Month: February 2021

News Roundup

Bad News

With commentary briefer than a thong bikini worn backwards:


…nope:  add stupid meat-eating journalists, politicians and celebrities.


…frankly, I can’t see how it could get any worse than it is right now:


…and just like that, the Supremes became irrelevant.


…[insert “Satan” joke here].


…and yet, anyone who’s ever seen or heard dumpy ScotPM Nicola Sturgeon knows that the stereotype isn’t outdated.


…following Robert Townsend’s advice in “Up The Organization” (first pub. 1970).


…SC’s murder rate to plummet in 3…2…1...


…wherein 2021 tries to outdo 2020.


…1.) no it isn’t, and 2.) fuck you, Scott.


…and fuck you too, Fauci.


…Kim’s prediction:  it will be the only novel on Amazon with more favorable reviews than actual buyers.


…okay, then let’s “repurpose” the building into a casino.  Especially so when you read shit like this:


…here’s a message to the Stupid Party:

Or we could just nuke D.C. and be free of all this kind of shit:


…so there we go.

And finally, something worth looking at:

Amen To All That

Architecture

Found via Insty, this diatribe against “modern” (fugly) architecture.

“Let’s be really honest with ourselves: a brief glance at any structure designed in the last 50 years should be enough to persuade anyone that something has gone deeply, terribly wrong with us. Some unseen person or force seems committed to replacing literally every attractive and appealing thing with an ugly and unpleasant thing. The architecture produced by contemporary global capitalism is possibly the most obvious visible evidence that it has some kind of perverse effect on the human soul.”

For newcomers to this website — there may be one or two — here are some of my own thoughts on the matter, and you may find a common thread among them all:

Back To The Classic —  My Style — Old Fashioned?  Me?  — Another RCOB — Talk About Ugly — As I Said — Squares, Cubes And Blocks — Insisting On Beauty

Just re-reading some of those posts raised my blood pressure five points.  And that picture at the top of both this article and the one it’s linked to actually made me slightly nauseated.

A pox on all of them.

Afterthought:  I once stayed in a little apartment in this building, just north of Sacré-Cœur in Paris:

While the apartment itself was small and rather foul, every time I stepped out into the streets surrounding the place, I felt invigorated by being in the midst of such beauty.  If I had to step into a street lined with modernist concrete blocks, I’d want to kill myself.

Reconquista

Funny Stuff

From the fiendish Mr. Free Market:

At first, my reaction was pretty much the same as all my Murkin Readers:  “Hell, no!”

But then I started to think about it.

Lessee:  we’d lose New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

On balance, I’d be tempted to say that the Brits could have ’em all back (with the possible exceptions of Georgia and South Carolina, which we could trade maybe for California?) and frankly, we could solve a whole bunch of problems for the rest of us.

Granted, Virginia comprises Northern Virginia (Commies and bureaucrats) and Remaining Virginia (decent conservative folk), ditto North Carolina which outside Raleigh-Durham (Commies and academics) is likewise populated with decent conservatives.

I’m starting to have second thoughts about Georgia, after their shenanigans in the 2020 elections, and don’t talk to me about Pennsylvania…

Actually, given that the Brits love cities (London, Manchester, Liverpool etc.) I’d be willing just to hand over all 13 states’ cities (New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore etc.) and keep the countryside outside for ourselves.

Frankly, I’m not sure that the Brits could handle the country folk in any of the 13 states — just watching them trying to impose their gun laws in Western Pennsylvania and Georgia alone would be worth the price of admission.

Like I said, at first I was sorta-outraged;  but let’s be honest:  which of us wouldn’t be glad to see the back of New York City and Boston?

Open Letter To TX.gov

Bad News, SHTF

Now that things have returned to normal (ice melted, water restored, power turned back on), we need to look very hard at ourselves and make sure that none of the past month’s nonsense ever happens again in Texas.  In case the Big Brains haven’t figured it out yet, let’s look at the problems and their solutions.  First, the overriding principle:

Texas needs to become completely self-sufficient in power generation.  That includes during times of inclement weather such as we’ve just had.

1.)  Wind power fails in a crisis.  That’s not an assertion, that’s a truism, and it’s not just true in Texas:  it’s true everywhere in the world.  So if we’re going to continue to generate power from wind, that power needs to be sold outside the state to, say, California [irony alert] because they apparently love the stuff.  But not a single part of the Texas energy supply should come from wind power, ever again.

This means that to replace wind power as part of our energy supply system, we have to build more gas-powered and nuclear power stations.  And we need to do it quickly, in the next couple of years.  But before anyone starts blathering on about environmental regulations as excuses for not getting it done, here’s the mandate:  get it done or we’ll elect people who can.

2.)  Texas has its own electricity distribution grid, and it sucks — once again, a statement of fact.  Texans don’t want to hear about pipelines freezing or cables breaking because of extreme cold, ever again.  When it gets cold — and no matter how cold it gets — Texas needs to continue functioning.  Our energy transmission grid needs to be made bullet-proof.

3.)  All of this is going to cost money.  Don’t care.  We also know that a lot of people have a lot of money and political capital invested in the “renewable” power generation business, and we don’t care about them either.  Find the money by cutting pork-barrel expenditure items from the Texas budget — if you need to know where they are, ask Dan Crenshaw for a list, because I bet he has one — or else, lean on the utility companies to get their own house in order, because apparently they’ve been unable to do it for themselves.  And if they do, that can’t come at the expense of higher utility bills.  We pay enough for electricity already, and given the energy resources Texas has at its disposal, we should be paying even less.  (And while you’re there, eliminate this nonsense.)

