Month: October 2025

Modern Take On A Classic

Drive Time

I was never that much into the venerated AC Cobra myself, because like meeting your heroes, it’s one of those things best worshipped from afar.  In other words, the reality of driving a Cobra is, well, a little terrible.  It’s unbelievably loud, the ride is harsh beyond description, and the creature comforts of the cockpit… well, there aren’t any.

Not my cup of tea, in other words.  If I wanted all the above (minus the overpowering roar from the overpowered engine), I’d just get a Lotus 7 / Caterham.

Well, until now.  There’s this bunch of guys who make AC Cobra replicas, and they seem to check off quite a few boxes.  Witness this beauty:

It has heated seats, FFS. [sound of Carroll Shelby’s corpse hitting 12,000rpm]

But for those who think this vision has somehow become pussified, fear not:


That’s a Roush 427R V8, producing 550 horsepower — and even better, it has a TKX 5-speed manual transmission.


(Be still, my over-stimulated heart… okay, groin.)

I’ve never been tempted to drive an AC Cobra on one of my demented long-distance road trips (e.g. here, here and here) because unless there were massages delivered to my aching back every hundred or so miles by beautiful maidens of the Orient, it would just be too damn painful.  But in one of these?  I might be tempted.

“But what about luggage, Kim?”

Oh yeah, that little detail:

I know that the prices of cars nowadays are too stratospheric, and the cars themselves are too gadget-ridden and wind-tunnel anonymized in terms of styling and they’re, well, just pussified.

But for just over $100k, I’m not sure you’d find something as red-blooded and… satisfying as this lovely thing.

If I’m going to risk being labeled a total pussy, though, I’d ask the guys at Backdraft Racing to fashion me a soft top against the rain because frankly, at my age I wouldn’t want to risk pneumonia.  Other than that:  vroom-vroom.

Random Totty

Gratuitous Chick Pics

I see that metal band Cradle Of Filth recently lost their keyboards player, Zoe-Marie Federoff.

“Who they, and who she, Kim?”

Not too long ago, Zoe-Marie married the Cradle’s guitarist:

Apparently, she quit the band in a huff because they were planning a collaboration with… Ed Sheeran.

Ummm okay, I can kinda see her point.

News Roundup

Bad News

And you’re gonna need a couple, after reading this lot.

Taylor Swift says it’s ‘shockingly offensive’ to claim this is her last album
...what’s really offensive is the thought that we’re going to have to endure still more of her assembly-line “music” for the next who-knows-how-long.

Next, some Backlash News:


...should have been fired for academic fraud long ago, but I’ll take what I can get.

...at least she wasn’t bonking a 14-year-old.  One hopes.

And in

 




...keep on truckin’, boys:  i.e. throw ’em out by the truckload.  Or something.

In International News:


...sounds about right.  And speaking of Jew-killers:


...like anyone cares.

From the Darwin Report:


...let’s just hope that her kids’ father(s) might have passed on a bigger helping of brains to them.

From Teh Meejah:

PIERS MORGAN: JK Rowling once called me an amoral celebrity toady
...truth hurts, dunnit?

And now it’s that time: 


...when a porno movie does halftime… oh wait, that’s BROWN Bunny.  My bad.
Oh, and Mr. Bunny:  I’m not going to learn Spanish just to try to understand your poxy lyrics.

And in our journey along :


...yes, I’m afraid it’s that time again.  Sorry.

After that, the news is kinda lame.

Range Report: One Of Those Mattel Guns (5.56x45mm)

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

You may want to sit down for this one.

Not long ago, I spent some time with Doc Russia and Combat Controller — both, as Longtime Readers know full well, among my dearest and most longtime friends.  While our initial friendship was sparked by our love of guns, over time we’ve become drinking buddies as well, and many’s the night of company well spent in riotous merrymaking of the liquor-abusing kind, wherein we swap tall tales, tell old lies and slag each other off endlessly.

Anyway, on this particular occasion they ganged up on me and derided my love of Old Things Wot Go Bang, and in fact suggested in no uncertain terms that if ever there was a need for gunplay of the social (okay, anti-social) kind, I would not be a welcome companion because… my choice of SHTF firearm (guess) could not share ammo with their anti-personnel platforms.

I should point out that Doc is a former U.S. Marine, and Combat Controller — as his nickname indicates —  was one of those snake-eater AF types called upon to bring in death from the skies from a friendly air force.  So you know what gun they prefer, right?

Ugh.  Anyway, after a while they told me that they could whip together a gun for me just from parts they each had lying around the place, with maybe just a few additions.  In other words, a new gun at almost no cost to me.

