Entry Level

So you’re a young-ish man or woman, and you want to get into the wonderful world of Hunting / Target Shooting, Rifle Division.  But when you start looking at what’s out there, you’re bowled over by the prices.

You might saunter over to Collectors, and snatch up this one, for only $600:

Here’s the checklist, all answered in the positive:

  • well-known brand
  • good, adjustable trigger
  • bull barrel which won’t start to wilt after only three rounds fired
  • popular cartridge, relatively cheap for practice, not horrible recoil
  • includes an acceptable Nikon scope (for hunting;  for greater distances, buy something more powerful)
  • lightweight stock

Caveats:

  • it’s consignment, which means Collectors hasn’t tested it for function (as they do when they buy guns from individuals)
  • the bolt may be stiff and clunky to operate (common fault of Savage rifles that haven’t been worked on

Honestly, it’s a dandy for an entry-level shooter.  Me, I think the positives outweigh the potential negatives, bigly.

Scraping

It can’t be simple coincidence.  After my post about coolers the other day (wherein I lashed out at over-priced Yeti), I got this message (flagged as junk mail):

Of course, clicking on either of the links doesn’t do anything except register your email addy as belonging to a sucker.  Whoever created this bullshit then spoofs your email address and starts sending you dozens of spam messages per day — so it looks as though you’re receiving emails from yourself but worst of all, you can’t flag your own address as spam or junk so you can’t stop the fucking things.  (Ask me, I’ve tried.)  Here would be my solution to these assholes:

Clickbait Hoars

I read Breitbart News  every day, sometimes more than once, to get an idea of what’s going on out there.  So it pains me when these guys piss in the soup by, in this case, treating a fucking commercial as a news item, viz. (don’t bother clicking on it, it’s just a screen grab):

Most of the comments are scornful of BN, saying things like “As sponsored by…” and so on.

Here’s the news:  nobody cares if you carry ads, or even advertorials.  But you have to tell people that they are just that and not actual news reports, like this example from, of all places, the Daily Mirror:

Otherwise you could (justifiably) be accused of abusing the trust of your customers, which in this case, you are.

Even the “mainstream” news has followed this principle, although they too have succumbed to clickbait bullshit recently.

I thought Breitbart News  was different.  Clearly, I was mistaken.  They just did a Bud Light.

Dumb shits.

It’s as though my Readers were to discover that all these years I’ve been paid by Springfield Armory to say all those horrible things about Glock.  (Relax, I haven’t.)

And I’m just a little blog, tucked away in the corner of the Internet.  If you’re in the Big Media Playground — and especially in the roped-off conservative area — trust is your only coin:  fuck that up, and you’re dead.  Ask Dan Rather.

No, I’m not going to stop reading Breitbart News, but I’m going to be a lot more skeptical about their reporting in future.

See how that works?

Bravo Scuderia

Finally, a ray of hope amidst all the gloom of Global Warming Climate Cooling Change:

Legendary Italian car maker Ferrari has no intention of phasing out combustion engines and going fully electric or hybrid anytime soon, promising Sunday to keep making the eight and 12-cylinder engines it has made its trademark at least until the end of the 2030s.

The chief of the Italian manufacturer told the BBC in an interview it would be “arrogant” to dictate to customers what they can buy while at the same time walking away from the company’s heritage.

Ferrari instead wants to honor its history of high performance cars using traditional methods of propulsion.

Of course, they’re dealing from a position of strength because they can’t make enough Ferraris to satisfy the huge market of people with more money than sense and no resistance to brand snob appeal.

That said, their 296 hybrid is pretty sexy:

…albeit still overpriced, like all Ferraris.

But let me not be too grumpy about this because they are to be congratulated for not capitulating to the Watermelons, and keeping their Rosso  where it belongs:  on the outside.

Lite, Shmite, Ultra-Shite – You All Suck

In the wake of Bud Light performing the impossible task of stepping on its own transgender wokedick comes this silliness:

Miller Lite is facing criticism for a weeks-old ad that pushed a feminist message.

