Month: September 2019

Of Course It Does

Food & Drink, Lies and Untruths, Science!

For all those fools people who have been eating white meat instead of red meat because Studies Show That Red Meat Will Kill You Dead, here’s the latest study:

Eating chicken puts consumers at a higher risk of a rare form of blood cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, as well as prostate cancer in men, according to researchers from Oxford University.

Of course, my skepticism about all these “studies” has been well-documented, and no doubt the next study will say that in fact, eating chicken will cure  cancer, not cause it.

Red meat stops your heart, poultry gives you cancer, cannibalism seems to be illegal, and no  meat causes your brain to shrink.  So basically, we’re fucked.  To quote a well-known sage (Joe Jackson):  everything  gives you cancer.

Next thing they’ll be telling us that it’s not the full English breakfast that will kill you, it’s the pint of gin you wash it down with.

Like that’s going to stop me.

Small Wonder

Culture, Travels

According to some organization, Vienna is the most “liveable” city in the world.  I can see why, and I could live there in a heartbeat.  I’ve often commented on my love for Vienna — to this day, it’s the only city that is so beautiful that the first time I went there, I walked the streets with tears running down my cheeks.

I don’t know what criteria the EIU set to decide livability, but here are mine:

1)  It must be beautiful.  Vienna has that, in spades.

2)  There must be lots of culture:  art, music and all the rest.  Feel free to tell me Vienna doesn’t have that  covered.  Here’s the Kunsthistoriches (Art History) museum, see also beauty (above)

…and as for music?  Even their street musicians are a cut above the rest (he was playing Mozart  tunes, FFS):

 

3)  The people must be well-mannered, well-dressed and classy.  Vienna:  check, check and check.  The Viennese are terribly formal, which suits me down to the ground.

4)  A relaxed lifestyle.  Vienna = café culture, maybe even more so than Paris.  And oooh the coffee…

5) Good food, and restaurants.  Here’s Vienna’s equivalent of Whole Foods, or maybe M&S Food Court.  Let me tell you:  I know  grocery stores, and Julius Meinl is the best in the world.

Let’s not forget the street markets:

So yeah:  if somebody stuck a gun to my head and said, “You have to go and live in Vienna!”, I’d snatch the gun away and shoot him before he could change his mind.

I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t list a couple of negatives about Vienna.  (A German I met once said, “Vienna would be beautiful, except for the Viennese”, and my only qualification of his opinion is that of the language.)

I speak German reasonably well, and can get around most of Germany without too much hassle (once I’ve been  there a few days and have caught up — you don’t use it, you lose it, and I’ve pretty much lost it).  That’s not true in Vienna, where the local patois is incomprehensible, even to a lot of Germans.  (In the early days in Munich, Hitler had to take a few elocution lessons because people couldn’t understand his Austrian-accented speeches.)

Also:  in winter, it’s witch’s tit cold.  Holy balls.  Even coming from Chicago as I did, Viennese winters are cold, Bubba.  The only good thing about winter there is that it keeps most of the tourists away — which brings me to my last quibble:  in summer, Vienna has more tourists per square yard than the average day at DisneyWorld.

But in summer, the weather is glorious and the whole city seems to sing.  The multitude of statues to Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and Strauss (all of whom lived in Vienna) must have something to do with it…

Mein schönes Wien… I need to get back there, and soon.

As for the rest of the “ten most liveable” cities on that list?  Ugh.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s Snow White and the Nine Dwarfs.

And one wonders how anyone could put Vienna and Toronto (???!!!) on the same such list, with a straight face.

News Roundup

Bad News, Funny Stuff

1)  British holidaymaker, 71, is shot dead on tourist paradise of Turks and Caicos as robbers burst into house to steal cash and jewellery —  fake news;  private citizens are banned from owning guns in T&C, so this couldn’t possibly have happened.

2)  British vegan activist is covered in blood when ‘farmers chase her down a motorway and shoot through her car window after she freed 16 of their rabbits’ —  looks like the Spanish farmers need more range time.

3)  ISIS strap suicide vests to COWS and blow the animals up in attack that failed to kill any humans in Iraq —  that’s the end of ISIS:  now they’ve pissed off PETA.  (Funny how there aren’t any “militant vegan activists” in Iraq…)

4)  Hundreds of illegal guns flood city after gun ban —  let’s hear it for “Australian-style” gun control.

5)  Women marry men for money — and if there aren’t men rich enough, they don’t marry at all.   Another big surprise.

6)  Bonk more, and life feels better —  another shocker, brought to you by !Science!

7)  Mugabe dies —  about time, and about forty years too late.  Africa wins again.

Gratuitous Gun Pic — Uberti Stallion Target (.22LR / .22 Mag)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

Whenever we look at modern single-action rimfire revolvers, the common model we think of is the Ruger Single Six, with its swappable .22 LR / .22 Win Mag cylinders.  I have one, I’ve owned a couple in the past, and I don’t have a single bad thing to say about them.

However.

I happened upon the same offering at Collectors Firearms, only this one’s made by the Italian Uberti company, and good grief, it’s a beauty:

…and at an old GunsAmerica listing, I found it in non-stainless:

Now we all know Uberti makes fine cowboy replica guns (and I’ve shot several of them, in .44-40, .45 LC and .357/.38), but I missed that they also make some other .22 revolvers, featuring a scaled-down Colt Peacemaker action.  When I went to their website to see what was what, there was this beauty (which looks more like a Ruger Bearcat, incidentally):

Case-hardened, brass sub-frame, AND there’s a 10-shot model option?  Be still, my twitching trigger finger.

And from what I can see, you’d be in for less than $500 each.

Want.  All of them.

Friday Night Music

Music

Last week was the intro to this series.  Now, as threatened, I include for your entertainment a few of the songs sung by our sometime-vocalist Jill:

Bette Davis Eyes — Kim Carnes (pure sex appeal, this one)

Angel of the Morning — Juice Newton (our arrangement kicked ass — once again, we turned a country ballad into a rock song)

Midnight Confessions — Grassroots (curiously, the lyrics make more sense when sung by a woman)

Turn Me Loose — Loverboy (band favorite, this one, and she killed the vocals)

Don’t Go Breaking My Heart — Elton John & Kiki Dee (pure fun, and Jilly had a better voice than Kiki, by a country mile)

Black Velvet — Alannah Miles (rolling blues, baby)

Stop Dragging My Heart Around — Stevie Nicks & Tom Petty (duet with lead guitarist Kevin)

I Got The Music In Me — Kiki Dee (our favorite closer for just about every gig we ever played — and LOL we caused no end of trouble once;  we were backing a rather snotty female cabaret singer who performed this as her “show-stopper”, but after she’d finished her set, we closed the show much later by reprising the song — and Jilly blew her off the stage.  We never backed her again, but it was worth it.)

For some reason, I don’t have any pics of Jill on stage, which is a great shame.  As I recall, she quit the band because her boyfriend got jealous.  An even bigger shame.