4.)  Pass legislation that enables all the above.  Generally speaking, we don’t like our state legislature to pass that many laws (see:  biannual legislature sessions, two-year budgets), but this is one time we’ll make an exception.  If you can get everything done under existing legislation, fine.  If not, pass the laws to enable them.

Texans are proud bunch, and when we see statistics like “3 million people have no electricity in the United States;  2.3 million of them live in Texas”, that pisses us off, big time.  Not having heat, water or power in our homes when it’s 15°F outside is not acceptable.  Just to hammer the nail in up to the head:  we’re talking millions of pissed-off voters.

I know that in any financial system there’s a calculus that says you can’t budget for extremes.  It’s the reason why Brownsville, for example, has no supplies of road salt and no trucks to scatter it on icy roads.  I’m not talking about that.  What I’m stating is that electricity is not a luxury, it’s a necessity — and it’s exponentially more necessary in inclement weather.

As a rule, I ignore the disaster weenies who are always forecasting doom because of climate change, wild swings in weather conditions and so on.  While their stupid predictions are not worth thinking about, the inescapable fact is that the Big Freeze of February 2021 has exposed our vulnerability and the fragility of our energy supply grid.  This time it was freakish weather, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen again.  The consequences of failure are too great for us to do nothing, and hope that the law of averages will come to our rescue in the future, because if averages tell us anything, it’s not to rely on them.  A polar freeze which happens every fifty years on average means that you could have one every year for the next ten years and not another one for the next five hundred.  That’s the way to look at averages, and it’s no way to gamble with the well-being of your citizens and the state economy.

Get it done.  And don’t even think of imposing a state income tax to raise the money — I shouldn’t even have to mention it, but some idiot will.

News Roundup (Out-Of-Date Version)

Bad News, Funny Stuff

Just in case you missed it earlier.


…good grief:  is there anything statins can’t do?  Finally, a drug I’ve been taking for years may actually be worth the money.  Although next week we’ll find that statins probably cause hemorrhagic fever, or something.


…oooh, no wonder she’s been called a “wild child”, the feisty lil’ thang.  I think I did all that, and more, before I turned 17 — unless, that is, she did all that before she was 14, in which case, I salute her.


…just your everyday over-achiever.  Key word:  Leeds.


…finally, some ACTUAL good news.


…uuuhhhh, sweetie, when you hang around with a guy who looks like this, I think you can expect at least some behavior that’s a little off the beaten path:


…given the cost of Woody The Wonder Drug, it would be cheaper just to buy a fresh bunch of flowers.


…you have to know how low the Beeb has sunk when the Chinks can call them out.


…yeah, if it’s total indifference you’re seeking from your partner in a sexual experience, stay at home.


…wherein we finally learn the Scandi spelling for “homeboy”.  (HBC, as always, looks like a bag lady).


…not to be too cynical or anything, but wouldn’t his post-murder treatment of her body be somewhat irrelevant at this point?  Anyway, look on the bright side:  he could have called her a “dirty nigger”, in which case he’d now be in serious trouble.


…and I’m sure the UK’s NHS is just waiting to give him the free surgery he needs, just as soon as they’ve discharged the very last Chinkvirus patient, in 2045.


…which would be nice, if there was anything there we actually wanted to see.

Lessons Learned

SHTF

Now that the waters have receded (from our apartment) and the ice has melted (from the Great Texas Polar Event of 2021), here are a couple of things I’ve learned from the experience.

1.)  You cannot have too many flashlights, lanterns or batteries.  Seriously.  When our power went out, I was three lanterns short, and I kept misplacing my goddamn flashlight — you know, you put it down to carry a bucket of floodwater outside, then can’t find the thing when you come back into a darkened room.

Addendum:  You don’t need trillions of candlepower to get by.  Seriously, again.  In fact, my trusty Surefire was often too bright, its beam blinding me when bouncing off a mirror or white wall.

Next steps:  I’m going to get at least three more battery-operated lanterns like this one:


I already have one of these, and for long life and adequate lighting, it’s the best:  it saw me through the last Plano power outage (5 days) back in 2016.

As for flashlights, I’m going to get a bunch of these Maglite 3C bad boys:


I used to pack one on hunts and camping trips back in South Africa, and over about five years it never broke, flickered or burned out — and those were the days before LED bulbs, even.  (I can’t believe that I don’t own one now, come to think of it. ) There is going to be at least one in every room in the house, and in each car as well.  (Note:  I already own a sufficiency of “tactical” Surefire and Fenix flashlights, and also a couple headlight types as well.)

I’m also going to get a lanyard to hang a smaller Maglite around my neck, just in case.

2.)  My little butane cooking stove was completely inadequate to cook anything outside — the wind kept blowing the flame out, and even in calm conditions, it took over half an hour to boil a single pot of water, because butane sucks under frigid conditions.  Here’s the offending object:

Next steps:  what I’m going to get is a sturdy camp stove, like this one:

…which uses Coleman Fuel, white gas* or in a pinch, even gasoline (which I always have on hand in a spare fuel can).  Or I might just go crazy and get one of these:

I don’t care much about portability because it’s for in-home emergencies like we just endured.

Conclusion:  it doesn’t seem to matter how well prepared you think you are — I certainly wasn’t, even though I thought otherwise.  (I didn’t run out of batteries, which is the only good thing about the whole sorry business.)  Next time will be better, I hope.

*Coleman Fuel and white gas are almost the same, except that white gas, while cheaper, doesn’t have the extra stabilizers and corrosion-preventatives that the branded Coleman Fuel contains.  Even so, either will last up to ten years in an unopened container.