Tag: Stupid people

The 100

Music

Let’s face it:  Rolling Stone  magazine was always awful.  I think it was them Frank Zappa was talking about when he characterized their writing as “people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, aimed at people who can’t read.”  (I still miss Frank, a lot, as much for his intellect as for his music.)

RS‘s latest attempt at a “greatest” list (of singers) is a typical example:  muddled, ignorant and open to ridicule.

The muddle is easy:  they attempted to combine several genres of singing — rock, r&B, blues etc. — but while there may be some crossover in those particular ones, it falls completely on its face if you try to include people like Sinatra and Mel Torme, especially when it comes to ranking  the singers.  The muddle is also ignorant of actual vocal quality — and even worse if one tries to include “iconic” as part of it.  There are singers of extraordinary quality (such as Paul Rodgers of Free/Bad Company) who don’t have iconic tonality, and “ordinary” singers of limited range (like Ozzy Osbourne) who almost define an entire genre.  You can’t attempt to rank Rodgers and Ozzy against each other because they are two totally different singers, albeit in more or less similar genres of music.  Now rank Rodgers against Aretha Franklin, which the hapless Stoners did.  It is, as they say, to laugh.  (And by the way:  any compendium list of 100 singers which does not include Ian Gillan of Deep Purple or Steve Marriot of Humble Pie — to name just a couple which caught, or rather didn’t catch my eye —  is fatally flawed.)

Each genre of music requires a different kind of voice, and very few singers can cross over without failing.  And a singer’s inclusion in whatever genre is horribly personal, in any event.  (In the “jazz crooners” club, for example, Harry Connick Jr. is an infinitely-better singer than Sinatra, but without Sinatra there would likely be  no jazz crooners club.  YMMV.)

So Rolling Stone should have broken up the list into genres, just for starters, with the first being the aforementioned “iconic”voices — those which defined the genre — and then some attempt at vocal quality if they’re to be ranked at all.

I’m not going to do that, at least, not today.  But here’s an example of ten of my favorite Rock vocalists in no special order, just as I think of them:

Robert Plant (Zep)
Joe Cocker
Paul Rodgers (Free, Bad Company)
Cilla Black
Graham Bonnet (Marbles, Rainbow)
Stephen Stills
David Bowie
Freddie Mercury
Ann Wilson (Heart)
Ian Gillan (Deep Purple)

And just for the hell of it, ten from R&B/soul, likewise unranked:  

Otis Redding
Wilson Pickett
Aretha Franklin
Joe Tex
Tina Turner (who could equally have been classified under Rock)
Al Green
Ella Fitzgerald
Sam Moore
Lionel Ritchie
Etta James

And both lists could change tomorrow.

Buh-Bye

Culture

City Journal puts men’s magazines under the microscope, and doesn’t like what it sees:

In a tough media environment, men’s magazines are suffering more than most. Some—notably, Playboy and Esquire—appear to have decided that appealing primarily to men is no longer the best way forward.

Yeah, good luck with that, assholes, and watch your readership (and business) disappear.  Good-bye and good riddance.

Come to think of it, this humble website  offers more to men than any of the glossy so-called “men’s” magazines.  On these electronic pages can be found pictorials of topics wanted by men:  guns, cars, women, food, booze and articles including straightforward political discussion, cultural content — such as the occasional review of movies, music and fine art — and even historical analysis, all on a daily (not monthly or quarterly) basis.  Oh, and no ads.

And it’s free, except for voluntary contributions (thankee).

Unreality

Freaks & Loonies, Modernism

Amidst this whole LGBTOSTFU nonsense, I would have thought that certain biological manifestations were pretty much set in stone, so to speak — such as women’s menstrual periods.  Apparently not:

Transgender lobby forces sanitary towel-maker Always to ditch Venus logo from its products

Why?

…the decision [was made]  by makers Procter & Gamble (P&G) to kowtow to trans activists who were born female and still use sanitary products.

So let’s get this straight (ahem): someone born a woman who “transitions” into a man will get offended by the Venus logo?  Because gawd forbid a dude should get his eyes crossed by having to use a sanitary towel with a drawing  on its label?

After I stopped laughing, I decided on the following policy.

