No Thanks

Arriving in my Inbox yesterday was this breathless news:

Man, have they ever got me wrong.

In the first place, my NRA membership has long since expired — which just shows you the value of a mailing list (at least to them).

And yeah, I’m so jazzed about winning a fucking sandy-colored Glock, because that screams right there that I’m an “operator” and I really want to be regarded as such.

Even if

were to be replaced by any one of these:

…I still  wouldn’t have sent in an entry and renewed my membership.

To the NRA:  don’t hold yer breath, you clueless idiots.

The good thing about electronic mail is that it costs almost nothing to send a message.  That’s also the bad thing about e-mail.

More Lockdown Problems

What was that about familiarity breeding contempt?

Three Brits having affairs during the lockdown have revealed their stories as they look for ways to spice up being in isolation.
Speaking to FEMAIL, the trio – all of whose names have been changed – revealed how they have taken to FaceTime sex and affairs from their city pad as they struggle to deal with the restrictions.

This comes as the UK’s leading affairs site Illicit Encounters reported a 15 per cent rise in activity in the last month.
More than half of male members (54 per cent) said they had initiated new affairs in the last four weeks, with the main reason for this rise being ‘boredom’ sparked by being stuck at home in the lockdown.
Meanwhile almost half of female members (46 per cent) had made contact with a new male partner in the last four weeks, revealing that the crisis had exposed the weakness of their main relationship and made them realise they needed ‘fresh stimulus’.

So far, the only extramarital business adversely affected by the “stay at home” policy seems to be prostitution, and that’s not going to last long either.  When it comes to strange nookie, people will always find a way.

This, however, will undoubtedly be true:

‘There is going to be an explosion of affairs when the lockdown ends – a long, glorious summer of sex. The Roaring Twenties are really going to take off.’

Gratuitous Gun Pic: Ruger Talo Carryhawk (.45 LC/.45 ACP)

While seeking to assuage my Lockdown Blues a couple days ago, I stumbled on this little piece at Collectors:

Hmmm… a down-sized carry revolver in .45 Colt/ACP;  what could be bad about it.?

Leaving aside the single-action issue (not an optimal choice for self-defense, really), what’s wrong with this piece is the bird’s-head grip.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find revolvers thus gripped to be almost uncontrollable:  the damn thing turns in my hand not just up-and-down (which is a good thing with the bird’s head as it helps handle recoil) but side-to-side as well, which is a huge problem.  I once had a pretty little Ruger Bearcat revolver in .22 LR, like this one:

…and after a couple years I sold it to someone who wanted just that kind of revolver.

Maybe it just was my hand size, I dunno;  but I just had no fun shooting it.  And that was a .22 LR revolver:  what, I wonder, will it be like trying to control that grip in a meatier chambering like the .45?  I’ll probably never own this type of gun again, but I’m willing to be proved wrong.

Your thoughts in Comments.

Remembering

The other night I watched a little movie on Netflix entitled simply “Itzhak”, which unsurprisingly was a little mini-biography about virtuoso violinist Itzhak Perlman.

Some background is necessary before I go any further.  I attended a classical concert in Chicago many years ago, and the “house band” was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, then and now one of the finest orchestras in the world, conducted by Georg Solti, one of the finest conductors ever to wield a baton.  The opening piece (if I remember correctly) was something by Beethoven, and the CSO played it wonderfully.

Then Itzhak Perlman came to the stage, painfully hobbling along on his crutches, his polio-ravaged legs waving helplessly as he made his way to the First Violinist’s chair.  He sat down, rearranged his legs with his hands, then waited while the CSO began playing Brahms’s  Violin Concerto in D major, which is characterized by a lengthy introduction before the lead violinist plays a note.  Then it came time for Perlman to play… and the CSO took off like a fighter jet.  In other words, one man’s playing grabbed the already-magnificent orchestra and literally propelled them into a performance of unbelievable virtuosity.  The standing ovation from the audience lasted nearly as long as the performance itself, and several of the orchestra’s violinists dabbed at their eyes with tissues, so moved were they by the experience.

Itzak Perlman was and is a force of nature.

So when I saw this movie on Netflix, I hit Play with gleeful anticipation, and was not disappointed.

Itzhak Perlman is no ordinary man.  Quite apart from his virtuosity with the violin, he is a man of infinite compassion — his charitable works and teaching violin alone would set him apart from most people — he’s been married to his priceless wife Toby forever, is a devoted father to his large family, and loves his pet dogs almost as much, I think, as his children.  He is also wonderfully funny — his description of looking up something Jewish on the Internet as “Jewgle” made me guffaw for several minutes.  I have always loved Perlman’s playing — who could not? — but this was something different:  the longer the movie went on, the more I fell in love with this incredible, singular man.

But, of course, he’s Jewish.

And this would make him a target for all the assholes in the world:  the Muslims, the alt-Right, the academe and intellectuals (especially in Europe) and people like the loathsome Labour politician Jeremy Corbin who are infected with their foul brands of anti-Semitism.

