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Twins Confusion

Gratuitous Chick Pics

I have spoken before about how I get celebrities confused with other celebrities when reading about them.  Here’s a recent example, that being between Emma Watson and Keira Knightley:

 

I know, they don’t look anything like each other when seen side by side.  But when I read about one, I’m thinking “petite Brit brunette with no boobs”, and I think you’ll acknowledge my confusion when those criteria are applied.

So now I have to apply a discrete mental tag to each one, such as “skinny Brit brunette with no boobs in Harry Potter” and “skinny Brit brunette with no boobs in that pirate movie with Johnny Depp”.

 

 

Of course, my life would doubtless be simplified if I just ignored reading about them altogether, but that would probably require that I quit reading my guilty pleasure, the Daily Mail.  And I don’t really want to do that, because the very definition of “guilty pleasure” is something that one gets pleasure from even though one shouldn’t.

What’s even worse is that I don’t find either of the above that attractive because “whiny voice / skinny / no boobs” (all of which they both have in common) is generally speaking a total turn-off for me.

What a mess…

Compendium Of Wrong

Law and Order, Punks

It’s difficult to imagine just how much more could have gone wrong in this situation:

Jay Conway, 33, was spotted dealing drugs by two plain-clothed officers in a park in May.

They tried to apprehend him but he got away before another uniformed officer, who was on patrol in a police car nearby heard a radio alert and took up the chase.

Dramatic bodycam footage shows brave Constable Dan Clayton hauling Conway off a stolen push bike, before pulling out his taser and ordering him to “Get on the floor now.”

But Conway, who was wearing a balaclava, ignores him and instead pulls a loaded pistol out of his sock.

Conway is immediately tasered but, as he falls to the ground, he points the gun directly at Constable Clayton, who can be heard shouting, “No, no” and “gun, gun, gun,” as he sprints for cover.

Of course, all my Murkin Readers are no doubt going “WTF?  Why didn’t the cop just shoot the asshole dead when he pulled the gun?”

If I were to tell you that this didn’t happen in the U.S. but in Britishland, then it all becomes clear.

Pro tip:  If a scrote points a gun at you, the correct response should be “Blam! Blam! Blam! [repeat as necessary] ” and not “No! No! No!”

If, however, your police force refuses to provide you with a “Blam! Blam! Blam!” option, perhaps you should reconsider your career choice.

Just sayin’.

Two Chessboards

Wars & Other Fun Games

Here’s a very perceptive look at the current fun and games in Iran, and the U.S. strategy behind them:

This isn’t one war, but two.

There is a regional chessboard, on which Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other Gulf states all play. Iran’s proxies, its drones and ballistic missiles, its nuclear ambitions, its funding of Hezbollah and the Houthis. All of that belongs primarily to this smaller game. Israel has always understood this board. So have the Saudis. So has everyone in the neighbourhood.

But there is a second chessboard, vastly larger, on which the United States and China are the primary players. On this board, the central question of the next 30 years is being worked out: whether the American-led global order survives, or whether China displaces it. Every American foreign policy decision, from the pivot to Asia to the tariff wars to the posture in the Pacific, is ultimately a move on this board.

America is in this fight because of China. Specifically, it is about dismantling the most significant Chinese forward base outside of East Asia.

Read the whole thing, I beg you, because it shows that far from being a silly cowboy playing with a loaded gun, Trump’s grasp of global strategy is so far removed from that of his political opponents (and even of most of his nominal political allies in the West) that it defies belief.

We often joke about Trump playing four-dimensional chess while his opponents are stuck to a chessboard.  The above article shows exactly how that 4-D chess game actually works.

I am very impressed that this appeared in the normally-silly Daily Mail.  As far as I can tell, not one American news publication has come close to this succinct analysis,  instead busying themselves with the minutiae of the campaign.

Classic Beauty: Deidre Hall

Classic Beauty

I’ve never watched a single episode of any daytime soap opera, in any country.  (I think the soapiest I ever got was Dallas, and that only lasted a couple seasons — when J.R. Ewing was shot, I only discovered the identity of the shooter about a week after the reveal, more or less by accident when I overheard some people talking about it like it was the most important thing in the world.)  So whenever I happen upon some totty who is or was a “soap star”, my interest barely flickers.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been a few exquisite of the type, of course — I remember thinking that Susan Lucci, for example, was quite a doll back then.  But one who did get my attention was Deidre Hall, because a long time ago I saw her being interviewed on some celebrity show or other, and not only was she gorgeous, but… freckles, by golly.  (And I think most Readers will be well aware of this particular  fetish  fascination of mine.)  Then quite recently I saw some newspaper article talking about her recently celebrating her 86th birthday (!!!!), but the teaser contained a pic of her much-younger self.  So off I went, along the highways and byways of Teh Intarwebz.

And I wasn’t disappointed.  I’ve confined myself to black & white pics, because most of the color pics are owned by the Usual Suspects, Getty, Alamy, etc., whereas the non-color pics are blessedly free of their foul little watermarks.

And for the freckles:

Of course, the tout ensemble  is excellent:

…but tucked away in some dark corner of said Intarwebz was a whole ‘nother side of Deidre, most probably before she became famous:

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