Month: March 2017

Life Among The Gun Nuts

Guy Stuff

So the other day I was parked in my chair writing this here blog, when I became aware of a fly buzzing around. I ignored it for a while, but when Doc came home from work, I asked him where he kept the fly spray.

“Fly spray? Fly spray? I don’ need no steenkin’ fly spray,” he exclaimed, went away and came back with this thing, the “Bug-A-Salt(TM) The Original Salt Gun”:

For those of you unaware of this Implement of Death, it’s essentially a low-powered pump-action pneumatic shotgun which shoots table salt at insects.

So I popped the fly with the Bug-A-Salt at close range. It buzzed around a bit, somewhat erratically, so thinking I hadn’t hit it squarely, I moved the gun closer and popped the fly again. No effect. So I said a Bad Word, and gave it yet another load of salt. This time it fell to the windowsill, but it was still kicking. So I gave it one last shot, and finally the little bastard snuffed it — at least, he was still lying there a couple hours later. Four shots of salt to kill a single fly — I should have just butt-stroked the damn thing.

This alleged insect-killing device was made in China, and perhaps their flies are not as tough as our Texas flying assholes, which make a noise like a buzz-saw and can crack a window-pane with a single headbutt.

Needless to say, this caused some discussion between Doc and myself, and we came to the conclusion that we either need to drill out a larger bore on the gun barrel to increase the gross projectile weight, or use a larger shot size (i.e. coarse kosher salt), or both.

I’ll keep you posted.

Like We Didn’t Know

Terrorism

From some news organization:

A knifeman was shot by armed police in the grounds of Parliament today after pedestrians were mowed down in a terror attack on Westminster Bridge. More than 10 people are said to have been hit by a car on the central London bridge after a vehicle described as a ‘4×4’ drove into pedestrians and cyclists.

If this nonsense keeps up, I’m gonna need to wear suspenders to keep my pants up — all those extra 1911 mags are heavy, let me tell you.

“But Kim… what good are bullets against a runaway SUV?”

Against the SUV, not much. Against the driver, a little more. Carry a gun, folks. It may just save your life. And for you Brits: you need to start voting for politicians who will let you do the same.

Oh, who am I kidding? That’ll never happen. But it should.

Stop That Shit #2

Culture

Reminder: I was reading some article [no link, it was ages ago] wherein a so-called “style and etiquette” expert was making suggestions for the ages at which one should stop doing certain activities (e.g. wearing a bikini), and while I agreed with some of his statements, I found myself in stark disagreement with others. Here’s his #2 of when to stop doing things:

Women having long hair: age 40

Total bollocks. I don’t know of any actual men (i.e. who are not homosexual hairdressers, pussywhipped husbands, or beta male twerps) who like short hair on a woman. In fact, amongst most men of my acquaintance, short hair is a decided turnoff in that men often associate short hair with feminism, lesbianism or a woman who just doesn’t care about her appearance anymore (and in the last instance, they’re often woefully correct).

If you have beautiful hair, at any age, wear it long, ladies. Leave the cropped hairstyles to the lesbians and grannies. And yes, I know mommies cut their hair into “low-maintenance” styles because of children, which is a lousy excuse and ta-da! might make them look less attractive to their husbands (like anyone cares what those poor bastards think). Of course one can make excuses for women who have unfortunate hair — the thin, wispy Heather Locklear-kind which can’t hold a style or a curl; but apart from that, the longer the better.

No discussion of this topic would be complete without pitchurs, of course, and the most egregious example is the exquisite Anne Hathaway, who cut her wonderful hair short for a movie role (acceptable), then inexplicably kept it short  for well over a year thereafter (ugh).

  

Whoever persuaded her to keep her hair short must really have hated her. You see, she has very exaggerated features (huge eyes, wide mouth and thick lips which admittedly do work in her favor on stage). Longer hair keeps those features in perspective; but unless a woman has petite, regular facial features, the short hairstyle over-emphasizes them and just like Hathaway, will make her look like a caricature of herself.