I can only plead semi-drunkenness and (the promiscuous, as it turns out) gun love for agreeing to this stupid idea — with the result that I am now the owner of this thing:

…it being classified as an AR-15-style “pistol”, with a 10.5″ barrel and a “brace” — right.  (Who do we think we’re kidding?)  The red dot sight is the same as the one I have mounted on the Buckmark.

Anyway, I took FrankenGun to the range yesterday to see what all the fuss was about.  (I’ve fired several ARs in my life, but never one built like this.)

First impressions:

  • Holy shit, this thing is LOUD.
  • There’s some recoil but nothing to write home about — about the level of a lever-action shooting .38 Special, if my memory serves me.
  • The trigger is outstanding (for those who want details, it’s supposedly a good one:  Geissele).
  • I spent more time getting the red-dot scope right than playing with the gun.  Also, I only had 40 rounds (two 20-round Pmags).

“Yeah, yeah, but how does it shoot, Kim?”


(for some reason I loaded only four rounds for the second string instead of my customary five)

And in looking at the pics, I mis-typed:  the distance was 20 yards and not 25.

Then I got a little more businesslike:

Hold was center (where the quarter’s been placed).  I was too busy working the scope’s elevation to worry too much about left-right.  And ammo was running short, so I took a deep breath and got really serious:

Okay, I couldn’t get those kind of groups at that distance with any of my other handguns.  So I can’t fault the accuracy.

Also, the FrankenGun ran like clockwork:  no failures of any kind, no bits fell off, nada.  No problems there.

So I’m left with a BIG question, because I’m still undecided whether I like the thing.  It checks a lot of boxes, to be sure.  But I’m still not convinced of the effectiveness of the 5.56x45mm poodleshooter ammo (a long-held reservation, as Longtime Readers will know about me all too well).

Would it be fit for purpose in some kind of self-defense situation?  Not inside the house — not my house, anyway, because I would have serious issues (i.e. permanent deafness) if I touched off the thing there.

Outside the house — and we all know what I mean here — and assuming I was aiming for a target (or targets) at distances longer than 50 yards (way beyond where I would consider using a 1911, for example), would it work for me under those circumstances?

Here’s the crunch question:  would it work better than a pump shotgun loaded with buckshot?  (I know, you only get a few rounds with a pump, whereas with an AR, you get lots more.)

Or, to change the question around a bit, would it work better for me or would I feel better about it if I swapped out the barrel for something more substantial, like the .300 Blackout (.300 BLK) with its more severe recoil?

Like I said earlier, I’m undecided.  Sure, it’s fun to shoot and ammo is cheap (unlike the Blackout, which costs nearly double).  But I don’t know whether my hesitancy is because at the end of the day, I just don’t feel right about the cartridge.  For fun shooting, I have all my .22 guns, and we all know that the .223 is a lot more of a cartridge than that.  But is it serious enough for me as a SHTF round?

I’m going to have a dozen or so more range sessions to get comfortable with FrankenGun, and I’ll let y’all know then whether I’m going to keep it or not.

Even if Doc and CC would hate me for getting rid of it.

As always, all comments and suggestions are welcome… once you’ve recovered from the shock of Kim With AR-15.

Falling Over

Health

For once, I discovered an interesting article in the ghastly New York Times — motto:  “Other Than That, The Story Was Quite True” — because it has nothing to do with politics, for once:

Public health experts have warned of the perils of falls for older people for decades. In 2023, the most recent year of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 41,000 Americans over 65 died from falls, an opinion article in JAMA Health Forum pointed out last month.
More startling than that figure, though, was another statistic: Fall-related mortality among older adults has been climbing sharply.

I don’t know quite when I started to lose my balance.  I think it was in my early sixties, when for no reason at all, I would stagger a bit when turning a corner (walking, not driving, of course).  I wouldn’t fall over, but it nevertheless alarmed me.

And when getting dressed, specifically putting on pants or briefs, I suddenly found myself unable to balance on one leg without toppling over;  which means that now I pretty much have to either brace myself against a wall with one hand, or else make sure that if I do fall over, there’s a bed close at hand to catch me.  It’s irritating.

Going down stairs has a similar effect.  Where once I could bound down a staircase with no effort at all, I find myself having to grip the banister like my life depends on it, which it does, now.

Of course, I’m very familiar with the fact that we Olde Pharttes tend to have brittle bones, hence the distressing number of said group suffering things like broken hips, skulls or limbs after toppling over. (see:  novelist Jilly Cooper, dead following fall)

The famous expression “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”  is not so funny anymore.

