No Longer Wanted

Pop Quiz: Name This Granny (answer at the end of this post).  Bonus point for guessing her current age, and no cheating with Internets.

 

Never one to shy away from the tough topics, La Paltrow has weighed in on what happens when a woman ages and loses her desirability (or, as she so charmingly puts it, “fuckability”).

‘To get wrinkles and, like, get closer to menopause, and all these things… what happens to your identity as a woman if you’re not f**kable and beautiful?’
Gwyneth firmly believes self-acceptance is key and that as you get older, your inner beauty radiates outwards.
‘Luckily, what’s happening at the same time in parallel… is you just start to like yourself’, she continued.
‘I think you get to a point where it’s almost like your sort of pulchritude is waning in a way and your inner beauty is, like, really coming out, and so it’s this funny shift that’s happening.’

This is what happens when you work in an industry that a.) has no problem with (literally) fucking children and b.) enforces impossible standards of beauty upon its workers:  of course  you begin to think that only the young can be desirable and that women lose their desirability when they age.

As with so much of what Paltrow spouts, it’s mostly bullshit.  I can think of several older women who have aged and become wrinkled, and who could get practically any heterosexual man to bed them.  And I’m not just talking about actresses, either.

Where Paltrow, as always, misses the point is that she confuses “desirability” with universal  desirability.  I’m not au fait  with the current crop of young women who are deemed “hot” by the poplar culture, but let’s just take Scarlett Johansson as someone I know was once (and may still be) considered the ultimate in female desirability.

 

She’s heading for her 35th birthday as we speak, and I think it’s safe to say that in twenty-five years’ time, she will still be quite desirable, just not universally so.

Here’s one-time paragon of beauty Sharon Stone, at age 60:

 

…and still-gorgeous Jane Seymour (at age 65):

 

But let’s ignore for the moment the fact that among actresses, skillful surgery can play a part in prolonging youth (or at least hiding the effects of age) — I have no idea whether any of the above has resorted to same, but we can play the odds — and acknowledge that while stupid men and callow youths (some overlap) are forever in thrall to the “perfect body” (as defined by, say, Playboy  magazine), many men (myself included) find that women get more interesting  as they get older.

And in my case, anyway, that’s not just a function of my getting older;  at age 30, for example, I thought that Sophia Loren (then aged 50) was the sexiest woman alive:

 

…and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t alone in that thought, either.  Now she’s nearer 85, and I’ll bet that for her age she’s still as sexy as hell, unless of course all the wheels have fallen off, so to speak.

 

And even then, some  randy old goat would… let me not go there.

I said it earlier, but it bears paraphrasing:  for a woman to be desirable to all men regardless of her age is never going to happen.  What we do know is that very few older women (with some notable exceptions) are going to be undesirable to all  men.

If Paltrow and her aging ilk are going to go all “Boo-hoo-hoo nobody wants to fuck me”, I would suggest they relocate from Hollywood (and from Southern Cal in general) and try living in a retirement community.  They’ll get more pricks than a pincushion, from all accounts.

Frankly, if Paltrow really is having a problem (and it’s not just some new PR ploy to sell more vaginal marble eggs), it’s probably because as she’s got older, she’s become increasingly more batshit crazy.  I would suggest that that, and not her wrinkled body,  is the passion strangler. Read more

Desert Island Guns

This post is a riff on the BBC’s program “Desert Island Discs”, whereby the guest is asked to list the five pieces of music they would take if exiled to or marooned alone on a desert island (such as this one, screw that grass hut nonsense).

So here’s my list of five guns I’d take under similar circumstances.  (Assume a healthy supply of ammo, targets, cleaning gear etc.  Also, assume you’re never going to be attacked by pirates or zombies, FFS.)

Colt Python (.357 Mag/.38 Special)
Every time I pull the trigger on a Python, I fall in love with shooting all over again.  It is quite possibly the perfect handgun.  I’d choose it with a 6″ barrel.

 

Ruger Single-Ten (.22 LR)
I could take the Single-Six but as any fule kno, ten is better than six.  And plinking is gonna be pretty much an everyday affair, yes?

