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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.

Followup

Drive Time

…on last week’s post about Porsche and its runaway wheels, Reader Al R. writes:

Regarding why knock-off wheel locks went away, it was the fault of the US Congress. In October 1966 the Department of Transportation was created by it. The new DOT immediately started dictating changes to automobiles to justify its existence. One of the first diktats of the DOT was the outlawing of the Rudge-Whitworth center lock, aka the knock-off.
Since 50% of British sports cars were sold in the USA and it made economic sense to build only one car for all markets the knock-off wheel was no longer provided.

But wait!  There’s MOAR!  On the topic of Gummint foolishness:

Also in the case of the E-type, the faired headlights were outlawed and the bumpers had to be raised, marring the beauty of the design. The DOT would continue to legislate stupidity with the 5mph bumper law that mandated the ungainly “diving board” bumpers of the ’70s and ’80s. The worst example of this law’s effect was the rubber bumper MGB.

I currently have a 1984 380SL project car that I am restoring and am considering spending about $3,000 (which I don’t have, alas) for Euro headlights and bumpers just because they look so much better than the DOT compliant lights and bumpers. If I don’t scrape up the money from somewhere I’ll have to look at those ungainly bumpers until the day I die.

And I think I should include Reader GT3Ted’s comment from the post, because he knows so much more about cars than I do.  First, from Reader Vonz:

“Center-lock wheel bolts and components were manufactured out of specification by a supplier, creating a risk of fracturing and wheel detachment.”

To which Ted replied:

Right, that’s the issue as I understand it as well. A specific batch of 2024 wheel nuts were not properly heat treated or possibly there was a problem with the alloy of Unobtainium they were made from that causes the nut to shatter after a number of heat cycles. When driven aggressively the wheel nut gets very hot.

But rest assured, those wheel nuts on the center lock equipped GT Cars are properly German over-engineered. They need 444 Lb-ft of torque to be properly tightened and new special wheel nut high-temp wheel grease each time they are changed. The nut itself (@ $450.00 each) has an internal locking mechanism that you are supposed to check for proper function after torquing the wheel. The little flap door inside the wheel center is supposed to freely move when pressed, then the wheel center cap goes on making sure that the grove on the cap is aligned with the bump on the wheel so that the pointy part of the Porsche crest is aligned and points to the valve stem.

[Kim’s 25,000-word rant about over-complication deleted]

Now on the race cars like my friend’s 935 that I crewed for, it’s a little different. You just throw the new wheel and tire on, making sure that you start the wheel nut in the correct direction by hand (each side is different) so you don’t cross thread it, then hit it with the nitrogen-powered wheel gun until it stops turning. Release the air jacks and send him back out.

My only comment on the above is a response to this statement:  “When driven aggressively the wheel nut gets very hot.”

I can understand the issue if you’re tracking your GT3 RS.  I can’t understand that heat problem occurring in typical day-to-day driving.  (There are those who can’t understand why anyone would use a GT3 RS for a daily drive, I among them.)

I literally cannot see how the “hot nut” thing could occur in the non-track 718 and 911 models, unless the Unobtanium treatment was really that bad — in which case it’s time Porsche reevaluated their relationship with the supplier.

This, by the way, is one of my problems with the high-performance cars of today:  they’re just too much for ordinary drivers (i.e. about 98% of their owners).  Engines that can rev at 10,000rpm, engine power that exceeds 600hp, when few people can handle power as low as 300 horsepower.  If you want proof of this hypothesis, just do a search on EeeeewwwChoob for stories of wrecked supercars — Lambos, Ferraris, Bugattis and Paganis, most costing in excess of $600,000.  (Mat Armstrong repaired one such car which had 57 miles on the odometer:  the new owner crashed it on the way home from the dealership.)

I’m not suggesting any kind of Gummint intervention, of course.  I just want a little more sanity injected into this market;  but I doubt it will ever happen, because there’s just too much Stupid Money around.  That bullet has well and truly gone through the church, and there’s no recalling it… more’s the pity.

That’s the Pagani Zonda R Evolution [sic]:  yours for a measly $6.5 million.

it has a 6-liter AMG engine, putting out 789hp and a top speed in excess of 230mph, and Pagani made only ten (10) of them.  Just the thing, then, for a trip to the supermarket, or church, or the range (as long as you’re only shooting handguns — or more realistically, only one handgun).

Except:

“Most Zonda Rs are hidden away in private collections, making public appearances of them exceedingly rare. It’ll certainly sound – and look – way better than any dubiously-shaped billionaire space rocket, that’s for sure.”

Phooey.

Asterisk Time

Muzzies

The brilliant Kathy Gyngell outlines her skeptical opinion on Islam:

[Islam] is a religion born as an adjunct to conflict. Whereas early Christians, long before their faith had acquired political status, were prepared to die for their personal and spiritual commitment to Jesus Christ, the first followers of Mohammed rampaged through the civilised world, killing and enslaving whole populations of Christians, Jews and Persians as they imposed their power.

Even discounting the fact that religious conflict in Britain has hitherto been within the bounds of Christianity, there is something about Islam which sets it apart from the equally alien faiths of the Hindus and Sikhs: not simply its claim to be the final, incontrovertible word of God, but its apparent inability to draw a line between God and Caesar in public life.

As I’ve said many times before, Islam is not merely a religion.  It is a socio-economic system that allows no alternative, no opposition and by its very name, demands submission.  It has a system of laws (backed by religious precept) that sets out, violently, to replace whatever other system of laws exist in its proximity.

It is long past time that we drew a line in the sand, and applied an asterisk to the First Amendment.  Islam does not deserve Constitutional protection as a religion, especially as it would, if it could, abolish that very Constitution and replace it with the ultra-intolerant shari’a.

No.  Enough is enough.

It’s time for a Constitutional convention whereby we can address this issue once and for all:  ban the practice of Islam in the United States and, if necessary, implement the denaturalization and deportation of its followers.

And just so we’re clear on the concept:  my First Amendment right to express the above opinion would be subject to imprisonment and eventual execution under shari’a.  Which is precisely why we need to prevent its implementation, through our Constitutional method.