Month: November 2019

Cute Lil Animules

Africa

I read this story with interest few days ago, and it seems like a classic case of animals striking back at humans:

“A chimpanzee came in the garden as I was digging,” Ntegeka Semata said in an interview with the publication. She noted that her four young children were with her and as she turned her back to get water, the chimp took her child by the hand and ran off.
The child screamed, which caused the other villagers to pay attention and chase after him, but it was too late. “It broke off the arm, hurt him on the head, and opened the stomach and removed the kidneys,” Semata continued, adding that the child died on the way to the local hospital.

Here’s the thing.  The article points out that chimps share about 94% of their DNA with humans — i.e. they’re the closest thing to us in the animal kingdom.  That does not make us kinfolk, by the way (just in case the above story didn’t get the point across), and chimps are total assholes:  they exhibit all the bad traits of human behavior (murder, cannibalism, torture etc.), and there’s nothing at all cute about them.  A friend back in South Africa once described their look as “trying to decide which way to kill you”, and he’s not wrong about that.

I was driving through the Kruger National Park once, and I’d stopped to take some photos of a herd of buffalo, when a young male chimp jumped on the car’s bonnet and stood peering into the car through the windshield.  As it happened, I’d left a pack of potato chips on the dashboard, and when the chimp saw it, he started to gibber and jump around, trying to reach the packet through the glass.  Of course, I burst out laughing — and when the chimp heard my laughter, he stopped dead and stared at me with that  look.  Then he ripped off a windshield wiper as though snapping a pretzel, waved it at me, then scuttled off with it like it was a trophy.  It was the most human act I’d ever seen from an animal, any animal.

I should have just shot the little prick but they take a dim view of that kind of thing at the Kruger Park, so I just drove off, seething*.

So yeah, I can quite imagine that the chimp in the article above was pissed off at humans, and destroying their habitat sounds as good a reason as any.  They know  who’s responsible, you see, and some kind of retaliatory action is not at all surprising.

The next time you see some movie where chimps are freed from a medical research facility and set about causing mayhem and murder, I’m here to tell you that it’s not at all far-fetched.

Photo credit: iStock

*Update & Correction Dept.: A couple of Alert Readers contacted me and told me that what happened to me in the Kruger Park was doubleplus unpossible because chimps are tropical jungle-dwellers and not found in Seffrica, ergo it must have been a baboon.  In high dudgeon, I went to find the pictorial evidence (i.e. a photo) that I took of the little bastard… and it was indeed a baboon.

What the hell, they all look alike to me.

That Would Be All Of Them

Entertainment

Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey introduces us to their movie-rating scale:

I have to say that the very last time I paid a full-price movie ticket was for the final Harry Potter  episode — and in fact, I went to the movie house for all the Potter movies.  If I recall correctly, the last non-Potter movie I saw in a cinema was Saving Private Ryan, and even that was some time after its initial release.

Every single other movie  over the past twenty-odd years has fallen into the #2 category.  As far as I’m concerned, there is not a movie in recent history worth the price of a movie ticket, or that is so good that I can’t wait to see it.

That doesn’t mean I think all movies have sucked in recent times — I’ve enjoyed lots of them, and Midnight In Paris, The Fabulous Baker Boys, A Good Year, The Incredibles  and Gosford Park (to name but some) I’ve not only watched but watched over and over again.

And I’m not even going to get into the horrible morass that is watching a movie in a cinema today:  people talking (loudly) all through the movie, people talking (loudly) on their phones all the way through the movie, people walking in and out of the cinema all through the movie, deafening movie soundtracks with bass turned up so high it can make one feel nauseated, trash and litter everywhere… do I need to go any further?

The only reason I’d go to the movies would be to watch Donald Trump winning his second term on Election Night in November 2020  — and that won’t be screened in cinemas anyway, so I can watch it for free on TV and (even better) see the mainstream TV personalities’ reaction:

(picture credit: some sick bastard on the Internet)

Tell me you wouldn’t pay money to see that.

Tangled Webs, Etc.

Men & Women

Try to follow along with this story (there may be a test).