 

Winchester Mod 62 gallery gun (.22 LR)
Plinking with one of these (or the Taurus knock-off) would be almost continuous, with a series of metal spinner targets set at various ranges.

 

Aguirre y Aranzabal (AyA) XXXV (20ga)
Of course  there’d be a multi-station shotgun range on the island.  I would probably need weekly shipments of clays, by the container.  (And if I could cheat ever so slightly and take two  of these to save on the barrels wearing out after only six months, I’d be very grateful.)  That’s also why I’d pick 20-gauge over the 12:  to spare my shoulder.

 

Finally, to the surprise of precisely nobody, my rifle choice:

Mauser M12 (6.5x55mm)
It is the finest bolt-action rifle I’ve ever fired, period.

Of course, it would be my  M12, as accessorized below:

Needless to say, compiling this list took lots of time because choices.  In the end, I went with guns I’ve fired before and enjoyed shooting more than all the others — and I have fired a lot  of guns in my time.  It’s all very well to think about AK-47s and such, but who actually enjoys  shooting them (other than South African criminals and Muslim/Marxist terrorists)?

And speaking of AK-47s, note the complete absence of semi-automatics in the above.  That was a coincidence, not by design.  I just like working the actions of my guns.

Anyway, those are my five Desert Island Guns.  Feel free to pick your own in Comments, and no cheating with stuff like T/C multi-caliber rifles, either.  Five (5) guns, one chambering per gun.  Have at it.


Update:   “Also, assume you’re never going to be attacked by pirates or zombies, FFS.”

Clearly, I need to emphasize the rules and conditions for some  people…  FFS.

Vanishing Scenes

On a long-ago vacation in the Algarve, my two early-teen sons, who had left the hotel pool to go and swim in the sea, came rushing back towards me in a state of high panic.  “Dad! Dad!  Ugh!  There are these old women lying on the beach without bikini tops!  Ewwww!

In the interests of parental concern, of course, I had to see for myself what was causing such panic, so I wandered over to the clifftop and peered down.  Yup, the boys were correct:  there was a crowd of elderly French women, sagging, pendulous breasts burned almost chocolate brown, sprawled on towels all over the white beach sands.

That may be a thing of the past, according to some study or other, because it appears that French women are no longer interested in topless sunbathing.

Once widespread in France, topless sunbathing is going out of fashion, a survey has shown, with fears about harassment, body image and health seen as prompting a trend to cover up more at the beach.
Fewer than one in five Frenchwomen under 50 said they sported a ‘monokini’, compared to 28 percent a decade ago and 43 percent in 1984, according to the survey by French pollster Ifop published Tuesday.
Young women aged 18 to 25 said harassment, criticism of their bodies and being ogled by men were their biggest barriers to going topless.

Note the highlighted “under 50” qualification above, because it probably means that the sights which so frightened my sons back in the early 2000s are not going to disappear soon.

So as a public service to my Loyal Readers, here are a few examples of what’s going to be vanishing in France:

 

No need to thank me;  it’s all part of the service.

Kindred Spirit

I find myself curiously lethargic these days, when it comes to blogging.  Oh sure, the occasional action of some politician (e.g. Barr’s, yesterday) will pierce the blanket of lethargy and cause me to start looking around for the hammer and nails (okay, the AK-47 and a bandolier of cartridges), but mostly, I’m of the same mind as Taki’s Jim Goad, who took a week off from politics and feels all the better for it.

No matter what I write or how I vote, the debt is higher, there’s no wall, immigration is unchecked, Israel is still America’s master, I have no say in how the government spends even a dollar of the money it bleeds from me, nearly all journalists are dishonest, most people are deeply and incurably stupid, Republicans and Democrats are two arms on the same Frankenstein, the USA is culturally fractured beyond repair, the press still uses the euphemism “teens” for “black rioters,” women still make false rape claims while denying the very existence of false rape claims, white people are being systematically dehumanized by the same propagandists who scoff at the very notion that white people are being systematically dehumanized, trannies remain “the gender they were assigned at birth” no matter if they spend a million dollars to mutilate themselves, the “oppressed” would be just as rotten as the “oppressors” if only given the chance…etc. etc.

