Month: January 2018

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

So (via a link sent to me by my Reader Brad) a local choirboy sees an old codger working in his garage and decides it’s time for a little undocumented wealth redistribution. He breaks in through the window and threatens said old codger, demanding money.

Having no sense of humor about this kind of thing (we old codgers generally don’t), Our Hero pulls his gun and wastes the little fucker.

And because this happened in the United States of America and not in California, Massachusetts or New York, the old codger is not going to face any charges from the Gummint.

You can all stop that cheering, now. Me, I’m going to do a Happy Dance even though it’s 15 degrees Fahrenheit outside. I can always warm my hands on the AK-47’s barrel.

Bloat

Drive Time

As one who succumbed to the so-called “middle-age spread” long before I actually reached middle age, one would think that I have little room [sic] to talk about bloating. But I can, because I’m not talking about people here, but cars.

Let me get this right out of the way first: I don’t like big cars. I’m not just talking about Cadillacs or SUVs here, which is a whole ‘nother rant; I’m talking about how ordinary, nay even small cars, seem to have ballooned out of all proportion — turning what was once a small car into something close to a medium-sized one. And cars were small back then; here’s a late-1950s Alfa Romeo Giulietta next to its owner (who looks like a giant, but only by comparison):

…and a 1955 Lancia Aurelia B24 ditto:

Alas, those lovely little cars are long gone and out of production; but others are still with us, albeit bloated versions of their former selves. Allow me to post a couple of pics to illustrate the point.

When Britain introduced the Mini to the world, it was a brilliant small car not only for its design but for its utility. Tiny, nimble and quick (even with its teeny 850cc engine), the Mini was the perfect city car for the time (1960s and 70s), and the ads and pics reflected the car’s ethos to a nicety. Note this one, featuring a very Swinging Sixties sex symbol, Charlotte Rampling:

Note its setting: some backstreet mews in (I suppose) London, maybe even one near the iconic Carnaby Street.

But look at what the German BMW-spawned Mini has become, by comparison to its predecessor:

Now I know that a lot of the bloat has come about because of the Nanny State’s insistence on airbags and similar safety features [25,000-word rant deleted] and the fact that in today’s obese world of fatties and such, only anorexic supermodels could get in and out of the old Mini without needing the Jaws Of Life. I know all that, and I don’t accept the excuse, because back in the 1970s I knew a 6’11” tall man who used a Mini as his daily driver, and I , at ~230lbs, used to hell around with him when clubbing and so on. Was it a tight fit (as the actress asked the bishop)? Sure it was: but we weren’t driving thousands of miles either, so temporary discomfort was quite acceptable.

Here’s another example of bloat. After WWII, FIat came up with a cheap, tiny car with an even smaller engine (479cc, later 499cc) than the Mini’s: the fabled Quinquecento (500) — the later version of which, the 600, was actually marketed as a family car despite being if anything, slightly smaller than the Mini was. Like the Mini, however, the 500/600 was mostly marketed as a single person’s car (and especially for young women):

Unlike many, I have actually driven one of these pint-sized creations — no small feat in that I was a 50-gallon-sized guy, even back then — and my gripe was not about the dimensions but about the crappy little engine.

I have since driven one of the new Fiat 500s, by the way (Daughter has one) and I love it despite its crappy little engine — some things never change* — but again as with the Mini, the new one is a bloated fat cow by comparison:

And note the not-so-subtle change in Fiat’s marketing:

Are the New Fatties better cars than their tiny predecessors? Of course they are. Times have changed, and engineering has improved. But with all that improvement, some character — okay, a lot of character — has been lost along the way, and I, for one, lament its passing.

I seem to do that a lot these days. Gah.

*I’ve been in the Fiat 500 Abarth, by the way — Longtime Friend Knob drove me around Monaco in his a month ago — and it is a monster: it’s like a pocket-sized Ferrari. And don’t get me started on how Ferraris have got wider and fatter either, or we’ll be here for a week.

Update: Patreon

Patronage

More than a few people have written to me to tell that Patreon limits pledges to only $1.

That isn’t so, by the way: according to Tech Support, who investigated it when I asked, you have the option of raising the pledge amount (the $1 is just a starting-point because they don’t deal with any amounts less than a dollar).

At any time, you can go back and change the amount, so if any of you want to do that, please do.

