Latest Posts

Reminder

SHTF

Dan Bongino says that Americans should prepare for emergencies:

‘Have yourself an emergency radio, have yourself some batteries, get yourself some emergency food, get yourself a rain collection and water filtration, some filtration tablets,’ he said on Monday.  ‘Get your stuff today. Please. Do it for your family,’ Bongino added.

None of this should come as any surprise to Readers of this website — not only have I advocated for this many times in the past, I’m pretty sure that most of us have been doing this since at least Y2K (a.k.a. the scare that wasn’t).

Of course, this is just prudence and not panic;  the only people who will panic are those idiots who have made no precautionary preparations and will show up at the Super Dome clutching a Pepsi Big Gulp (#Katrina) as their sole sustenance.

Don’t believe for one moment that the Gummint is going to step up and look after you, because like all Gummint activity, such assistance will arrive late and be inadequate (if it arrives at all).

Here’s my brief 90-day checklist (add as necessary for your own situation):

  • water and filtration tools
  • food
  • guns (and ammo)
  • first-aid kit (including any prescription medications, plus vitamins and iodine tablets)
  • cash
  • sanitary supplies (soap, handwipes, disinfectant, toilet paper and paper towels etc.)
  • batteries / power inverter
  • portable generator*
  • flashlights (lots of)
  • survival tools (axe, saw, shovel and your toolbox)
  • cooking equipment (stoves, fire making, gas grills etc.)
  • large trash bags, duct tape and nitrile gloves
  • rain gear / cold weather gear, as appropriate
  • at least a half-tank of gasoline in all your cars;  3/4 or full is better.

Details on all the above can be found here and here (some repetition).

*I still don’t have one of these, and I should.  But the good ones (e.g. this model) are spendy, so I might have to raffle a gun or two to buy one.  Watch this space…

Almost Like Driving

Drive Time

Longtime Readers will know of my dislike of things that automate the way we operate machinery, whether semi-auto instead of bolt-action rifles, auto-wind over manually-wound watches, and automatic over stick shift gearboxes in cars.

Note that I’m not saying there’s much wrong with the above automated operations, but just stating a personal preference:  I like the feeling of working a rifle’s bolt action, winding a watch and driving a manual transmission.  I know that this preference puts me at odds with, well, most of the adult population of the world, but I’ve never cared much for other people’s preferences anyway.  And yes, I prefer the female body shape of Kelly Brook over that of (say) any slender supermodel, and I’m in the distinct minority there, too.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the manual operation thing.

One of the trends in car buying these days seems to be a growing preference among collectors for cars that are… less complicated than the typical offering offered by manufacturers like Ferrari.  It seems that there’s a trend towards buying older, second-hand models that are less complicated simply because the newest models don’t offer a simpler option.  (To give just one such example:  as little as a couple of years ago, you were able to buy a low-mileage 1997 Porsche 911/993 Carrera with a stick shift for less than $100,000.  Today?  $160,000.  And this is also true of models like the Ferrari 550 Maranello manual, preferred according its pricing over the F1-transmissioned variant of the same model.)

So now you have an automatic transmission, for example, as the sole option for driving a new car, and hybrid engines (gasoline-driven engines plus battery-powered motors) are the sole propulsion choice.

I know, I know:  modern automatic transmissions change gears far more quickly than anyone could do with a stick shift, so they’re more efficient.  This assumes, of course, that efficient gear changing is the sine qua non of pleasurable driving, and that the loss of control thereby is of no consequence.  Well, quick gear changes are great if you’re racing on a track, and automatic transmissions are preferable to stick shifts if you’re driving in heavy, stop-start traffic during the morning commute.  I’m not going to argue that point, because the truth is self-evident.

Anyway, Porsche once decreed (with typical Teutonic arrogance) that they would do away with manual transmissions altogether for their new 911 models — if you wanted to drive a stick shift, they sniffed, you could drive the much-inferior 718 (Boxster and Cayenne) instead.  And then they were astonished when sales of the 718 outstripped the 911, despite the cheaper 718’s inferior engines and inefficient manual shift operation.

Speaking of arrogance:  Ferrari noted the above trend, so they decided to offer a manual transmission in their latest model, the 12Cilindri (Twelve Cylinders*), as the “Manuale”.  In typical Ferrari fashion, they’re only going to make a few (1,499) of this model, to drive up the price and desirability thereof among Ferrari groupies and the Stupid Rich [considerable overlap].

