The Midi

Everyone owes it to themselves to visit the South of France, especially the Provence and Louberon areas.  There’s something different about the place, and not just the architecture and scenery:  even the light is unlike anywhere I’ve ever been.  When you see artwork as painted by Cezanne and Van Gogh, you look at the light and think that the golden tint that diffuses the scenery is unrealistic or even fake, but it isn’t — it really does look like that.  (It’s best visited in summer, by the way:  winter has a different light altogether, as I discovered when I toured the area with Longtime Friend Knob a couple years back.)

Anyway, all that is to introduce an artist I’ve never seen before (introduced to me by New Wife, by the way), who apparently specializes in painting scenes from the Midi:  Laurent Parcelier is his name, and here’s an example:

Painting Artist Laurent Parcelier at WOoArts

This one serves as the wallpaper on my laptop as we speak.

Here’s another:

Painting Artist Laurent Parcelier at WOoArts

Yes, that’s exactly what the sunlight looks like in Provence — I’ve seen several places that could be carbon copies of the above.

You can find some of Parcelier’s other works over here.  Unusually (for me), I like just about every single one of them.

Enjoy browsing.  And the website, WOoarts.com, has some other interesting artists as well.

Risky Bidness

Apparently, some “experts” (standard warning applies) over in Britishland (same warning) have come up with a list of activities that carry a risk of catching Chinkvirus cooties, ranked according to risk level:

All FYI — as much of what is listed is pretty much commonsense.  I do wonder, though, how “protest march”, “rioting” and “looting” (some overlap) did not make the list.

2020 Strikes Again

Once again, the Year From Hell is adding to the catalogue of woes:

And I think the Grand Finale will be:

…which, if it blows, will pretty much wave goodbye to Western civilization.  (The Third World is already in Dark Ages-style squalor, so not much change for them  and like cockroaches, they’ll survive.)

There’s only one thing to do, at this point:

Not my actual Cabinet ‘O Scotch*, but it’s pretty close.  So, after I’m done loading up my [number deleted]  AK- and M1 Carbine mags…

Cheers, y’all.


*Upon close inspection, there are only about a couple of those brands that I’ve never tasted, so maybe a pre-Apocalypse run to Ye Olde Liqueure Shoppe is called for…

Let’s Get Defunding

Seeing as how everyone’s getting all “defund this” and “defund that”, allow me to offer a few candidates out of this lot:

A U.S. Army email, sent after the Fourth of July to its military and civilian members, included a graphic which claimed saying the phrase “Make America Great Again” is evidence of “white supremacy.”
The graphic listed other behaviors it deemed evidence of white supremacy, including, “Celebration of Columbus Day,” the “Denial of White Privilege,” “Talking about ‘American Exceptionalism,’” and saying “There’s Only One Human Race.”

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL, duh) is all over this, and he:

…has sent a letter to U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, demanding an investigation.
Brooks asked McCarthy to answer the following:

1. Who within the Department of the Army is responsible for the creation of the email and document?

2. Who within the Department of the Army approved the email and document?

3. Pursuant to the creation and approval of the document, was there a violation of either the Hatch Act or DoD Directive 1344.10?

4. If a violation of the Hatch Act or DoD Directive 1344.10 is found to have occurred, will those responsible be held accountable for their actions?

5. If it is found that a violation occurred (which seems pretty obvious), how will those federal employees be held accountable for their illegal conduct?

The Army needs to stamp out this bullshit toot sweet, and defund the people responsible (every single one who falls into the above five questions), i.e. either by court-martial and dishonorable discharge, by RIF-ing their asses out of existence or (if some civilian asshole is involved) fire them with loss of all benefits and privileges.  (I leave it to my .dot-mil veteran Readers, e.g. Staff Martin, to offer the precise details in Comments.)

I’m not going to go overboard and throw the “treason” word around — it’s been used way too cavalierly just recently — but if we take on faith that the “MAGA” expression belongs to the C-in-C (and it does), what’s going on here is (at best) gross insubordination.

I’m being quite serious, here.  This nonsense does not belong in our Armed Forces;  their job is to help keep America great, but if they can’t be trusted to do that — and this is a prime indicator that they can’t — there needs to be some kind of ill wind that blows all the non-essential, and even the marginally-essential, REMFs  out into the fucking trash can.

