Author: Kim du Toit

Death By Covid

Tragedy

You know, it’s one thing when Olde Pharttes like me are whacked by the Rona;  but this is just horrible:

Britain’s oldest pub has called time after more than 1,000 years
— due to the Covid pandemic

Ale was first served at Ye Olde Fighting Cocks in 793 but sadly the popular boozer has been unable to withstand the struggles of the past two years.
The pub in St Albans, Herts, has survived wars, plagues and previous economic crises. But landlord Christo Tofalli said he was walking away because the pandemic had been “devastating”.
He added: “I have tried everything to keep this pub going. However, the past two years have defeated all of us who have been trying our hardest to ensure the pub could continue. It goes without saying I am heartbroken.”
The much-loved landlord, who has run the venue for a decade, has been inundated with messages of support from around the world since his company went into administration.

“Messages of support?”  What about financial support?

Here’s yet another reason I would like to win a huge lottery:  I’d buy The Fighting Cocks (was there ever a name better chosen to get the hippies upset?), run it at a loss until business picked back up, and then give it back to the owner, who seems to be more than a decent sort.

And don’t talk to me about having the National fucking Trust step in to save this historic building.  First thing these wokist twats would do is change the name (because animal croolty), and then ban the sale of booze on the property.  Fuckers.

No, the Brits need to get behind this most excellent cause, with the rallying cry of

It deserves no less.

Starved

Men & Women

Here’s one that should make you cringe:

Anderson Cooper on Thursday revealed he has welcomed a second son named Sebastian Luke Maisani-Cooper. The CNN personality, 54, announced the big news on his show on Thursday evening.
…
Cooper said that his ‘best friend and former partner’ Benjamin Maisani is ‘in the process of adopting Wyatt, whose last name will be changed to Maisani-Cooper as well.’ He added, ‘Wyatt calls me “daddy” and Benjamin “papa.” We’re a family.’

The newborn had this to say:

Poor thing.

In so many ways.

Use Enough Gun

The Gun Thing

…especially when you’re attacked by a moose:

“As he charged me I emptied my gun into him and he never stopped,” she wrote on Facebook. “I ran for my life and prayed I was fast enough to not be killed in that moment. He trampled the team and then turned for us.”

Yeah, well.  Read the piece for the details about her “gun”.

Of particular interest to me is this statement:

She said no musher would ever travel with a rifle or a large caliber gun, instead preferring to scare off animals with a flare gun. And with all the jostling of the sled, the larger guns could easily go off.

Firstly, if your gun goes off because of “jostling”, you need some training and/or a better gun.  The thought of something like this Ruger Redhawk .44 Mag going off by being jostled,,,?

Ain’t gonna happen.

As for mushers going out without a rifle or large-caliber handgun:   if what this idiot says is true, they’re bigger idiots than I thought.  FFS, even realtors carry a heavy gun when they’re showing cabins and houses in the Alaska boonies.

Nothing Sinister

Media Assholes

Bah.  Apparently there’s something “sinister” about The Villages complex on Florida, as though there’s evil afoot by hoovering up a bunch of old farts, letting them have a good time and putting them into the equivalent of St. Peter’s waiting room.

To the relentlessly positive residents who fill their days with keeping fit and socialising, it is paradise on Earth.
But the immaculate lawns of The Villages — a sprawling development in Florida — hide a “sinister” underbelly, according to a filmmaker who likens it to the fake perfection of The Truman Show.

It seems as though “day drinking” is a Bad Thing, as though booze should only be consumed at night [pause to sip on my breakfast gin].   And ditto having fun:

Cheery music is pumped 24/7 over loudspeakers but ambulances turn off their sirens and funeral cars are unmarked. No one wants to be reminded of death.

Really.

Of course, if you read the article, there’s actually no dark underbelly, try as they may to find one.

Had the “journalist” spent just thirty seconds on an Internet search — as I did — he might have discovered this “shocker”:   that The Jackals Of The Press cooked up a scandal about how The Villages is a hotbed of sex and venereal disease, when in fact it isn’t.

The entire motivation behind all this negativity can be explained by one word — ENVY — because gawd forbid that people who have led long, productive lives, raised families and paid taxes should now be allowed to enjoy themselves, in the twilight of their lives.

Rope.  Tree.  Journalist.  Some assembly required.

Thoughtcrime

Government Thugs, Resistance

In the dystopian novel  Nineteen Eighty-Four  (1949), by George Orwell, the Thought Police (Thinkpol) are the secret police of the superstate, who discover and punish thoughtcrime, personal and political thoughts unapproved by the regime. The Thinkpol use criminal psychology and omnipresent surveillance via informers, telescreens, cameras, and microphones, to monitor the citizens and arrest all those who have committed thoughtcrime in challenge to the status quo authority.

And right on cue, the modern-day version of the Thinkpol emerges, brought to you by another of the Alphabet Gestapo, our comrades at the Department of Homeland Security:

MDM is a term developed by the DHS Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to replace the old-fashioned phrase “foreign influence.” Now let us caveat that the U.S. government does indeed have a responsibility to monitor and to identify foreign influence operations. This was the remit of the Reagan-era Active Measures Working Group, which worked tirelessly to identify Soviet lies being spread to undermine the United States’ global standing in the world, and then countered them with the truth.

But under the latest iteration, DHS is no longer concerned solely with enemy lies spread abroad, but increasingly with information spread by “domestic threat actors” (read: American citizens). And no longer are they merely concerned with disinformation, false material spread to manipulate an opponent, but with misinformation, which DHS considers information that is false but not intended to cause harm, and “mal-information,” which means information which is true but the government considers harmful anyway.

I added the emphasis, because that’s an extremely interesting concept.  A couple of interesting questions arise from this.

  • Who defines what is “harmful”, and by what parameters?
  • What are the penalties for disseminating this so-called “mal-information”?
  • Should the DHS be abolished?
  • Has anyone in Congress done anything to stop this?  and
  • Has the time come for us to begin the mass hangings?

I need to get over to the range.  Excuse me.