Stupid And Futile Gesture

Here’s the latest good news for our side, and bad news for them:

Numbers released Monday show that the FBI ran 192,749 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) background checks on Black Friday 2022. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) noted that the 192,749 NICS checks on Black Friday 2022 “[rank] it third in the Top 10 Highest Days for NICS checks and…[represent] a 2.8 percent increase from Black Friday 2021.”

The FBI conducted 187,585 NICS checks on Black Friday 2021 and 186,645 checks on Black Friday 2020, Breitbart News reported.

The NSSF observed that there were 711,372 NICS checks “during the week leading up to and including Black Friday.”

The strong Black Friday NICS check numbers come after surges in gun sales during recent years.

For example, on October 6, 2022, Breitbart News reported retailers had sold over one million guns a month for 38 consecutive months.

You have to ask yourself about the Gun Control Set:  “Why do they even bother, anymore?”

I mean, if you look at the thing clinically, the whole concept starts with that innate human characteristic, that instinct of self-preservation that has been baked onto your genetic structure, perhaps only alleviated a little by the “fight or flight” reaction to danger.  So there has to be an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance to resist that impulse, and I can only think that it’s assisted by constant propaganda of the “guns are evil” mantra of the media and politicians.  On the one hand, you have people who are genuinely upset by violence (and there’s nothing wrong with that) but think (mistakenly) that removing weapons from individuals will end violence;  and on the other hand, you have the malignant power-seekers for whom an unarmed populace is the sine qua non  for societal control.  (There is an overlap between the two groups, and I’ll address that later on when it becomes more relevant to the discussion.)

Then, of course, came a group of wise men in 1779 who, when starting up a new country pretty much from scratch looked at the situation and said, “The natural instinct for self-preservation is so obvious, only a fool would attempt to gainsay it.”  (Okay, they called it a God-given right, but it’s the same thing, really.)  And having just escaped the clutches of a tyrannical* government a couple of years earlier, they were even more mindful of the fact that men needed tools to resist those bastards who would want to control whole populations.  But then came an even wiser man who realized that one day there would be fools who would want to take away that God-given right, and governments who would work really hard to do so, and so he said, “Right.  We’re actually going to codify this thing so that even a moron can understand that the right of people to self-defense (both personal and societal) cannot simply be legislated away by some asshole that may look like John Kerry, Chuck Schumer or Joe Biden,”  and thus, the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

And yes, over the years that followed the anti-weapon hoplophobes were able to chip away at that natural and legal right, as the government had been reasonably successful at preventing bad people from inflicting violence on innocent people and society at large.  So people were duped into thinking that just because some mope shot at a President with a mail-order Italian WWII military-surplus rifle, therefore nobody else should ever be able to order a rifle from Amazon;  or that when the Constitution was written the authors thereof didn’t know about AK-47s — an efficient semi-automatic rifle being way more dangerous than a muzzle-loading musket and therefore should of course be banned — without realizing that muskets are all very well, until the government brings AK-47s (or their Mattel equivalent) to a little oppression party.

All this was fine and dandy until the Third American Revolution began in, of all places, Ferguson, Missouri and people suddenly realized that the government, largely composed of knaves, cowards and Socialists (some overlap), was no longer going to guarantee the safety of innocent people against mobs of murderous thugs and vandals.

Which is why, as the above article points out, ordinary people have gone out and bought over 38 million guns since Ferguson  — to the surprise of absolutely nobody except the hoplophobes and government stooges.

One would think, returning to the original question posed at the top of this post, that supposedly intelligent and rational people would see the absolute common sense of all this, and say, “Screw it.  There’s no point in trying to overcome this gun ownership thing, because doing so is just a stupid and futile gesture and so we’re not going to bother with it anymore.”  And indeed some have: 

Gun control advocate Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Sunday that Democrats in the Senate “probably” do not have the votes to pass a ban on “assault weapons.”

But these hoplophobes are people who have attempted to deny basic human nature, and their government allies have attempted to suppress it;  so I suppose it’s just a battle which we’re going to have to fight over and over again, ad infinitum et nauseam.  And speaking of idiots, there’s this statement from President Braindead:

“The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” said Biden. “It has no socially redeeming value… Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”

My only regrets are that a) we didn’t get to 200,000 NICS** checks last Friday, and b) the purchases weren’t all semi-sutomatic rifles.


*the concept of “tyranny” is very much a relative one;  the Founding Fathers may have thought that a 3% consumption tax on tea was iniquitous and therefore justified rebelling against the greatest world power since the Romans, so we can only guess what their reaction would be to a government which takes away over a third of a person’s wages at gunpoint, and The People just shrug and say, “Okay.”

**yet another little institution which would cause the Founding Fathers, were they alive today, to reach for their AK-47s.

Speed Bump #8,403

I love headlines that make me want to throw the gin bottle across the room:

…took the “reigns”?  Once again, editing by Spelchek.  Fucking morons.

Still, it could have been worse;  he could have taken the rains, and made the thing even wetter than it turned out to be.

Baby Talk

Then we have this silliness:

If I were put in charge of a business today, probably one of the first things I would do is make the use of all “emojis” in corporate communications a cause for immediate termination — whether in internal emails or texts, and certainly in client communication.

Why?  Because a business is a serious thing — there are profits to be made, customer- and client relationships to be forged, and decisions made can have long-term implications and outcomes.

