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When Panic Costs Money

Eco-Crap, Journalist Scum, Watermelons, Weather

The Greatest Living Englishman has turned his ire towards the BBC, and at climate fearmongers in general:

Amazon Prime star has slammed weather forecasters for spreading what he has described as “green propaganda” in his latest column.

The presenter, 63, went on to explain that due to inaccurate weather reports, he and many other farmers and been forced to “take a massive financial hit” for “absolutely no reason”.

Jeremy recalled how earlier this week, weather presenters had claimed “an apocalyptic storm would arrive in Britain on Tuesday night”.

The Former Top Gear host went on to explain how, due to predictions of weeks of “torrential rain and gales”, he had felt forced to harvest his crops even though they weren’t ready because the moisture content was too high.

“Yes, I’d have to pay £10 a ton to dry the grain after it was harvested but better to take that hit than have the whole lot ruined by the storm,” he wrote in his column for the Sun. 

“We worked tirelessly until 11pm and when I finally crawled into bed, utterly exhausted, I noticed that all of my neighbouring farmers were still out here, doing the same thing.”

Here’s what he was talking about:

But:

The ex-BBC star went on to express his outrage when he had expected to see “Armageddon” the next morning only to be greeted by “blue skies and a gentle breeze”.

“So the farmers had brought in their harvest early and taken a massive financial hit that they can’t afford… for absolutely no reason,” Jeremy fumed.

So he lashed out.

“They feel compelled, when it’s warm, to paint their maps dark red and talk about ‘extreme heat’. And similarly, to keep Greta and the snowflake army happy, they need to say when it’s a bit chilly, that we will all soon be buried under a 20-foot snow drift,” he complained.

“They see their weather forecasts now as political weapons. Baseball bats which can be used to beat the oil companies into submission. And they’ll mangle statistics if that’s what’s necessary.”

He then went on to beg weather forecasters to share “the truth” with farmers and to save their “propaganda forecasts” for people who need to “turn the heating down”.

“They think that the constant wrongness doesn’t matter, because a wonky weather forecast only affects people planning barbecues,” he stated. “But to farmers, it bloody well does matter.”

Frankly, if I were a British farmer, I’d subscribe to an actual meteorogical service and learn to interpret the data for myself.

And refuse to pay the BBC license fee, like millions of other Brits are doing.

News Roundup

Bad News


And speaking of quickies:


...candidate for “Most Misleading Headline Of The Year” competition.


...pick and cut?  What happened to flaying and impalement?  Oh wait… those watermelons. My bad.

Some Political News:


…


...a simple glance at past Soviet leaders would emphasize that Commies never give up power voluntarily:  they have to die.


…

In International Monetary News:


...three words guaranteed to cause mocking laughter:  Euro bailout fund.  And speaking of money:


...wait:  cash-sniffing dogs?  What new totalitarian hell is this?

From the Great Cultural Assimilation Experiment:


…I prefer the old-fashioned term “concentration camp”, myself.


...as opposed to “un-sinister” sex attacks on women?

From the True Crime Dept.:


...I know that criminals are seldom PhD candidates, but… seriously?

In the Woke Chronicles:


...am I the only one getting an ever-larger Schadenböner out of this sorry tale?

Never mind;  this next one will cause all boners to wilt like two-week-old lettuce.


...fat, stupid and pervy is no way to go through life, son.

And now it’s time for INSIGNIFICA (and you’ll be SO glad there are no links):

      …who they, again?

Finally:


...it’s been a while since we looked at the former newsreader and now Hottest Conservative Babe On The Planet, so here we go:

Is there a better way to end the news than with a pic of Tomi in denim shorts?  I think not.

Gratuitous Gun Pic: Weatherby Orion Side-By-Side (20ga)

Gratuitous Gun Pics

Sent to me by the eagle-eyed Gun Professor is this welcome news:

Of course, they’re not just offered in 20ga.:

Weatherby has had a sort-of on-again-off-again history with their side-by-sides, having had them made variously in Spain, then in Italy, and now, according to the Professor (who contacted them) they’ll be made by Tiblis in Turkey.

Street price for these guns is likely to be slightly under a grand, which will make them competitive with CZ’s offerings — which are also made in Turkey.

As one who has seen the ancient and venerable side-by-side shotguns fall from favor over the past couple decades, all this is good news.  To quote some non-professorial gun guy:

“Shotgun barrels need to be side by side like a man and his dog, and not over and under like a man and his mistress.”

Off My List

Entertainment, Two-Minute Hate

I’ve moaned about this nonsense before:

Since hitting UK cinemas last month, the atomic bomb thriller Oppenheimer — which stars Cillian Murphy in the titular role — has been given a slew of five star ratings while critics branded it Nolan’s ‘best and most revealing work’.

