Tag: Me Myself I

Personal stuff

Sufficiency

Guy Stuff, Lifestyle, Toys

I was watching this podcast, and one of the statements (made at about the 41-minute mark) resonated with me.  It was this:

“For me, cars and watches are a similar thing, because at a very early accessible price point, they both fulfill their brief.  So telling the time and getting from A to B, happens with an Apple watch and a Dacia Sandero.  If you’re concerned about the functionality of a car, anything after that is led by the heart.”  [And the ego.]

It’s been a constant struggle for me and I think, for many.

I know I’m always going on about luxury stuff, and I think almost every argument on this website has revolved around where your own limits are on the price : quality scale — because in almost every case, we’ve established the functionality of the thing early on.

Hence cars:  functionality is achieved with, say, a Honda Civic.  Then, if you want a little more speed to go with your functionality, you move on to the excellent Civic Si or even to the Civic R.  But you also have a desire for a little more luxury than a standard Honda’s offering, so you look at… an Acura Integra Model S?  (Same car as the Civic, more or less the same performance, but with a tad more luxury and a higher price point.)  But come on, you say, an Acura?  Why not (say) a Mercedes CLA 35 AMG at pretty much the same price point, but with Merc luxury (better than any Acura’s)?  (Here’s a comparison.)  And then on and on you go, until you start getting serious about all those things that make your parts tingle until you end up looking at stupid money for a product that is completely over the top by any standards (hello Ferrari or similar).  (And in SUVs, you start off with a Toyota RAV4 and end up with a Maybach 600.)

Then watches.  Functionality is simple:  Casio F91-W ($30).  Okay, you don’t want a digital watch, so a more manly Invicta Pro Diver ($60).  You all know where this is going:  up the scale with Timex, Tissot, Seiko, Grand Seiko, Longines, Omega… until you get to Rolex, Ulysse Nardin, Audemars Piguet and thence to the stratosphere where you can spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars… on a watch that is functionally little better than that Casio, Invicta or Timex.

With watches, I have my Tissot Heritage and I really don’t feel the need for any other.  Maybe if I had some budget I’d consider a Longines Master or even an Omega Railmaster (which makes me tingle, bigly) but beyond that it’s more ego than I care to indulge myself.  Unless I went all eclectic on y’all.  As with cars with manual transmissions, my timepiece choices are somewhat narrowed by my insistence on manually-wound actions, but there ya go.

Of course, there are guns.  Confining ourselves to double-barrel over/under shotguns, we start off with Gforce (never heard of them) for under $400, and while this may be a piece of junk — not judging, just acknowledging that to produce this kind of gun at that particular price point, compromises must be made — there’s no doubt that it’s at least a Timex shotgun, so to speak.  Then I guess you’d go on to the Turkish-made CZ Drake, then up the food chain to Browning Cynergy,  Beretta Silver Pigeon, Rizzini BR110… and we all know where this ends, don’t we?

I have to confess that my mood swings wildly when it comes to this stuff.  On the one hand, I’m perfectly comfortable driving my 150,000-mile Tiguan.  But if I had to get a new car and had any kind of budget, given my circumstances, I’d probably consider that Honda Si (decent reliability, performance and above all, manual transmission).  After that, I’d need more budget, maybe a great deal more budget to get a car I’d really like to drive for pretty much the rest of my life.  While I’m not really brand-conscious (in terms of impressing others), I’d rather drive something that has some kind of heritage — but forget the boutique stuff like Ferrari, no matter how much budget I have.  And whatever, it has to have a stick shift.

I’m pretty sure you all know where I stand on guns.  I carry either Springfield or Colt 1911s, wouldn’t dream of carrying a Nighthawk or Ed Brown 1911, hate plastic guns of any caliber, and prefer shooting revolvers anyway.  And that’s just handguns.  Rifles?  I’m a Mauser man — actual Mausers as opposed to John Rigby’s exotic Mausers — and while I might be tempted on occasion to look at a custom rifle (purely based on its appearance), I’m just as happy shooting a .30-30 lever action.  And finally, when it comes to shotguns I prefer the old-fashioned — that is to say, side-by-side barrels and double triggers — and regard pump-actions as I would hammers or drills:  pure tools, nothing more.