And serious business requires serious communication, not fucking chat-speak shorthand (and by extension, the same goes for acronyms like “AFAIK” and “IMHO”).

There’s no excuse for using any of the above.  “But it expresses what I mean much more quickly and efficiently”  is the common whine in their defense, which tells me that you are a) lazy and b) unable to write / communicate properly.  Neither of those shortcomings is likely to endear you to me, the boss.

I think that this foolishness is in keeping with the modern yoot’s belief that work isn’t serious, that employers have to make employees’ lives easier — safe, yes;  easy, not so much — and it all feeds into the scenario that today’s workers feel that they’re entitled to a job that has few rules, few restrictions on their behavior, and few demands on their intellect (such as it is).

This “work from home” nonsense is another flea on the corporate body.  I once had a job where I worked from home, but only because the (start-up) company was based in Florida and couldn’t afford to relocate me.  Even so, I made a point of spending a full week each month in Florida to meet with other executives and employees, and most especially to justify my continued employment to management.

The way I see it is that if you live closer than twenty miles from the corporate office, you should come in to work every day.

“But I’m just as efficient working from home as from the office!”  (which is a total lie, and everyone knows it) which carries the implication that the employee and not management can set the standard for efficiency.

“But I don’t have to be in the office to work!”  comes the next wail, as though management should have to justify the company’s employment requirements to the employees.  I decide the working conditions — and if I say you have to work in an office, then you’ll work in an office.  Otherwise, hit the road.”  (or “FIFO” — hah!)

I think it’s the insufferable arrogance that all the above demonstrate that makes me want to walk around with a cane, lightly swatting people who offend me with their attitude and laziness.  (I know, that’s assault — another fucking example of corrective action turned into a criminal misdeed, don’t get me started.)

Long ago, I interviewed a kid for a junior executive position, and was completely floored when he asked me how much access he’d have to senior management, to communicate (as he put it) his “ideas” for improvement.  He was equally taken aback by my response:  “What makes you think that your inexperience qualifies you for such access?”  I then got the “fresh eyes” spiel, whereupon I pointed out that he shouldn’t be so arrogant as to assume that his fresh young eyes were the first such that had ever started work at the company.

Of course, he didn’t get the job — and was somewhat hurt when I told him why I’d made that decision.  (In those days, one actually communicated with applicants when turning them down, instead of ghosting them.  Don’t get me started on this little example of corporate / individual cowardice.)

Elephant herds tend to survive (and thrive) because the older bulls keep the adolescents in line.  In today’s culture, adolescents demand that they should run the show, even though history shows that uninformed opinion and little experience ends up in disaster. One of my favorite movie storylines is that of Big (1988), where Tom Hanks is miraculously transformed into an adult, and whose idea for a toy company makes him a corporate hero.  However, his next idea is terrible, and had he not reverted to childhood, catastrophic failure would have been inevitable.

Never mind history (all that old stuff);  one has only to look at today’s White House and its Cabinet of lightweights like Harris, Buttigieg, Granholm and Raimondo  to see the consequences of such folly.

The business world is no different, by the way, as witnessed by the ineptness and uncaring attitude of adolescent children like Zuckerberg and the twerps at Google, whose “life is just like a game, dude” perspective is equally catastrophic for society.  Great ideas for a start-up, but not so good (okay, terrible) for the long term.

Unfortunately, unlike with Tom Hanks’s Big character, there’s no easy way out for the rest of us who have to live with the Bidenesque- and Metaversal catastrophes.

And while these twerps, insulated from looming catastrophe by age (Biden) and wealth (Zuckerberg), might say “BFD, dude”, the same is not true for the rest of us.

It IS a Big Fucking Deal.

Boycott The Boycotters?

As far as I know, these are the advertisers who have “paused” their presence on Twatter since Elon Musk took over:

  • Audi — can’t afford their overpriced cars anyway
  • General Mills — so much for that weekly box of Cheerios in the cart
  • General Motors — never on my list because crap cars and trucks
  • Mondelez International (formerly Kraft [Snack] Foods)– never cared for Oreos, Triscuits, Ritz and TUC either.  As for their chocolate brands, I can only see a problem with Cadbury (hello Lindt)  and Fry’s — massive concern from New Wife, who loves their Turkish Delight
  • Pfizer — pfuckem, not going to get another ‘Rona jab anyway
  • Volkswagen — well, that’s a real stinker.  As a lifetime buyer of VW cars, wagons and vans (7 or 8 so far), I guess I’ll just have to break the VW habit and look elsewhere for a replacement for the Tiguan when the time comes, as long as it’s not Chev or Audi (hello… Mazda?).

Also:

Advertising companies Interpublic Group—with clients like CVS and Nintendo—and Havas Media—whose clients include O2, Hyundai, and Domino’s Pizza—have recommended to their clients to pause paid advertising on Twitter, Forbes reported.

No more Rx from CVS, then (hello Wal-Mart or Kroger), and I’ve never been a user / consumer of the others.

One person (Yer Humble Narrator) can’t do much, it seems, when it comes to making these assholes pay for their wokedom.  Let’s hope there are a lot more people who think the way I do.

And remember:  not being a Twatter adherent myself, I actually care little about whatever happens to them.  What gets up my nose is the Leftist reaction (note the players) to Musk’s avowed intent to make the company less stridently Left-wing and fervently anti-conservative.  Maybe he should just fire more Twatter employees as a result of lowered ad revenue.