, of course, departed this vale of tears long ago. Now, the Hulkster has joined Savage in the Choir Invisible. God bless ‘em both. More on Hulk Hogan’s passing.

Before Hogan came on the scene, professional wrestling was a niche form of entertainment. Often low-budget and rough around the edges, the pro wrestling of ages past wasn’t the slick product that it is today. Hogan (born Terry Gene Bollea in Augusta, Ga.) helped usher in the modern era of pro wrestling.

I like the way TMZ explains Hogan’s appeal: “Hulk transformed professional wrestling into a family entertainment sport. Before Hulk, wrestling catered to a fairly narrow audience. Hulk’s theatrics in the ring was [sic] magnetic for children and their parents, and it supercharged the sport.”

Hogan’s candy-colored wardrobe, boundless enthusiasm, and “real American” persona appealed to kids and adults, and he was an easy hero to follow and emulate. My brother had a foot-tall Hulk Hogan action figure that’s at my house today for some reason. He said he would pick it up on his way home from work for his shrine.

Hogan’s villainous turn in 1996 broke plenty of hearts, but it added to the Hogan legend. World Wrestling Entertainment inducted him into its hall of fame in 2005, but after the cretinous gossip site Gawker leaked allegedly racist comments he made, WWE rescinded his induction in 2015. Hogan successfully sued Gawker, and WWE re-inducted him in 2020 as part of NWO, the collection of wrestlers he hung with under his villain persona.

The Hulkster had a successful career in movies and television as well, but his appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention may have been one of his most memorable moments of his later years. He exulted Donald Trump both in character as Hulk Hogan and out of character as Terry Bollea.

Speaking of, no way am I gonna let the Hulkster’s powerhouse RNC star turn go unmentioned here. Not on this day, of all days.

Fucking beautiful, and dead on the money, every word of it. Fare thee well, Hulkster, and well done.

Memezapoppin’!

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Mike

Welcome to this week’s installment of our Wednesday meme feature, folks. Links to the “found via” sources will be attached to the specific MiQ’s (Memes in Question) whenever I can remember them, which likely won’t be very often. Only the first two memes will appear above the fold to save on bandwidth usage, since I assume not everybody who shows up at this here websty will want to see all of them. This intro will appear at the top of each week’s Memezapoppin’! post. Enjoy, funny-pitcher lovers.

Continue reading “Memezapoppin’!“ →

Ozzie RIP redux

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Mike

In noting Ozzie Osbourne’s demise, Midwest Chick ran a meme that was so touching, so apt, so sweet in its own special way, that I just couldn’t help but swipe it for usage here also.

Amen to that, Mr Reaper, sir.

Fare thee well

Posted on July 22, 2025July 23, 2025 by Mike

RIP to the incomparable Ozzy Osbiourne.

Black Sabbath legend Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness, dead at 76
Ozzy Osbourne, the legendary Prince of Darkness and one of heavy metal’s most iconic stars, has died. He was 76.

He died “surrounded by love,” his family said in a statement to The Post Tuesday. “It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning. He was with his family and surrounded by love. We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time. Sharon, Jack, Kelly, Aimee and Louis.”

News of Osbourne’s death comes more than five years after he announced his Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in January 2020.

Born John Michael Osbourne in Birmingham, England, on Dec. 3, 1948, he was nicknamed “Ozzy” in primary school.

He had a challenging childhood, but music provided him with an outlet.

Learning was difficult for him due to dyslexia, and the future Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee claimed to have been sexually abused by bullies when he was 11. He also recalled attempting suicide as a teen.

Osbourne credited The Beatles and their 1964 song “She Loves You” for inspiring him to pursue a music career.

Ozzy sold over 100 million albums as a solo artist and a member of Black Sabbath.

Here’s a 1970 vid in which Black Sabbath demonstrates what performers mean when they talk about leaving absolutely everything they have on the floor of the stage.

Rest easy, Ozzy. The world has never known another quite like you, and almost certainly never will again.

