…on the Sloop John B, heading for the ultimate in Good Vibrations.
R.I.P. Brian Wilson, one of the greatest musical minds of modern times.
Feel free to share your favorite Beach Boys songs, in Comments.
Author: Kim du Toit
And Here’s Why
Earlier this week I talked about how Yurpeen tourist places were rethinking their welcome wagon policies.
Well, here’s one place that’s doing that and I think, based on the evidence, we can all see their point:
In a desperate attempt to crack down on alcohol-fueled debauchery, enraged [Albufeira] City Hall officials on Friday approved huge new penalties of up to £3,375 for holidaymakers flouting a strict new good behavior code — with fines for everything from urinating in the street to getting naked.
The rules will kick in within weeks, in time for the summer season, aiming to curb anti-social behavior.
And locals hope they will turn the tide, with nakedness, vomiting in the street or having sex in public all now coming at a price.
Here’s what really sucks about this. I know Albufeira — I’ve been there before, and I thought it might be the prettiest little village on the whole of the Algarve coast — but that was eons ago. Clearly, things have changed, and not for the better.
And the problem is that regardless of how badly the tourists (mainly Brits, duh) might behave, the pubs and restaurants are obviously making a killing so they’re not going to do anything to stop the Louts & Sluts Brigade from trashing their town.
Sadly, it’s always the local folks who end up with a town where the streets flow with vomit, blood and semen while the publicans shrug and pocket the cash.
And then everyone will be shocked — shocked! — when the locals start posting signs that read “Muerte A Los Turistas”, “Ingleses Regressam A Casa” or “A Bas Les Rozbiffs” (depending on whether it’s Spain, Portugal or France, for instance).
What’s really needed in Albufeira is for the Porro rozzers to go all Chicago P.D. circa 1968 with these drunken assholes (men and women):
…and let them know that what might be fine in Merseyside, Manchester or Millwall is non grata when visiting Albufeira.
The problem is that the Euros in general have gone to great lengths to pussify their various police forces, so that very logical avenue will denied them — but it is, at the end of the day, the only language that these oafs understand. Until that time, then, nothing will change, and fines aren’t going to do diddly.
Random Totty
Anyone remember this little thing, from Wayne’s World?
Unquestionably one of the cutest exports from Philippines, it’s Tia Carrere:
Doing the Baywatch thing:
And yes, she’s now in her late fifties, but still worth a spin, says I:
I Surrender
I think it was William F. Suckley who characterized conservatives (people who want to conserve what’s right and what worked well in the past) as someone standing athwort the Tide of history, shouting “Pop!”
Imagine if you were Horace standing proud at the bridge outside Home, trying single-handedly to stop the Geordies from crossing a bridge so that the defenders could use the time to mount a fence — only to discover that instead of doing that, the inhabitants of Gnome were having a party and putting lipstick on their wives, sisters, daughters and preteen sons so that they’d be more attractive to the invaders.
Well, that’s how I feel in my struggle to preserve grammar standards nowadays. What’s the point of running over a speed bump and complaining about how much it affects your reading pleasure, when the people who let the speed bumps fall off the back of the truck a) don’t care and b) are too busy heading off to their next big adventure of launching a podcast or showing their tits on Tuk Tuk to worry about some old geyser mouthing off about their shitty speling?
Even better when the Artificial so-called Intelligence can write a better sentence than the aforementioned scribes anyway, so they don’t have to bother creating anything at all?
There’s no point in trying to make the written word, you know, comprehensible when all your efforts are greeted with indifference or worse, a patronizing pat on the head with “There, there, Gramps. Go take a pill and listen to your old unremastered non-autotuned Beetles songs.” (unspoken: just kill yourself you old fart, because why would you waste your time on such irrelevant activity when you could be a “content creator” on Instagram which you don’t subscribe to anyway.)
So that’s it: I quit. No more speed bump posts, no more kvetching about spelling errors, illiteracy, ahistorical writing or any of the multitude of sins which have infected modern writing like a malignant tumor.
I’m going back to the old standards: guns, cars, booze, women and political rants, in no specific order of preference. And if in my reading I encounter godawful spelling errors, dangling participles and misplaced commas (to name but a few), I’ll just ignore them and carry on — because that seems to be the current way of doing things. Standards? Who needs them?
And who am I to be the one not keeping up with modernity and trends?
So, for the last time:
Unmasking
I remember that as a boy who was hooked on “cowboys ‘n crooks” movies, the infallible way of identifying the crook was to see how he wore the bandana tied around his neck. Knot to the front: good guy; knot to the back: crook.
This was done by crooks so that they could more easily raise their bandanas to cover their faces while pulling off a bank- or stagecoach robbery — the rule of thumb being that anyone wanting to conceal their identity was up to no good.
So it is with great delight that I note the following:
Donald Trump declared ‘bring in the troops’ and called for the arrest of anyone wearing face masks as violent clashes between law enforcement and protesters rocked Los Angeles overnight.
Arrest, then rip off the face mask and take a pic of the scrote’s face before loading the arrestee into the back of the cop car or -van.
Severe beating optional.
More Troubles
Earlier, I referred to this account of the mostly-peaceful reindeer games taking place in L.A. et al., there’s an additional twist to the tale:
Some of the most horrifying images to emerge from the carnage on Sunday came from Downtown LA, where at least five Waymo self-driving cars were set alight and vandalized, prompting an indefinite shutdown of Los Angeles St north of Arcadia, and south of Alameda amid safety concerns about the lithium batteries.
Oops.
I also liked pics of this mostly-peaceful activity:
Good question, sweetie.
Mr. President?