Lifestyle choices:  budgets, compromises, ego, practicality, dreams… we all have them.

This New Thing

Marketing / Advertising, Morons & Idiots

Probably the modern word I hate the most is this “influencer” tag.  Fuck me, every totty with some kind of EeewwwChoob / TikTwat channel is now suddenly an “influencer” because her views of makeup / clothing / (whatever fad the younger audience of today are obsessed with) seem to cause advertisers to swoon with delight, according to the number of “followers” they are supposed to have according to some impenetrable measurement method.

There’s nothing wrong with the latter, of course:  the Nielsen ratings were once the yardstick whereby advertisers could approportion their spending among the various TV stations and shows according to the shows’ audience size.

Or maybe it’s just sour grapes on my part, because these (mostly-brainless) girls are raking in the cash with their “content” — the latter being nothing but opinion (largely shaped, I assume, by the brands’ sponsorship of such).  And apparently, being beautiful with large breasts increases their allure (no idea why).

I find it interesting that male “influencers” tend to have more actual content on their shows;  the wonderfully-low-class Mat Armstrong, for example, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars (okay, pounds sterling) out of repairing crashed supercars — he’s just bought a house in England and another in Miami, so we can safely assume that his business is profitable —  while stalwarts like Garand Thumb (two guys with actual expertise, being former SpecFor and Ranger operators) skimp along, apparently, with sponsorships from various gunny-type companies (but have a lot of fun along the way).

I suppose that even I could call myself an influencer, judging by the number of (tongue-in-cheek) complaints from people over the years, wailing about how they were perfectly happy with their firearms until they came to this website and were compelled — forced, even — to buy yet another gun they didn’t know they needed until I spoke glowingly about its allure and excellent qualities.

Did I get any kind of remuneration from this “influencing”?  Don’t be ridiculous.

So yes, maybe I am jealous that today’s influencers make money hand over fist each week while I have made, at a rough guess, a few thousand dollars — over twenty years — from my type of influencing.

Of course, my own cussedness hasn’t helped, in that I refuse to take on advertising (I did, once, very briefly for a few months during the NoR days, until an advertiser complained that I’d said Bad Things about his industry and I told him to fuck off and pulled the plug on the whole thing).  Ditto sponsorships, mostly because gun companies don’t need me when they have “gun writers” to pimp their products via the various gun magazines, but also because I absolutely refuse to be tied to any kind of influence over my opinions on, well, anything.

It also doesn’t help that my “likes” are confined to a really small list of products and such, either.

So I guess I am and have been my own worst enemy in this regard.

Oh well.

Here’s an unsolicited (and unpaid-for) recommendation (link in pic):

It’s a pre-WWII Sempert & Krieghoff tube-fed semi-auto chambered in 8x60mm, and it’s so beautiful it makes me swoon like a schoolgirl groupie.   Okay, at $17,500 it’s not the cheapest gun you could buy, and good luck finding the obscure 8x60mm S ammo anywhere, which means it’s strictly for reloaders.

And its performance is pretty much on a par with its smaller 8x57mm Mauser cousin, which is plentiful and can be fired far more cheaply from rifles like this mil-surp K98k:

…which are sold everywhere and can be had for under $1,000.

But you have to admit, that one-of-a-kind Sempert sure is pretty.  If you do decide to buy it, mention my name to the folks at Collectors, which will result in nothing more than a “who?” from them and not a single penny of kickback to me.

Par for the course, really.

