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Brutes

Guy Stuff

I know that in days past, I expressed my love for the new Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, which delivers over 500hp from a 2.9-liter V6. This list, however (via Insty) seems to take the whole thing over the top. Cases in point:

— Does anyone think that Dodge can make a car which can handle well enough to push out over 700hp without killing the driver and everyone else within a quarter-mile of its crash?
— Will anyone who wants to tow a boat even look at the BMW X5 (567hp, $100k+) as the horse?
— A 640hp Cadillac? What are these guys smoking?
— I make no comment about the Shelby Mustang, Camaro or Corvette because their owners, like those of the Dodge Hellcat, are probably not long for this world anyway.

I know, I know: we’re a nation founded on power and excess and all that good stuff. But at some point, someone at a car manufacturer has to ask the question: “Why?” (And listen to Jeremy Clarkson — the world’s foremost “POWAAAAHHHH!!!” speed freak; even he has admitted on occasion that a car can be too powerful.)

Most people can barely handle 150hp in their cars, let alone more than 500hp — use your favorite search engine to look up “Bugatti Veyron crash” for a simple flavor, and this in a million-dollar-plus car which has far less than 500hp and handles like a dream — which makes me think that these powerhouses should probably come with a mandatory driving course entitled: “When your IQ is less than a sixth of your car’s horsepower.”

I once watched a guy trying to reverse his McLaren F1 out of a parking space at Eatzi’s in Plano. It took him several minutes, multiple tries and half a dozen near-collisions with other parked cars because he had no idea how to handle the F1’s power for what is, after all, the most mundane of tasks we ask of a car.

My only consolation from all this is that the consumer market for the above will be refreshingly small, kept that way by cost, commonsense and, sadly, attrition.

I still want the Quadrifoglio, of course, because a.) it’s beautiful and b.) it’s an Alfa Romeo, but I’d still want it even if it had half the stated horsepower. How many of the other cars on that list would remain as desirable under that criterion, I wonder.

Not Myself

Grief & Loss

I’m not normally a melancholy person, and apart from the obvious reason, I really have no idea why I feel that way now: the house sale closes on Monday, Daughter got a new job (yay!), the other kids are doing fine, and I have two trips, one local and one international to look forward to in June.

Yet there it is: today feels like an “empty” day, I feel crappy and unmotivated, and I shouldn’t be.

It doesn’t help that Doc Russia is away for the next week or so, slaughtering dangerous game in his annual African safari (see below); this means that I’m denied my usual “beer, scantily-clad women, loud music and friendly company” remedy for whatever is bringing me down. I’d love to have a few cocktails, but I can’t and never could drink by myself. This is a new thing for me; in the past, I was perfectly happy to be all by myself, and was seldom if ever depressed. Now, I hate being without companionship, and I feel lonely without it. Fuck.

I think I’ll head down to the DFW range for most of the day, and give several of my guns a workout, followed by a thorough cleaning.

Normal blogging service should resume tomorrow. Sorry about that, but I don’t think I’m quite done dealing with this bloody bereavement thing yet.

Killing Time

Guy Stuff

This cheerful little pic arrived in my Inbox at 5am today:

 

Yes, that’s Doc Russia on the right, the PH on the left. The skull will eventually decorate his office wall. (Mr. Free Market got his buff on Monday.)

I have to tell you, in all the hunting I ever did in Africa, I never went after Cape buffalo, because I simply didn’t have the guts. (Also, the money for the license fee, but that’s not an excuse.)

Kudos to them both.

Breaking Promises

Politics

Okay, it seems like the Left is trying to push the meme that President Trump is a failure because he didn’t do much in his first (artificial deadline of) 100 days in office.

I agree. In fact, I’m holding Trump accountable for breaking some of his electoral promises, to whit:

  1. There have been no mass roundups of homosexuals and shuttling them off to concentration camps in cattle cars.
  2. There have been no reports of mass roundups of illegal Central- and South American aliens, and shuttling them off to Babi Yar-style killing pits for summary execution.
  3. Ditto university professors and -administrators.
  4. Not one woman’s uterus has burst explosively because she was denied a pregnancy termination under the new Trump anti-abortion laws.
  5. You still can’t buy a full-auto assault rifle in Aisle 17 at Wal-Mart without a background check.
  6. It’s still illegal to shoot transsexuals in the street on sight. (Bruce or Shirley Jenner — or whatever xie calls xumself these days — can breathe a sigh of relief.)
  7. Madonna is still at large, unmolested by the newly-created Trump Secret Police force. Ditto Whoopi Goldberg and [300,000-strong list omitted].
  8. Journalists have still not been flogged in the public square according to Trump’s new laws, either.

Now the cynics among my Readers — and there are one or two — may point out that as attractive as some of the above situations might seem to us Deplorables, Trump never promised any of them in his campaign speeches.

All I can say is that during the 2016 presidential campaign, you obviously didn’t read the New York Times or watch MSNBC, then, because they assured us that he did.

Question Of The Day

Politics

From Reader MadJack:

I saw this question on Quora and was intrigued.
“What is the biggest mistake a U.S. President has ever made?”
The number one answer was Watergate, but I’m not so sure I agree with that. I’d be interested to know what you and your readers think — most know more about history than I do, and that includes the parts I lived through.

In modern times, I’d have to say it was George H.W. Bush, who broke his “No New Taxes” promise to the electorate. That mistake cost him a second term and (coupled with Ross fucking Perot) put Bill Bastard Clinton into the White House in 1993.

The other huge mistake was Harry Truman’s acceptance of the United Nations onto U.S. soil, but I’m not sure whether he could have done much to stop it even had he wanted to. He could have refused to sign the Charter — as a Republican president of the time might surely have done — but he went along with it partly from his own conviction and partly because it was a cornerstone of the saintly FDR’s legacy.

One more presidential mistake to consider was JFK’s refusal to allow the U.S. Air Force (or any other branch) to support the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. I know people will say that the USSR might have intervened, but any scrutiny of the history of the time will show that the Commies didn’t have the military capacity to project power that far into the Western Hemisphere, and there was no way they would have used a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.A. just to protect Cuba. But Kennedy’s reluctance, coupled with his disastrous meeting with Kruschev a few months later, did embolden the Soviets to start installing medium-range missiles in Cuba, which in turn led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. While Kennedy did redeem himself on that one by standing up to the Soviets, it was a problem largely of his own making. (One wonders how Urkel Obama would have responded to Kruschev’s ploy… no, I don’t wanna think about it.)

By the way, Watergate was a huge blunder for Nixon — the cover-up was, anyway — but I think Gerald Ford’s preemptive pardon of Nixon was an even bigger one, because it put Jimmy Shitforbrains Carter into the White House in 1977.

Readers are encouraged to add their suggestions in Comments. I’m not an expert on pre-20th century U.S. presidents by any standards, so I’d like to hear thoughts on that era especially.

Faking It

Men & Women

More news from the Female Orgasm Front: apparently, eight out of ten British women fake their orgasms. (Men do too, just in smaller numbers.)

Don’t care. Besides, they’re Brits, ergo drunk most of the time, ergo probably can’t remember what happened anyway.

And in an unrelated development (via Insty again), some guy has invented a machine (called a “Yarlap” — priceless) which stimulates a woman’s pelvic floor and may help her have an orgasm.

Still don’t care. I thought that kegels were supposed to do this precise function, but apparently eight out of ten British women are either too drunk or too lazy to do even this most basic of exercises.

And just to add a little visual to this piece, here’s the pic (again) of Typical British Chick:

No man should.

Frankly, I’m surprised that more British men don’t fake their orgasms, just to escape their predicament.