R.I.P. Val

I’m sorry to see that the Big C finally ended the life of Val Kilmer, who I’ve always thought was a fine actor.  If he’d played no other part, his role as the dying Doc Holliday in Tombstone  would make a hell of an acting legacy.  In The Saint, Heat  and even the silly Real Genius:  likewise brilliant.

As for the rest… pick your favorites.

(Apparently, according to some directors, Kilmer could be a total asshole to work with, but I don’t care about that.  Sometimes, talent excuses a few peccadilloes, a.k.a. the Barrymore Exception.)

The New Brazos Tragedy

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I would be selling off a number of my guns to get a better handle on my financial situation.  Several Readers contacted me, and I have to say that pretty much all have been snapped up.  To all those Readers who sent me a request for a list, sorry — but Reader Matt The Polack, who lives here in north Texas, made me an excellent offer for all but one of them and is now the proud owner thereof.  The guns also came with shall we say a substantial quantity of ammo included in the price.

I’m now down to what I consider the bare minimum of rifles — an AK-47, which as my SHTF gun cannot be sold, and my beloved Browning 1885 High Wall .45-70 Govt, which was a gift from you guys back in the day and which although originally included in my to-sell list, I just cannot bring myself to part with.  As I’m unlikely ever to go hunting again, therefore, all my other rifles were redundant and have disappeared from Ye Olde Gunne Sayfe, ditto their boolets from Ye Olde Ammoe Locquere.

Of course, my .22 rifles are not included (because they’re not guns but household commodities, as I never tire of reminding people);  although I did toy with selling the Marlin heavy-barreled varmint rifles, I’ve reconsidered because they are now the only scoped rifles I still own and with my failing Old Fart Eyes, I have to be able to hit something.

My handguns… ah, now I’m faced with a dreadful dilemma.

You see, I really have few (shall we say) extraneous handguns.  All are either needed for self-defense or else plinking — pretty much the same situation as my rifles now are.  I do have a duplicate or two, however, so I’m offering this one up for sale:

It’s a Ruger Single-Six in .22 LR (only;  there’s no .22 Mag swap-out cylinder) which I love, but it’s one of two in the safe.  POR.

The only other handgun I’m considering selling is my Ruger Super Blackhawk in .30 Carbine:

Look;  this is a fun gun.  It’s not really a hunting gun, and obviously not much use as a self-defense piece either.  BUT:  few other guns compare in that the noise is wonderful, the 18″ muzzle-flash impressive, and the recoil out of the 7″-barreled heavy revolver is somewhat less than a .357 Magnum.  If I do sell it — and I’m really torn about it, as you can see — it will carry a hefty price premium, although that price will be somewhat ameliorated by the amount of ammo that would be included in the sale.  (With the M1 Carbine gone — aaargh! — I no longer need to keep any .30 Carbine ammo.) Interested parties should email me for details.

None of my other handguns are for sale, for the simple reason that in addition to their utility, I cannot bear to part with any of them.

Finally, let me provide a humble reminder of my annual fundraiser — the last I hope to ever do — and for which the details are here.  My heartfelt thanks to all who have already contributed.

That Tariff Thing

Ignoring any sensationalism from the Daily Mail  (like ignoring rapaciousness from the IRS), I see that Britishland faces a 10% tariff hike.

Which, using Kim’s patented Law Of Ten Method, means nothing.  (The corollary to said law, when applied to budgeting, says that you can always take 10% off anything without much or indeed any problem.  This is true of a household or corporate budget.)  Remember too that tariffs are not applied to the retail sale price — i.e. what you pay for them — but to the cost of goods in the home country.  Even so, I expect that U.S. retailers will eat some of any wholesale price increases, so the retail cost of goods to the consumer will not be that onerous.  Especially after we’ve just gone through Bidenflation. [25,000-word rant on that topic deleted]

I see this, with amusement:

The UK currently exports around £60billion worth of goods to the US. 

Almost all of these goods will now be taxed 10% to send them to the US, making it more expensive.  

Within this £60billion, British cars make up just over £6billion of the exports. Trump last night announced a 25% tariff on all imported cars, again making it more expensive, and less attractive, to buy UK-made motors.

So those Rolls Royces, Bentleys and NuJaguar Duracell cars are going to cost more (not the full 25%, as I expect that the manufacturers thereof will eat at least part if not most of the tariff).  Somehow, I’m pretty sure that the Murkin buyers (plutocrat scum) of said luxury items will not be  driven away by what is not a significant price increase.