Shine A Little Light

Journalist Scum, Psychos, Two-Minute Hate

Here’s an interesting story.  A journalist has been plagued by a troll who has followed all her writings and articles, and infested the comments section with mean and nasty little snarks.  So the journo decided to find out exactly who this person was, and she actually went to the troll’s house (lair!) to confront her;  but the troll wasn’t home.  Go and read the details.  (I couldn’t post an excerpt because the article has been preserved as a screen save rather than as text, but the link should be good.)

Read more

What Joe Said

Good Stuff, Lifestyle, Old Fartism

My admiration for Joe Walsh knows few bounds, and especially so for his seminal work, Analog Man.

“I’m just an analog man in a digital world”

If anyone sees similarity between Joe’s lyrics and the occasional rant on this website, let me assure you that this similarity is profound, not accidental.  And the more I think about it, the more that concept applies to just about everything I enjoy doing in life.  Before I launch into the exposition thereof, let me say at the outset that I’m not being a dick about this concept;  a good example is that while I generally prefer to shoot revolvers over semi-automatic pistols, I carry a 1911 because of the obvious reasons:  more boolets, quicker rate of fire, etc. etc.  There would be times when the above features might well be a lifesaver, and I’m not that stupid as to eschew those reasons just for philosophical purity.

So let me list those things which give me pleasure (guns will come last).  Be warned:  this is going to be a long read (it’s the weekend!), so you may first want to get a fresh cuppa, empty the bladder and make sure you’re comfortable.

1. Watches.  If I had the money, I’d like to collect watches because I love the engineering thereof.  Like the revolver/pistol example above, I am fully aware that Casio digital watches are more accurate timekeepers than, say, the average mechanical watch.  Unlike with guns, however, knowledge of the precise time is not a life-critical issue in my life — hell, I can easily do without a second hand, come to think of it;  minutes and hours are all I need, and a minute’s difference one way or the other is, generally speaking, of little importance.  My lifestyle does not involve granular time-critical activity, and seldom ever has.

So when I’ve disappeared into Dreamland and thought about what kinds of watch I’d like to collect, it should come as no surprise to learn that (absent duplicates), I’d struggle to come up with as much as two dozen.  This is largely because of the rules I impose on myself:

  • No watch should cost more than $40,000.  Honestly, once you’ve got to an acceptable level of accuracy / performance, the cost:quality curve becomes flatter than Kate Moss’s chest, and the only added costs are jewellery or artificial constraints (scarcity, provenance or marketing) — which do absolutely nothing for a watch’s efficacy.  And if there was some kind of cost constraint, I could easily do with watches costing less than $20,000 (with only a few wistful regrets).
  • Manual-wind operation only;  no automatics or quartz movements.  I know that having to wind one’s watch every so often can be irritating (I wind mine every morning, or before I put it on to go out — I don’t wear a watch inside the house because I’m surrounded by clocks).  And don’t get me started on having to replace batteries when the stupid things suddenly cease to work.
  • No metal bracelets or rubber straps;  leather straps only.  I have hairy arms, so the metal joints pinch my hair constantly.  And yes I know:  leather wears out more quickly than metal or synthetic material, but this just gives me an opportunity to get a new strap every couple of years, perhaps even in a different color.
  • A clear, easily-read watch face, uncluttered by multiple functions / complications.  These new watches which allow one to see the inner workings of the thing through the face are ridiculous.  When I want to know the time, that needs to be almost instantaneous — I don’t want to spend time playing “hunt the hands” amidst a jungle of background moving parts.
  • Decent typefaces for the hours’ numbers.  I like plain (but not too plain), art deco (but not too much so) and Roman numerals (because of my classical education, I can read Roman numerals as quickly as any other form, especially on a watch face).  I can also live with no numerals at all, just indicators, but I find numbers more accommodating.  Lastly:
  • I don’t much care for “yellow” gold watches, unless the watch has a very thin casing.  Steel is preferable, “white” gold a distant second.  Don’t even think about plastic.

So let me show y’all just a few examples of the watches that would appear on Ye Olde Bucquette Lystte, with some non-starters underneath.  All fall into the criteria as set above.