Man and woman get engaged ‘cos they wuv each other.  (So far, so good, happens all the time.)  Man decides that he likes dressing up in women’s clothing.  (Okay, this doesn’t happen all the time, even nowadays.)  Woman can’t stand the thought of her man stealing her undies and bras (understandable), but instead of handing him his exit ticket, she decides to have an affair with another man (somewhat understandable, perhaps, but getting wonky).

Here’s where it goes all pear-shaped.

Bra-wearing fiance discovers the affair, and when he discovers that she’s going to leave him for Roger The Lodger, beats woman to death with a pole.  (I would call that an extreme reaction, but who am I to get all judgey about this?)  Then, when charged with his beloved’s murder, he claims that she  was “confrontational” and “provoked” him with words.  (Apparently, the deceased was Australian, so one can only imagine…)

In the midst of my laughter while reading the article, however, I just can’t help thinking that at some point, all this may somehow have been avoidable.

Maybe if the Brits stopped Australians from coming to the U.K., if transvestism was banned, or if extramarital bonking was outlawed (or all three)…?

Just sayin’.

This Means WAR!

Africa

…or maybe it might have, decades ago:

Britain could face a tea shortage in a row over land that was seized from native people in colonial-era Kenya.
A Kenyan governor is demanding £15billion of reparations for land that was ‘stolen’ in the 1930s and has warned of Zimbabwe-style farm grabs if Britain does not pay up.

You could do  all sorts of bad things to Brits… but take away their tea?  How would the island nation function?

Of course, in the good old days when faced with a sticky situation like this, the BritGov would simply have sent a gunboat over to Kenya, and either threatened to or actually shelled a seaport or two, and the Fuzzies would have capitulated, toot sweet.

Nowadays the BritGov has better things to do, like blocking the will of the people to leave the EU;  so the long-suffering Brits, deprived of their beloved tea. will just shrug and go to Costa, Starbucks or Caffè Nero instead.

Sic transit gustatum et bibendum.

Afterthought:  Needless to say, had the “settlers” not taken the land and farmed it, the land wouldn’t look like this:

…but instead like this:

…Kenyans being so good at farming, and all.

Oh, That’s Charming

Legal Stuff, The Gun Thing

I see that the Supremes have fucked up yet again:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting can proceed with their lawsuit against gunmaker Remington Arms.
The high court decided it won’t take up the case, but said the families can still seek damages from the gun company over the 2012 Newtown, Conn., attack that killed 20 children and six adults. Justices rejected Remington’s argument that firearm manufacturers are shielded from liability in crimes.
The families argue Remington marketed the AR-15-style assault rifle in a fashion that inspired shooter Adam Lanza to plot the attack. Advertisements, they say, promoted the gun as “a highly lethal weapon designed for purposes that are illegal — namely, killing other human beings.”
The lawsuit says Remington should never have sold a weapon that dangerous to the public — and argues Remington used product placement in violent video games.
Remington has argued a 2005 federal law shields gunmakers from liability for crimes committed with their products. Tuesday, the Supreme Court justices rejected that position.

I feel I should say something about this travesty, but what I say could possibly result in an unfriendly visit from a federal alphabet agency — to be met by an extremely unfriendly reception from yours truly — so I’ll just shut up.

So much for that “conservative” Supreme Court the Left has been wailing about.

If I had the money, I would buy a fucking Remington AR-15 right now, even though I’m not a fan of AR-15s (as any fule kno) and apparently the Remington variants are not highly regarded by the AR-15 cognoscenti.

I think I am going to buy another Remington product, however, just so they can get a few bucks into their coffers to defend themselves against this bullshit.  But which one?

There’s the 1911R1 (as a possible replacement for my venerable Springfield):

Then the 870 pump, always a crowd-pleaser, and I’ve never owned one before:
And because I still  don’t own a semi-auto .22 rifle (sssshhhh don’t tell the TX state police), there’s the little heavy-barreled 592:

Or I could just go for something a little more ummm deadly (seeing as that’s what’s getting everyone upset), like the Remington Semi-Automatic Carbine in (say) .308 Win:

None of that wussy AR-15 .223 shit for Kimmy, not in my current mood.

Sadly, right at this moment I can’t afford any  gun, but I think I can formulate a plan to get one which would satisfy everyone except Michael fucking Bloomberg.

Watch this space…