Read all of it to get the full flavor.

So for the next week or so, expect nothing more from this blog than gratuitous gun pics, studies of beautiful women, fine works of art and music, discussions of cars and… errrr wait a minute.

But like Joad, I’m taking a holiday from politics for as long as I can stand it.

Let’s just hope that the politicians don’t fuck it up, like they do so many things.

What We Face

As we conservatives gird up to face what would destroy us and our beloved country, consider this article a warning.

Under a prevalent view that has emerged from universities in recent years, a wrong opinion is seen as tantamount to a thrown punch or even an indication of a willingness to genocide—which invites the idea that an offended party who throws a real punch (or worse) is simply acting in self-defense. This idea has become so pervasive and is so taken-for-granted at this point that even workaday journalists now pay homage to this academic conceit in their work.

Who defines what constitutes a “wrong” opinion?  (Hint: it isn’t you.)  Read the whole disgusting thing.

And as a wise man once said:

“Of course, the game the Left has always played is to use violence as a pretext to impose their preferred policies. We’ve had waves of left-wing violence since the Obama administration, all intended to elicit a response. Those responses are used to justify what amounts to political terrorism.”.

Feel free to see what people think, here.

Damn, and I was only at the range a couple days ago, practicing with a sniper rifle.

Well, if you’ll excuse me… that 1911 isn’t going to shoot itself.  Maybe it’s also time for a little AK practice, too.

With All Due Respect, Fuck Off

So the Attorney General thinks we should allow Gummint access to our private lives, does he?

U.S. attorney general William Barr has said consumers should accept the risks that encryption backdoors pose to their personal cybersecurity to ensure law enforcement can access encrypted communications.
In a speech Tuesday in New York, the U.S. attorney general parroted much of the same rhetoric from his predecessors and other senior staff at the Justice Department, calling on tech companies to do more to assist federal authorities to gain access to devices with a lawful order.In remarks, Barr said the “significance of the risk should be assessed based on its practical effect on consumer cybersecurity, as well as its relation to the net risks that offering the product poses for society.”
He suggested that the “residual risk of vulnerability resulting from incorporating a lawful access mechanism is materially greater than those already in the unmodified product.”
“Some argue that, to achieve at best a slight incremental improvement in security, it is worth imposing a massive cost on society in the form of degraded safety,” he said.
The risk, he said, was acceptable because “we are talking about consumer products and services such as messaging, smart phones, e-mail, and voice and data applications,” and “not talking about protecting the nation’s nuclear launch codes.”

Really?  That little speech probably sounded better in the original Chinese.

Then there’s the tu quoque  argument:

The U.S. is far from alone in calling on tech companies to give law enforcement access.
Earlier this year U.K. authorities proposed a new backdoor mechanism, the so-called “ghost protocol,” which would give law enforcement access to encrypted communications as though they were part of a private conversation.

As though we should emulate the British — who, lest we forget already  has governmental powers which allow them to preemptively ban anything to be published which they don’t like.  (It’s called a “D notice”, FYI.)

Here’s my take.  But first, a reminder:

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Considering how the “security services” have already violated this Constitutional precept against one person they didn’t care for (FISA?  Russian collusion, anyone?), why should we trust that these fucking spies won’t abuse this power against anyone else?

OF course, the fucking feds will no doubt blackmail the tech companies into doing their foul work for them:

Barr did not rule out pushing legislation to force tech companies to build backdoors.

I’ll bet he didn’t.   And Barr, lest we forget, is supposed to one of the good guys?  Can you imagine giving this power to a Justice Department, CIA, NSA DHS or any of the other little Stasi acronyms, under a future Democratic Socialist administration?

We might as well live in Communist China or 1970s East Germany.  Which is doubtless exactly where these pricks, all of them, would like us to be.  All for our own security, of course.

FOAD, all of you.

That’s my First Amendment right coming into play.  You don’t want me invoking the Second, you motherfuckers.  There’s another wholly different meaning to “going dark”.