Longines Master Collection ($1,200)

Jaeger-LeCoulte Reverso ($8,500)

Eberhard & Co “8 Jours” ($4,500)

(this one’s a tad cluttered, but I kinda like the “powermeter” function)

Vacheron Constantin “Fifty Six” ($15,000)

Patek Philippe Calatrava ($25,000)

No decent watch collection should be without at least one Patek Philippe and a Vacheron.

Not being a pilot, race car timekeeper or deep-sea diver, I don’t have much need for a “function” watch;  but I still like the look of this one:

Omega Speedmaster “Moon” ($6,500)

And it went to the Moon back in the late 1960s, so there’s that.  Oh, and that foul canvas strap would be gone before I walked out the shop’s door.

Now for the Rogues Gallery (no prices, because they’re pretty much all ridiculous, even in Budget-Free World).

   

They are, left to right:  Richard Mille, Ulysse Nardin and Rolex Submariner

I have an aversion to most Rolex watches, not least because they’re generally mounted on a steel bracelet.  But they’re also clunky and ugly, not too mention overloaded with functions.  Yes, they have brilliant actions — accurate, reliable and well-made — but they’re “statement” watches, a creation of Marketing, and because they make jillions of the things every year, not especially exclusive either.

Here’s one last favorite of mine, just to help you mindscrape the ugliness of the above:

Seiko Grand Elegance ($4,800)

Even the watch snobs acknowledge this one’s value… although I personally prefer the Omega Tresor ($6,000):

Okay, that’s enough about watches.  I think you get the point.

2. Books.  I’ve written before that I prefer paper books over e-books, not only because I find operation of the ebook to be tiresome, but also because I like the feel of ordinary bound books in the hand.  I know that e-books are more convenient — fresh content can be summoned up while, say, traveling, taking away the weight and hassle of carrying multiple books in one’s suitcase.  But I also know that the content can be blocked or pulled at any time by whoever is distributing or storing the content, whereas once a real book is purchased, it’s yours forever, should you choose to keep it.

As to which books, I don’t think I have to go there.  Now for another perennial favorite:

3. Cars.  At the risk of being massively repetitive (because I’ve opined on the topic ad nauseam before), let me just list the criteria:

  • Stick shift (okay, manual transmission as used in actual driving) over automatic (steering).
  • No electronic control through software.  Note the similarities between books and cars:  in the old days, once you bought a car, you owned everything sold with it;  with modern cars, there are few functions that can’t be “switched off” unless you pay more for the privilege of use.  I’m not even going to talk about “self-drive” cars.
  • No digital snooping.  A warning light:  good.  Law enforcement or insurance companies tracking your speed, noting your acceleration patterns or logging your destinations:  not only bad, but unspeakably bad.
  • Must be beautiful.  Things designed by names like Pinanfarina, William Heynes, Bertone and David Brown (to name but some) will always win over Wally Wind-Tunnel Designs, Inc.

So on to a brief sample of the Automotive Bucket List:

Late 60s Fiat Dino


Same engine as the Ferrari Dino — in fact, the little 2.0 (later 2.4)-liter V6 was developed by Fiat for Ferrari — but as fully-restored Ferrari Dinos now command stratospheric prices (over $500,000) compared to a similarly-restored Fiat’s ~$150,000, the Fiat gets the nod.  I know that some may balk at Fiat’s legendary unreliability, but in this regard they were no worse than the Ferraris of the same era.

1957 Jaguar XK140


Oh, by all means compare this snarling beast to the whisper-quiet new JLR all-electric cars.  (No pic of the latter because ugh.)

And let’s get more modern:

2001 BMW Z8


Of course I’d prefer its predecessor, the 1957 BMW 507, but not for ten times the Z8’s $200,000.  Let’s not be stupid, here.

Okay, let’s go Murkin:

1965 Ford Mustang Mk 1

…and costing less than a third of the old Euro cars above, for good measure.