As far as I’m concerned, if you still have a penis, you’re a man, no matter what the rest of your body looks like.  (That means you, Caitlin Bruce Jenner, even if you were voted Woman of the Year by some morons.)  And if you call yourself Macho Man, feel like a man (whatever that means) but still have a functioning vagina needing tampons etc., you’re still a woman.

End of story, end of statement, end of this fucking insanity.

Thought For The Week

Deep Thoughts, Ethics, Modernism

From the much-reviled Puritans (very relevant at this time of the year):

Puritans believed it was also “to knit the heart of a husband to wife,” a charming thought. One of the supposedly oppressive rules of the Puritans was that men should not get away with taking advantage of women. They were strict. They did not believe that a man and woman who were not husband and wife should be alone together, because they thought the temptation was likely to be too much for one or both of them. We threw that rule out, and guess what? It turns out it has a good deal of truth to it. Just because adultery does not occur in 100% of such situations, or even 30% does not mean it doesn’t happen more than is good for both individuals and society as a whole… [Puritans] did not foreswear the flesh, they merely believed it should be held under short rein.

So many of the “old social rules” which have been weakened and eventually discarded have, over time, been seen to be not only sensible, but whose absence has been very harmful to society.

But with the modern world’s insistence that we never ever ever go back to the old ways because that would be [pick any or all as appropriate]  reactionary, racist, hateful, intolerant, intolerant, silly, White hegemony, patriarchal and in general doubleplusungood, I’m gloomy about the chances of our ever reinstating any of those old customs, rules and mores.

Even if going back would be beneficial to, oh, just about everybody.

I think I’ll go to the range this afternoon.  That usually dispels my gloom.

Marxist Economics

Elections, Marxists

From POTUS-wannabe Pocahantas comes this policy proposal:

Democrat presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren wants to use federal excise taxes to reduce gun and ammunition sales.
Her gun control, made public in August on Medium, shows Warren believes the current ten percent excise tax on firearms is too low. She wants to raise that tax to 30 percent while increasing the tax on ammunition to 50 percent.
Because excise taxes are paid directly by the consumer–the taxes are added to the price of the goods–this means a $500 gun would immediately cost $515 and the price for a $20 box of ammo would immediately rise to $30.
Warren claims this taxation policy would “bring in new federal revenue” that can used for “gun violence prevention.” And she simultaneously suggests the tax would raise the price on guns and ammo to a level sufficient to stifle sales.

So using her “economics”  it would go something like this:

  • Currently, 1,000 rounds of 7.62x39mm (eeevil AK ammo) @ $300* yields $33 (@11%) in excise tax revenue

So therefore Madame Marxist suggests that with her plan:

  • 1,000 rounds of eeevil AK ammo @ $300 would yield $150 (@50%) in excise tax revenue… whoopieeeeee a net gain of $127 stolen taxed by the gummint.

Except of course that in the real world, AK ammo sales would fall to 100 rounds and yield only $15 in excise taxes (a 50% loss in revenue).  “Yay yay yay, but ammo sales have fallen!” she would pronounce.  But why  would sales fall so precipitously, she asks?  Because of the higher tax?

Because, you Commie coksucquer, during the months before you could enact this poxy tax increase, we AK owners would buy countless millions  of rounds of ammo, so that we’d have enough stored for the lean years — just like we did before the term of that other socialist asshole Barack Obama — and resume buying once an actual American became president again.

Ditto all those eeevil AR-15s and AK-47s you hate so much:  we’d buy so many before you could touch them, the gun factories would have to institute 365-day / 24-hour shifts just to cope with the demand.

I swear, I’m a huge fan of the First Amendment and I like to hear politicians spell out their proposed policies;  but I would also propose that anyone using idiotic economics theory (like the above) to create policy should be forced to wear a dunce cap and be beaten with wet spaghetti — just because of their naked stupidity.

And this phony bitch wants to run things?

* (example) Wolf Performance (WPA) is $304 / 1,000 at Cheaper Than Dirt at time of writing.

Why Bother?

Business

As Longtime Readers may remember, I was involved for many years with the “customer loyalty” business — specifically in the supermarket arena, but tangentially in a couple other industries — so I kinda know what I’m talking about when it comes to this stuff.  (As an aside:  if you use a Kroger Rewards card when you shop there, I’m at least partially responsible;  sorry.)