2

Pollyanna gets excited over nothing again

Posted on July 21, 2025July 22, 2025 by Mike

Ahh, if only.

Will John Brennan Finally Be Indicted?

Stupid question, easy answer: No. No he most certainlly will not. Not that there isn’t ample reason to, I mean. It’s just that Amerika v2.0 is not the knid of country where things that really ought to happen usually DO happen, see.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced this week that John Brennan is under investigation, and with good reason. Brennan is the most corrupt former CIA director ever. His transgressions against the U.S., coming to light more succinctly with each passing week, portray an individual who should have never been in government service, let alone CIA director. Now is the time to nail him.

Brennan lead the subterfuge against Donald Trump in his first campaign. He was aware that Trump had not collaborated with Russia before or after the 2016 election. In fact, he fully briefed Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden about Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee’s scheme to frame Donald Trump as a Russian operative who was colluding with Putin to steal the 2016 election.

He knew that the Steele Dossier was bogus and that it was illegally employed to obtain FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign and his staff.

Brennan falsely claimed that the Russians successfully hacked DNC computer servers. He made sure that lies about Russian intelligence and collusion with the Trump Administration made their way into the public arena via major newspapers, television, and the internet.

Russiagate was a complete fabricated lie and yet Brennan, still serving as Obama’s CIA director, put in place a surveillance system to monitor at least two dozen Trump campaign staffers and advisors. Brennan wiretapped and eavesdropped on the conversations of Donald Trump’s most prominent political supporters.

Much later, when investigator John Durham finally finished his investigation, Durham’s report highlighted that Brennan had informed Obama and Biden about the Clinton Campaign’s plot to portray Donald Trump as a puppet of the Russian government, under Vladimir Putin.

For all of President Trump’s first term, Brennan actively sought to inflict damage whenever and wherever he could.

In a better, more enlightened era, actively working to harass, undermine, and unseat a duly elected President by nefarious, illegal means was called by its proper name: treason.

Another of those devoutly-to-be-wished consummations that I really, really hope none of you good people are holding your breath waiting for:

DNI Gabbard: Obama Directed a ‘Treasonous Conspiracy’ Against Trump
On this week’s broadcast on FNC’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said former President Barack Obama directed a “treasonous conspiracy” against President Donald Trump during his first term.

Gabbard said, “The implications of this are, frankly, nothing short of historic. Over 100 documents that we released on Friday really detail and provide evidence of how this treasonous conspiracy was directed by President Obama if just weeks before he was due to leave office after President Trump had already gotten elected. This is not a Democrat or Republican issue — this is an issue that is so, so serious, it should concern every single American because it has to do with the integrity of our democratic republic.”

“Integrity,” she says. I think it’s just soooo cute how poor Ms Gabbard seems to actually expect anything to be done about Quarter-Black Jesus and what she aptly calls his “treasonous conspiracy.” Alas, Bathhouse Barry and his co-coup plotters are no more likely to be seen rockin’ orange for their heinous crimes against the (former) Republic than Brennan is—or Comey, or Strook-Stroke-Struck, or any of the Bribem crime family, or Fauci, or…

At the end of the day, cynics like Stacy McCain have the right of it.

Those of us who’ve been angry for years about the Steele Dossier, etc., now find ourselves in the shoes of the urban protest mobs demanding #Justice. We know damned well that Team Obama and Team Hillary engaged in wrongdoing, and that they deserve to be punished for it, but what are the chances that Pam Bondi could actually get a criminal conviction in a federal court? Not good — not good at all.

As egregious as the RussiaGate scandal is, the overwhelming likelihood is that nobody involved in this sordid mess will ever be charged with a crime, and that if somehow Bondi does find a way to get indictments against Brennan, Clapper, Comey, et al., the subsequent trial will end in a verdict of acquittal. “Guilty as hell, free as a bird,” to quote Weather Underground alumnus Bill Ayers. “America is a great country.”

‘Fraid not, Stace; America WAS a great country, once upon a time. Alas, the days of her greatness are far, far behind her now.

Have people had a bellyful of it yet?

