Tag: Suckage

Things that totally suck

Slim Pickings, Again

Bad News

Over the past few days, I have once again been struck by the paucity of decent news upon which to vent my spleen and/or make serious (or any) commentary thereon.

Cocaine in the White House?  Probably Hunter Biden’s, but given the foul menagerie of creatures that currently infest the place, I wouldn’t be surprised at whoever the actual bearer turns out to be.

Election 2024 candidates?  Too early, and whether Stumblin’ Joe ever gets to be the DemSoc candidate is of only minor interest.  There’ll be skullduggery a-plenty, whoever emerges as the eventual candidate.  As for the Republicans, I look on all the candidates except De Santis with growing horror, and Trump especially so.

The FBI/DOJ/IRS/FedGov in general?  Bunch of fucking power-hungry, corrupt assholes.  Their career prospects under the reign of World-Emperor Kim would be gallows fodder and soylent green ingredients.  All of them, without exception.

Good grief, when the most interesting news is that Red Bull F1 have reinstated bigmouth Oz driver Daniel Ricciardo in their Alpha Tauri second team, we’re all in trouble.  Otherwise, we’re left with the news that Boris Johnson’s equally-bigmouthed wife has popped yet another sprog… oh FFS, kill me now.

No wonder I prefer to read the Daily Mail, Sun, Star and Mirror from Over There.  At least they have boobies coverage / uncoverage.

Thank gawd for guns and cars, or I’d really have nothing to talk about.  See a couple of the posts below.

Model Failure

Fashion

Yesterday I received another one of those email ads trying to get me to spend more money.  I was about to junk it, when something caught my eye, to wit, this:

Great Aphrodite’s bleeding eyeballs, when did models turn away from being beautiful and into heffalumps like the above?

Yeah I know, “body positivity” and all that Womynz Issues stuff, but seriously?

Here’s something for the Fashion Industry to ponder.  Somewhere between this:

… and this:

…is a happy medium — basically, a women not emaciated or boyish, and not a fucking blimp either, but a woman who looks more like a happy medium, i.e. not like this:

…but more like this: 

The latter girl, by the way, is not a model, but just a random pic of an ordinary person taken from a newspaper — with an acceptably-pretty face, and a decent-but-not-perfect body.  That, I would suggest, is more of a happy medium than what we’re having shoved in our faces today.

Fuck their “body positivity” and all that jive.  If I’m going to be persuaded to buy something, I just want to see it presented in an agreeable form.

And this from a man who actually prefers zaftig  women over skinnies.  But I have my limits, and modern advertising has stepped well over them.  Here’s the latest such offering:

I love Miriam Margolyes beyond words… but as a model?  No.

If I want to see ugly women, I’ll go to WalMart.

Travel Advisory

Africa

…not that any sentient human being should want to visit the continent, of course, but just in case you have to (business etc.), please note this little snippet put out by someone or other:

I don’t know what criteria were used — most likely, violent crimes per capita — but what strikes me most is the absence of Mogadishu from the list.  And as for 6 of the top 10 being in South Africa… ask me again why I left.

*Rustenburg is a town of over half a million people, northwest of Johannesburg on the way to the gambling mecca of Sun City.  In the early 1980s our band played a residency at another resort hotel nearby, and even back then we avoided the place.  It’s also the center of the platinum supply (over two-thirds of the world’s platinum is refined there).

Pietermaritzburg has the ironic nickname of “Sleepy Hollow” — clearly, that’s no longer the case — and it’s where New Wife used to live as a young schoolteacher.

Cape Town is generally regarded as the “safest” large city in Seffrica LOL.

Beautiful to look at;  but the closer you get, the worse it becomes.

Don’t get me started on Johannesburg.

Here We Go Again

Bad News, Two-Minute Hate

…and from the Usual Suspects, the usual stupid questions:

Barack Obama has questioned why the Titan sub tragedy that killed five men has received wall-to-wall media coverage – while a boat sinking with 700 refugees on board has been ignored.

Why?  I’ll tell you why:  nobody cares about African peasants drowning because a.) they’re peasants and b.) it happens all the time.

Yeah, it’s unfair and blah blah blah “equity” yadda yadda “untenable”, but the fact is that a tragedy involving wealthy people visiting arguably the most famous (and tragic) shipwreck in history thousands of feet below the surface is more newsworthy than the drownings of (yet another) boatload of illegal immigrants — I’m sorry, I mean undocumented travelers / refugees / asylum-seekers — who are invading Europe on a daily basis.

And the final thing:  not everything is about being Black, you disgusting race hustler.

Natural Suckage

Bad News, Nature, Tragedy, Travels

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.