Month: June 2021

For Sale 2

The Gun Thing

Back in Ye Olde Dayes, I had a Browning A5 Sweet Sixteen, and as I was loath to add to the already-extensive caliber proliferation in Ye Olde Ammoe Locquer, I found a deal on a Spanish cheapie side-by-side at a gun show (back when one could still find such deals), and laid in a small stock of 16ga ammo.

I want to get back into sporting clays here locally, and birdshooting with Mr. FM, but now I’d rather shoot 20ga than 16ga.  So:

For Sale — Churchill (Kassnar) 16ga SxS, double triggers, 2¾” chamber, 27″ barrels — $150:

As you can see, it’s in NRA Condition “Wretched”:  worn bluing, dings in the stock, etc.

 

To make up for its pitiful condition, I’ll throw in some cleaning brushes and swabs:

…and also 125 rounds of various ammo types because I won’t need them anymore:

(Frankly, I think the ammo is worth more than the gun, so look on it as ammo + free gun, or gun + free ammo.  Either way, it’s a decent deal.)

Aside:  I actually thought I had more than that, but the rest turned out to be a over two hundred rounds of 20ga — yeah, I have still more ammo for a gun I don’t even own (yet) blah blah blah.

N. Texas residents get it hand-delivered, all others need to add the usual shipping and processing fees.

Emails preferred (kim@) from interested parties.

Update:  $old, very soon after the post went up.

One More Reason Not To

Mocking Furriners, Travels

Let’s just go through the catalogue of ways to die in Australia:

  • dingoes which eat babies
  • brown snakes
  • funnel-web spiders
  • sharks
  • saltwater crocodiles
  • Sydney traffic
  • unchecked, uncontrollable bush fires
  • box jellyfish
  • blue-ringed octopus
  • its cousin, the blue-lined octopus
  • stonefish
  • Australian paralysis tick
  • and so many more

Now we can add mouse plagues to this list:

At night, the floors of sheds vanish beneath carpets of scampering mice. Ceilings come alive with the sounds of scratching. One family blamed mice chewing electrical wires for their house burning down.
Vast tracts of land in Australia’s New South Wales state are being threatened by a mouse plague that the state government describes as “absolutely unprecedented.” Just how many millions of rodents have infested the agricultural plains across the state is guesswork.
The plague is a cruel blow to farmers in Australia´s most populous state who have been battered by fires, floods and pandemic disruptions in recent years, only to face the new scourge of the introduced house mouse.

And of course, plagues of mice sometimes result in follow-up plagues of… you guessed it, snakes, which treat this as some kind of Roman orgy of gluttony, and not only gorge themselves but create still more snakes to take advantage of the bounty.

Predictably, this mouse plague is being met with customary Aussie ingenuity and just as predictably, activities like this are being greeted with horror by the Usual Suspects (almost all of whom, of course, live in areas untouched by the mouse plague):

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) on Tuesday pleaded with farmers not to kill ‘curious animals’ that are ‘just looking for food to survive’.
‘They shouldn’t be robbed of that right because of the dangerous notion of human supremacy,’ PETA spokeswoman Aleesha Naxakis said.

“Human supremacy”, eh?  We should also drop this bunch of rodents into drowning pits and fire barrels.

As a lad, I used to enjoy hunting for mice in the fields nearby our house, armed with my trusty Diana air rifle, but I think my best day only yielded a dozen or so.  This Oz thing is something else altogether.

For Sale 1

Music

For the past four days I’ve tried to play my bass guitar — trying to push through the agony of Olde Phartte joint pain, hoping that with regular practice I could fall into playing it for fun again.

No such luck.  In fact, Day 4 (yesterday) was so bad that I quit after an hour.

I give up.  So:

4 Sale —

Epiphone EB-3 (copy of Gibson) 4-string bass, hard case, spare set of Ernie Ball strings, strap, headphones and cords:

The only mod I made was replacing the utterly useless rotary pickup selector switch with a three-way (bridge, neck and bridge&neck), because the POS rotary broke after a month or so’s gentle (i.e. home) use.  Otherwise in as-new condition.