Make no mistake:  to these people — think of Hitler and his Nazis as just the extreme embodiment — this man Perlman, this extraordinary, wonderful man who has been one of the greatest gifts to civilization ever, would be just another Jew to harass in the street, another Jewboy to kick and spit on, and just another Untermensch to load onto a train to be sent to Auschwitz.

Almost two years ago to the day, I wrote these words:

Pound for pound, the Jews have contributed as much or more to Western civilization than any other group — it’s even called the “Judeo-Christian tradition”, FFS — and to discount this contribution deliberately, to me, shows a shallow intellect at best.  (At worst, Hitler, but I’m not going to go there.)  Of course, I know that many Jews are socialists, communists, progressives, one-worlders, and all those things that are not only themselves distasteful, but are contradictory to Western thought.  Ending slavery in the Western hemisphere (an action performed solely by Western nations, lest we forget) is not the same as allowing Western culture to be perverted or submerged by inferior cultures — and let’s be perfectly honest, when compared to Western culture, all other cultures are in general absolutely inferior to ours.  To say otherwise is to be ignorant of history, or to be able to consciously deny the fact of the matter despite all evidence to the contrary.  Judaic culture, by the way, is not inferior to, say, Western culture and civilization because in no small part, theirs is almost indistinguishable from that of Western Europe because of their commonality.  That Israeli liberals seem perfectly prepared to help bring about the destruction of Eretz Israel was always a mystery to me until it was explained to me (by one of my good friends, an Orthodox Jew) that these liberals hate the state of Israel because it is culturally closer to Western European democracy than it is to Eastern European socialism.  And the liberal Israelis have camp-followers all over the world:  in Europe, Britain, the United States and anywhere that Jews can be found in any numbers.  Does that mean “conspiracy”?  Sure, if you’re a moron, because there are many, many Jews who are conservative, too — but somehow, the Conspiracy seems to have passed them by?  Not credible.
So:  am I pro-Israel?  You betcha.  I’m even more  supportive of Israel when I look at the nations of assholes who want Israel destroyed.
Do I think that a lot of Jews are liberal assholes?  You betcha, again. (Don’t even ask me about Jews and their support for gun control, unless we also mention JPFO, who also seem to have missed the memo.)
Am I prepared to become an anti-Semite because of The Great Jewish Conspiracy?  Think again, Adolf.
Would I stand aside if some anti-Semitic pricks started playing their little neo-Nazi reindeer games with Jews in the streets?  Not only would I not  stand aside, but I’d be standing between the two groups, telling the anti-Semites that they’d have to get past me first.
Ich habe Dachau gesehen.
And as long as I have breath in my body, “Never again!” will not be just an empty phrase, even if that seems to be the case with some Jews(!), who think that their tribe’s survival of the Holocaust was somehow irrelevant in today’s world.

Today, coincidentally, is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and this post is dedicated to all my Tribe Readers especially, but also to all my Jewish friends and acquaintances all over the world.

After watching the movie about Itzhak Perlman, a rage descended on me that has not dissipated in the days since, and I’m not sure it ever will.

So here’s what I’m going to do.  Winging its way to me on the wings of the USPS is a yarmulke (kippah) — something not purchased, but given to me by a Jewish friend because, as I explained to him, it would mean more to me coming from a friend than if I’d just purchased it somewhere.

It’s going into my jacket pocket, to be carried everywhere I go.  And from now on, every time I walk around in an area which might be regarded as anti-Semitic — majority Muslim, majority Black, majority alt-Right, whatever  — I’m going to wear the yarmulke, not because I’m Jewish, but because I’m sick to death of this bullshit.

And to anyone who may take issue with me over this:  fuck with me at your peril.

Open Appeal

Several years ago, back when the term “disposable income” meant actual money instead of just a fond dream, I donated some money to a far-off congressman’s reelection campaign fund.

Mistake.

Now I’m still on the Republican National Committee’s sucker donor list, and not a day goes past when I don’t get some plea for money to help some or other hapless Republican congressman, and even to donate to billionaire Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection fund.  Here’s my appeal to the RNC:

For fuck’s sake, can you bastards quit begging for money?  Considering that I and probably millions of other Americans haven’t been able to work for nearly two months and have had zero income since then, it is the height of stupidity [ergo, the Stupid Party] to ask us to donate towards an election which isn’t due for over six months.
Frankly, when it’s hard to think how we’re going to be able to pay the rent or mortgage, car loans and utilities, health insurance and even groceries, what the fuck makes you think that we would be able to give you  money?  Even worse, we all know that after the election is over, the elected  politician is just going to pocket the unspent cash from the campaign fund, one way or the other, while we’ll still be mired in debt.

Kindly piss off and leave us alone, at least until we can get back to work.

Yours very sincerely,

Wise Words

One of the many pleasures of reading Instapundit is Glenn Reynolds’s use of (mostly) single sentences as pithy commentary on whatever link he posts.  Here’s an example:

…and:

In the latter, he’s talking about the Chinkvirus pandemic models, but of course it’s equally applicable to the climate change versions, and just about all the other government- and academic models as well.

“Wise Words”, therefore, is going to become a regular feature on this back porch, gathered under the “Quote Of The Day” umbrella.