Posted on July 17, 2025 by Mike

Looks like the Spaniards may have, some of them at any rate. Heartfelt kudos to those cake-eating civilians for at last r’aring up on their hind legs, angrily screaming “ENOUGH already!!” Next comes the traditional raising of the Middle Digit Of Hate© in the general direction of Established Officialdom at every level, closely followed by aggrieved Serf Class knaves taking matters into their own (unwashed) hands.

Hopefully, it’s not already way too late for the Spanish Peasant Uprising of 2025 to be of much help in the way of significant sociopolitical change, beyond affording the local yokels a fleeting sense of pride, bravery, and honor reclaimed—both personal and national varieties in one fell swoop, as they say.

Big Trouble in Torre Pacheco
For the last few days there has been widespread unrest in the region of Murcia in southeastern Spain. The trouble began last weekend in Torre Pacheco, when a 68-year-old was attacked and wounded by what he said were Moroccan culture-enrichers. Angry groups of native Spaniards then took to the streets looking for Moroccan culprits, and from there the unrest spread to other Murcian cities. There have been multiple reports on the ructions in recent news feeds (see, for example, The Daily Mail, GBNews, Blue News, Brussels Signal, and European Conservative).

The following article from the Spanish public broadcaster RTVE, also translated by Gary Fouse, describes recent events in Torre Pacheco:

6 arrests for attacks, damages, and altercations in the unrest in Torre Pacheco (Murcia)
Six persons have been arrested — five Spaniards and one Maghrebian — for assaults, damages, and altercations in a police operation deployed in Torre Pacheco, Murcia, as Mariola Guevara, the government delegate in the community, reported tonight.

Thus, during Sunday, the forces and agencies of state security have arrested another five persons, all of Spanish nationality, in addition to the Maghrebian arrested on Saturday.

Three of those were arrested were for attacking a Moroccan minor and for causing damage to a journalist’s sound equipment; two others were arrested as they were walking around in a group on a public street wearing bicycle helmets in a suspicious manner.

Hmph. SO, then, let’s recap:

Violent retribution against randomly selected Muzzrat immivaders
Trashing the (pricey) gear of purveyors of Europropaganda
Carrying out a surveillance and intel-gathering mission, as well as intimidating, confusing, and antagonizing the enemy via large groups dressing and conducting themselves “in a suspicious manner,” which sounds like all-purpose legal bafflegab whose meaning is adjustable according to the circumstances; the aspect which pisses off the Spanish Stasi most of all is how the RAYCISS!© thugs evinced not the least concern at the prospect of arrest, jail, fines, and presumably, execution by keelhauling

I dunno; sounds to me as if those Spanish ReichWingNaziDeathBeasts© have their heads screwed on straight—clearly, their hearts are in the right place, and they’ve got their priorities in order. Some regularly-scheduled range time—let’s say, a bare minimum of two (2) hours, thrice weekly—could well be indicated here, before Spanish Leftwits completely outlaw all such terrifying, deadly, and barbaric places and pursuits.

Linky-lurvs

Posted on July 16, 2025July 16, 2025 by Mike

Attentive CF Lifers may already have noticed our latest addition, findable at not-quite-bottom left in Ye Aulde CF Blogrolle section: Substack Scalawags, featuring whippersnappers who have cast aside the creaky, crotchety, arthritic old WP “weblog” gizmo for that newfangled Substack whatsit all the kids are talking about nowadays. Check it out, loads of excellent stuff in there.

Another good ‘un gone

Posted on July 16, 2025 by Mike

Kim DuToit memorializes the renowned Sloop New Dawn’s master, owner, and captain.

The Layabout Sailor
Longtime Readers may recall that a bunch of my friends and I used to get together once a year for the Feinstein-Daley Memorial Shoot at the east Texas ranch of Reader Airboss (sadly, since deceased). It was always a festive affair and featured the occasional gun.

