Author: Kim du Toit

Cash, No Checks (Or Cards)

The Gun Thing

So now the banks are trying to pee in the soup as well:

Banks and credit card companies held informal discussions about identifying transactions involving firearms.
Although the discussions resulted in nothing tangible — and ideas may never come to fruition — ideas tossed would help companies monitor gun purchases, which includes information on buyers, from retailers.
Financial companies explored the concept of creating a new credit-card code for firearm dealers, similar to similar to how restaurants or department stores identify their transactions, the newspaper reported. Another idea would require retailers to share info about specific firearm products purchases.

Simple solution (which I’m going to implement for myself with immediate effect): pay cash for all gun purchases from now on. This does two things: it stops the possibility of these tools learning about your gun purchases, and it helps the FFL because he doesn’t have to pay the banks the card transaction fee.

I know the problems associated with this: guns are expensive, it takes time to save up the moolah, etc. It’s a small price [sic] to pay.

Here’s what I’m saving up for at the moment, a S&W Mod 66 in .357 Mag with a 4″ barrel:

Actually, instead of the Model 66 I’d really rather get a Model 65, like my old one:

…but of course, S&W in their infinite wisdom [stop laughing]  has decided not to restart production of the 65 as they did with the 66.

So while I’m saving for the 66, I’ll also be on the lookout for a decent secondhand 65 — which purchase would never be traceable, whether by the Gummint or the bastard moneylenders. It’s called a win-win situation.

When’s the next DFW-area gun show?

Failing

Entertainment, Sports

I see that the promoters of the U.S. F1 Grand Prix are going to have one-time Train Smash Woman Britney Spears and someone named Bruno Mars perform at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) over the race weekend this year. This, to encourage people to come to a place which features, as one canny commenter put it, a 56-lap parade lap.

Here’s why I, a Formula 1 devotee, won’t be going back to the US GP anytime soon.

  • Parking — It’s a nightmare. If you don’t mind paying $150 for a parking spot next to the track, then you’re good to go. However, if you balk at paying that fee on top of a $200-plus ticket price, then you’ll be parking in a muddy field over a mile away and walking along a country road to and from the race. It’s total bullshit. There should be large covered parking garages (which we Murkins do better than anyone else, btw) all around the circuit so that race fans can at least get to their cars quickly, even if they then have to endure the
  • Traffic jams — Access to COTA is along a series of tiny, two-lane back-country roads which cannot handle even half the traffic of the event. If the race starts at 1pm, you need to get to within three miles of the track at least three hours beforehand. Last year, Doc Russia, Trevor and I got there two hours beforehand, parked the Doom Wagon (Doc’s ride — don’t ask) and walked about a mile and a half alongside a road full of cars carrying people who were trying to get closer before themelves parking. Some people had given up and were trying to turn around — making the situation even worse — and the only saving grace of the whole thing was that it wasn’t raining (which it often does in Austin in November, by the way, sometimes in torrents). All this hassle, as I mentioned above, at the most excruciating
  • Cost — It seems ironic that only the F1 team owners and drivers can really afford to go to the US GP. Attending the GP could cost, all in, over $1,000 — way too much for the average fan to afford — and to be perfectly honest, when it would cost me only a few hundred dollars more to attend any of the better-managed F1 races in Europe, I can see why the promoters have an uphill battle, especially when the FIA governing body of Formula 1 charges excessive fees to the track owners so that FIA can pay the large amounts of money to the teams to cover development and playboy millionaire-driver costs. Unlike in Yurp, we Murkins have a lot of choices when it comes to motorsports — Indycar and NASCAR come to mind, both of which are better spectacles than F1 anyway, because they are less
  • Boring — It says a lot that a NASCAR race on an oval track can be more exciting to watch than the F1 Grand Prix. In my opinion there are several ways that F1 could improve the sport and make it more exciting for spectators,  but I’ll talk about that some other time. So I’d rather not watch the F1 races in situ, but instead spend my Saturdays and Sundays
  • Online — The annual cost for the F1 live-streaming TV coverage of all the races is about one-tenth the cost of attending a single Grand Prix: no expensive hotel rooms, no driving three hours just to get to Austin, no traffic jams, no long walks over muddy fields and along congested roads, no exorbitant tickets costs, etc. Rather, I’ll sit in my comfortable recliner with some kind of beverage in hand and a bowl of snacks, and watch the entire race, not just the piece of track I can see from my seat. I hope it rains.

And here’s the real takeaway from my gripe: once there’s no reason for me to attend said event, it really doesn’t matter whether there’s a US Grand Prix at all — on TV, the coverage is pretty much confined to the track anyway. (For that matter, I’d rather watch the Spa or Monza races on TV anyway because the tracks are more interesting than the Scalextric layout of COTA.)

Incidentally, I am fully aware of the irony of COTA hiring Britney Spears to perform after their Grand Prix:

 …while F1 has banned grid girls.

Let it also be said that I wouldn’t attend a Britney concert as a gift. I have enough problems with my hearing without subjecting my ears to her breathy dog-whistle voice. And as I have no idea who or what “Bruno Mars” is, it’s a safe assumption that I won’t be watching that either.