But did anyone think that they’d put an actual manual gearbox into the 12?  Silly rabbits:  they’ve overlaid a “drive by wire” operation onto their standard automatic transmission — in other words, making it a transparent SIM gearbox that feels like you’re rowing through the gears, but aren’t, really.  And only for the first six gears, withal.  After that, the auto gearbox takes over (at more than 196 mph).  (196 mph?  WTF?)

And needless to say, the fake manual gearbox isn’t cheap:  the Manuale costs over $200,000 more than the regular 12Cilindri’s $600,000+.

So how does the Manuale drive?  Let’s have Jason Cammisa tell us.  (Like most of Jason’s videos, it’s excellent and well worth the viewing.)

And by the way, the 12Cilindri is pretty good-looking and produces (an unusable) 800+ horsepower, so it’s not all bad.  And it’s not a Duracell-hybridized engine either.

Still, under “Corporate Greed and Cynicism” in the dictionary you’ll find the Ferrari 12Cilindri Manuale.

Vai via.

*Ferrari went with the alphanumeric 12Cilindri, because Dodici Cilindri (“doh-deechi chilindree”) is almost unpronounceable to non-Italian speakers, especially Americans — their primary market — and Ferrari couldn’t trademark it either because it’s a generic term.

News Summary

Bad News


...looks like the fix is in.
#California #NoSurpriseThere

And:

Justice Department uncovers hundreds of Washington
registered voters it believes may be noncitizens
...see California, above.

However:

Complaint urges Texas officials to investigate more than
1,000 duplicate voter registrations in south Texas
...fucking hell.  I don’t feel good about this.


...as if we needed any more proof that she’s delusional.


...only two versions?  I fucking wish it were that simple.


...and nobody cares, as long as the environment is protected… right?  Oh, wait...

Study Finds Paper Straws More Harmful
to the Environment than Plastic
...well, well, well… guess it’s back to plastic, then?


...I wonder if these self-important twats realize just how ridiculous they appear to ordinary people.


...I dunno.  Was it perhaps the pallets of $100 bills shipped over to Teheran in the dead of night that gave the game way?


...Mexicans.  Not kidding, either.


...yeah, good luck with that.  Whatever it is, it won’t work;  you heard it here first.


...no doubt causing confusion among the band’s many retarded ‘fans’.


...sorry, I’ve never heard of her either.  Maybe she’s an A.I. creation.

Today’s Earworm

Music

Back when I wrote about my time as a professional musician, I mentioned a man named Neil Fox, whom we always called on to fill in for Drummer Knob when business called him out of town / country.  He was a solid, capable drummer, at ease with any kind of music and an extensive familiarity with practically every song we played.  It was no hardship to have him stand in for Knob, I assure you.

Neil was a lovely man, a Scot with a wry, dour attitude towards life, but he had a wonderful, dark sense of humor — his single, explosive “Ha!” when hearing something truly funny was the equivalent of anyone else’s hysterical laughter.    He owned a small music shop in downtown Johannesburg which catered almost exclusively to professional musicians, carrying gear that the chain stores didn’t, and several exclusive lines as well.  (I don’t recall how much business our band gave him, but it was considerable.)

The store wasn’t at street level, but upstairs.  When I asked him why, the response was typical:  “I don’t get any street traffic at all, which is why I have almost no shoplifting.”  Pause.  “In fact, I’d have no shoplifting at all if I banned that Gary Van Zyl coming here.” (Bassist and bandleader of one of the more popular club bands.)

I loved calling on Neil, not least because his wife was the office manager/accountant of the business, and she had probably the most exquisite non-professional body in the country — literally, she stopped traffic in the street and ended conversations when entering a room.  I’d known Lettie for almost as long as Neil had, so we always had a good time chatting and laughing together if her hubby was dealing with a customer.

Anyway, I told you all that so I could tell you this.

Neil hated Neil Diamond’s music with an unreasoning and bitter passion.  “Och, yon horrrrible fucker’s probably set music back twenty yearrrrs, the bastard.”

Needless to say, then, every time I walked into his shop I would be singing (loudly) Crackling Rosie, Solitary Man or Love On The Rocks — which caused his wife to shriek with laughter and him to chase me around the store with a drumstick.

I was thinking back to those happy times, so needless to say one of Diamond’s songs turned into a damn earworm.  Here’s Holly Holy.

Sorry, Mr. Fox.

I just wish he was still alive so he could read this, and be tormented by it.

Resistance Grows

Control Freaks, Nannies, Resistance

It’s not often nowadays that I read something which makes my old rebellious heart beat a little more strongly, but this is one of those things:

The Great Un-Karening has begun, and decades of cultural engineering have finally run into something their architects cannot fucking control: human nature.

