September 2025 – Page 4 – Splendid Isolation

Not The Same

September 24, 2025 Kim du Toit Shootin' Time

From SOTI:

“A recent report from a United Nations Fact-Finding Mission paints a grim picture of Maduro’s Venezuela, especially after stealing the election in 2024, asserting violence, torture, arbitrary detentions, deaths in custody, deaths of protesters, sexual violence, forced disappearances, foreigners as hostages, etc.”

Ummmm lemme see: an actual Communist dictator is doing all these terrible things, right?

Our own Commies just wish that Trump, who to them typifies all the above Bad Things, actually behaved like Maduro so they’d have something to really complain about. But of course he doesn’t do any of that, despite the many calls from people like myself to start the one-way helicopter service already.

A “forced disappearances” thing sounds pretty damn good from where I’m standing — but no doubt someone’s going to have a problem with this.

All I can say is that if I owned a chopper and had a pilot’s license…

Random Totty

September 24, 2025 Kim du Toit Gratuitous Chick Pics

Perrie Edwards was more-or-less named after Steve Perry from Journey, and started off her singing career as a member of an all-girl band named Little Mix (no, I couldn’t hum one of their songs either, even at gunpoint).

She has, to my eyes, a kind of old-fashioned beauty, hence her appearance on these pages.

Techno-Woes, Part 17

September 23, 2025 Kim du Toit Technology

One would think that the Gods Of Technology, having bricked my new laptop (bought in January 2025) and caused me to have to buy a new one, would have done fucking with me.

One would be wrong.

Last week, I picked up my phone, to feel and see this:

Yup. The old case, she splody like an IRA bomb or Al-Qa’eda IED.

“Oh,” said the T-Mobile tech person when I brought it in to the store, “that’s the battery. They do that. How long have you owned the phone? That long? Wow, and the battery only went phut now? You’ve been lucky. Anyway, you’re going to need a new one. No, not just a new battery — a new phone, because they stopped making this model about four years ago.”

Fortunately, I long ago made the command decision to pay a little extra on my monthly bill for a replacement phone deal, should Bad Things Happen.

So I picked up the New Phone yesterday. Why only yesterday? Because these phone stores no longer carry any actual stock, you see — unless you’re a New Customer, in which case they’ll whip one out and empty your bank account in a flash. But a replacement phone for existing customers? Oh no, we’ll have to order that one, and it’ll take a week or so, sorry about that. At least I got an upgraded model, for no extra cost.

Blessedly, the transfer of all my stuff from Old & Broken to New & Shiny only took about 5 minutes, mostly because I didn’t bother transferring any photos (having already backed them up).

I guess that 5+ years usage out of one of these “smart” phones isn’t that bad — although considering that I barely use the fucking thing (compared to everyone else in the universe), I would have thought it would last much longer.

But back to my store visit… I wanted to have a clear screen protector installed. Sorry, we don’t keep those in stock — but we can order one for you. One of those rubber-like protective cases? Nope, sorry, but if we order those for you, they’ll get here in a week or so.

For fuck’s sake: what happened to the concept of one-stop shopping and customer service?

(I should add that the staff at said store were helpful and knowledgeable in the extreme — even for Southern Nice People, they were exceptional. They’re not to be blamed for policy decisions like in-stock items.)

Anyway, I have the new thing, and it seems to be working okay. Let’s just hope it lasts longer than that godawful ASUS piece of shit laptop.

And the next time I go to a mall (2026, if my existing shopping trend continues), I’ll just swing by one of those little kiosks and get the screen protector and safety casing there. Life is too short to worry about shit like that.

Sorry, Love

September 23, 2025 Kim du Toit Law and Order, Psychos

I see that Charlie Kirk’s young widow Erika has (unsurprisingly) gone all Christian and forgiven the loathsome little shit who murdered her husband.

I can’t find it in myself to do that, and it’s not because I’m not a Christian.

You see, “forgiveness” has gotten a bad reputation of late, and that’s because we see it all over the place. Judges “forgive” career criminals and release them back into society; prosecutors of the Soros persuasion refuse to prosecute crime as they want to “forgive” the criminals because of their race or ethnic background (or political leanings), and even parents want to “forgive” the criminals who raped their daughters or sons.

Erika Kirk has even asked not to go after the death penalty for her husband’s murderer:

“I’ve had so many people ask, ‘Do you feel anger toward this man? Like, do you want to seek the death penalty?’ I’ll be honest. I told our lawyer, I want the government to decide this,” Erika shared.

“I do not want that man’s blood on my ledger. Because when I get to heaven, and Jesus is like: ‘Uh, eye for an eye? Is that how we do it?’ And that keeps me from being in heaven, from being with Charlie?”

Yeah, well this is why our society has delegated the business of revenge to a third party — in this case, the state of Utah — because it eliminates the personal from the process and hands it over to the People. And the people of Utah have voted for the death penalty for murder. It has nothing to do with the survivors.

And yes, forgiveness can make you feel your “ledger” is clean and your conscience made pure; but your personal inclinations are not as important as the interests of society as a whole.

Society as a whole needs to be protected from animals like Kirk’s assassin — and I’m not just talking about his own activities. I’m talking about others like him, who may decide to follow his path because there’s no chance that they’ll lose their own life as a consequence. Life imprisonment, in other words, may work to protect people from an individual’s future activities — but it is definitely less of a deterrent for others than a death sentence.

I’m not going to argue the point with people who are against the death penalty per se. I’m also not going to the trouble of looking up what happened to the capital murder rate in states like New York which abolished execution, or in states like (I think) Ohio which reinstated the death penalty. The plain fact of the matter is that the death penalty is a deterrent against murder — the stats pretty much all show that — but even past that, I believe strongly in the concept of vengeance against those animals who have stepped so far outside the bounds of a lawful society that their continued existence is a smack in the face of the victims and their survivors, whether the latter want to acknowledge that, or not (as in the case of Erika Kirk).

Give Charlie’s murderer a fair trial, then hang him. And hang all those who do the same.

Enough of this forgiveness bullshit: it’s time for retribution.

Quote Of The Day

September 23, 2025 Kim du Toit QOTD

From the DM’s Kennedy:

No one should lose a job – in the media or otherwise – for saying something that offends the government.
But that’s not what happened here.
Kimmel got canceled because he offended the American viewing public en masse. That’s just bad business.

Quite right. To paraphrase The Godfather: “It’s not personal: it’s just business.”

And if your behavior angers customers — in this case, a TV show with already-appalling viewership — expect the hammer.

One might think that the Bud Lite and Cracker Barrel episodes should be enough of a warning signal to these tools. But they’re lived for so long as a protected species that they doubtless think that the rules don’t apply to them.

Is there some of the old Schadenfreude that they’re starting to learn differently?