Month: May 2024

Innocent Times, Part 1

Gratuitous Chick Pics

A while ago I stumbled onto a website that featured a series of early Playboy Magazine stuff, and looking at it, I couldn’t but wonder at how innocent it all was.

I know, calling Playboy “innocent” creates something of a cognitive dissonance in the typical reader, because the whole “Playboy” ethos was anything but that in the 1950s (and even -60s).  At the time, of course, it was disturbing, outrageous, even pornographic to the eyes of the time.  I mean, inviting a Black person (Sammy Davis Jr.) to perform on Hefner’s TV show, and treating him like an actual person instead of some second-class citizen — okay, nigger, to use a common term for his type back then.  That, and Hef’s love of avant-garde jazz (“nigger”) music… I mean, it was just terrible.

But looking back at Playboy today, I find myself yearning for that era, because it really was an innocent time — although nowadays it’s easy to see that its permissiveness was, just as gloomily foretold, very much the thin end of the licentiousness wedge.

Compare, if you will, a typical Playboy cartoon of that era:

…with its more vulgar counterpart from the vile Larry Flynt’s Hustler:

(…which, by the way, I find screamingly funny, but that’s just me.)

Anyway, I thought I’d just use all the above as an excuse to show a few of those Playboy cartoons, and some of their models too.  Enjoy.

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Kim’s U.K. Garage

Drive Time

No need for ten cars that I’d want to keep stabled  in Britishland;  just five should do quite nicely, thank you.  And as the distances aren’t vast, I don’t care about nonsense like fuel consumption (not that it’s ever been much of a consideration, come to think of it).

And all right-hand drive, of course.

1939 Alvis Speedster 25
More roomy (and much more powerful and reliable) than the MG T car models, the “25” had a 4.3-liter straight-six engine which provided 137bhp.  Sufficient for the time, and sufficient for the Brit country roads I’d be driving on.  Other candidates for this spot:  the aforesaid MG TF from the T-class, Morgan Plus Four and Caterham Seven 420.

2009 Bristol Fighter
An actual British supercar, made to “compete” with the Gordon Murray-designed McLaren F1, the Fighter had a Dodge Viper V10 engine in a car which weighed half that of a Viper.  Jeremy Clarkson once called driving it “stupendously suicidal”, and I can think of no higher praise.  Other candidates:  Jaguar E-type Series 2.

1975 Range Rover

After they’d worked out all the (many) niggles in the 1970-74 models, the 1975 model Range Rover was upgraded with creature comforts while keeping the lovely 3.5-liter V8 Buick/Rover engine.  Also, this was the generation before all the horrible electronic nonsense arrived to bedevil Rover owners.  Other candidates:  none.

1960 Bentley S2 Continental

…with the “new” (for the time) Rolls-Royce V8 engine tweaked by Bentley engineers, it was (and still would be today) “sufficiently fast” —  and I dare say, “sufficiently posh” too.  Other candidates:  none.

1968 Mini-Cooper S MkII

My “town car” for those quick little trips to the village pub or grocery store.  Small, quick (1,275cc!), nimble, easy to park, easy to drive;  I’d probably drive this little beauty about 90% of the time, and all the others the remaining 10% (assuming, of course, that the others were better-than-average in terms of reliability — high hopes, but there it is).  Other candidates:  none.

There’s no E-type, no MG, not even an Austin-Healey, because there’d be examples of all those in my European- and U.S. garages.

Yup, when it comes to my British garage, I’m backing Britain:


… albeit with some American engines.  I love me my British cars, but there are limits.

News Roundup

Bad News


(Kim writing his blog before personal computers were invented.)

Let’s start by looking to what the terrorists and terrorsymps are doing:


...wait:  protesters came all the way from Long Island?


...terrorists tell lies.  In other news, Lindbergh crosses the Atlantic.


...why?  Those journos are their most fervent supporters.

From the Dept. of Stupid Fucking Laws:


...and even that percentage is too high, there being no such actual crime as “hate speech”.

News from The Great Cultural Assimilation Project©:


...that excuse is positively Clintonesque.


...child molestation being very much part of his “home culture”, no doubt.

Some Political News:


...only difference is that unlike Mandela, Trump’s presidency won’t involve creating utter chaos in the country.

From the Lawn Order Department:


...just one of the perils of electing a Democrat as governor.  As opposed to the great state of Georgia, which didn’t:


...only way this could be better is if shooting squatters as dangerous criminals would not involve prosecution.  Oh well, baby steps.


...but no mention of any daily whippings or weekly ball-kickings?  Must be an oversight.

And some Entertainment News:


...one might say the same thing about Piers Morgan, of course.


...well, don’t we all?

In Economics News:


...which absolutely nobody saw coming, except everyone who isn’t in government or academia.

And in more (link-free) 

   

Finally, in a drive down :


...yes, she does:

Not just leggy, but also quite booby:

And that’s how we keep abreast of the news.

3 Worst Headlines Of The Past Week

Friday Feature, The Worst

I mean, FFS:  did they really mean it when they released Not Fade Away, all those years ago?

Do I even have to explain why this one sucks, on so many levels?

I find myself curiously conflicted by this one.  On the one hand:  ISIS are a bunch of fuckwits;  but on the other hand, so are Commies.

And one (only one) headline that absolutely didn’t suck:

Color me astonished.