Sayonara, Austin Grand Prix. I’d like to say it was fun while it lasted; but overall, it wasn’t. I’m a huge fan of F1 — just not the way you stage it. Too bad, really.

Creature Comforts

Men & Women, Pussification Parade

According to reports, BritPrince Harry will be living with his new Hollywood wife in a tiny village in the Cotswolds area of Oxfordshire, out in the west of Britishland — and from personal experience, I can attest to the place’s extraordinary beauty. There is a silver lining to his cloud (the cloud being his bossy, oh-so modern and trendy spouse): his “local” will be the Falkland Arms, and a pretty place it is too…

Alert Readers will notice the presence of Britain’s best brewery on the sign, which means that Harry, a renowned drinker in his youth, will be able to drink pints of Wadworth 6X… assuming his health-Nazi wife allows him to ever visit the place, that is.

Let’s Hear It For Violence

Terrorism

I was recently triggered by an article (linked by Insty) which contained this little gem:

Here’s the actual bullshit, in its entirety:

“We stand in solidarity with the Red Guards and principally Maoist collectives who are working towards the creation of the Maoist Party. We stand in solidarity with Maoist parties across the world who are committed to building socialism and fighting revisionism through People’s War!
“What needs to be done is the concentric construction of the three weapons of revolution: the Maoist Party, the Maoist People’s Army, and the Maoist United Front. What needs to be done is to militarize the masses and all the pre-Party Maoist formations!
“We must prepare today, yesterday and tomorrow for the prolong confrontation, the protracted war, against the capitalist state. We must carry out military actions against the enemies of the people!”

Ummm when I said I was “triggered”, that doesn’t mean I was offended or whatever the snowflakes normally mean. What happened is that I burst into great shouts of laughter which frightened the neighbor’s cat off the fence.

Listen, you little Maoist pricks: do you know that the “masses”, as you call them (about a hundred million people), are already pretty militarized? More to the point is that when you start carrying out “military actions against the enemies of the people”, tens of millions of your “enemies” will probably shout in a single voice: “The day has come, hallelujah! It’s Zombie Killin’ Time!” whereupon you sorry little bunch of insects are going to see exactly what “violence” means.

Do you actually have any idea what kind of whirlwind you pathetic Commies are going to reap? Do you have any idea how many goobers (like me) have been just waiting to settle that old argument once and for all? (The old argument being: “which would be more effective in killing Commies: the AR-15 or AK-47?”)

The problem is that you Communist tools are still stuck in the past, when the peasants were unarmed and only a few of the “vanguard” were necessary to terrorize the population (with the help of the army). Now, however, after over 100 million deaths caused by Communism, we know exactly who the enemies of the People really are: they’re the Communists, and the army is on the side not of you Commies, but on the side of your supposed “enemies” — the capitalists. If you don’t believe that, you have a rude awakening coming on the Glorious Day. (It’s gonna be glorious, all right — just not in the way you think.)

So good luck with that, assholes. Me, I’m off to the range. My sniper rifle isn’t going to zero itself, nor will my AK be able to dump a full mag into the sweet spot of a (human-shaped) paper target without the shooter (that would be me) being completely “regulated” in its use. (You may want to look up the actual meaning of the word “regulated” in its original placement in the Second Amendment, by the way.)

Don’t get me started on my 1911, which has been looking at me piteously for two whole weeks, begging for an outing.

Hmmm… maybe I was “triggered” after all; certainly my trigger finger started to itch uncontrollably as I read their little manifesto.

Maoist collectives? Pathetic twerps, more like.

Another Frigging Moron

Men & Women

I have often said that had I been Rick Blaine in the movie Casablanca, I would have arranged to have Major Strasser send that Commie rat Viktor Laszlo off to a concentration camp, then spent the rest of the war in Casablanca making boatloads of money from the bar and lots of babies with Ilsa.

I grant you that in my scenario above, Casablanca would have been somewhat different from the version as released, but that’s just me. Others, however,  are drawn to adventure, like this fool who is currently climbing Mt. Everest:

His name is Ben Fogle and he is an “adventurer”, which is all well and good while you’re a single young man with no responsibilities (which is why his counterparts in, say, the Marine Corps are considered expendable).

But Fogle leaves this behind to go on his adrenaline-junkie escapades:

It’s not just the fact that Marina Fogle is drop-dead lovely (which she is), but there are children involved. So when Daddy plunges to his death / gets eaten by a shark / dies of some hideous disease in a poxy jungle in some shithole country, these beautiful kids will have to come to terms with the fact that their Daddy thought that his adventures were more important than they were (which he clearly does).

Frankly, were I Mrs. Fogle, I’d ditch her selfish husband and hook up with someone more responsible. He wouldn’t have to be an accountant or lawyer or some equally-dreadful nebbish, just someone with a greater sense of familial duty than her existing husband. That she doesn’t do this makes her a better person than he is.

Nevertheless, Fogle will doubtless meet a pointless death like that Aussie idiot who was always playing with dangerous animals, and Mrs. Fogle can get on with her life. It’s just too bad that the kids have to suffer along the way.