Kiddies

I’ve opined on this situation before, mostly when it comes to topic of the success of comic-book movies among so-called grownups:

The Democratic Party’s vision of the American future is a kind of permissive classroom, no doubt appealing to its base of spoiled children. It is not a place where real work will ever get done. Democrats tell their voters there is nothing they cannot have, and that if they complain and demand loud enough the stingy, bad parent (the Republicans, the rich, Old White People©) will be forced to give them treats. They are led to believe that anyone who does not give them what they want freely (free health care, free college, reparations, housing, jobs) is doing so out of malice.This jejune political rhetoric is mirrored on social media in the left’s call for people to be deplatformed. Censorship is the demand for teacher to restore order in the classroom and punish the disagreeable pupils. Unanimous agreement on all the big questions is a precondition for playing in the same nursery.

Going beyond politics, the infantilization of America is unmistakable by the success of Disney. As a film company, they’re on a hot streak almost unparalleled in Hollywood history. Within any given year they drop new releases in Star Wars, Marvel superheroes, children’s cartoons, and live-action remakes of children’s cartoons. These movies do well with children and with adults. It sucks the satire out of another Onion headline, “Rising Disney World Ticket Costs Prompting Many Parents To Leave Children At Home.”
This trend is also evidenced by the numerous toys geared for adults. Electronic toys and video games for men are extremely popular. Equally ridiculous is the number of adult women who have an affinity for Disney princesses.
Millennials (born 1980–1994) and Gen-Zers (1995–2009) don’t seem to realize that video games, toys, and the like were things you were only supposed to be into until you were old enough to drive, date, get married, and be an adult. But millennials don’t drive, they don’t date, they don’t marry, and they don’t really grow up. So it’s no surprise they are stuck in a preadult world [].

Don’t even get me started on supposedly-adult men of voting age who are infatuated with My Little Pony  (a.k.a. “Bronies”).  Great Napoleon’s bleeding ulcers, it actually turns my stomach to read about these fucking losers.

At the risk of sounding all White Christian Male and stuff [irony alert], allow me to remind everyone of this excellent precept from Corinthians:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Except that men aren’t doing any of that.  Instead, they’re clinging to the artifacts of their childhood, hoping that Mommy will be there to keep the Big Bad Wolf/Zombies away.

What will inevitably happen is calamity.  As Charles Norman puts it:  “The world is running out of grown-ups. It will probably take tragedies and a prolonged era of diminished affluence for people to grow up.”

Like I said:  calamity.

Ban Them!

Here’s a good one, from Brazil:

Masked man who took 37 hostages on a bus in Rio de Janeiro is shot dead by a police sniper after a three-hour standoff — and cops then discover it was a toy gun.

Now quit that sniggering, you lot.

From this tragedy, it is clear that the only answer is to ban toy guns.

 

Or buses.


En passant, the word “sniggering” above was flagged by SpellCheck when I typed it in.  (No prizes for guessing why.)

 

Lighten Up, Frances

Somebody buy this bad boy a drink:

Gianluca Vacchis litters Instagram daily with videos of himself dancing with scantily clad women.
But the Italian 52-year-old millionaire playboy has run into a social media backlash after posting a video of himself hitting the bikini clad models’ behinds on his private yacht.
Vacchi has recently taken up music and the video shows him bouncing his hands off the model’s derrieres to the beat of his newest track ‘Mueve.’

LOL

But the video has been met with criticism.
Many of the comments posted under the video said the video was ‘demeaning’ and a ‘sad moment,’ and that his behaviour suggested a lack of respect towards women.
Some asked whether his girlfriend Sharon Fonseca, who he’s been with since April 2017, approved.
Others said the women filmed did not respect themselves and that they were ‘following your money.’

Good grief:  the feministical snowflakery is strong with this one.

But Our Hero responded in the proper way:

Vacchi used more than words to respond to the negative criticism of his video with a follow up released around a week later.
In the video, four women dressed in stylish business suits discipline the silver haired multi-millionaire by returning the spanking.
Vacchi, dressed in a leopard print leotard and high heels bends over twerking in high heels.

Somebody buy this man another  drink.

So Much For College

I admit that I can’t see the appeal in ginger nebbish Ed Sheeran’s music — I mean, it’s not horrible in the way that, say, Taylor Swift’s music most certainly is, but I find it… pleasant, yet unremarkable.

 

My opinion, though, doesn’t matter:  the little bugger has made more hit records and more money than he can burn with a flamethrower, and clearly, his music has touched a lot of people despite his looking like Third Dweeb From The Left in a Harry Potter movie, so I have to give him that.

What gives me the giggles, however, is that when he studied music at college, he failed.

 

It says a lot about him that he hasn’t bought out the college, fired the entire faculty and burned all the buildings to the ground.  I guess that being a zillionaire is its own revenge.

Change Needed

On my way back home this morning, I got a call from the NRA, wanting me to renew my membership.  The lady was very pleasant, with a deep Southern drawl, but was obviously reading from the standard NRA fund-raising spiel about upcoming legislation brought by Democrats, Chuck Schumer wants to take your  guns away, etc. etc.  Then she switched to the “Now I need you to renew your NRA commitment, so let’s get that taken care of” closer.

My response was not what she expected, nor I think what she wanted.

“Frankly, I’m more than a little disappointed in how the NRA is spending our membership dollars — for starters, I don’t want my money being spent just so Wayne LaPierre can look good on TV, and I’m pretty sure Col. Oliver North could point to a few similar misuses of the NRA’s cash.  So I’m not going to renew my NRA membership today, or, most likely, in the near future either.  Instead, I am going to send the equivalent amount to the Second Amendment Foundation who, it appears, have been quite successful in arguing our cause before the state courts and the Supreme Court as well.  Feel free to pass these sentiments on to the senior management of the NRA.  Good day to you.”

…and I hung up.

Or have I missed something here?  (I should point out that I have a three-year membership of the TSRA, which I have every intention of renewing.)

Feel free to enlighten me in Comments.

Gratuitous Gun Pic – Mauser Sporter (8x60mm S)

Here’s another take on last week’s GGP of the Mauser Sporter 7x57mm rifle.  This one (also from Collectors Firearms) is more conventional-looking, and chambered for the unusual 8x60mm S cartridge:

And the action is likewise quite lovely, with a polished knob bolt (rather than the butterknife) and conventional scope rings.  Still with the full stock and double set triggers, though.

As for the 8x60mm S cartridge:  it’s basically a lengthened casing derived from the military 8x57mm cartridge, and was created to circumvent the Versailles Treaty restrictions on the production of military chamberings — the thought being that hunters and their clubs could become ersatz  reserve units for the Wehrmacht.  (I know, stupid, but that’s gummint for ya.)  So DWM simply changed the cartridge while keeping the bullet (the “S” denotes .323″) — and the longer casing meant more gunpowder, ergo  a more powerful cartridge.  As such, the 8x60mm is very close to the .30-06 Springfield in terms of performance.

So why buy this rifle, when the cartridges are hard to find?  Actually, one might think that the 8×60 S is rare, but it isn’t — quite a feat given that it was made solely for pre-WWII German hunting rifles.   True, you do have to look around for them, but they’re made in quantity by Serbia’s Prvi Partizan company, and in keeping with PPU’s philosophy, they’re inexpensive — I found them selling for just over $22 per 20, which makes the rifle a perfectly acceptable purchase.  (The only problem is that this rifle is horribly –and I think unjustifiably — expensive, even by Collector’s standards.)

Now… where are those lottery tickets?