Author: Kim du Toit
Classic Beauty: Deidre Hall
I’ve never watched a single episode of any daytime soap opera, in any country. (I think the soapiest I ever got was Dallas, and that only lasted a couple seasons — when J.R. Ewing was shot, I only discovered the identity of the shooter about a week after the reveal, more or less by accident when I overheard some people talking about it like it was the most important thing in the world.) So whenever I happen upon some totty who is or was a “soap star”, my interest barely flickers.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been a few exquisite of the type, of course — I remember thinking that Susan Lucci, for example, was quite a doll back then. But one who did get my attention was Deidre Hall, because a long time ago I saw her being interviewed on some celebrity show or other, and not only was she gorgeous, but… freckles, by golly. (And I think most Readers will be well aware of this particular fetish fascination of mine.) Then quite recently I saw some newspaper article talking about her recently celebrating her 86th birthday (!!!!), but the teaser contained a pic of her much-younger self. So off I went, along the highways and byways of Teh Intarwebz.
And I wasn’t disappointed. I’ve confined myself to black & white pics, because most of the color pics are owned by the Usual Suspects, Getty, Alamy, etc., whereas the non-color pics are blessedly free of their foul little watermarks.
And for the freckles:
Of course, the tout ensemble is excellent:
…but tucked away in some dark corner of said Intarwebz was a whole ‘nother side of Deidre, most probably before she became famous:
Changing Cards
Last Monday morning I went out to run some errands — nothing fancy, just dropping off a document at the tax guy, paying for the sooper-seekrit mailbox, and a quick trip to Kroger for some top-up items. Basically my spend was less than a hundred dollars, but I knew I had way more than that in the bank account, so no big deal, right?
Wrong. I got home, check the email and there was a warning message from the bank saying I had less than $100 in my account (I am so glad I have this feature). When I looked at the account, there was an ATM charge from some company for $336 dollars — a company I’d never heard of nor visited, and when I looked at the details, it noted that the transaction method was a “tap”.
Didn’t happen.
I then called the bank and told them about the fraudulent claim, which got the wheels turning. Net result: they changed the transaction to “pending”, but then the crap began: policy is to issue a new card number/card, which takes ta-da! up to five business days to process and deliver. So basically, I end up without an ATM card for that period, plus I have to contact all the autopay vendors and give them the new card number so that my life can continue uninterrupted, without such things as wifi being disconnected and so on — you know the deal.
What disturbs me about all this is that apparently there’s no guarantee that a fraudulent transaction can be “clawed back” if it’s been made against a checking account — it’s considered your problem — but with a credit card, however, it’s the bank’s problem and they have all sorts of ways to get the money back. Seems weird, but that’s banks for you.
I remember seeing one of those EeewwwChoob videos a while ago wherein some smart money guy said that he refused to use an ATM card, ever, and only used a credit card because of just such a situation.
Here’s my take: I don’t owe a lot of money on my credit card, and thanks to an upcoming tax refund I could pay it all off without any problem. (I normally pay 6x the “minimum” each month, so I don’t get stung too badly by their loanshark interest rates.)
I am thinking, now, that maybe I should do what the Smart Money Guy said, do away with the ATM card and treat the paid-off credit card like it’s an ATM card, and just pay the balance in full each month. (I don’t spend a lot of money on the Visa card so this shouldn’t be a problem, and our income — from New Wife’s job and my SocSec gets automatically transferred out of our current accounts into an interest-bearing account anyway, so we never have that much cash in the current accounts.) I have full faith in my and New Wife’s self-discipline to do this, by the way, so on that score there should be no problem.
My question for y’all: if I do the above and pay off the credit card balance in full each month, is there a risk that Global MegaBank Inc. will realize that they’re making no money off their loansharking, only from their transaction fees, and cancel my credit card?
All input is welcome.
Short-Range Zero
Ron Spomer tells you how to sight in your scoped rifle when you don’t have access to a long range. (You may sometimes need a buddy to help you, I think — Ron does.) And I have to tell you
Here’s my take on this.
A vast preponderance of shots are made at what I’d call short range: less than 150 yards. And if you do most of your hunting in any kind of woodland, it’s likely to be less than that — think 50 yards. So if you’re doing this kind of shooting, then a 30- or 50-yard zero makes a lot more sense. (Frankly, if you’re shooting at about 50 yards or less, I seriously question whether you need a scope at all.)
I think the longest shot I ever took back in South Africa was a measured (by pacing off) 325 yards, and I have to tell you, had I been more experienced a hunter back then, I probably would have backed off and not taken it.
Now? If I were to go hunting at all (which is highly unlikely), I’d set my limit at 100 yards, and probably less than that. I’d use a low-power scope (maximum 5x) if indeed I used a scope at all — and I’m pretty sure a red-dot scope would do the trick, instead of a crosshair or mil-dot reticle.
Remember that most of the time, you’re shooting at a side plate-sized target, and as such, a 3-MOA sighting group would be more than adequate.
Leave the sub-1″ stuff to the target professionals, and let’s not even begin to talk about the ultra-long distance 1,000 yard shooting. That’s sniper-grade accuracy, and 99% of all riflemen aren’t snipers or even close to being snipers. Hell, at my very best I wasn’t a sniper, mostly because of my crappy eyes. But I was quite a competent hunter.
Know your limitations.
Related Actions
First up, there’s this excellent thought from Bill Lehman (and read all of it because it’s excellent):
Take down their military structure. All of it. Take out their Quds Force, the entire IRGC in as far as we can find it, and leave their government, their military and their military logistics a pile of burning rubble. I would be a fan of flying a few hundred supply runs over Iran, C-17s and C-5s, full of crates of rifles, and ammunition, and dropping them, for the People of Iran to use, to finish the job. Then we need to LEAVE.
And here’s a manifestation of the above:
Thousands of Kurdish fighters have launched a ground invasion in Iran, according to a US official. The Kurdish militias, based across the border in Iraq, began the offensive in northwestern Iran on Wednesday. The Kurdish groups are widely seen as the most well-organized faction of the fragmented Iranian opposition and are believed to have thousands of battle-hardened fighters.
President Donald Trump on Sunday night spoke with the heads of Kurdish militant groups in Iraq to discuss the situation in Iran. The CIA was exploring plans to arm the Kurdish forces with the aim of sparking a popular uprising, CNN reported Tuesday.
Yeah, I’m all over this idea, as long as we remember that sometime not so long ago we armed a group called the Taliban to rebel against the Russian invaders of Afghanistan, and that didn’t work out so well. And I’m also a little apprehensive that these guys are coming over the border from Iraq — FFS, that whole area is a snake pit, isn’t it?
And just to remind everyone: the PKK (main Kurdish political party) is soft-core Muslim but hardcore Marxist. If that combination isn’t a toxic brew, I can’t think of a better one. None of which bodes well for the future.
Me, I’d prefer to drop those rifles and machine guns into towns and villages all over Iran, after first notifying the local resistance leaders — we know who they are, right, CIA? — where and when the guns are going to arrive so that they aren’t just taken by the IRGC fanatics when the crates hit the ground. Using history as a pointer, this would be akin to randomly air-dropping guns into Nazi-occupied Europe, only to have the SS intercept the shipments and use them for their own purposes, i.e. killing resistance fighters (and a few Jews, just for fun).
It’s all a little complicated and so on, but in this case, anything is better than dropping American boots on the ground to handle the thing. Once again, a history lesson: Afghanistan and a little further back, Vietnam.
Guns and ammo are cheap; American lives are expensive, and worth more than the game. Especially in this Middle Eastern shit pit.
Caption Competition #435
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