However:

BBC News star Jane Hill revealed she walked out of Christopher Nolan’s film halfway through after spotting a major flaw that left her ‘disappointed’.

I was thinking “historical inaccuracy” or “gratuitous sex/violence”, but no:

It appears Jane was certainly not in agreement as she shared that she was frustrated at not being able to hear the film’s dialogue properly due to the loud soundtrack — and was even more astounded to learn that the issue occurs in almost ‘all’ of Nolan’s films.

She told her followers: ‘Saw Oppenheimer. Well, managed half of it. Disappointed that music & effects often drowned out the actors, I missed whole chunks of dialogue. 

Well, that takes the movie off my “to watch” list.

Till fairly recently, I thought that this degraded sound in movies was simply the result of my age- and tinnitus-ridden hearing, but now I know the truth.  It seems that the new trend in cinema verité  is now to muddy up the dialogue either by having the actors mutter their lines — and sometimes in thick, incomprehensible accents withal — or else to submerge the speech with over-loud sound effects and / or “background” music.  Or in the case of this weasel Nolan, both.

Sorry, but there’s not much verité  when you can’t hear it being spoken.

I know, the answer is to wait for the movies to appear on a streaming service, and then tap the “subtitles” button.

Nah I’m not going to do that.  If I’m going to have to use subtitles, then I’ll just watch furrin stuff like gloomy Scandi detective shows or Belgian whodunnits, which quite frankly are often better than their “English” competition anyway.

The Son&Heir suggested that I get a sound bar for my TV so that I can turn up the “mids” (mid-range audio) and compensate, but I’m not going to do that either.

This little trend is like an artist covering his painting with sheets of thick gauze so you have to strain your eyes to see what’s on the canvas.  I wouldn’t bother looking at those, and I’m not going to watch these shitty movies either.

A pox on all of them.

Related:  Oppenheimer  director Nolan tells us all to fuck off.

3 Questions That Shouldn’t Need Answering

3 Inexplicable Things, Guy Stuff

Every so often one will come across a question to which the answer is self-evident, but someone’s going to ask it anyway.  Here’s an example:

1. “When you find a rusted-out old kitchen knife, why not just toss it out and buy a shiny new one from Williams-Sonoma?”
— because nothing looks as fine as a well-restored blade, not just in appearance, but in its intrinsic history.  Need proof?  See here, where some guy with mad skillz goes after an old cleaver.

Here’s another one:

2. “Why would someone spend $170,000 on a replica of an old car?”
— because as long as the replica has been manufactured by engineers with all respect for quality as well as heritage, it’s worth it, and not the least because the originals require not just stupid money, but insanely-stupid money available only to Russian oligarchs, software company founders and parvenus like Jeff Bezos (also criminals, some overlap with the aforementioned).


(watch the second video at the link…)

Here’s another question of this ilk (but by no means the final one):

3. “Why is The Repair Shop such a popular TV show?  All they do is restore old junk.”
…it’s not “junk”, it’s heritage, history, treasured artifacts and sentimental objects.  To watch Steve Fletcher fixing an old clock, Will Kirk restoring an old piece of furniture or even those two old pink-haired biddies bringing wrecked toy dolls and teddy bears back to life is to see and feel the joy of a miniature triumph of life over death.  If you are not moved by that, you are a foul, crass and cynical human being.

The overall answer to all the above questions can be summed up in one word:

Craftsmanship.

It’s a rare talent (and becoming rarer still when so many people are seduced by cheap, fragile and nasty knock-offs from China or Eastern Europe), and if we hold on to no other custom, craftsmanship is worth everything. To quote Oscar Wilde’s words from Lady Windermere’s Fan :

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.

I know I’m always teetering dangerously close to the latter, but all I can say is:  guilty as charged.  Especially where beauty and craftsmanship are involved.

Karma Smiles

Marketing / Advertising, Sports

Two headlines that had me chuckling, when seen one after the other:

…and then:

So their lesbians beat our lesbians.  (I know, this whole Lesbo World Cup is of little interest over in this corner of Teh Intarwebz, being a) soccer and b) womyns’ sports, but stay with me here.)

This whole non-singing of the national anthem — when you have been chosen to represent your country — has stuck in my craw since Day One.  By not singing the anthem, what you’re saying is that this is not a momentous privilege but just another thing you have to do before signing that lucrative endorsement deal.

And then kvetching when you don’t get that lucrative endorsement deal.

I know, I know:  it’s their First Amendment right and all that, but people need to understand that sometimes there are consequences to actions, and this would be one of those times.

I’m no longer an executive in this business but if I were, there is absolutely no way I would sign up one of these unpatriotic and ungrateful assholes and pay them some large sum of money, because in all good faith I couldn’t show them wearing the Team USA shirt (on the Wheaties packet, for example) when they’ve basically indicated that wearing said shirt is anathema to them.

Enjoy your stay in Oblivion City, shitbirds.