Price:  Sweetwater has them at $400;  I’m asking $250 plus whatever shipping is required.  (N.Texas residents will get it dropped off at a place of their choice.)

Roland Cube 30 Bass amp (30w, 10″ speaker):

For reasons best known to themselves, Roland discontinued this little sweetie.  I just wish I’d had it as a gig amp instead of the monster I used to slip discs putting into the van.  Everything works as advertised.

Price:   as it’s been discontinued, the closest equivalent I can find is this Ampeg, which is also solid state and 40w, with a 10″ speaker, but with no COSM features.  Guitar Center sells it for $150;  I’ll take $100 for the Roland, plus shipping.  (Same deal for N. Texans.)

So:  $350 for a bass/amp gig setup which quite frankly would have served me well in my misspent yoot.

Let me know by email (kim@) if you’re interested.  I’d prefer to sell them as a package, but that’s not set in concrete.  (BTW:  I don’t haggle, unless we’re talking about an exchange for a .22 rifle or pistol of similar value which is taking up needed space in your safe.)

Update:  I found a good home for the gear:  a young lady heading for a college music school.

It’s Not Hypothetical Anymore

Culture

A Black intellectual asks this question, talking about a White man:

Confronted by someone who is constantly bludgeoning me about the evils of colonialism, urging me to tear down the statues of “dead white men,” insisting that I apologize for what my white forebears did to the “peoples of color” in years past, demanding that I settle my historical indebtedness via reparations, and so forth—I well might begin to ask myself, were I one of these “white oppressors,” on exactly what foundations does human civilization in the 21st century stand? I might begin to enumerate the great works of philosophy, mathematics and science that ushered in the “Age of Enlightenment,” that allowed modern medicine to exist, that gave rise to the core of human knowledge about the origins of the species or of the universe. I might begin to tick-off the great artistic achievements of European culture, the architectural innovations, the paintings, the symphonies, etc. And then, were I in a particularly agitated mood, I might even ask these “people of color,” who think that they can simply bully me into a state of guilt-ridden self-loathing, where is “their” civilization?

Good question, because there is no answer.

And as the title suggests, this is no hypothetical question because it is asked and answered every day by us White people.

The plain and simple fact is that the sum of our civilization, whether technology, sciences, language, philosophy and culture has been created almost exclusively by “Caucasian” or “White” men, and the contributions by “other races” — all of them — have been practically zero or at very best, minimal.

Prove me wrong.

Hidden Treasure

Gratuitous Chick Pics

Here’s a picture of the lovely Helena Bonham Carter at some insignificant red carpet event or other, looking quite unlike her normal scraggly self (other than the hairstyle and boho sunglasses):

However, knowing Our Helena as we do, we can have no doubt that her long spotted dress most probably conceals a pair of Army boots.  Some things just don’t change… for some reason, leopards come to mind.

Back To The Future

Architecture, Modernism

So it seems like our public buildings are no longer going to look like this:

…but rather, like this:

…all because of this:

Biden Purges Non-Partisan US Commission On Fine Arts In Unprecedented Move Against Popular Classical Architecture

The commission is an independent federal agency established by Congress that advises Congress and the White House on public (civic) architecture on federal lands and in the District of Columbia. Established in 1910, its seven members are chosen from “disciplines including art, architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design,” and are appointed by the president to serve four-year terms. No commission member has ever been asked to tender their resignation before their term was up.
The Trump administration stressed classical architecture, though traditionally the issue has been non-partisan and has included such champions as former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and former Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
While classical architecture remains the hands-down favorite of the American public, its opponents are powerful in academia, elite architecture circles, and, it seems, in the Biden White House. Biden revoked former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Beautiful Again” executive order early in his administration, with supporters claiming classical architecture is somehow connected to fascism.

Yup, those pesky Greeks, with their Corinthian columns and friezes, were all about fascism.

Even though the word “democracy” (an Ancient Greek institution) stems from the Greek word demos, meaning “crowd”.