“So here’s to women,” comedian Ilana Glazer says in the ad, which Miller Lite published in March for Women’s History Month. “Because without us there would be no beer.”

Without women, there pretty much wouldn’t be any need for beer, but let’s continue:

Glazer explains that women have made beer throughout history and the beer industry has not paid them enough credit. The ad criticizes beer advertisements that feature women in bikinis.

Errr nobody gives a rat’s ass about who actually makes beer — it could be made by Brazilian macaque monkeys, for that matter, and I suspect some actually might be — but showing women in bikinis is just the beer industry’s equivalent of a cosmetic company using some actress as their “face”, i.e. getting the attention of its core buyers.

But that just leads to my main point.

Regardless of who makes it and who drinks it, “light” or “lite” (i.e. diluted) beer is a totally shit product. 

We shouldn’t be boycotting Bud Light or Miller Lite or any of their cohort brands;  we should be boycotting diluted beer in toto.

When I say “we” I mean all existing male drinkers of this foul swill — I had one sip of Miller Lite back in 1985, and have never touched the shit (of any brand) since, so I can’t very well boycott something I never drink.

Still, I can’t deny that there’s a need for people to drink lots of hardly-alcoholic booze, so I have to reluctantly concede that there is a market for it.  Going back to my first experiences with light beer, I recall that anyone throwing a party always had to get some Lite in so that the girls could drink with the boys.

So while men have always bought light beer, it’s generally been for their womenfolk and not themselves:  men can consume and handle alcohol in quantity more easily than women — fact! — so why not?  Light beer, then, has always been aimed at women, but subtly:  showing bikini-clad women in those ads simply reminds the buyers — mostly men — not to forget the ladies when they plan their party.

Clearly, though, that’s just Not Appropriate anymore, and Men Are Pigs and Women Are Downtrodden and and and and, ad nauseam.

Is it time for a breakfast martini yet?  Oh, why the fuck not?  If there was any 6X anywhere around, I’d go for one of those, but there isn’t so I’ll just substitute.

Not a lite bone in its considerable body.


Judging from the Comments, I seem to have pissed in a few people’s light beer.  LOL

They Hate All Of Us Anyway

Here’s one that made me chuckle:

Gunmaker Heckler & Koch tweeted agreement Tuesday with Miller Lite’s woke campaign against using sexy women — “bunnies” — to sell products, then doubled down in a second tweet, describing ad campaigns that objectify women as “trash marketing.”

On Tuesday, Heckler & Koch doubled down, responding to accusations that they have become “woke” by giving a detailed explanation of their opposition of “objectifying women” in selling guns:

Wow- woke? Allow me to translate: objectifying women was never a good marketing strategy. In the firearms industry, that was a prominent strategy up until recently. Many industries have done that (including beer corps).

As an actual woman typing this, I’ll use more words for you to comprehend: using bunnies to sell products is trash marketing. Supporting women by not doing that is good. 

Of course, it’s easy to say all that bullshit when your target market isn’t men buying guns for their womenfolk (unlike light beer).  If it was, H&K (who, as Larry Correia reminds us, think we all suck anyway) would paint bikini models on the oversized grips of their overpriced guns.

And by the way — and this applies to all gun companies — your job is not to “support women” by uttering platitudes like the above.  Your job is to support women by making guns that they can actually shoot.  (Last time I looked, H&K is kinda lean in that product description.)

As with light beer, I can’t boycott H&K products because I’ve never owned one in the first place — mostly because of H&K’s Ferrari-like premium prices.  (Only unlike Ferrari, whose cars are arguably worth the $$$$, H&K guns aren’t.)

Anyway, it’s all bullshit. Manufacturers have been using beautiful women to sell their products ever since Mrs. Aarg preferred Mrs. Thaarg’s leopardskin loincloth.  That’s not going to change, ever.

Bloody fools.