It was at one such event where I met Doc Russia, at the time still a med student at UT-Houston, who had a blog entitled Bloodletting (which I miss dreadfully, even though I still see him regularly for shooting and dinners etc.). Another blogger also came along at that same meeting: Jim Siegler from Smoke On The Water (ie, blog, linked at Kim’s place—M), which featured guns, politics and details of his life on board his beloved yacht, the sloop New Dawn.

While Doc was an excellent shot, Jim was likewise; actually, Jim was easily the best all-round shooter — pistol, revolver, rifle and shotgun — I’ve ever met.

I need to make a comment at this point. Frequent Readers of this website may remember that I have always referred to Jim as “the Layabout Sailor”. That was a total lie, because Jim was one of the hardest-working men I’ve ever come across, and the ironic nickname was the complete antithesis of him. Having come from extreme poverty — his first job was washing dishes at a restaurant, at age eight — Jim worked his whole life at a number of jobs, sometimes two at a time: insurance adjuster, car salesman, bus driver, roofer, whatever paid the bills. He used to joke that his best-paying job was when he enlisted in the Air Force in his late teens, so you get the idea. College was never an option because there was little money and he refused to get into debt. But he was always well-groomed and impeccably dressed — and by the way, very intelligent, well-read and well-spoken, his soft Texas drawl a welcome sound always, along with his impish sense of humor. (His online signature: “Jim S.– Sloop New Dawn” became “Jim S. — Sunk New Dawn”, which masked his despair at the tragedy of its loss.)

Last November Jim wrote to me to tell me that he was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — Lou Gehrig’s Disease — and of course as we all know, ALS is incurable. His prognosis was grim — perhaps two years — but the cruelest part was that while ALS can affect both the brain and the muscular system, Jim’s brain was completely unaffected. So his body was starting to collapse, leaving his lively, intelligent brain intact. He became weak and his speech began to slur.

My friend Jim died two weeks ago, in late June 2025, after only nine months since his diagnosis. Rather than a slow decline, his condition simply went over a cliff, and he died of pulmonary failure, as his lungs — even with a respirator — ceased to function.

And the world became a little worse for his passing.

It did indeed. Most of you have probably run across Jim Seigel’s remarks in the comments section of one blog or another, maybe including this one; for a good long while there, he popped up at CF frequently. I was fortunate enough to enjoy an extended private email correspondence with Jim as well. Never did get to meet the man IRL, alas, nor to go shooting with him, which makes me just a wee mite envious of DuToit, damn him.

But as I slowly, torturously figured out after my late wife’s sudden, violent demise at an unfairly early age—as I have told friends who are fetched up in the deepest toils of mourning over the loss of a beloved spouse, child, parent, sibling, what have you—the only way to get through the agony of bereavement is to not be bitter over what you lost, but to be grateful for what you had. Yes, maintaining a positive outlook, keeping our attention tightly focused on gratitude rather than the easy, more natural slump into bitterness, darkness, and crushing despond can be tough sledding indeed. No matter how long one had with the Dearly Departed—years? Months? Weeks? Days? Hours?—it can never be long enough to satisfy those left behind.

Although Jim and I were on friendly terms, and I hugely enjoyed our email correspondence, we weren’t so close that I’d presume to offer counsel to his widow and other loved ones on how they might best cope with the unfillable hole in their hearts Jim’s absence is sure to leave. I hope and pray that Jim’s people are hanging in there as well as might be, and that when the immiserating flood-tide of grief has at last begun to subside the survivors can evade the dead-end swamps of bitterness, resentment, and leaden futility to walk the more comforting, luminous path of gratitude instead. Like I said, that really, truly is the only way. Same-same goes for our old buddy DuToit, a good and decent sort his own self. Kim, my prayers are with you and yours, my friend.

Regardless of whether you were familiar on any level with Jim of the Sunk New Dawn or not, do read all of DuToit’s heart-rending post. The death of such a singular, multifaceted, and noteworthy an individual as was Jim Siegel diminishes us all to some extent, whether we know it or not. As such, his passing should be marked, his numerous accomplishments remembered, his extraordinary life celebrated.

2

Mike @Substack

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