For those who’d prefer to make annual donations, Tech Support is looking into it.

Filthy Lucre Part 2

Patronage, Writing

Back when I could afford it, I used to contribute $5 a month to Michael Yon and a couple other writers because I thought that they were doing a worthwhile thing — and I support Chris Muir’s Day By Day strip because his is the very first site I visit, every single day, and as such he deserves my support.

Now, of course, I am but a poor pensioner and can’t do that anymore, which sucks. Now I’m the guy who needs to make some kind of income from my writing.

As threatened in Saturday’s post, here’s the next thing.

Several people have suggested that I set up a subscription service so that Loyal Readers could contribute towards this goal, so over in the Blog Roll on the bottom right of the page, you will see this link:

If you enjoy visiting my back porch regularly, please go there and make a contribution. I’m not asking for large sums of money; for cash flow purposes, I’d actually prefer a monthly sub of just a few dollars,  which will also make it easier on your wallets. (For those people (like me) to whom it’s important, note that it’s not through PayPal, because I think those hoplophobes have had enough of my business.)

My daily traffic is nothing like my old website’s, but it’s still high enough that if most of you help me out this way, I won’t have to become a greeter at WalMart or drive drunks home at 3 in the morning with Uber.

Among other things, your support will enable me to go to the SHOT show in Vegas for the first time, and report back on the gunny goodness I find there.

And when my regular monthly income reaches a decent level, I’ll set up a patron-only podcast (frequency TBD) as a reward for your patronage, as an adjunct to Splendid Isolation.

Please note that I have no intention of setting up a paywall on this website: the daily output of (inter alia) snarling invective, beautiful women and gun worship will continue to flow unabated for all to see.

And speaking of beautiful women, allow me to post another finalist for Nigella Lawson’s replacement: Sela Ward.

More of her to follow…

As always, I am grateful for your support.

Global Domination

Business, Politics

Contradictory to what Citizen Obama once said, it appears that we can drill our way to prosperity. (Like so much of what that asshole said, it was completely wrong.)

Surging shale production is poised to push U.S. oil output to more than 10 million barrels per day – toppling a record set in 1970 and crossing a threshold few could have imagined even a decade ago.

That’s all good, of course, because it means that the other oil-producing shithole countries (the various Arabs, Russia, Venezuela etc.) get shafted and their economies flushed down the toilet, which is all good and proper.

Tucked away in the article — and unlike most crap from Reuters, this one is worth reading all the way through — is a lovely little nugget:

Fears of dire energy shortages that gripped the country in the 1970s have been replaced by a presidential policy of global “energy dominance.” [emphasis added]

Wait, wait… you mean that President Trump can count this as yet another one of his first-year achievements? Because it sure as shit wasn’t Obama’s policy — he wanted to put our energy industry out of business.

How it must have hurt those tools at Reuters to have to admit that — but note that they left out Trump’s name, lest they actually be seen to acknowledge his policy as a good thing.

I’ll leave you to read the whole article, but let me add one last little thing of beauty:

“New wells can be drilled in as little as a week,” he said. A few years ago, it could take up to a month.

Enter The Food Nannies

Food & Drink, Two-Minute Hate

Here we go again:

Britain is set to be put on a nationwide diet from March this year as public health officials impose new calorie caps.
Lunches and dinners are to be cut to 600 calories at fast food outlets and on ready meal shelves at supermarkets, in new guidelines from Public Health England (PHE).
Breakfast portions will be cut down to 400 calories as the government aims to stop Britons overeating and combat high obesity rates.

FFS; is there no area of our lives that is exempt from this busybody we-know-what’s-best-for-you bullshit? (My advice: if the nu-meal seems inadequate, buy two instead of one. That will do two things: stick it in their eye, and end your stomach’s growling.)

But it gets worse, O My Readers. From the same article:

A separate study by researchers at Oxford University also found that current alcohol guidelines may be too generous.

As one of my heroes once put it:

As any fule kno, I’m on a diet at the moment. But when I see shit like this, I want to go to a pub, eat a double portion of fish ‘n chips, and wash it down with five pints of Wadworth 6x. Here’s the starter:

Or, if this bullshit ever comes to this side of The Pond, take down a couple-three family buckets of KFC (Original Recipe) with a dozen Classic Cokes.

Now, this wouldn’t be a pretty sight. But it would be a lot prettier than the alternative: