Month: August 2024

That Garage Thing Part 2 – The Euros

Drive Time

See last Saturday’s post for the background, if this is the first time you’re seeing this series.

My choices for the Euro section is a little different this time, because in addition to wanting to flee the modern electro-digital foolishness, I’m also tending towards smaller cars that are fun to drive, but not necessarily high-performance cars.  So you won’t see the Dino 246 (my perennial favorite) or similar in today’s selection.  Here they are:

1956 Porsche 356C

1971 Lancia Fulvia 1600 HF

1964 Alfa Romeo Giulia Spider

And here’s my go-to choice, one that, unlike the Alfa, will always start reliably:

1964 Mercedes 230 SL

I am quite curious to know that if I ever did populate my garage with the above four beauties, which one would become my favorite over time.

And next week — have the smelling-salts handy — I’m going to list my modern choices.

Out Of The Past

Heroism, Military

Longtime Readers will remember that many years ago, I attended Boomershoot with the Son&Heir, and took the 2-day training course delivered by Gene Econ and two kids from the unit he was training, Adam Plumendore and Walter Gaya.  As a result of that meeting, we (I plus my Readers) kind of “adopted” Adam and Walt, and when they told me they needed some gear (scopes and rangefinders) for their upcoming deployment, we raised the money and bought them the gear.  (As I recall, it took about three days to raise the $25,000-odd, because as I’ve said before, I have the best Readers on the Internet,)

Anyway, the kids went off to Iraq.  Two months later we heard that Adam had been killed by an IED, and Walt had been badly wounded in a different engagement.

I told you all that so I could tell you this.  Walt and Adam’s CO at the time was Col. Erik Kurilla, a man of incredible bravery and outstanding leadership.  He himself was wounded in Iraq (shot three times in the legs when ambushed by some assholes in, I think Mosul).

It will therefore come as no surprise to anyone when I tell you that Colonel Erik Kurilla is now General (4-star) Erik Kurilla.  You can learn all about him here.  It makes for some interesting reading.  Just the other units he’s since commanded makes me quite awestruck, but I bet he left them better than how he found them.  He’s that kind of man.

I had a chance to chat with him once, some time after Adam was killed, and when by way of introduction I told him how I’d met Adam and Walt, and about the gear we’d contributed, his immediate response was “Oh, I know all about you, Kim, and your group, and how you helped us.”

He was not then, and I doubt very much whether he would ever be one of those remote, office-bound types who doesn’t take care of his men.  With men like him in the Army, there may still be some hope for our future.

I feel extraordinarily privileged to have known him, even as slight as that acquaintance may have been.

Work Ethic

Good Stuff, Gummint

The State (i.e. governments large and small) can always find ways to stifle individuality, especially when that individuality manifests itself in young people.  Here’s a recent example:

Bored and looking for something to do this summer, Danny Doherty hatched a plan to raise money for his brother’s hockey team by selling homemade ice cream.

But a few days after setting up a stand and serving up vanilla, shaved chocolate and fluffernutter to about 20 people, Danny’s family received a letter from the Norwood Board of Health ordering it shut down. Town officials had received a complaint and said that the 12-year-old’s scheme violated the Massachusetts Food Code, a state regulation.

No surprises there, this being Massachusetts.  (My only question:  who complained?  Some goody-goody, or someone fronting for the local ice cream shop?  Either way, they need a swift slap.)

Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, I lived in in one of the Chicagoland suburbs — Palatine, a modest middle-class neighborhood of the kind that’s so Norman Rockwell it’s almost a caricature.  And while my house itself was small, it sat on just over a quarter-acre, which meant a large lawn in the backyard.  Said lawn took well over two hour to cut and edge, and in the short but warm, fecund Chicago summers, the grass grew quickly, meaning it had to be cut at least weekly;  actually, I would cut it about five times a month.  And it was a hot, sweaty business:  Chicago’s summers can be sticky, especially when contrasted with its icy winters.

At that point I was working from home (long before it became the cool thing to do) because the company was based near Fort Lauderdale.  And I really couldn’t afford to spend the time doing the lawn.  Anyway, one afternoon I was just about to go out and cut the thing when the doorbell rang.  When I opened it, there were two boys standing there, aged about ten.

“Cut your lawn for ten bucks?”

Hell, yes.

Whereupon these two little buggers (each had their own, okay, most likely Dad’s lawnmower) cut the lawn — good grief, they ran behind the mowers, and the grass was cut to almost professional standard in just about fifteen minutes.  They didn’t do edging (“Our Dads won’t let us because they say it’s dangerous”) but that was really just a half-hour job, and easily done after 5 o’clock.

“See you again next week, boys?”

They actually sounded surprised.  “You want us to come back?”

Hell, yes.  And over the next couple years, I never cut my own lawn again. And nor did a lot of my neighbors, once I told them about these kids at the next block party.  These boys made an absolute fortune, and worked their tails off.

And if the local council gauleiters  had ever tried to stop these kids from earning some money from good, honest hard work, I do believe that the neighborhood dads would have burned down their offices.  They didn’t interfere, of course, either because they never learned about these budding entrepreneurs or because they just ignored them (as they should).

Now I’m not suggesting that whenever Gummint does what they did to young Danny Doherty above, the neighborhood dads should torch their offices or tar and feather the bastards.  That would be incitement, and I’m never going to do that no sirree not me not ever.

But I sure as hell wouldn’t try to stop those irate folks if they did.  I would offer to hold their coats, however, just as a good neighbor should.

News Roundup

Bad News

So let’s look at some (mostly) non-fake news.


...just exposing another one of her many lies — the bitch has always been of the “no borders” persuasion.  Also see:


...just doing her best to keep up with her VP’s record of lies about his background.
#LikeJohnFuckfaceKerry

In Business News:


...this would have sounded so much better if IBM were moving all their R&D back to the United States, but IBM ceased to be an actual American company way back in the 1990s.

And would it be a week without some We’re All Gonna DIIIEEEE! news?


...quick, impose a lockdown!
#NazzoFastGuido

Some Sports News:


…that’s because he may be a professional racer, but he’s clearly an amateur drinker.

In Military News:


...nothing about the Army has looked good since Desert Storm ended and DEI/LGBTOSHTFU was installed.
#HangMarkMilley

This just in from The Great Cultural Assimilation Project©:


...it’s “California-In-The-Rockies”;  what else did you expect?


...wait:  the FBI did some actual law enforcement?
#SarahsShockedFace

And in the continuous fake news a.k.a. Global Cooling Climate Warming Change©:


…

In the Commercial News Dept.:


...sorry, sweetie;  I know you’re just doing it for the $$$, but no way no how no chance not ever will I buy anything from that bunch of San Francisco anti-gun Commie assholes.

And speaking of giant dicks, we have in Medical News:


...one of the perils of your wife being gluten-intolerant?  Keyword:  Lebanon.

And after that snippet, the usual collection of 

  ...lemme guess: “Forgive and forget”?

...people who have no lives of their own.


...nope, I have no idea who she is either, but that’s never stopped me before:

And that’s the rear end of the news.

No Room For Screwups

Eco-Crap

…and by “room” I mean space, or area, not a room inside a building.

The first problem with Britishland is that it’s tiny — I mean, the entire United Kingdom can pretty much fit inside Oregon.  The other problem is that (outside the cities) British countryside is unspeakably gorgeous. The third problem is that when (say) a political party screws up, the effect on the population as a whole can be nigh-catastrophic.

Here in Murka, by way of contrast, you can build a 2,500-acre solar- or wind farm with 600-ft turbines in, say, West Texas or anywhere in Nebraska and the chances are that unless you put it next to an interstate or similar, nobody’s even going to know it’s there.  So when the solar panels are destroyed by a lightning strike or the wind turbines get blown over, it’s the proverbial tree falling over in a forest — nobody notices.

The problem is that in Britishland, 2,500 acres is a big deal, and anything you build there (e.g. those 600-ft turbines) will not only be visible, but the chances are that they will, in the words of Jeremy Clarkson’s county planning commission, spoil an Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty.  And still on Clarkson’s farm, remember how the local council gives him a hard time on his farm of only 1,000 acres — less than half of one of those solar/wind farms as mentioned above.  How much more trouble would said councils kick up over so large an intrusion?

Well, not much, as it turns out.  Why?

The new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero didn’t waste any time in announcing his approval of a solar farm on the Cambridgeshire and Suffolk border covering 1,000 hectares or nearly 2,500 acres. This £600million development, Miliband said, was ‘crucial to achieving Net Zero’ and would provide ‘an abundant source of cleaner, cheaper energy on the mission towards 2030’. This is just one project out of many across the farmland and moors of Britain.

Miliband is also planning the imposition of wind turbines up to 200 metres (656ft) in height, again ignoring the wishes of local residents and their potential harm to the countryside. For example, there are plans to site 65 turbines of 200 metres on 2,300 hectares of Walshaw Moor, in Calderdale, West Yorkshire. Campaigners against the scheme believe it will be damaging to bird life, such as skylarks and curlews, and increase the risk of flooding. Up to 10,000 tons of concrete will be needed to support these turbines at their base, together with quarried material for 22 miles of access roads. The unsightly structures will be visible for miles in a beloved part of the country. These developments include the construction of a network of transmission pylons across the countryside.

Not to be outdone by Ed Miliband, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has decided that part of the green belt should be relabelled grey to help build a target of 1.5million homes in five years. And while Rayner thinks some green belt land is ugly, she has dropped the need for aesthetically pleasing buildings. She protests that she isn’t going to build unsightly houses yet she is dismissive of the concept of beauty, commenting that ‘beautiful’ means nothing really, but ‘one thing to one person and another thing to another’.

Remember that of all the terminally-destroyed habitats in the world (e.g. the Aral Sea in the former U.S.S.R.), pretty much all of them are to be found in socialist- or formerly-socialist countries.

Nothing, it appears, gives a Stalinist (e.g. the aforementioned Rayner) greater pleasure than to screw up the environment — whether it’s to fulfill the latest Glorious Five-Year Plan or, as above, Net Zero (a nominally eco-sensitive initiative).  After all, as Rayner admits, beauty is just a bourgeois concept, after all.

I am amazed that the average British voter cannot see (or refuses to see) that all the great socialist dreams are never actually in pursuit of their stated goals (improve the lot of the peasants/proletariat, or “save” the environment), but are rather simply a nostrum for oppressing and controlling people’s lives.  But whatever, the Brits voted these foul Stalinists into power, and now they’re going to reap the whirlwind of the consequences.

Ordinarily in a situation like this, I’d just ask Pontius to hand over the basin;  but the fact is that I’m truly saddened by what’s going to happen to one of the most beautiful countrysides on Earth, a countryside that I’ve visited often and love — love a lot more than the British governing class, to start off with.