Tag: Things that totally suck

The Doomed Five To Make You Think Again

Disaster

What do you do when society — and specifically, a society’s infrastructure — either fails because of a Random Bad Event or else because of a series of cascading calamities brought on by years of neglect.

Here’s a piece which highlights the five places in the U.S. that you absolutely don’t want to be living in when the above S hits the F.

As much as I sometimes complain about living in north Texas, we seem to be in slightly better shape than any of the above areas, although the prospect of a catastrophic power grid failure in June with no hope of repair for months does certainly give one pause.  (We’re little different from Phoenix in that regard;  we have little access to water and life without air conditioning doesn’t seem survivable.)

At least we Texans have one thing going for us:  the chance of becoming prey to people who would take what little we have from us during calamitous times is somewhat reduced by the fact that we are not a disarmed populace — unlike, say, the Atlantic Northeast and Chicago, which are.

I know that we laugh at Europeans when they suffer from a major heat event like this previous summer;  but their summers are really, really short compared to our Western states, so at least they may be able to survive a couple of months, more or less, always with the chance of seasonal rain to help.  A typical eight-month-long dry Texas- or Arizona summer?  Not so much.

Sobering stuff, indeed.

Wait, What?

Crime, Legal Stuff, Two-Minute Hate

Okay, this one got my blood boiling:

A Texas man with a prior murder conviction is accused of running a “full-service drug operation” near several schools where authorities say surveillance showed what appeared to be teenagers purchasing narcotics and fentanyl pills disguised to look like ecstasy.

A convicted murderer was out free on the streets?  IN TEXAS?  How the fuck did that come about?  Why hadn’t he been executed, or at least still be behind bars for the rest of his worthless fucking life?

Also relevant:  whose signature is on the petition for release, and whose signature is on the release authorization?  (Yeah, we’ll probably never know that, because if we did, it could easily come about that the signatories would be dragged out of their house and beaten with iron bars and chains.  In any just society, that is.)

Read the whole thing to get the full horror of it.

Range time.

Aaaargh

Economics, Farming, Food & Drink

So much for my BBQ:

America’s ranchers are facing their smallest cattle herd in 75 years, a shortage now rippling from pastures to some of the nation’s largest meatpackers.

USDA data shows the U.S. entered 2026 with about 86.2 million cattle and calves, the smallest herd since the early 1950s. That’s down from roughly 94.7 million cattle and calves in 2019, a decline of more than 8 million animals.

And therefore:

Tyson Foods announced last week that it will close beef facilities in Illinois and Utah and pursue the sale of another in Washington as it reshapes its beef business amid what the company called one of the most historic cattle shortages the country has ever experienced. Tyson said recent USDA data suggest supply constraints are likely to persist.

And the reason:

“The biggest thing has been drought,” Eric Belasco, head of the agricultural economics department at Montana State University, previously told Fox News Digital.

He said years of dry weather have depleted grasslands across the West and Plains, leaving ranchers without enough feed or water to sustain their herds. Many have been forced to sell cattle early, including cows needed to produce the next generation of calves, making the road to recovery even longer.

The effects are reaching beyond ranches and into grocery stores, where consumers are paying more for beef.

Tell me about it.  Beef has long been a staple chez Du Toit, but I think our current consumption of steak, burgers and such has been more than halved over the past year or two.  As for going out for a steak dinner?  Not since B.C. (before Covid).

I can’t even afford to make my own biltong anymore.  No wonder New Wife has been cranky recently.

Worse is that I don’t much care for chicken, unless in toasties… but I guess that will have to change.

As much as I’m reluctant to let Gummint be involved in anything, I do think that cattle farmers could do with some help from that quarter.  (I don’t know where because I’m not a cattle farmer.  But no, it can’t come from tax relief because that just benefits Big Beef Inc., who controls most of our beef production.)

I have to tell y’all, though:  I’m getting kinda cranky myself every time I go into the store and see those beef prices.  Beef shouldn’t be a luxury foodstuff;  but it’s become one, and I don’t like it.

Thank you, Mother Nature, you dried-out old bitch.

When Predators Go Shopping

Third World, Wildlife and Hunting

Somebody got lucky:

Shocking moment ferocious leopard barges into booze shop and attacks terrified worker who scrambles behind counter

And the leopard wasn’t even old enough to drink.

Jokes aside, both men were really lucky to survive.  Fucking leopards are the assholes of the predator world:  they enjoy killing more than U.S. Marines do, and if put into an enclosure with (say) a flock of sheep or goats, will kill and kill and kill until they’re tired — and only then will they schlep one of the carcasses off to a nearby tree for their dinner.

And what do leopards kill?  Everything that moves, even other predators.

As Written

Books & Movies

Finally, someone speaks up for what’s right (albeit on a fairly trivial issue):

James Bond casting director Debbie McWilliams has said 007 should remain white and male as auditions for Daniel Craig‘s replacement continue.

Amid speculation that the character could be reinvented as a woman or played by a black actor, McWilliams, who cast the previous 14 Bond films, said Ian Fleming ‘wrote a character, and that’s the character that stays’.

Well said, ma’am.

Unfortunately, that’s not chiseled in stone (although it should be).  Why so?

McWilliams retired from her casting career prior to Amazon MGM Studios acquiring creative control of the James Bond franchise in 2025. The job of finding the next Bond now falls to casting director Nina Gold and director Denis Villeneuve.

Which means that James Bond may soon be Jamal Bond (a reformed teetotaler fresh from an AA meeting), or Jamie Bond (Lesbian Extraordinaire, with a license to munch).

Netflix has done worse, in the past.

I am so fucking sick of moviemakers turning beloved characters into something they were never intended to be.  Netflix is the prime [sic] offender in this regard, having trampled all over traditional casting to be more “inclusive” and turning roles into travesties rather than just doing the simpler (and right) thing by sticking to the formula.  But they’ve all done it in recent years, whether with Marvel characters or other such icons.

Hey, let’s hear it for Ian Of Green Gables, which tells the story of how a young boy has to make his way in the world after having been mistakenly put up for adoption with two lesbian Satanists.

What the hell:  let’s have the whole story told in flashback (like Amadeus) after Ian is sent to a psychiatric ward for having murdered his adopted lesbian step-parents (because they molested him constantly), then blew up the offices of the government adoption agency which made the original screwup.

See how this plays out when you set out to be “creative” and change everything, just to make it more “eclectic”, more “relevant”, more “inclusive” or more “edgy”?

Never mind that you’ve just turned a beloved classic story into a near-parody.

I don’t know what the hell these people think they’re doing, or how they believe that they have the right to do this to our culture.

So let’s keep James Bond a white man, with sociopathic tendencies and a harsh, cynical outlook on life — just as Ian Fleming imagined him.  It worked unbelievably well for the novel series (a.k.a. “franchise”, another word I’ve come to detest), and it worked for the Sean Connery-era of Bond movies (reflected in poll after poll, where Sir Sean continues to outrank all his successors — emphasis on “suck” — when it comes to the “ideal” James Bond).

And if The Usual Suspects don’t like that paradigm, they are free to come up with a new character and a new storyline outside the existing canon.  It will fail, of course, just as the Bond “franchise” will fail when James is replaced with “alternative” versions.

You heard it here first.