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Quote Of The Day

QOTD

From Othias at C&Rsenal, talking about the Russian Contract Winchester 1895:

“I can’t be held responsible for what you learn in fiction.”

In context, he was talking about people whose sole exposure to guns is through RPG-play on their computers, but if you think about it, it’s applicable to so many other areas: movie depictions of gunplay, books’ descriptions of romance, movie depictions of auto-driving, newspaper hypotheticals, and let’s not forget political hyperbole (e.g. the 9mm Europellet “blowing a lung out of the body”).  All fiction, and all often paraded as fact when of course they aren’t, no matter how plausible.

Classic Beauty: Veronica Lake

Classic Beauty

Always one of my favorite stars of the era, Veronica Lake was very much an “accidental” film star — she got her first role when she accompanied a friend to an audition — but was never really cut out to be a celebrity.  None of that matters, now.  All we’re left with is her beauty.

Changing Perspectives

Drive Time

Chris Harris asks the important question:

What happens when cars like the 296 appear is they cause geeks like me to stop and rethink what we had assumed were accepted ‘classes’ of cars. This happened to me when I was driving the 296 and following Paddy in the Pagani Huayra BC. Because he was driving something that looked like a livid insect, I assumed it would simply disappear in a straight line. It didn’t.

What we now have is an ‘entry level’ Ferrari that is as fast as one of the craziest hypercars ever sold. It’s a remarkable reset in the history of fast cars, yet it seems to have passed most people by. Perhaps that’s because these machines are so competent that people expect such things to happen. But I can’t quite get my head around the level of performance a 296 offers.

I have no idea where this is all going.  I’ve written before how cars’ performance has increased to the point where very few people can actually drive them without wrecking them — 600hp engines? FFS — and here’s Ferrari making a “street” car that could have won the Monza F1 Grand Prix race as little as ten years ago — or even more recently.

I should also point out that Longtime Buddy and Former Bandmate Knob is on the waiting list for a 296.  I hate him.

Changing Times, Changing Values

Men & Women, Show Business

Maybe I’m just getting more indifferent in my old age, but nowadays this kind of thing is more likely to get a shrug from me, rather than outrage and condemnation:

Cheeky couple fund bucket list trip around Africa by flogging amateur porn

“We feel wild and confident about our sex life, I don’t see porn as negative in any way, plus it’s helped us financially too.

“He is the only person I have sex with on or off camera…

“We both enjoy it a lot. We have sex a couple of times a week, it’s a great stress relief and sleep medicine. We both are sexually experimental and we like to have a laugh during it.”

Well, as long as you enjoy it… it’s just another way Teh Intarwebz has made it easier to earn money, really.

It’s easy for people of my generation to shout and condemn all this, of course.  But I have a sneaking feeling that at age (say) 24, had a Pretty Young Thing suggested that we fund a trip through Europe (forget that Africa shit) by having us have an occasional bonk on camera, I might have had a different take on the whole business [sic].

And that was back in the 1970s.  In today’s more permissive climate, who knows?

Lastly, Teh Meejah have played a considerable role is lowering standards.  The above couple are described as “cheeky” in the headline;  I wonder how the headline would have read in 1978?

Quote Of The Day

Government Thugs, QOTD

From Rick Manning at ALG:

“America has seen what the FBI does when they’re serious, with 6 a.m. raids on targets of investigations if they’re in the wrong political party and kid gloves for the Democrats who have apparently become the official party of the government.”

Fire them all, burn down their buildings (especially that totalitarian concrete block in D.C.), salt the earth they stood on — and then we can get serious.