Splendid Isolation

Hold Back

From Reader Mike L. comes this piece of good news:

A Pennsylvania man says he is celebrating his Mega Millions win by getting engaged.  The man, who didn’t release his identity to the public, reportedly won a $1 million Mega Millions prize in New Jersey with a ticket he ordered using the Jackpocket app.  Representatives with the lottery app said the lucky winner decided to purchase the winning ticket while on a break from work.

First things first:  I hope he had the foresight to hold back $450k in taxes from that million, otherwise his friendly local neighborhood IRS agent is going to give it to him good, as will the poxy New Jersey tax enforcers.

Second thing:  yes, his luck was good, but not that good.  Why?

The winning ticket matched all five white balls, just missing the gold Mega Ball.

Had he got the Mega Ball, his winnings would have been about $120 million, in which case he could have got engaged in a cabana at the Four Seasons in the Seychelles:

As it is, his $550k is a lovely windfall, but after buying a decent house, an engagement ring and paying for the wedding, he’ll still have to keep on working.

Being a millionaire isn’t what it used to be…

News Roundup

And speaking of speeding:


...”than expected” is now de rigueur in statements like this.

From our Crime Reports:


...reminding me of my support of the death penalty for pedophilia.


...I guess all those anti-cop defunding laws are working out just as we expected, but they didn’t.


...keywords:  New Orleans.


...keywords:  Los Angeles.


...keyword:  wait — Brooklyn?

This week’s PANIC ATTACK!!:


…wait, what happened to Global Cooling Climate Warming Change© and The Next Big Pandemic?

In Woke News:


...yeah, just follow the link if you don’t believe me.

In the Heart Of Stone Dept.:


...quit that unseemly giggling, willya?


(no link)


...and when I read success stories like this, it makes me proud to be an American.


...Terrible Tragedy or Great Escape?  I report, you decide.

And in a world of 

...that’s no way to talk about London.

 

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Well, I guess if you’re going to play Big Boy Games, you need to be prepared to die like a man:

A 16-year-old male was shot and killed Monday while allegedly trying to steal a car around 2:20 a.m. from a San Antonio, Texas, apartment complex.

Police indicated the owner of the car heard glass breaking outside his apartment and went to investigate. Once outside, he found the 16-year-old allegedly sitting his his car, trying to steal it.

The car owner believed the 16-year-old was armed so he fired at the suspect, striking him once and killing him. [some editing necessary – K.]

Gotta say that San Antonio seems to be becoming a dangerous place to work, that is if your “work” involves undocumented property redistribution.

Gratuitous Gun Pic: Prairie Assault Rifle

Longtime Readers know well that I am a huge, unabashed fan of the venerable lever-action rifle, often called the “prairie assault rifle” because of its history in the settlement of the West, its ease of shooting and handling, and because of its capacious (for the time) magazine capacity.  Here’s a Marlin 336 in .30-30:

…which as we all know, is a gun I think should be given to all freshly-naturalized citizens immediately after the swearing-in ceremony, courtesy of the U.S. Government.

However, someone in some Marketing Department somewhere decided that the Marlin needed a facelift, and came up with this concept:

…adding to its capacity, so to speak, and lightening the thing by carving out holes in its (plastic!) stock to make up for all the weight added by the extra cartridges (I guess).

Well you know, I don’t have too much of a problem with the above modifications, other than the fact that they make for a truly fugly weapon, and are completely unnecessary in every sense of the word.  (I do make an exception for the red-dot sight device, because I can’t see the front sight anymore and I’m sure there are a bunch of Olde Pharttes in precisely my predicament — said Olde Pharttes being, I guess, the principal target market for such “improvements”.)

The problem is that as much as they want to make the lever-action rifle more resemble a modern semi-automatic rifle of the AR-15 genre, there’s no point because the AR-15 is a semi-automatic with a detachable magazine while the lever action is, well, not.

So then, assuming that you do want a handy semi-automatic rifle but you want to keep the spirit of the lever gun (light, handy, large-capacity magazine etc.), then allow me to suggest an alternative to the Frankenlever thing above:

Yes, it’s the equally-venerable M1 Carbine, made in the several millions, killed probably far more Nazis/Commies than the lever rifle killed Indians, and is the spiritual descendant of the lever rifle.  And if you want, you can add a red-dot sight to the M1 as well, using an Ultimak mount:

See?  I’ll bet that given the choice, the early settlers would have been quite happy with them — and you won’t have to mess around with loading round after round into a lever rifle either (and both Oliver Winchester and John Moses Browning can stop that dreadful grave-spinning, as a bonus).

Never Not Ever No Way

Commenting on this post about my car issues, Longtime Reader Fred Z. asks:

“Have you considered a small motorbike for short trips and simple errands? Cheap to buy, cheap on gas, cheap to maintain.”

And easy to fall from, be struck by another car with, and a host of other dangers.  As the meme goes:

I’ve never ridden a motorcycle, was last on one (my uncle’s) at age 10 and never again since.  Ain’t gonna happen.

I’d drive an EV before a bike, but only if it looks like this:

Bright, high-visibility yellow.  No doors so I can jump out easily if the fershlugginer thing catches fire.

Kinda like riding a bike, except with four wheels.  I am aware of the irony, thank you.

Does that answer the question?