For years, the helicopter-parenting crowd, DEI bureaucrats, ideological school administrators, and professional grievance merchants have worked to remake childhood in their own miserable image. Courage became recklessness. Masculinity became toxic. Independence became neglect. Every hurt feeling became an emergency, and every whining control freak acquired a fresh excuse to interfere. They built entire systems around rewarding fragility, policing behavior, and teaching children to view the world through the narrow lens of identity, victimhood, and institutional permission.

Yeah, I know.  I think someone wrote something on a similar topic a while back, even using a Bad Trigger Word in the title.  However:

And now the machinery is encountering resistance. Kids are reportedly refusing school Pride Day activities. Parents are defending their children’s right to adventure. Twenty to forty neighborhood kids organized their own nighttime pursuit game, complete with strategies, head starts, and a mile-long course. Some neighborhood hall monitor called security. The kids kept playing.

Fucking beautiful.

You can say that again.  I want to see a whole lot more of this, at every level and in every organization of our American society.

Because it’s not gonna work anywhere else — Over There, you can get arrested for posting something “hurtful” online (to give but one example).

Nope;  this rebellion has to grow, and nowhere better than in a nation whose very foundation was based on telling the controlling powers that be just to fuck off.  Yeah, they did it in polite terms (until the bullets started flying, of course);  but in today’s world, the powers that be — especially the non-elected, self-appointed sort — had better get used to it.

Open Borders

Africa, Immigration

One of the more unpleasant politicians in South Africa (among many, many contenders) is a Marxist scumbag Julius Malema, head of the so-called “Economic Freedom Fighters” (EFF) party.  This is the cancerous wart on the skin of humanity who encourages crowds at his rallies to chant, “Kill The Boer!”

As if his rabid Marxism isn’t enough to create fear in the Seffrican population (and not just among Whites), his latest pronouncement is this beauty:

“No African in Africa is a foreigner,” he said, and expanded on the historical context of how borders in Africa were drawn in the first place, regarding them as a colonial construct.

Now I will grant him that point:  almost all borders in Africa were set in place during the Berlin (!) Conference of 1884-85, by the then-colonial powers of France, Belgium, Germany, Great Britain and a couple others (e.g. Spain).  These borders paid little heed to any suggestion of native tribal territories, in some cases dividing tribal lands into disparate pieces.  (The locals, of course, mostly ignored these new boundaries, leading to many clashes with the colonial governments.)  Malema again:

“The African leaders come, and they start putting fences. Then you say you are anti-colonialist, but you embrace colonial decisions.”

Now I could support the idea of redrawing national boundaries, reuniting traditional tribal territories because it kinda makes sense — but sense is never a factor in continental African decisionmaking, as proved by Malema’s lunatic suggestion that there should be no national boundaries at all on the African continent.

Yeah, I’m sure that the Zulus would have no problem at all with a bunch of non-South African tribesmen suddenly appearing in KwaZulu and competing for jobs (and women).

Did I say “would”?  Silly me.

An immigrant man was beaten to death by a group of about 50 people in central Durban on Thursday morning, 22 October 2026.

The man, who has not yet been named by police, was accosted by a group marching on Dr Pixley kaSeme Street towards Maud Mfusi Street, according to KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Colonel Robert Netshiunda. A murder case has been opened.

Two men split off from the group and approached the man, said Netshiunda. Then about 50 people assaulted him, leading to his death.

A security guard, who asked to stay anonymous, told GroundUp that the group was targeting immigrants. He said the man was probably walking to work at around 7am when he was spotted and attacked by the group.

The guard said shop owners and residents in the area had been terrorised for weeks by groups of roaming vigilantes. He said SAPS and metro officers were hardly visible and had done little to intervene.

The guard said that even South African shop owners had begun closing their doors, fearing they might be mistaken for immigrants.

Now imagine this happening on a national scale, under Malema’s foolish “no African borders” policy.  As if South Africa wasn’t violent enough already.

I can see it now:  Malema’s putative government opens its borders to any African, and the country is suddenly swamped by a massive influx of, oh, say Ndebeles from up north, all looking for work (that isn’t available in Marxist Zimbabwe).  And over time, said newcomers would start demanding a say in government — demands which would lead to still more violence.

But hey, that’s Marxists for ya:  forever putting policy ahead of reality.

The EFF is a splinter party in the Seffrican polity, and has little chance of any kind of electoral road to power.

Which is kinda what the Russians thought about the Bolsheviks*, back in 1917.

*”Bolshevik” means “majority”, which of course they never were:  just the first of the many Communist lies that were to follow.