ArmySec McCarthy needs to jump on this quickly, have answers for Brooks with 24 hours, or face termination himself.

Get ‘Em While They’re Hot

Here’s an interesting line of thought from Mr. Free Market.  As we all know, one of the Greens’ major pushes to curb our beloved shooting fun has been to declare that Eeeeevil Lead Boolets are poisoning the Earth and We’re All Gonna Die Even The Cute Lil’ Animules Boo Hoo.

Now granted, lead is kinda yucky stuff, but I do feel that the Great Lead Poisoning Scare is probably overblown, like so many of the other claims of the Greenies.  And places like Califuckingfornia have already enacted bans on things like lead shot in shotgun shells and so on because OMG when we shoot birds and such, the lead pellets eventually soak into the ground and watershed etc. etc. etc. but we’re all familiar with that whine and that’s not what I wanted to talk about anyway.

Here’s the interesting part.  Over in Britishland, lead shot has been banned (if not outright, then nearly enough so to make the difference irrelevant).  Certainly, all I ever saw Over There was steel shot-filled shells, and don’t even talk about taking your own stuff over there because you would be lying facedown on the tarmac at Heathrow as soon as some enterprising twerp from H.M. Customs discovered your wickedness.  It’s steel shot, or nothing.

Now as we all know, steel shot does all sorts of nastiness to your shotgun barrels over time, especially if you are a keen shotgunner like Mr. FM (who each year buys his cartridges by the pallet rather than by the case).  It’s all fine and dandy, though, because if you’re shooting a boring old Beretta or similar (as he does — according the manager at James Purdey & Son, Mr. FM has terrible taste in firearms), it just means that every five years or so you either replace your shotgun altogether, or just buy a new barrel set and have them fitted to the old action.

As I said, this is no big deal if your guns are made by Armas Tsheep Y Nasti in Spain or some such place.  Nobody cares if your ugly old gun has to get replaced by another ugly gun (see:  Kim’s old No-Name Brand 16ga side-by-side, long overdue for replacement).

But what if you are a man of refined taste and deep wallet?  What if your shotguns are of this pedigree?

This 5-gun set of matched Holland & Holland guns (two 12ga, two 20ga and one 28ga) are selling, secondhand, for just under $300,000.  Yup: three hundred thousand Washingtons.

I’m not going to debate whether said guns are worth it* — actually, given the price of new H&H side-by-side guns, $60 grand per gun isn’t that out of line — but even hardened shooters like me, who shoot their guns instead of locking them up in a bank vault somewhere, are going to wince every time they pull the trigger and send steel shot scraping their way down the barrel.

In other words, these are not guns whose barrels will be replaced — they have become literally too expensive, and too much of an investment, to be used.  And if they are used, the depreciation of the investment is going to be horrendous.

What this means for Purdey, Holland, McKay Brown and all the other makers of bespoke guns is that the demand for their merchandise is going to evaporate.  Mr. FM reckons that in twenty years time, you’ll not see any of these fine guns out in the field anymore;  and I for one think that’s a very bad thing.

I know, I know:  this is probably the very epitome of a First World problem.  But it’s not just that.  It’s that the eventual  disappearance of quality workmanship and gunmaking is going to make the world a little less fine, and a lot more ugly and common.

It’s as though Ferrari, McLaren, Rolls-Royce and Bentley were to disappear, leaving us only the choice between Kia, Honda and Ford.   Or if cars’ engines, regardless of manufacturer, were restricted only to the “sensible” upper limit of 120hp.  What kind of world would that be?

I don’t like that thought, and I really don’t like the idea of a world without fine guns.


*even if I had that kind of money to spend on shotguns, I wouldn’t buy those Hollands because they have single triggers and pistol grips (ugh, and no).  My choice, of all the guns at Steve Barnett’s place, would be this matched pair:

…and a bargain they are, at only $72,500 for the pair. [/eyecross]

But I would never — ever — take them over to Britishland for some birdshooting in Dorset with Mr. Free Market.  Not if I’m going to destroy those beautiful barrels with poxy steel shot, that is.  (I know, bismuth / plated shot.  I’m too old to learn how to shoot lighter loads.)

Finally, the usual caveat applies:  I accept no responsibility for empty bank accounts, ruined relationships and other such bad things should you follow those links.