Getting Back To Reality

Start off by reading this article (excerpt below) and then we can continue:

A British tourist has told an Italian court how she was raped by a barman in Naples after stopping for a meal at a pizzeria while on holiday. 

Returning to the southern Italian city to testify before a judge, the 22-year-old tourist this week told the court how she was holidaying in July when she suffered ‘the worst experience of my life’.

Some time back, I also commented on a stupid bint who was raped in Paris after leaving her party to relieve herself behind some bushes, and that leads me to my main point:

Women shouldn’t be on their own outside their homes, because they are not safe.

When I say “on their own”, of course, I mean in a deserted or isolated spot where they could be attacked — such as in a restaurant’s back room, or in a park hidden from view behind bushes.  Or walking back home alone from a party / dinner.  Or jogging along a lonely road, or through a park.

I think you get my drift.

Now let me address the thoughts of the people who might disagree with me on this point.

I know, I know:  women shouldn’t be at risk in the above situations, and men shouldn’t prey on women when the women are solitary.

Unfortunately, the world just doesn’t work like that.  Men (of a particular sort) often succumb to their baser instincts when confronted by such situations.  This is an unfortunate fact of life, and this is especially true of men who come from, shall we say, less civilized backgrounds and societies (e.g. Mediterranean countries, the Middle East, all of Africa, Russia, the Balkans, Muslim countries, most of South America, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, North America, Central America… actually, pretty much anywhere in the world).

And women are vulnerable in all those places and circumstances because they are… the weaker sex[pause to allow the angry feministical screams and expostulations to die down]

This, by the way, is why I fervently support the idea that women should carry guns, because of all forms of self-defense, guns are the best equalizer.  It’s why I have helped train literally hundreds of women how to shoot, and helped them purchase their handguns and shotguns.

If guns are not available to women (and this would apply almost universally outside Second Amendment Country), then they need to seek safety in numbers and not stroll around by themselves, because it’s just not safe.

It’s the same reason, for example, that I avoid walking through specific downtown areas at night, and shun all back alleys even if they’re a shortcut.  And I’m big and tough and armed.  How much more ridiculous is it for an unarmed woman not to do the same?

There are times when a woman finds herself in a position when she feels she has to walk by herself — e.g. to get to her car in a deserted parking lit or parking garage after a night shift — but she shouldn’t.  She should instead try to find a man (security guard, workmate, whatever) to accompany her.  Fortunately, I don’t think we’ve reached the stage yet where a man would refuse to do so.  (Yeah, I know, chivalry is so outdated and demeaning to womyns [/feministical] shuddup).

It’s got to the point that whenever I read about such events of a woman being attacked / raped / whatever when she’s on her own in some foreign country / strange city / walking back from the pub, I just shout at the page / TV screen:

“What did you think was going to happen?”

This air of unreality that seems to be so prevalent in modern society needs to end.  People need to grow up and understand that when reality meets philosophy or theory, reality is going to win, every single fucking time.

Even for (or especially for) feministicals and their adherents.

Same Time Next Year

Apparently there’s this German guy who visits the same city in Britishland each year for his vacation, and has done so for the past several years.  (My Brit Readers can be excused for going “Huh?” when they discover which city has so enthralled our Frequent Visitor.)

Which leads me to ask the question:

Is there any city in the world that you would re-visit for two weeks exclusively each year for the next, say, decade? 

(I’m going to assume long lives for the Olde Pharttes among us, bless ’em, who could always just substitute “…for the rest of my life” if they so choose.)

Give reasons, in Comments.  It could be a furrin city or a Murkin/NorMurkin one, your choice.  In the spirit of the thing, it has to be a city, not a region or a resort.  Play the game.

My choice is below the fold:

Read more

Asking For Trouble

This is the kind of thing that gets me throwing things across the room in angry frustration:

A British police officer has said she was raped at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower on Monday.

The victim, 23, has told French police she was attacked by a man wielding a knife in the Champ de Mars park shortly before midnight that evening.

She said the suspect pulled out a knife as she tried to deflect his advances.

Okay, here’s my first point.  I know this area very well indeed, and let me just say that it is — along with, say, NYfC’s Central Park — a tourist attraction I wouldn’t go anywhere near after dark.  So why would this Dickless Tracy do such a stupid thing?  Ah, here’s a clue:

The attacker pounced after the victim went behind a bush to go to the toilet.

