Category: Good Stuff

Range Report: July 4th Excursion

Good Stuff, Patriotism

Not my range visit, but from deep in the mountains of Tennessee (greenest state in the land of the free — sorry), Reader Mike S. sends me this fine account:

Loaded up magazines, a 50BMG can of 5.56, and my AR into the truck and headed to the range.

First pleasant surprise came when checking in the office.

“Hey, Ruger guy!” It was a fellow I met a few weeks ago and showed him my Mk II Standard and Mk III 22/45. He’d just bought a Mk IV 22/45 from the range. It was a range rental but no one was renting it so … he enjoyed shooting mine so got one of his own. *happy dance*

Off to the firing line.

At one point there were 5 of us with ARs. One was full auto. We let freedom ring!

During reloads we swapped info ‘bout makes, models, modifications… gun stuff. And yes, I had the oldest model (AR15A2) with fewest mods (trigger and stock replacement) except for the youngest shooter who had a new AR. He took notes on what we said. His girlfriend was reluctant to shoot the rifles so … boyfriend took her to the pistol range to fire his 9mm. She didn’t like that one either so once again my 22/45 came into play. She didn’t like the light trigger but enjoyed the light recoil. The Volquartsen mods are perhaps too much for a newbie. When they returned my gun and mags they included a box of ammo. Nice touch.

As the sun slid between the firing line cover and tree line it got a tad hot (stop laughing you Texans!). The rifles weren’t cooling down either. So handshakes all around and off to home.

Damn good way to spend Independence Day.

I’ll say.  And I have to say that as much as I enjoyed the story, what really got to me was the display of good manners by the youngins.

Maybe we’re not doomed.

Six Of The Best: The Watches

Top 6

Anyone who  was imprisoned in  went to a boys’ boarding school before 1980 will be familiar with the term “six of the best”, which referred to the number of strokes applied to one’s backside by a cane-wielding head- or housemaster.

This series isn’t about any of that sadomasochistic nonsense.  It’s about fine things, things I like right at the moment, things I would like to possess (given the means, of course):  just… great stuff.

So today:  Watches.

As Longtime Readers know well, I have some fairly strict rules when it comes to watches:

  • no metal bracelets (because arm hair);  leather straps only, no rubber or plastic straps need apply
  • manual wind action (no automatic or battery a.k.a “quartz” movements)
  • simplicity over complications
  • uncluttered watch faces
  • dress watches over “functional” (stopwatches, diving watches, etc.).

While these are very much ironclad rules, I have reserved the right to break them in a couple of cases simply because the watches are gorgeous.  So here we go (in alphabetical order), and prices are as currently listed in the red links:

Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso – $9,000

I want a dark-faced watch for discreet evening wear, and I love the “JLC” brand.

Longines Master Collection – $1,200

Art deco numbers, and it oozes class that belies its price.  If something bad were to happen to my brilliant Tissot Heritage, this would be its replacement (assuming I couldn’t find another Heritage, which seems to have been discontinued booooo).

H.Moser & Cie Endeavor – $18,500

The minute I saw this watch, I fell in love despite its nosebleed price.  Want.

Omega Speedmaster Professional Moon Watch – $6,500

Yeah, I broke my own rules with this one:  it’s clunky (not a dress watch) and it’s multifunctional (not simple time-telling).  But it survived a trip to the Moon, which has to count for something, and I’d take one over any Rolex*, any day of the week.  Oh, and that no-class canvas strap would go bye-bye.

Piaget Altiplano – $11,000

The ultimate in minimalist style, the ultra-thin Altiplano has always attracted me.

Vacheron Constantin 1942 Triple Calandrier – $20,000

Okay, I broke almost all my rules with this one:  when a watch tells you the date and month (in addition to hours, minutes and seconds), that’s what you might call “multifunctional”.  Don’t care:  it’s old-fashioned (1942 first production) and I love it.  At least it’s still a manual wind…

Honorable mention (because it isn’t a wristwatch):

Vacheron Constantin 1900 Pocket Watch – $6,000

Art Deco, gold case (not ostentatious because you keep it in your pocket), and a VC into the bargain.  Yeah, it’s secondhand.  Anyone know what a 1961 Ferrari 250 SWB sells for, these days?

And speaking of which:  sometime next week will be cars.

*The Rolex Discussion can be found here.

Final thought:  you will never find any Breitling, Hublot or Tag Heuer watches on any list of mine.  Here are the reasons (just ignore the horrible A.I. voiceover, if you can).

The Right Stuff

Good Stuff

I don’t know if liquid cowshit (“slurry”) can be called the right stuff, but when it’s used properly, it sure as hell is.  Here’s the executive summary.

Two weekends back was labeled a “heatwave” by Brits (what we here in Texas would refer to as a “nice spring day”).  Anyway, the Brits did what they always do when faced with that situation:  they got in their cars and headed north to the “country”, specifically in this case to the Lake District.  Now, this being Britishland, there wasn’t enough parking to accommodate this flood of cars, so a bunch of these drivers saw an empty field.