And finally, the topic I’ve covered so much that even I’m somewhat tired of it…

4. Guns.   My preferences and prejudices are well known to all:

  • 1911 over Glock
  • wood over plastic
  • metal over plastic
  • revolvers over semi-autos
  • bolt-actions over semi-autos
  • side-by-side instead of over-and-under shotgun barrels
  • double trigger sets over single triggers
  • …and so on.

And just a couple of examples should suffice:

CSMC A.H. Fox 20ga

I like the engraving, but I could do without it, to save costs — such as with the CZ Bobwhite in the same chambering, and at a third of the Fox’s price:



Note that both guns share similar characteristics:  splinter fore-end (to save weight), straight English stock (my preference over a pistol-grip stock), side-by-side barrels and a double trigger.  In terms of utility and reliability, they’re functionally identical.  But that Fox is just gorgeous.

Now don’t get me wrong when it comes to shotgun actions:  I have nothing against pump action (self- and home defense) or semi-auto (goose hunting);  but given my druthers, I’d be at the clay pigeon range every day of the week, if I could — so I prefer double-barrel break-open shotguns.

Similarly with rifles:

Mauser M98 Standard Expert

Now:  the Standard Expert retails for just over $13,000 new.  But I could “downgrade” to the Model 12 (which I’ve owned before, and it’s excellent) at a quarter of that price, or even, at a pinch, a WWII-era K98k (in decent condition).


…of which I’ve owned several.  In fact, give me any Mauser 98 (or Swedish 96) and I’m good to go.  But that Expert is seriously pretty… and then we come to the rimfire rifles.

Now here I don’t mind going with a semi-auto like the Ruger 10-22 or Winchester 63 type, because rifle plinking is just more fun when you don’t have to work the bolt between each shot.  (Ditto pistols, by the way.)

And don’t get me started on pump-action rimfires.  In fact, I much prefer shooting pump-action over bolt-action and even semi-auto rimfire rifles;  because I prefer to operate the machinery, and the pump-action is quicker and easier to operate than the bolt-actions, is why the pumps get my nod.

Let’s talk about handguns for a moment.

Pre-1990 Colt Python (.357 Mag, 6″ barrel)

They’re still filthy expensive, even though the new-generation Pythons are functionally a little better and about half the price of the older ones.  But that Royal Blue finish… have mercy.

But here’s the thing.  Other than non-rimfire revolvers with the “Bisley”-style grip (which I find tiresome to shoot because they’re uncontrollable), I like shooting almost any revolver.

Give me a Ruger GP-100, Smith Model 65 or 68, Colt Officer’s Target — hell, any of them will keep me banging away for hours.

Of course, I’m capable of banging away for hours with a semi-auto pistol too:

…and especially of the rimfire variety:

But if I want to do a little rimfire target shooting — a more deliberate activity than plinking — then I reach for a revolver, every time.

 

Summary (and good grief, there needs to be one):

When it comes to activities, I prefer to operate whatever it is, whether a car’s stick shift, a paper book, winding a watch or shooting a gun.

I know that it’s generally more time-consuming and less convenient to do all that — some might even say less efficient — but I don’t care.  These are all things I enjoy doing, and the enjoyment comes as much from the work involved as from the control of the activity.  In cars, it’s driving as opposed to steering;  in watches it’s not being reliant on a battery or even movement of the hand to keep the thing going;  in books, there are few greater pleasure than holding the author’s written word in hand — hell, I’d read a paper newspaper over an online website of the same newspaper any day of the week;  and finally, with guns, it’s all about feeling the machinery of the gun working in your hands, under your control.

Maybe it’s a function of my age, having grown up when a lot of what passes for convenience didn’t exist at the time.  On reflection, though, even that’s not true:  I learned to shoot with a single-shot pellet rifle, followed by a semi-auto .22 rifle long before I ever fired a bolt-action rifle.  But the minute I first fired that Mauser K98k, worked its bolt and fired again, I was hopelessly hooked.  Ditto driving cars:  my first cars all had stick shifts;  and when I finally did get one with an automatic transmission, I enjoyed the convenience… right up until I needed to get into a lower gear in a rain-slick corner, and felt helpless as the car just carried on.  (I didn’t crash, but it was sure as hell close.)