The NYT article suggests this:

The author, Dr. Thomas Farley, an epidemiologist, reported that death rates from fall injuries among Americans over 65 had more than tripled over the past 30 years. Among those over 85, the cohort at highest risk, death rates from falls jumped to 339 per 100,000 in 2023, from 92 per 100,000 in 1990.
The culprit, in his view, is Americans’ reliance on prescription drugs.
“Older adults are heavily medicated, increasingly so, and with drugs that are inappropriate for older people,” Dr. Farley said in an interview. “This didn’t occur in Japan or in Europe.”

Some other guy opines:

The difference, he believes, is Americans’ increasing use of medications — like benzodiazepines, opioids, antidepressants and gabapentin — that act on the central nervous system.
“The drugs that increase falls’ mortality are those that make you drowsy or dizzy,” he said.
Problematic drugs are numerous enough to have acquired an acronym: FRIDs, or “fall risk increasing drugs,” a category that also includes various cardiac medications and early antihistamines like Benadryl.

Which might be plausible, except that in my case it’s not a reason because I don’t take any of the above drugs, or even drugs that are similar.

Of course, we all know that some meds like Benadryl can cause dizziness — FFS, it says so right on the pack — which is why if I do ever take one of those, I take it right before going to bed.

No, I have no idea why I’m suddenly so tottery on my feet, when in the past I always had excellent balance.

It’s also a well-known fact that Olde Pharttes are more likely to experience vertigo when faced with extreme heights or drops.  Just a photo of some idiot hanging from a sheer cliff face by only their fingertips will actually cause my stomach to heave;  I have no idea how I’d feel if facing a sheer drop in person, but I’m perfectly prepared to believe stories about elderly people inexplicably toppling over a cliff as through drawn to it.

I’ve said it before and I repeat it now:  this getting old business is not for the young.

What Price The Big Day?

Good Stuff, Men & Women

This story got me nodding my head in agreement.

One couple ditched their plans for a conventional wedding and instead jetted off on a month-long honeymoon.  Hannah Bird and Charlie Camper, both 26, had originally budgeted £30,000 for their big day.  However, the pair from Burnham-on-Sea soon realized the huge sum would be blown on just one day and could instead be used to make more memories exploring the world. 

So they did just that:  offering their guests supermarket cup cakes instead of buying an expensive wedding cake, got the bride a free (i.e. secondhand) wedding dress and offered their guests a buffet (“grazing table”) instead of the traditional sit-down meal.  As for the venue:  they booked a woodland retreat for a whole weekend’s festivities — which ordinarily would strike some as excessive — but reduced the cost by charging their guests sixty quid, in lieu of wedding presents.  Which makes a great deal of sense, by the way:  it may sound tacky, but from a guest’s point of view, where are you going to get a weekend getaway for only sixty bucks?  A bargain for everybody, and guests wouldn’t have to mess with buying presents into the bargain.

I never bought in to the wedding-industrial complex;  it always seemed to me a cynical exercise in gyno-centric excess — the idea that a girl somehow “deserves” to have a Special Day wherein she’s the absolute center of attention.  What bollocks.  And this is especially true when one looks at the statistics and realizes that the chances of said nuptials actually producing a long and happy relationship are vanishingly small.

I have no problem with the bride’s parents paying lots of money for the occasion, by the way — it’s their money to do with what they wish, and as long as they don’t bankrupt themselves (a distressingly-common occurrence), why not?  But as with the couple in the above story, it makes so much more sense to take the money that would have been blown on fripperies such as massive flower bouquets and a one-day-use dress, and spend it instead on something worthwhile to the couple, rather than just feeding the bride’s giant ego or need for self-aggrandizement.

I actually did that with my first marriage.  As time passed, I noted with alarm that the whole thing was growing faster than a Democrat politician’s spending plan, and I did two things:  first, I secretly bought our honeymoon air tickets (to the U.S., incidentally, where neither of us had been before);  then I presented that fact to the bride’s family as a fait accompli, and said that this wedding day was going to be made on a strict budget because we needed to save money to afford a month-long’s stay in the U.S.  Unbelievably, over time pressure was brought upon me by her family to cancel the U.S. trip for a shorter honeymoon at some resort somewhere in South Africa — said pressure only disappearing when I threatened to walk away from the whole wedding (and marriage) and go to the States on my own instead.  And I meant every word.

Anyway, that honeymoon Over Here was truly beneficial for me, in that I fell in love with this wonderful, fantastic country, big time… and the rest you know.

And all because like the couple above, I refused to spend a boatload of money on some one-day extravagance.  In their case, they got a lifetime’s worth of memories;  in my case, I changed my life’s entire path.

A bargain, for both of us.