Doubtless, my post-lottery Eagle E-type will cost more:

…but I’m pretty sure the lottery winnings would absorb the hit with little notice.  [/snark]

As for companies like AstraZeneca (the Covid guys) with their ~5,000% profit margins, my heart bleeds custard, the chiseling scum.

The Euros (20%), on the other hand, may have a harder time of it, and the Chinese (34%) harder still.  Whatever.  Peruse the table below, and feel free to comment about any of the countries that you may know about.

The Balkans are not listed, but I’ll be curious to see what if anything happens to the price of, say, Prvi Partizan ammo.

Finally, just remember that the United States is the world’s largest market for just about everything made in that world, so if prices rise too high, Americans will just stop buying that imported shit.  Which suits me just fine.  I’d like to see a whole bunch of textile mills, for example, re-open in places like Mississippi, who could sure use the jobs that they lost to the cheaper sweatshops in Asia in not-so-long-ago times, when the Finance assholes moved their operations abroad.

Interesting times.

Dept. Of Righteous Stabbings

Okay, it wasn’t actually a shooting, but I think everyone will agree with my bending the rules in this case.  Here’s the headline:

Schoolchildren disarm robber and stab him to death after being held at gunpoint

The 40-year-old man reportedly approached the two schoolchildren, a girl and a boy, on a bike. They reported that he was armed with a gun and knife and tried to steal their phones. The Public Prosecutor’s Office said that the victims got into a struggle with the man, with one of them snatching the knife off him. The man was stabbed two or three times but managed to get away on his bike. Shortly after he was found lying in the road.

I guess the moral of the story is:  Don’t mess with Chilean teenagers.

And this last item will come as a surprise to exactly nobody:

The prosecutor also confirmed that the deceased had previous criminal records.

…which ended right there, on a dusty street somewhere in Chile. [/Hemingway]

Oh, The Humanity

Why am I reduced to peals of helpless laughter at these tales of woe?

Thousands of federal employees who were forced to return to their offices in recent weeks have made some disgusting discoveries – including a lack of toilet paper and rodents.

Donald Trump promptly ended work from home options for federal workers upon taking office, saying anyone who does not ‘show up to the office on time and on schedule’ will be fired.

Ever since, federal employees across the country have found themselves in cramped offices where they have been forced to clean toilets and take out the trash, according to the New York Times. 

One Bureau of Land Management employee even detailed to NPR how ‘we have to go to the agency head to ask if we can buy toilet paper’ because the government-issued pay cards they used to use have been capped at $1 under Trump’s spending freeze. 

Together, the unidentified employees have said the Trump administration’s efforts to bring back federal workers has been marred by a lack of planning and coordination, leading to confusion and even more inefficiency.

At times, the federal workers are even forced to share office space with people from other agencies – creating chaos as they all try to video conference at different times.

Some have said they were not even fortunate enough to get a desk at the offices, with shortages of anywhere to 80 to 100 desks, according to a Federal News Network survey. 

The lack of space has left some working out of conference rooms, cafeterias, hallways and even storage closets.

At the Food and Drug Administration, employees who flocked to the Maryland office on March 17 also found that parking was scarce, and a line snaked around the neighborhood as workers tried to get through security.

Once inside, they told the Times, they found the cafeteria had not stocked up enough food and there were not enough office supplies to go around.

A scientist with the agency, who was hired for a remote position, also said she now has to share office space while she works on sensitive and proprietary projects – creating ethical and practical concerns.

Meanwhile, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, employees were told to brace for limited parking at the two campuses.

One employee there said it can now take up to an hour and a half just to leave the campus because the parking lot is so full and there are choke points at every turn.

Read the whole thing, because there are so many more tales of woe.

Listen, you motherfucking taxpayer-supported slackers:  change is always uncomfortable, and sometimes it takes a little time for things to get worked out properly.  In the meantime:  deal with it because after all, if the conditions are that problematic, quit.   (You know, the way people in the private sector have to deal in the midst of corporate downsizings and the like.)  The fact that these pampered little Gummint apparatchiks now have to live in the real world — a world that they seem to have had no problem with forcing onto the private sector — is just one of those things.

I also note with amusement the source of this whining:  the New York fucking Times and National Pussified Radio.  Haven’t seen much about it in conservative media, of course, but there ya go.

I needed a good laugh, anyway.