And to this day, when I get bored with the Internet — and that happens much sooner than it used to — out comes a good book off the shelf, and away I go into another world, needing only a little light to keep it going.

At that moment, I’m back where I belong, in an analog world;  and good grief, how I love it.

Not Generated There

Writing

The Divine Sarah points to this article, which is about using A.I. to write something coherent instead of:

Often I’ll write a paragraph and think, “This sentence is terrible.” Not grammatically terrible, structurally terrible. Like it wandered into traffic and got hit by two semicolons.

So I’ll ask AI to smooth it out. Sometimes I use its suggestion. Sometimes I hate its suggestion. Sometimes its suggestion gives me an idea that turns into something completely different.

It’s less “robot writes article” and more “robot sits in the corner saying, ‘Have you considered not writing that sentence like you’re being chased by bees?’”

That’s useful.

There have also been articles that were difficult for me to write.

You know the kind. The ones where your brain is running at about eighty miles an hour while your fingers are trying to steer through tears and frustration, and what comes out looks less like prose than a transcript of someone arguing with a smoke detector.

Those articles were mine.

Yeah, well.  Now I have a confession to make.

I’ve never used A.I. to write anything — hell, I don’t even know how to access the thing.  Everything that you have read on these pages for the past twenty-odd years was conceived, written and edited by me.  The only time I’ve resorted to technology is when I’ve used Spelchek to make sure that in my haste to get something down, I’ve put “i” before “e” all over the place.  But to use something to check my style or flow?  That’s part of writing, and that’s what I do.

That’s not going to change.

Don’t get me wrong;  I’ll often write something, then when re-reading it, think, “What the hell have you done here?” and set about fixing it.  It’s time-consuming and often exhausting, but it has to be done.

Of course it’s easier to use A.I. to help you write something.  Those of you who have followed my train of thought on the topic, however, will know full well the contempt I feel for using technology to make one’s life “easier”, at the expense of losing control and (perhaps) becoming part of the Machine/Hivemind in the process.

Also, I think that using A.I. is cheating.  When you read something written by someone, that reading should give you an insight not only into the topic, but also into the mind of the writer.  Otherwise, you might as well just give your thoughts to a panel of writers, speechwriters and PR people and say “Here.  Do something with this,” and then publish it under your name.

Which is kinda what you’re doing when you get A.I. to write something for you.

And if you can’t write something without this:

Often I’ll write a paragraph and think, “This sentence is terrible.” Not grammatically terrible, structurally terrible. Like it wandered into traffic and got hit by two semicolons.

…then you need to learn how to write and edit your own stuff.  It’s hard — really hard, ask me how I know this — and often you’ll fail.  In which case it’s time for a rewrite, or a visit to the trashcan.

Mark Twain used to read his daily output to his wife and daughters, because he found that not only could they spot problems in his writing, but the very act of reading something out loud highlighted mistakes and missteps.  He was lucky;  most of us don’t have that sounding-board, and we have to rely on our own devices, skills and indeed patience to get the damn thing right — which is what I do.

And at the end of it all, when that piece of writing is finished, I can look at it with if not pride then at least satisfaction, and say:  “Look wot I done.”

Which is what makes it all worthwhile.  Writing is not a collaborative activity:  PR releases and corporate statements are.

Thanks, but I’ll stick to doing it all on my own.  My Loyal Readers deserve no less.

A.I. delenda est.

Slacking

Food & Drink

Sorry about the paucity of posts today.  It being Doc Russia’s birthday, we (Doc, Combat Controller and I) went out for a spot of carousing last night, and the old gulliver’s feeling the effects thereof.

Normal service should resume tomorrow.