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Darkening Skies

Marketing / Advertising

Saw this over at Kenny’s place, and it resonated with me:

While marooned in Siberia a hotel room over the past four months, I watched probably more “regular” TV shows than I’ve watched in more than twenty years past.  And over time, I suddenly realized that the above meme is quite correct:  there aren’t any.

I mean, yes there are a few White people around, but you have to really look out for them.   And if not solo acts, they’re as often as not part of a mixed-race couple, or a figure of fun and ridicule.

“Oh Kim,” I hear the progressive wokists gloat, “now you know how the POC  [persons of color — I know]  felt all these years, when ad agencies never cast Black or Brown people in ads except as part of a stereotype-filler.”

And if these oh-so smart, hip creative types (mostly, it should be said, based in New York, L.A. and Chicago) want to redress a long-ago grievance, that’s fine.  But it cuts several ways.

Do you think a Chinese consumer is going to respond well to a commercial featuring Black actors?  Or an Indian consumer to an ad featuring a mixed-race couple and their coffee-colored babies?  Or, for that matter, a White consumer — oh wait;  that’s because all Whites are raaaaaayyyciss and POCs can’t be.

Uh huh.

Having been in this game myself, I also know that the reason behind casting Whites was that that particular demographic group was where the market (i.e. the money) was.  And if I can be honest:  in time, I (and many, many others of my ilk) may come to treat advertising precisely the same way that Blacks and such used to treat all-White TV commercials:  as something to be ignored.

Ignore that message at your peril, Madison Avenue.

Getting To Know You

The Gun Thing

So here I sit with my newly-acquired S&W Mod 65:

…and because I’ve not owned a .357 Mag revolver for lo these many years, of course I had to check out the ammo on hand.  (Yeah I know, I had ammo for a gun I didn’t have — like that’s never happened to any of you, don’t get me started.)

Actually not too bad, considering.  About 100 rounds of “self-defense” (i.e. hollowpoint 158gr killer-diller stuff) the shortage of which I shall address when time and wallet allow, but I can get by with that, certainly. As for practice .357 ammo?  About 500 rounds of the Winchester White Box 110gr.  Little light, there.

So off I went to look for said White Box practice ammo via Ammoseek… and holy shit!  Are you kidding me?  $2.40 per round??????  Two dollars and forty cents every time I pull the trigger????  Looks like the lightweight 110gr stuff may become my backup “self-defense” load — and yeah I know, the little 110gr pill doesn’t do well in ballistic gelatin etc. etc. yadda yadda yadda because even though it absolutely screams out of the barrel, there’s not enough mass to penetrate deeply enough to satisfy the Death Brigade Cognoscenti.

Anyway (after I’d got my heart working again), after browsing Ye Olde Internette a little further I found an old friend:

Still spendy, but in the current climate, not excessively so.  [20,000-word rant deleted]

“Okay, Kim:  why the lightweight stuff (125gr) instead of the proven (and cheaper) 158gr?”

Because if I know anything about the K-frame S&W revolvers like the 65, it’s that you can beat them up badly shooting lots of heavy .357 mag ammo through them.  And I plan to shoot lots because I’m out of practice shooting a meaty revolver cartridge.

Yeah, I know:  I can practice with .38 Special (no need to buy more of that, no sir), but I follow the old adage:  practice with what you’ll shoot.  And while the 125gr bullets aren’t the same as 158gr bullets in terms of recoil and such, they still have that little .357 snap!, more so than an ordinary .38 Spec, even the 158gr ones.

Comments in the usual place, please.  I welcome them all, because it’s been a long time since I shot the .357 Mag, out of any gun.

Oh, and for the many (!!) kind people who have written to me with offers of gifts of components, I really have no plans for getting into reloading, but thankee most kindly for the offers all the same.

Gummint Meddling

Business, Gummint

Just as they’ve been doing with the gun industry and other such activities they don’t approve of, banks (aided and abetted by the usual assholes e.g. John Fuckface Kerry) have turned their fevered gaze towards the eeeevil energy companies.

Climate envoy John Kerry is prodding major U.S. banks privately to announce commitments for climate-friendly finance as part of the administration’s climate change policy rollout at President Joe Biden’s Earth Day summit next month.

…and of course because banks are in business purely at the behest of government, they will no doubt hasten to do what he tells them.

This Green bullshit has to stop, and I’m glad to see that some states are fighting back.

Fifteen state treasurers told Climate Envoy John Kerry to stop pressuring banks and financial institutions to drop the states because if they do then the states will drop them.  The states include Texas, Oklahoma, and coal-heavy West Virginia.

Don’t mess with Texas, assholes.

All For Nothing

Health

Via Insty, I see that the whole mask-erade of covering our lower faces in cloth/paper condoms was an exercise in futility:

New findings reported Tuesday in a University of Louisville study challenge what has been the prevailing belief that mask mandates are necessary to slow the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. The study notes that “80% of US states mandated masks during the COVID-19 pandemic” and while “mandates induced greater mask compliance, [they] did not predict lower growth rates when community spread was low (minima) or high (maxima).” Among other things, the study—conducted using data from the CDC covering multiple seasons—reports that “mask mandates and use are not associated with lower SARS-CoV-2 spread among US states.”

So… just another load of feelgood bollocks, giving governments, nanny corporations and similar filth the chance to boss us around and, yes, punish us for not doing what they tell us.

Next:  the TSA.

FOREIGNERS?

Gratuitous Gun Pics, The Gun Thing

Ordinarily, I’d be apoplectic about a bunch of foreigners buying a storied American company, especially one such as Colt, makers of fine (and a couple not-so-fine) guns since the nineteenth century.  I mean:

 

 

 

 

 

…and I think you get my drift.  A bunch of foreigners taking over this heritage?

Well, I was nearly about to have an RCOB Moment, when I further learned that said foreign company was actually the equally-storied CZ (Česká zbrojovka), whereupon I felt much better.

Nothing wrong with CZ (a.k.a. Brno) guns, either:

 

…and let’s not forget their rifles;  ooooh, their rifles:

 

Quite frankly, Colt Industries has got up my nose on many occasions (“Screw the civilian market”, “We’re not going to make the Python anymore… oops, okay, we’ll make them again, just not as well”), whereas CZ has seldom if ever perpetrated the same kind of nonsense.

I am cautiously optimistic about this takeover, but long experience has taught me that the road ahead may often not be what I’d like it to be.

But if CZ decides to move Colt manufacturing out of gun-hating Connecticut to their new facility in Arkansas while promising to keep or improve the quality thereof, I for one will applaud them.