From my teen years: Flowers In The Rain (from one of the world’s most underrated bands).
And a bonus, because the first one triggered this one almost immediately.
And yes, early Jeff Lynne pre-ELO was in the band.
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Bill Wilson Cleans His 1911
I love watching a pro go about his business, and let’s be honest that when it comes to the 1911 pistol, few if any are Bill’s equal.
Which is why a couple of things he says in this video made me go: “Huh? I did not know that*.”
And I’ve fired well over 50,000 rounds through various 1911 models. Watch, and learn as I did.
*the life of a typical recoil spring was one of them. I change mine a lot less frequently than he does, but that’s going to change, you betcha.
Quote Of The Day
“The very people opposed to fossil fuels are mysteriously hostile to the best-known form of carbon-free energy production, which tells you what’s going on. The ‘climate cult’ rejects nuclear power because it might be too good at addressing their made-up climate crisis.”
— Vivek Ramaswamy
The guy should run for President. Oh, wait… he is.
All Your Kid Are Belong To Us
From the Department of Child Abuse comes this cheery little thought:
Teachers know what is best for their kids because they are with them every day.
We must trust teachers.
— Secretary Miguel Cardona
Yeah… trust our kids with teachers. Like this teacher, or this teacher, or this teacher, ad seemingly infinitum.
Now let’s talk about teachers showing kids porno in classrooms…
Frankly, when it comes to criminal abuse by authority figures, I see little difference between fucking a kid’s body and fucking up a kid’s mind with this evil shit.
Glenn said it best: leaving your kids in the care of the public school system is nothing short of child abuse.
And they’re not even being educated — except, it seems, with trannie agitprop and blowjob lessons in the curriculum.
Farming Or Party?
Then there’s this little snippet:
About 30 tons — or 60,000 pounds — of ammonium nitrate went missing from a rail car during transit.
Well now: either a couple of farmers have adopted a DIY attitude towards beating the rising costs of fertilizer, or else someone’s planning a party, Timothy McVeigh-style.
The way I feel about our beloved government right now, I find myself feeling curiously… how can I put this? — neutral? uncaring? apathetic?
That kinda thing. Anyway:
The company was shipping the ammonium nitrate in pellet form and believes it may have begun falling out of the rail car at some point during the trip, a Dyno Nobel spokesman told KQED.
“The railcar was sealed when it left the Cheyenne facility, and the seals were still intact when it arrived in Saltdale [Calif.]. The initial assessment is that a leak through the bottom gate on the railcar may have developed in transit,” the spokesperson told the station.
Why, it’s quite the Agatha Christie “locked room” mystery.
And let’s never rule out plain old incompetence, where someone just forgot to lock the delivery spigot underneath the car.
Natural Suckage
Whenever some natural disaster strikes a place where I’ve been before, there’s always a hint of a personal tragedy for me. (I don’t think I’m any different from most people, of course, but there it is.)
Such is the case with Ahrweiler in Germany, which lies on the banks of the Ahr River right before it empties into the Rhine at Remagen, and it’s a town that has many happy memories for me.
I remember that when I was there, about a dozen years ago, I thought that I could easily live in Ahrweiler — the town is gorgeous (although come the summer every year it floods, only with tourists), but the scenery everywhere you look is just spectacular.
The Romans thought so too: the mountainsides are festooned with grapevines dating back to those days, and there’s a large Roman villa outside the town that was only discovered a year or so before I got there.
Some pics I took when I was there:
And the town is shot through with drainage canals and pipes: 
…which didn’t seem to help much.
One would think that Ahrweiler’s proximity to the Rhine outlet would spare the town from flooding — especially as the town itself is ringed by a wall dating back to medieval times or earlier:
…but that didn’t happen this time:
The people of Ahrweiler received no warning of the impending crashing waves.
Leonie from Ahrweiler had the terrifying experience of watching the water destroy the city. At about 11pm Leonie and her family had gone to bed, but before falling asleep she was disturbed by loud noises outside their home.
The electricity had gone out and it was pitch black. The only way they could see was with candles and flashlights.
She looked outside to notice that there was a lot of water running down the street, but didn’t realise the severity of the situation until the water level started to rise to her doorstep. She woke up her mother and grandfather and they started to bring food and water upstairs. However, the nightmare had just begun – a massive wave burst through the front door, obliterating everything in its wake.
I should point out that Ahrweiler lies at the very foot of the Ahr Valley, which starts way up in the Eifel Mountains. It’s a steep drop from up there to the Rhine Valley below:
I hurt when I think about it.