She was separated from her friend for only a few moments when the attacker threatened her with a knife. 

Translation:  she’d been drinking hard, and needed to pee.  Where better than in a dark park in a strange city, away from her drinking companion?

Anyway, the gendarmes found the guy and busted him.  Surprise, surprise, it was another tourist (nationality not given, uh huh) — but a tourist who travels with a knife and harbors larcenous thoughts.

Sheesh, I myself generally carry a knife when I travel (because I can’t carry my 1911 [lots of bad words deleted] ), but I would only use it in the last extreme in self-defense and not to, say, indulge in a little coercive seduction.

My second point:  One would think a cop — especially a Britcop — would know better than to do stupid stuff like the above;  but clearly, an excess of booze makes a cop as stupid as the average idiot.

And so much for her police force’s self-defense training;  she should ask for a refund.

Grand Tour

As I mentioned in last week’s post about winning a lottery, there would be travel.  Lots of travel.  And I have to say, this one would feature towards the top of the list.

By the way, you’ll want to hit the above link, because (unusually) the article contains some of the most beautiful travel pics I’ve ever seen.

My route would differ only slightly:

…in that I’d leave off Switzerland –great scenery, but horrible people and fanatically-enforced speed limits — and take a trip instead up the Rhône Valley via Nice.

I’ve been to a couple of the places mentioned, and I’d be very happy to see them again (take a bow, Heidelberg and Innsbruck).  The others (Bruges, Liège, etc.) are all on Ye Olde Bucquette Lyste anyway, but I’d add Como (north of Milan) because reasons.

As for which car I’d take?  My current heartthrob, the BMW Z8 (4.9-liter V8 engine generating about 400hp, you betcha):

Nice and reliable, with looks that rival its spiritual predecessor, the 1958 BMW 507.

Or if shipping it over is too much hassle, I’d just buy something Over There that’s modern and boring but equally reliable, like a Mercedes SL:

A fortnight that trip is supposed to take?  Try four weeks, or even longer.

Not Concrete

When I first visited the U.S. of A. back in 1982 (honeymoon with Wife #1), I decided to do a LONG drive trip around the eastern U.S. — a four-day drive from NYfC to Boston and into New Hampshire and Maine, then back down to Manhattan for a day or two, and then carrying on down to New Orleans, then to Florida (Disney World), and back up the eastern seaboard to NYfC before flying home to the old Racist Republic.  The trip ended up taking us just under a month.

Bear in mind that I’d never driven on the right-hand side of the road, and there was no Wayze or GurgleMaps, just a Rand-McNally atlas.

That wasn’t a problem.  This was.

In South Africa, there are no concrete roads;  all are asphalt, and at least as far as the freeways are concerned, very smooth.  Imagine then my surprise when I got to the Greatest Country On Earth, set out on the interstate highways and had to endure three weeks of “ker-chunk-ker-chunk-ker-chunk” as the highway joints chattered away under the tires of the rented Dodge Aries, driving me to near-insanity.

WTF?  I’ve heard all the arguments in favor of concrete as a road surface, and none of them make up for the most unpleasant driving experience on Earth.  As for the “concrete lasts longer in extreme heat conditions than asphalt” argument, please note that in South Africa (where sweltering heat is not exactly an unknown weather condition) the asphalt roads bear up perfectly well.

Indeed, when I went back to Seffrica back in 2017, I had occasion to drive from Johannesburg to Pretoria and back (about 140-odd miles) on the N3/N1 motorways, which were in perfect condition AND being asphalt, there was no road noise.  (Ditto of course in Britishland, where I’d been likewise driving around Hardy Country in a Ford Focus.)

This was brought home to me quite recently when I discovered that Plano has started covering some of our concrete suburban roads with asphalt.  The change in the driving experience (and therefore my mood) has been dramatic.  My only gripe is that the process isn’t going fast enough, and to my dismay I notice that all the road repairs currently underway [20,000-word rant deleted]  are being made by re-laying concrete slabs, rather than just covering the affected areas with asphalt.

Whichever American first made the decision to go with a concrete road surface over asphalt should have been thrown into a revolving concrete mixer for a week.