Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Here’s the story.  You’re treating an apartment complex’s parking lot as your own personal racetrack.  Some residents tell you to quit, because there are kids playing in the area.

You take umbrage at this infringement on your liberties and drive off, fetch your trusty AR-15 and start popping off at a crowd of people hanging out in said parking lot.  Being a lousy shot as well as a terrible driver, you miss everybody.

Then some woman decides to return fire with her handgun, whereupon you lose all interest in the proceedings because she’s a better shot than you, and you’re bleeding to death in your car.

I think I got all the salient details, but go here just in case.

Quote Of The Day

From Elle Reynolds:

“Guns aren’t radically deadlier than they were 50 years ago, but our sick culture is.”

Preach it, sister:

While humanity has been fallen since Eden, the past 50 years have seen countless indicators of exponential cultural decline, not the least of which have been falling marriage rates and skyrocketing numbers of children who are denied the chance to live with both their mother and father. We’re also seeing a pandemic of mental illness, which the years of mental angst and isolation caused by Covid school closures will certainly only worsen.

Americans are losing interest in the purpose and community that faith and church offer, losing respect for the sanctity of human life, and losing sight of the notion that a higher moral good exists than immediate self-gratification. Instead, we live under a cultural ethic that idolizes the indulgence of selfish desires even up to the point of taking the life of another.

Yup.

News Roundup

Brought to you by:

And we begin the Roundup on a parallel topic…


more likely it’ll end breakfast through mass vomiting at the table.


so:  no harm, no foul then.


ummm I hate to break it to you, kids, but Barbie never had a ‘gina anyway.


lose your own armed bodyguards first, fatso, and then we’ll talk. (no link because duh)


as long as we raise the voting age back to 21 as well, seeing as kids can’t be trusted to be responsible.  (no link because ditto)

From the Dept. of Irony:


so much for that DIY book.

From the Dept. Of Useless Police:


and even though he lives on the same street as she does, the cops will do nothing.


kinda like getting marriage counseling from a Catholic priest, innit?

From the Dept. Of Suckage:


and yet, Bette Midler is still alive.


“Who the fuck are you?” was clearly not the pillow talk she expected.

And in blessedly link-free INSIGNIFICA:

       

And finally:  because it’s a short work week, I thought I’d celebrate with a few random pieces of smut lying around the place.  Call it a spring clean.

Thank gawd it’s Tuesday.

Not A Beau, But Beautiful Nevertheless

The Bristol Aeroplane Company was responsible for many memorable classics, among them the WWI-era F2b fighter:

…but chief among which is one of my absolute all-time favorites, the WWII Beaufighter:

After WWII, however, the market for such aircraft understandably disappeared, whereupon Bristol set out to make beautiful, powerful touring cars, a longtime favorite of people who wanted a bespoke car not made for the mass market.  (Story later.)

One of the trailblazing moves Bristol made was that almost from the start, they eschewed the crappy and unreliable little British engines of the era, and fitted their cars with BMW 328 2-liter engines.  British cars are taxed on engine size, the bigger the higher, but as Bristol cars were never cheap anyway, nobody cared.

Then in 1961, Bristol switched to using the excellent Chrysler 5.2-liter V8, and never looked back.

Probably my favorite is the Fighter, made from 2003 to 2011:

 

The Fighter remained true to that earlier philosophy, using a Dodge Viper 8-liter V10 to give it, in the immortal sales pitch, “sufficient” horsepower (~550) and speed (~200), neither of which has ever been documented as Fighters are never tested because every car is different and anyway, wealthy bluebloods don’t trouble with such insignifica, “sufficient” being, well, sufficient.

And, of course, it comes with a standard 6-speed manual gearbox, which is yet another reason why I love it.

Bristol Cars went out of business in 2011, stumbled along in bankruptcy etc., but they’re planning to bounce back with… electric cars.

Thanks, but I’d rather have almost any of their earlier models with an actual engine in it, such as the drop-dead gorgeous 407 drophead from 1954:

Oof.

And here’s the story, as promised.