And finally: bizarre hair colors and Skrillex (“Lisbet-Salander”) hairstyles should be abandoned when one graduates from college and the time for youthful experimentation has passed. Going beyond that, and I start to suspect psychological issues, e.g. Lisbet Salander (I know, she’s a fictional character; fake but accurate).

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Frankly, the only men who find such looks attractive are men with similar psychological issues. I should also point out that in the pickup artist (PUA) community, such hairstyles are catnip to guys looking for an easy lay.

Of course, every woman should be able to “express herself” and “choose what works for her” and all that feministical jive. I would politely suggest, however, that from the average man’s perspective he’d probably prefer that she doesn’t arrive at the wedding ceremony with a hairstyle like the above. And yeah, I know that women shouldn’t have to shape their appearance according to what attracts men. But that’s the reality of it. There’s a really good reason why Edwardian women kept their hair up in tight chignons during the day, and let it loose at night: the act of unpinning the hair and letting it fall past their shoulders was — and remains — an incredible aphrodisiac to men.

And finally, here’s an example of a woman who has kept her long hair way past the (“sensible”) age of 40:

I don’t think she looks good; I think she looks sensational.

 

Marxism Explained, By Wimbledon

Men & Women

I see that the U.S. Women’s Hockey team is threatening to boycott the World Championship unless they get better pay. (Hands up those who even knew there was a Women’s Hockey World Championship… thought so.)

I guess that this is as good a time as any to explain how this whole thing works, because women’s sports — or rather, the women who play professional sports — are essentially driven by Marxist principle, whereas professional sport as a whole is a creation and creature of pure capitalism.

Here’s how professional sports work.

There is a product — sporting competition — which is driven by one word: quality. The better the people who play the sport and the keener the competition, the better the reward, be it championship honors, financial reward, whatever.

Men watch sports all the time, because they are competitive by nature. Women hardly ever watch sport unless it’s not a sport (e.g. Olympic ice dancing, synchronized swimming or gymnastic dancing, i.e. events which have “style points” awarded instead of scoring goals and such). But in the main, the audience for sporting events is comprised of men. Men are competitive, men want to see goals, and baskets, and home runs, and touchdowns. Style is unimportant unless there’s a goal at the end. This is why men don’t watch Olympic ice dancing, synchronized swimming or gymnastic dancing (i.e. events which are won by “style points” instead of goals), unless they’re watching it with their wives / girlfriends. (Ditto women who go to football matches — it’s mostly with their menfolk, otherwise they’d rather have lunch with their friends. Trust me on this.)

Summary: the higher the quality of play, the greater the support. In English football (soccer) terms, there’s a reason why Manchester United plays to crowds of over 75,000 per match, while lower-division Accrington Stanley struggles to fill its stadium of 5,000 each week — and the Man U players earn more each than the total salary of Accrington Stanley’s entire team.

But let me illustrate the whole concept rather with, say tennis. Tennis at Wimbledon, which is generally accepted as the world championship of tennis.

Many years ago, female tennis players like Billie Jean Moffitt (later King) complained that although they practiced as hard as the men, and won their Wimbledon titles just like men did, the tenisettes didn’t get anything like the reward money (purses) that men did. Because this argument took place in socialist Britain, it made all the sense in the world, so women’s purses were increased.

Except, of course, that the argument not only made no sense at all, its acceptance was a de facto acknowledgement of Marxist principle. How so?

Marxism posits that the “worker” works as hard as the “owner”, and therefore deserves if not exactly equal, then at least commensurate reward. We see this all the time, where “input” is as important as “output”. Except it isn’t. One of the precepts of capitalism, as we all know, is that it doesn’t matter how hard you work; all that matters are the results. What counts in the end is the quality of the product, and not the amount of work put into the product. The quality of the product is what sells, and that’s what results in profits for the producer. (Remember this, because it’s important. Really important.) I’m not even going to get involved in a discussion of the relative value of a worker’s time (where the job is simple, and where the worker can simply be replaced by another worker), and that of his employer (whose work is infinitely more complex, more difficult, and who is not that easily replaced). Nine hours’ work by a worker produces, say, a single product; nine hours’ work by the employer produces a marketing campaign, a sales effort, financing of the entire enterprise, product improvement / redesign initiatives… you get the idea.

