“Here we are, after nearly 1,500 years of achievement in philosophy, poetry, architecture, science, music, art, and religion, yet we allow cultural troglodytes and other such ‘cool’ types to set the agenda.” — Taki
Author: Kim du Toit
Best Of All
I see that director Franco Zeffirelli died a couple days back, and as always the Jackals Of The Press are talking about his “love of excess” and all the other irrelevant nonsense that they spout when they are confronted with genius.
The fact remains that of all movie adaptations of Shakespeare’s works, Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet is the greatest — the closest to the original play, some of the best characters / casting (the Nurse and Mercutio being the best examples), with excellent cinematography and costuming. It is quite possibly the perfect movie.
And then there’s Olivia Hussey:
And if for some inexplicable reason you’ve never seen Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet, buy or rent it today. No thanks needed; it’s all part of the service.
Birth Year V: The Murkins, Part 2
This week as promised, we’ll look at the smaller U.S. car companies and their 1954 offerings:
DeSoto Firedome
DeSoto Powermaster
Hudson Hornet
Kaiser Special
Nash Metropolitan
Packard Caribbean
Studebaker Commander
I know the “Studdy” has many fans, but it’s only the best of a very bad bunch. By popular demand, here’s the 1954 Corvette:
Thanks, but if we’re going to do 1954 sports cars, I’ll still take the Mercedes 300SL, thank you:
Which brings to the end of the 1954 Birth Year series. Thank you all for playing along.
…and even though I don’t do Hallmark holidays, here’s one for all us dads, today:
And for the record, here’s Your Humble Narrator and the Son& Heir, each pic taken at age 23:
Didn’t even bounce.
Dangerous
[sorry this post is late — I set it to appear at 6pm, not 6am]
Apparently, the U.S. is not a safe place to be — in fact, there are 127 countries safer than ours.
I guess that it all depends.
Here in Plano, I see sights like this every morning in the pre-dawn hours — dozens of them, mostly jogging all by themselves, and I seriously doubt that you’d see much of this in, oh, Qatar (#31) or Oman (#69), let alone in Jamaica (#83).
Of course, I wouldn’t imagine you’d see many of the above in the South Side of Chicago or in Detroit, either, which just proves how dangerous averages can be.
What comes to mind immediately, by the way, is that according to the study, San Salvador and Honduras are ranked higher than the U.S. — begging the question as to why, then, thousands of their citizens are supposedly fleeing crime and persecution and flooding our southern border.
Actually, I call bullshit on the whole thing. Reason:
South Africa is ranked one place higher than the U.S., at #127.
While there may be safe and unsafe places in the U.S., there are no safe places in South Africa whatsoever. As I said: bullshit.
Acid Trip
Brit TV personality Jo Brand has landed herself in hot water (warning: link contains pics of Jo Brand) with this silliness:
The BBC has defied calls to sack comedian Jo Brand after she suggested on a Radio 4 panel show that protesters should throw acid instead of milkshakes at right wing politicians.
However, as stupid as that statement was, this was worse:
Nigel Farage accused the 61-year-old of ‘inciting violence’ and called on the police to act after her comments on an episode of Heresy.
I know that this is Britishland, where the fuzz can arrest you for making an off-color comment on Twitter, but my main point is quite simple.
As long as the loony Left (and few are loonier than Jo Brand) can continue to talk trash like this and remain unpunished, the better for all of us — because, as Longtime Readers will know only too well, I’ve often suggested tying socialists to a chair and beating them to death with a baseball bat. It is, of course, just hyperbole; I don’t really want to beat anyone to death (except maybe for a few of the worst socialists), and I’m reasonably sure that if some loon decided that a little acid be tossed in, say, Jeremy Corbyn’s face on the “good for the goose, good for the gander” principle, that Jo Brand would be “shocked, shocked ” that someone took her at her (jocular) word.
Ultimately, of course, this is going to turn around and bite the loony Left, for two reasons. In the first case, most ordinary people would be horrified if, say, Boris Johnson or Mike Pence were to get a faceful of acid, and the political repercussions would be severe — the loonies would alienate even more voters from their side than they’re already doing.
The second case, and I speak here of the U.S. specifically, would be a lot worse than simple political repercussions: some would-be acid-tosser [sic] would be quite likely to get a .45 bullet in his face the minute he raised the jug. And the rest of America would cheer the shooter to the rafters.
Once again, I say that the Left seems to be all about violence because they think we’re evil; but I don’t think they’ve really thought this through, unless they have a martyr complex (and they might — they are that twisted).
As long as they keep talking shit like Jo Brand has, we can just laugh at them, until, that is, some loony gets “triggered” into action. But using the rozzers to arrest people for talking shit is wrong — I believe that’s covered in one of the Constitutional Amendments, somewhere — because the minute we conservatives support that nonsense, it’s going to get used against us, a lot more than against them.
Remember: words mean nothing (in terms of legal action); it’s deeds that (rightly) engender a response from agents of the State.
Or a response from a concerned conservative (see “.45 bullet” above). The Brits don’t have that 0ption, of course, because they have no Constitution and no real Bill of Rights so the fuzz can fuck with the citizenry all they want, but that’s their problem.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go and oil a length of rope. Then it’s range time. Those .45 bullets won’t aim themselves, you know.
Goals Matter
Oh, good grief. This is what you get when you have ignorant people talking about matters they know nothing about:
Should The U.S. Women’s World Cup Team Have Run Up The Score Against Thailand?
Not only did they run it up to an absurd outcome (13-0), say critics, but they danced their way through it, celebrating after most goals. At what point is an opponent sufficiently beaten and even humiliated that mercy can be shown?
The answer is: Never, bro. This is Trump’s America now. The cruelty is the point.
Oh FFS, this has sweet fuck all to do with Trump, or “Trump’s America”. Here are the facts.
In professional football (okay, soccer) competitions, goal count matters — both for and against. If two teams are tied in terms of wins, losses and point totals (usually, three for a win, one for a tie and zero for a loss), then the deciding factor is the goal difference between the total number of goals scored by the team and the goals scored against the team. All other things being equal, the team with the higher differential will go through into the next round, or (in the case of league tables) be named the champion. All teams know this, and there’s no “mercy” in professional soccer, no “running up the score” and certainly there’s no “cruelty” in scoring as many goals as you possibly can against your opponent.
And I’ll finish with this: assume that the U.S. team’s group results showed that (say) Germany won their matches 4-0, 5-0, 4-0, 3-2 and 3-0 (5×3=15 points, goal difference: 17), while the U.S. team won their matches 13-0, 2-1, 3-2, 2-1 and 2-1 (also 5×3=15 points, but goal difference: 18). In this scenario, had the U.S. not run up the score against Thailand, then Germany would win the group and go on to the next round.
Under these circumstances, not running up the score and failing to progress would probably cause the U.S. team’s manager/coach to be fired, and rightly so. As I said earlier: goals count in professional soccer.
This weepy-waily shit about cruelty and running up the score comes from the modern pussified culture where participation trophies are awarded, scores aren’t kept and the won-lost record isn’t tallied. In the real world, as with everything else, life is less forgiving.
As for the so-called reporter who wrote this silly article: ignore everything else he ever writes, because if he screws up something as easy as this, he’ll probably screw up something important.