Happy Birthday

I see that Carmen Electra just had a birthday, and I have to admit that she’s not bad for a 50-year-old broad:

However, no amount of sexiness, hotness or other such descriptors can overcome the heritage of once having been Mrs. Dennis Rodman:

Hard pass.

Similarity Overload

I’ve said before that I miss newspapers — when I was staying in Britishland a few years back I devoured the Free Markets’ Daily Telegraph  every morning — and most of the reason is that a newspaper covers a wide variety of topics.

This is no longer true since we all started getting our news on the Internet, because naturally we tend to gravitate towards websites which cater to our needs rather than ones that don’t.

The problem is that there is hardly any what I call “general” reading anymore — all the conservative sites cover pretty much the same dozen topics each day — which is why I read Britain’s Daily Mail and Sun newspapers avidly.  I know that they’re both pretty dire, but they’re free, offer more than just politicspoliticspolitics, and even if they sometimes read like the National Enquirer, it’s at least far more entertaining than reading How Biden Is Leading Us To Doom for the seventh time that morning.  (The Telegraph  is behind a paywall, sadly, and all American newspapers are either also thus immured, or else horrible Lefty rags [some overlap] which I will not give the time of day).

My twice-weekly News Roundup features my attempts to address that ghastly sameness, albeit in a lighthearted manner, and the variety of topics I choose to “summarize”  reflects that ideal.  And unlike Instapundit, who I think tries to do more or less the same, my Roundups feature scantily-clad women, because just because.

Anyway, I didn’t start this post meaning for it to become so serious, so to lighten things up a little, herewith some gratuitous pics of things that I like:

(Try finding that joke at Breitbart or The Federalist…)

And finally:

You’ll never find that combination of topics at any single website, but you should at mine… along with

Old News

Here’s a lovely one from Woke Disney:

Disney began an extensive review of its film library as it prepared to introduce the streaming service in 2019, according to a New York Times report. As part of the initiative, called Stories Matter, Disney added disclaimers to classic movies for containing “negative depictions or mistreatment of people or cultures.”

The Stories Matter team privately flagged certain characters as potentially problematic, with the findings distributed to senior Disney leaders, two current Disney executive told the Times.

One of them was Tinker Bell, who raised concern because she is “body conscious” and jealous of Peter Pan’s attention, according to the executives.  Captain Hook was another potential liability because he could expose Disney to accusations of discrimination or prejudice against individuals with disabilities because he is a villain.

Disney also flagged Ursula the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid, saying her dark complexion could be construed as racist and her flamboyant mannerisms could come across as “queer coded,” or homophobic.

Fucking hell.  There is just no end to this bullshit.

Anyway, I don’t know about Hook and Ursula, but Tink has always been problematic for Disney, especially at the hands of the brilliant satiric (satyric?) artist Julius Zimmerman (warning:  link is so NSFW you could face termination of the extreme kind, let alone just the loss of your job or your eyesight).

Disney is whizzing beyond comedy into self-parody faster than the speed of a single cartoon cel through a projector.

And Disney?  Your stories don’t matter as much as you think they do.

Showing Off

Several years ago, Kim Kardashian was robbed in her Paris hotel room, and the popular response to this event was horrible.  It prompted this response from me on these pages, and I stand by every single statement I made back then (please go and read it before continuing).

All that said, I have to say that it makes me wince when today’s glitterati  and sports heroes show off their conspicuous wealth.  Here’s one example of some guy getting robbed of his $72,000 watch, and another example of stupid display:

That’s former Disney-girl and now-slut-extraordinaire Bella Thorne.  I can only hope that what she’s wearing on that single wrist and hand are paste, and not real jewels;  but somehow, I don’t think that’s the case.

I used to know a fabulously wealthy man who had a habit of buying his wife expensive jewellery, and paying a small fortune to have the pieces scrupulously copied in glass and gold-plate so that she could wear them in public.  I once asked him why he bothered buying the real thing at all, if all she was going to do was wear the fakes.  His reply was priceless:  “The real stuff is an investment;  the fake stuff is for her ego.”

I have no answer for any of this, by the way, because I don’t think there is one.  Criminals are always going to target the wealthy;  and if the wealthy want to wear a neon sign on their bodies that says, “I’m rich!” and goblins see the signs and act accordingly, I guess that’s just the way of the world.

As for Amir Khan:  I cannot imagine spending over seventy grand on a watch that ugly, but as we all know, wealth can’t buy you taste.

Helping Hand

I know how I feel about the man in this story:  I have complete and utter empathy.

Tender love letters have emerged that show the devotion of a British pensioner to the wife he is accused of murdering.
David Hunter, 74, is due to stand trial in Cyprus today after the alleged mercy killing of his terminally-ill wife of 56 years, Janice, 75, last year.
UK lawyers have written to the island’s attorney general asking prosecutors to reduce the charge to assisting suicide amid family pleas to ‘show some compassion’ but have received no reply.
Mr Hunter will die in prison if found guilty of murder.

As to Janice Hunter’s condition:

Mrs Hunter had been suffering from leukaemia since 2016 and her health deteriorated rapidly in the months before her death.
She was losing her sight, couldn’t eat or drink and had constant diarrhoea that meant she needed nappies – but was only given paracetamol by doctors.
Mr Hunter allegedly suffocated her before trying to take his own life by overdosing on sleeping medication in an apparent suicide pact.

And she was quite clear about her feelings:

He has since told his daughter, Lesley, 49, that his wife made her wishes to die clear and talked about it every day in the last six weeks of her life.
‘To begin with, he tried to dissuade her, then he said he would go with her,’ she said. ‘He loved her so much… I’m horrified they were so desperate they thought that dying together was the only way out.’

As you all know, I was in a similar situation when Connie was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and her condition worsened almost daily.  We had so many drugs in the house that it would have been easy for her to overdose;  and because she was in a drug-induced fog most of the time, she was quite capable of OD’ing through pure confusion — which is why I took over the job of giving her the drugs  — and therefore I could have deliberately given her an overdose which would have ended her life.

And I want to be perfectly clear about this:  had she asked me to, I would have, even though my conscience would have scourged me every day for the rest of my life.

As it happened, that fortunately never became an issue.

However, New Wife is a cancer survivor, which means the bastard can always return and cause her massive suffering.  We’ve talked about this often, as her late husband suffered and died from throat cancer — his last months of life having had as much suffering as Connie had from hers — and so both New Wife and I have had the most intimate experience with this situation.

And we want no part of it.

Fortunately, we’re both in decent health (for our age), so the immediate future so far does not look that dire;  but as everyone at our end of the age spectrum knows, that’s a precarious situation.  Both of us have a “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) document should it be needed, and we also have a (very private) agreement to cover the “Hunter” situation.  Neither of us wants to go through a painful and irreversible illness, both for ourselves and for the strain it puts on the other spouse, and that’s all I’m going to say on the topic.

Smoother

I must confess to liking the shape of the Ferrari Roma a great deal:

…if only for the fact that its bodywork doesn’t look like a biker chick with all her piercings removed, e.g. the new Lotus Emira:

..and even other Ferraris of recent vintage, like the 488:

In fact, the Roma reminds me of my true love, the discontinued (don’t get me started) Jaguar XK of the early 2010s:

…which I still think is one of the most beautiful tourers ever made, by anyone.

YMMV, and no doubt I’ll hear all about it in Comments.