Did I mention that there were signs all over the place?  Here’s one:

Note the polite request in the lower one.

Needless to say, because most Brits (even the wealthier ones) are at heart a bunch of screaming socialists who think that private property is theft, some people who think that such notices don’t apply to them anyway ignored the prohibition and parked their Mercs, Beemers and Audis in the field.

Whereupon this happened:

After years of putting up with tourists leaving their vehicles on his land as soon as the sun comes out, this week sheep farmer Hogg Hodgson finally snapped.

The furious tenant farmer, whose family has run Rydal Farm in the Lake District, for generations, was filmed covering at least 20 vehicles including Mercedes, Jaguars and BMW, in the foul smelling muck.

Today Mr Hodgson said he was ‘no hero’, and explained he felt forced to discharge the tanker of slurry over cars parked on his land to protect his livestock and his land.

He said: ‘I’m not proud of what I did. I didn’t do it for any particular reason other than the way tourists behave. I just get fed up with the way they treat the Lake District.  And I am sick of being abused by people when I ask them not to park on our land.’

And O Happy Day, there is pictorial evidence:

Our Hero’s ladywife apparently had this reaction:

 …as did I when I first read this story.

And I’m sorry, but if you wouldn’t buy this man a pint at his local pub the next time you’re Over There, then you’re not welcome on this here back porch of mine.

From the comments about the article was this priceless observation:

“Love it… he should, however, have made sure that the car wash was closed for the week-end.”

…and:

“Too bad the local car washes weren’t closed because of water restrictions.”

Followup Rant

Good Stuff, Marxists

Kruiser went a little nuts yesterday, talking about evil Democrats:

The most prominent people in the Democratic Party in 2026 are filth. They are all mentally unstable pathological liars who don’t deserve things like the benefit of the doubt in any situation, bipartisan overtures, or the presumption that they’re not inherently evil.

Now when I say “nuts”, I mean nuts — for him.  (For me, that’s just a mild-mannered dissertation.)

He then backs off a little by saying NADALT:

I would like to make it clear that I don’t believe that all Democrats are this way. The party has unfortunately been hijacked by a bunch of loudmouth coastal lunatics who, in my less-than-humble opinion, have irreparably damaged the brand and political relations in this country. That’s right, I don’t think that there is an antidote to the poison that they’ve injected into the American political conversation and I think that anyone who does is hopelessly naive.

The relatively normal Democrats who live in flyover country need to find a way to assert themselves — ballot box, anyone? — and make it clear that paste-eating morons like Hakeem Jefferies and Chuck Schumer are not at all representative of them. They are running out of time to make this case. It won’t cure the aforementioned poison if they do, but it might mitigate its effects. That really is the best that I can hope for, anyway.

I’m heartily sick of hearing that there are “moderate” Democrats.  There aren’t.  “Moderate Democrats” (in historical terms) are now moderate Republicans, which is why Flyover Country is massively Republican.  Those moderate Democrats looked at what their party had become and said, “Uh…no.”  Now they either vote Republican or sit out the elections.

If they don’t, and pull the straight-D lever on Election Day, then they’re no better than the loony Lefties, because by pulling that lever, they’re enabling the actual filth to continue being filthy.

My suggestion for the filthy:

Yeah, it’s a euphemism.  After all, that’s what they’d do to us, given the opportunity.

Remember Cambodia?

Those weren’t conservative Cambodians pulling the triggers.

Worth Supporting

Essays, Good Stuff

Some time ago I expressed my irritation about PJMedia’s fundraising machinations — i.e. by sticking most of their articles behind a paywall — which would be fine, if the articles were worth more than just a passing interest.  To my mind, most of them aren’t.  And in consequence, I see little reason to support PJMedia with any kind of subscription, despite their continuous blandishments to do so.

Yesterday, I linked to this article because it resonated with me as few of PJMedia’s articles do:

Then I went back to American Thinker‘s home page and looked over the rest of the articles:

I went and read every single one of them, and found them all to be uniformly excellent, not just in their analysis, but in that they made me aware of things I hadn’t known before, or else provided a foundation to some of my own opinions that I hadn’t bothered examining too closely (Twisted Psychology  being a good example).  Also, note the datelines of the articles:  those are just some of the most recent articles posted.

I’ve known about American Thinker  pretty much ever since they came into existence, but they were never a mainstream reading choice because I’m an idiot, and also because reading their material often makes my brain hurt (which, by the way, is a Good Thing for political commentary but a Bad Thing in literature #Proust #Pynchon).

No more.

So I cancelled one of my (underperforming) streaming TV channels, and redirected that money towards a sub for American Thinker.  They deserve no less — and by the way, they are thus far the only online publication I’ve bothered to subscribe to.  The others are, shall we say, less worthy.