This is Madelaine Petsch, who has appeared in some TV show that I’ve never watched before.






This is Madelaine Petsch, who has appeared in some TV show that I’ve never watched before.






I’m referring of course to this activity, whereby you, O My Readers, get a chance to win this lovely Norwegian Krag-Jorgensen carbine for a paltry $10 per ticket, no limit on ticket purchases.

I’m still about a hundred-odd dollars short of its reserve, so I’m going to leave the thing out there for the next few weeks… and the details are in the above link.
Remember, it’s for a good cause. (#JimsWidowIrish)
From The Divine Sarah:
“Communism is a hot house plant because it originates from intellectual abstraction; because it doesn’t work mathematically; because, contrary to image, its biggest fans are always intellectuals of a certain type; because it can’t survive without leeching off functional systems, and because it can’t survive the free dissemination of information.”
If by “intellectual” she means “of the mind”, then I agree. But a socio-economic theory that cannot stand up to the most basic of questions is the province of the unutterably foolish, not of actual rational intellectual thought.

Well, it finally happened. After just under six decades of faithful service, I finally used the very last one of these:

Now, for New or else Forgetful Readers [Alzheimer’s joke deleted], I discussed this problem in some, possibly lamentable detail back here, so I’m not going to rehash the whole sorry tale of Procter & Gamble’s corporate fuckwittery all over again.
Nope. I have swallowed all that rage, and decided to Move On.
So I tried this variant of NEW Old Spice, because at first sniff, it actually wasn’t that bad — almost (but not quite) as good as the original:

I used it for a few days, but then discovered that while its fragrance isn’t bad, the texture of the deodorant — a sort of stiff paste — is awful. In fact, after a day of wearing the stuff, the next morning’s shower just about requires the use of a Brillo pad to remove the stuff from the old pits, in that it hardens like some kind of ghastly semi-concrete. It’s not a chemical anti-perspirant (which I never use), but I have to feel that the sticky residue performs exactly the same function, simply by clogging up your pores. Sorry, but that just can’t be healthy.
So into the trash it went, leaving me with the same task of finding a decent replacement for my Old Spice Classic Fresh. (Did I mention already how long I’ve been using said deodorant? I did? Yeah, sixty-odd years, without a break, just in case you missed it.)
It seems that most modern deodorants are aimed at girlymen or the LGBTOSTFU Set [some overlap], both in terms of their marketing and their perfume. Needless to say, I am not one of these people.
Thus it was that in my hour of desperation, I happened upon an oldie:

Good grief: do they even still make this stuff? I remember my Dad using the aftershave lotion manifestation, and I was astonished to find the brand was still around. And it doesn’t smell bad, either. When polled, New Wife found it not objectionable, which is factor #2 in its acceptance. Finally, it’s of the same consistency as the traditional roll-on (like Classic Fresh) and doesn’t require a Dremel tool for its removal in the shower.
Clearly, someone at whoever makes English Leather has not made the P&G mistake, and realized that brand loyalty — long-term brand loyalty — should not just be summarily discarded in favor of some New Thing, and kept it going. I hope.
Of course when it comes to business like this, there’s always going to be a fly in the ointment, and therefore it should come as no surprise that the English Leather roll-on deodorant costs nearly three times as much as my Old Faithful. Which I’m just going to have to endure, maybe at the expense of cutting out one range trip a month so as to afford the damn stuff. (I should at this point acknowledge that had the price of Classic Fresh gone up by a similar amount, I would probably have paid the premium — grudgingly, but nevertheless — and continued to use it. So suck on that factoid, you P&G shitforbrains.)
All these ripples came about because some cocksucker [sic] in Marketing / Accounting / Advertising at Procter & Gamble made a decision to end a product that has had a loyal following for many decades, no doubt simply so they can free up the production line for the latest in gayboy scents which will in all likelihood have few long-term customers because that type always goes after the New Thing, and stupid companies like Procter & Fucking Gamble are doomed to follow these tits around in the vain hope that one day these new customers might actually stick with one product variant — kind of like the customers for the Classic Fresh used to do for decades at a time.
I hope that the Old Spice division at P&G goes out of business soon. That, or whoever signed off on the discontinuation of Classic Fresh dies of an unspeakably painful disease, along with his/her entire family.

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But never mind all that unseemly laughter, let’s:
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…and the reaction from non-Californicators and non-Oregonads at the prospect of losing San Francisco, LA and Portland:

Some good things from ![]()
![]()
...one more time, add a zero to that total so we can get really happy.
![]()
...weren’t the Boston cops going to RESIST! or something? Oh no, wait, that’s on the Left coast:
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...I thought she was about to retire, the poor old addled thing. Anyway, let’s see how that resistance/arrest thing plays out.

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...do we have a similar ROE Over Here? If not, why not?
And in Sporting News:
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...yes, Mr. Blaine, I am shocked — shocked! — to discover that there’s gambling on professional sports.
From The Great Cultural Assimilation Project© :
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...I’m just curious as to when the German voters finally say, “Genug!”
In Lawn Ordure (International) News:
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...at least she didn’t post hateful words in social media. (Update: they’ve since dropped the charges. Sadly, the fear of tar and feathers did not seem to be a factor.)
And let’s have some decidedly non-linky ![]()

And a new feature, Headlines That May Be Just A Little Inaccurate:
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...although I wouldn’t be all that surprised if it was actually true.
Lastly, on our leisurely saunter down
:
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...Keely who…. oh wait, that one: 800-meter Olympic gold medalist Keely Hodgkinson:





And that’s a nice end to the news.
While I was tempted to headline this post with “Smart Beds, Stupid People”, there’s a much bigger issue at stake here.
You see, as much as we might laugh at the idiocy of people who would depend on something as fragile as the Internet to operate their frigging beds (FFS), just stop and think about how much else is dependent on SkyNet: communications, banking, traffic systems, logistics, security systems, even mapping services and cars (don’t get me started)… the list goes on and on, ad nauseam.
And yet people like me, who rail against the vulnerability of this encroachment on basic daily functions are patronized (“There there, Gramps, just take your pill and go to bed”) and called Luddites.
What about this much-lauded artificial intelligence thing?
An artificial intelligence system (AI) apparently mistook a high school student’s bag of Doritos for a firearm and called local police to tell them the pupil was armed.
Taki Allen was sitting with friends on Monday night outside Kenwood high school in Baltimore and eating a snack when police officers with guns approached him.
“At first, I didn’t know where they were going until they started walking toward me with guns, talking about, ‘Get on the ground,’ and I was like, ‘What?’” Allen told the WBAL-TV 11 News television station.
Allen said they made him get on his knees, handcuffed and searched him – finding nothing. They then showed him a copy of the picture that had triggered the alert.
close up of hands using a laptop keyboard
“I was just holding a Doritos bag – it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun,” Allen said.
Yeah, it’s all funny and stuff — until one day we discover that A.I.-generated police ROE training allows for lethal shooting at suspects “to eliminate the threat”. Oh wait… you think robot cops are just a figment of Hollywood imagination? Given that cops are facing staff shortages (#ThankYouBLM) and falling recruitment numbers (#ThankYouWokeCityGovernments), does anyone care to bet against me about this scenario?
Here’s the thing. Try to write a story that has an unbelievable premise about the baleful effects of technology on a distant-future society, and I’ll show you: tomorrow. Bloody hell, the most prophetic form of hostile future technology that you can imagine is probably being beta-tested somewhere as we speak.
Even Blade Runner is starting to look like a near-future dystopia rather than some far-off eventuality.
Having your bed controlled by SkyNet is the least of our problems.