So: back to tennis. What gets people (mostly men) to watch Wimbledon tennis is the quality of the competition. If the top 50 male tennis players didn’t play, TV ratings would plummet (ask any NFL team owner how his attendance fared with replacement players during the players’ strikes of 1982 and 1987).

Now let’s compare the relative quality of men’s tennis and women’s tennis. Actually, let’s not, because there is no comparison. Women play best-of-three sets, men play best-of-five, so men’s matches last longer, and attract more viewers in consequence. The quality of the actual play (men vs. women) is also not comparable: female tennis star Serena Williams was soundly beaten in a recent challenge match by the men’s 200th-ranked player, some unknown German guy who reportedly was hung over, had a huge meal and some booze beforehand, didn’t bother to warm up and yet still killed Serena stone dead on the court. It doesn’t matter how hard a female tennis player practices, or how fit she is, or even how much she wants to win (another red herring argument); not one stands a chance against a Federer, Djokovic or Murray. Game, set and match.

So if the quality isn’t there, men aren’t interested. (I would suggest, cynically, that if Wimbledon wanted more men to watch women’s tennis, they’d make the women play topless or naked, but no doubt some feministical would have a problem with my suggestion. And furthermore I’m told that a large proportion of the female players are lesbians, ergo unattractive to men anyway.)

And yet despite all this, women want, nay demand equal pay to men, even though the product they produce is of demonstrably lower quality, which translates into lower TV ratings — and lest we forget, it’s the spectators who drive the sports business, whether they’re actually in the stadium or, more importantly, watching the match on TV. (By the way, I’m aware that many women attend the Wimbledon tournament itself, but let’s be honest, it’s the occasion which draws them, not the competition, or else they’re simply accompanying their menfolk. The Wimbledon occasion, like the Olympics, attracts many spectators who otherwise don’t watch any other matches throughout the year. Seen the TV ratings for Men’s or Women’s Super G World Championships this year? Nobody has.)

And yes, there actually is a “wage gap” (another Marxist principle, by the way) between men’s and women’s sports in general, because men (who are, one more time, the main financial supporters of all sports) happen to prefer things like rewards for quality and don’t agree with participation trophies.

So the silly American women who want to boycott the Women’s Hockey World Championship are not only sticking it to themselves, they’re going to stick it to women’s hockey in general, because without the U.S. team, nobody in the United States will watch the tournament, and in the end, without U.S. viewers and support, women’s hockey may go the way of women’s professional squash. (Yeah, I hadn’t heard of that either.)

There’s a term for this kind of behavior (other than childish petulance): what is it? Oh yeah, it’s self-destructively stupid. I was going to call them dumb broads, but apparently one can’t call chicks “broads” anymore. Another sign of the impending apocalypse.

No Kind Words

Two-Minute Hate

I see that former IRA honcho and murderous bastard Martin McGuinness has finally died. Good. There have been several eulogies given about him, but Norman Tebbit’s is by far the best:

“I’m just pleased that the world is a sweeter and cleaner place now. He was not only a multi-murderer, he was a coward. He knew that the IRA were defeated because British intelligence had penetrated right the way up to the Army Council and that the end was coming. He then sought to save his own skin and he knew that it was likely he would be charged before long with several murders which he had personally committed and he decided that the only thing to do was to opt for peace. He claimed to be a Roman Catholic. I hope that his beliefs turn out to be true and he’ll be parked in a particularly hot and unpleasant corner of hell for the rest of eternity.”

Amen to that. Now it’s that smooth little psychopath Gerry Adams’s turn. Hasten the day.

Train Smash Women

Men & Women, Train Smash Women

Daughter has a friend whom I’ll call Emma, whose life is one of tragedy. She was abused as a child, estranged from parents, talks the most brainless shit nonstop, is almost always drunk when not working, only dates large Black men who (inevitably) abuse her… well, you get the picture: her life is just one long train smash. Emma is 21 years old, and I love her dearly, for reasons I just cannot explain.