Back when I lived in Chicago, I used to fly in and out of O’Hare Airport about 50-60 times a year, and was a member of both the American AAdvantage and United Mileage Plus programs.

Once I even spoke to the head of one of their programs, complaining that my friend used to fly internationally once a quarter and accrued thereby a massive number of miles, whereas I flew rather fewer  miles and couldn’t get to his level of “SuperDuperPlusGoodPlatinum” level in their program.  This, despite the fact that he was making four purchase decisions a year to fly with them, while I was making that many purchase decisions every month.  But my flights were Chicago-Kansas City, Chicago-Minneapolis, Chicago-Des Moines and so on, while my friend’s were Chicago-Singapore, and I felt that I was being short-changed for my loyalty.  Rather to my surprise, the program director agreed with my logic, and although this had probably been planned anyway, about six months later the policy was changed to factor in the number of flights (“segments”) as part of the loyalty determinant.  Only then — and far too late — did my “status” improve.

In the rather interesting George Clooney movie Up In The Air, much is made of his goal to reach ten million air miles (with American, as it turns out), and the status that this conferred on him.  There’s no doubt that this gave him something  desirable (as far as he was concerned, anyway), but it’s interesting to note that had the movie been made today, those ten million miles would have made him rather less valuable a customer.

A new era of airline loyalty programs has arrived. United Airlines announced this week that the criteria for elite qualification in its MileagePlus loyalty program would change dramatically next year. Starting in January of 2020, United’s loyalty members will earn elite status based on Premier Qualifying Flights and Premier Qualifying Segments only. Flight miles, the traditional metric by which frequent flyers used to earn status, are no longer going to be considered.
It wasn’t too long ago that frequent flyers on American, Delta, and United earned elite status based solely on how far they fly. If a passenger flew 100,000 miles or 100 segments on any of the carriers, for example, top-tier (published) status was awarded, yielding perks such as upgrades, free checked bags, and free seat assignments.
In 2013, however, that formula changed when Delta introduced qualifying dollars to its equation for calculating for elite status. From that point forward, frequent flyers needed to earn a baseline number of miles or segments and also spend a companion amount of cash — up to $15,000 for the top published tier — to earn the same status as before. American and United quickly followed suit.

I should point out that for Oz’s Qantas Airlines, this has always been their policy because all their flights are long-haul, so it made sense to reward spending rather than just miles.

That’s not true for our local Murkin companies, of course, but it’s unsurprising that United (motto:  “We’re the Friendly Skies, until we have to break your nose“) and American (motto:  “We cancel flights, just for spite”) would make this change, because they’re a bunch of bastards.  (I can’t speak for Delta as I’ve only flown with them a few times.)

As I’ve said many times before, I know that to the airlines I’m just self-propelled cargo, but I don’t want to be treated  that way.  So they’re making flying even less attractive for people — and screwing up their programs in the process.

Needless to say, the Usual Suspects (i.e Gummint) are horning in on the action:

Air miles reward schemes should be banned because they ‘stimulate demand’ for excessive flying, according to a report commissioned by the Government’s climate change advisers.
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC*) commissioned report says that frequent flyers should also be hit by an ‘escalating air miles levy’ to put them off flying too much, but measures should not raise prices for people taking an annual holiday.
There [are] approximately 220 frequent flyer clubs with an estimated total membership of 200 million across the world, many of whom take additional flights to ‘maintain their privileged traveller status’.
The new suggestions are aimed at reducing air travel for the 15 per cent of the UK population estimated to be responsible for 70 per cent of all flights.

The latter would be people like Mr. Free Market, who don’t have any choice but to fly as their business is 90% international.  And gawd forbid people should actually be productive and, you know, earn salaries for themselves and profits for their companies — I think Marx had some ugly things to say about that — when they’re polluting the atmosphere and stuff.

I have an idea for improving our planet’s well-being, but as it involves rounding up all the the eco-loons and climate freaks and converting their bodies into fertilizer, no doubt someone’s going to have a problem with this.

I don’t know why they’re trying to kill off frequent flier programs, when the airlines are perfectly capable of doing it all by themselves.  But that’s Big Gummint for ya.

*Actually, that’s not what “CCC” stands for;  it’s “Climate Change Cunts”, i.e. all of them.