Let me get one thing perfectly clear before I go any further: when I come across a Train Smash Woman in person, I run a mile in the opposite direction because their very presence in your life is toxic. (Back in my misspent youth, I once had to rescue a teenage Train Smash Woman from her drug dealer by sticking a gun up his nose, but that’s a story for another time. What that taught me, however, was to stay away from her and her ilk, and I’ve managed to do so ever since.)

I’m still fascinated by them, though, in some twisted anthropological sense even though they absolutely exude tragedy — maybe for the same morbid reasons why people slow down to look at a car crash on the freeway. My problem is that I find them funny, and view their exploits with open-mouthed horror combined with helpless laughter.

We probably all know one or two of these unfortunate souls, but let’s look at a couple of the more famous ones.

Example #1: Lindsay Lohan. This woman started off her life as an unbearably cute child actress, became a beautiful young woman, then went off the rails completely in her late teens and twenties and now looks like some medieval gargoyle:

I have no idea what made her decide to dye her exquisite red hair into a shade we can safely call “Dockside Blonde”, nor to transform her beautiful mouth into a ghastly fish-pout, but they are all just examples of Train Smash decisions. Apparently, she recently broke off an “engagement” with some much-younger Russian playboy (like that was going to be her path to future happiness, uh huh) who (of course) abused her horribly. I have to tell you, though, that Miss Lohan is not a perfect example of a Train Smash Woman because she started off well before careening off the rails; most Train Smash Women start off as losers, and just continue down that track. There is considerable evidence that Lohan’s parents are a pair of utter assholes who leeched off her and gave her neither protection nor guidance, but we won’t go there other than to note that asshole parents may be a common factor in the phenomenon.

Example #2: Britney Spears. Like Lindsay Lohan, Britney began her public life well in her early teens. In her case she was a pop singer who, despite a rather thin and weak voice, tapped into the rich ur-pedophilia vein of boy / girl singers and became fabulously wealthy as a result. She was, in the old idiom, as cute as a button:

…and even when she matured and had a couple kids, she still looked good:

Then came the long train smash of broken marriages, disastrous affairs, drink and drug problems, and weight gain — none of which stopped her from performing, though, and she seemed quite unashamed of the Train Smash her life had become:

And the final breakdown came when she shaved her head in a series of online Facebook posts or tweets, I don’t remember:

Britney has not stayed a Train Smash Woman, however: she’s cleaned up her act, ditched the drugs and weight, and now has a full-time gig in Vegas. Predictably, I find her less interesting now, although she is once again better to look at (if you prefer that clean-living, daily-gym-visit look, that is):

 

Now she’s become just another $70,000-per-month superstar, and is of little interest to us anymore.

But no discussion of Train Smash Women would be complete without a look at the ultimate, nay the very embodiment [sic] of the breed.

Example #3: Lisa Appleton. No, I’d never heard of her either. She was on some foul British reality TV show many years ago, and I have to admit, she was quite cute (in that full-figured look I like) and even did a bit of celebrity modeling:

   

Had I been aware of her in those days, though, I wouldn’t have given her a second look.

But time has passed, as has Lisa’s “career” as a reality TV star, and she’s ummm changed quite a bit:

…and her “private” look is even more alarming:

Now I know what people are going to say: “Come on, she’s wearing [that grotesque] makeup… she knew the paparazzi were there.”

Of course she did, you fools — and she knows that every time she leaves the house, some camera lens is going to record her insanity.

And that’s the joke. Miss Appleton has turned her Train Smash life into a career; in modern parlance, she “owns” her Smashdom and uses it shamelessly. (Under “shameless”, I think, is where you’d find her picture in any dictionary.)

Needless to say, the Daily Mail loves her — almost every day sees a fresh example of Lisa being tongue-in-cheek Train Smash-y, and I love the pictures almost as much as the commenters at the DM website can’t understand why the newspaper features her so often. (Duh, you idiots: it’s because of me, and people like me who love Train Smash Women.)

And the best part of all this? Lisa has a daughter who plans on following in her mother’s footsteps in reality TV.

Multi-generational Train Smash Women!

I can hardly wait. Yeah, I know; I’m a bad person.