Friday, June 30, 2023

R.I.P. Alan Arkin

 h/t Evil Blogger Lady


"Please...I know everybody on this island is complete and total crazy. But you, Whitaker Walt? You are crazy too?!?"

Age 89, yesterday, at his home in Carlsbad CA, presumably of natural causes. Eight decades in show business, nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his first feature film role (above) as Lt. Rozanov, with only a Tony, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, and 40 years after he started in films, an Oscar, to show for it. He sparkled in every role he had, and his final work was a role as a voice in Minions: The Rise Of Gru only last year.

"Serpentine!"

So good, it was worth an homage thirty years later in HBO's Generation Kill:


And a couple of last looks, from 1991's The Rocketeer:


Some actors, you just watch. Some, you're going to miss. Alan Arkin was definitely the second kind.

And The Hits Just Keep On Coming...















It's almost like living in America, and the Constitution mattered. One could almost get used to this.

Housekeeping

 

Not mine; just for reference.
FTR, mine was worse than this.











Somewhere in my travels, I acquired yet another GI canteen cup to put together as part of an entire Go bag of useful items.

Except this one was rusted as shit. Inside and out.

I bought it at the time, because it was the only GI-style one they had (which was what I wanted), and I knew it was salvageable. Plus the rust knocked a few bucks off the asking price.

I have no idea how some stupid sonofabitch managed to rust up a stainless canteen cup, but the orange patina inside and out was unmistakable. I suspect the miscreant private somehow fornicated it up, and was too lazy to fix it, and too frightened of the obligatory platoon sergeant ass-chewing he had coming, so he palmed it off into the surplus world, until it came to me.

Much like the story of eight Marine privates locked in a room with a sandpile and eight crowbars*, this piece of kit proved that nothing the military issues is idiot-proof, because idiots are so ingenious. (Or maybe his doctor just told him to get more iron in his diet. IDK)

It has sat on my shelf in plain sight for some months, daring me to remedy its condition, until today.

I too am lazy, but only in the "I ain't got time for this noise" version of "I'm not going to sit here for five hours with steel wool, Ajax, and CLP scrubbing like hell until this thing is serviceable."

We are older, and now have tools to do the sweating for us.

We pulled out the Dremel 4000, having also recently acquired an assortment of flat and cup brushes (brass, carbon steel, and stainless) to undertake the task.

After selecting the brass cup brush, and tightening it into place (and wearing eye pro, naturally; if you'd seen how many tiny brass bristles were strewn about afterwards, none too friendly to corneas, you'd understand why) we began the effort.

Ten careful minutes later, after staring at it untouched for several months, we have now a shiny newly rust-free stainless steel canteen cup again.

(Work tip: the cup got hot wherever we were working. The shaft of the cup brush hotter still, and we gave it a little breather halfway through.)

We'll keep an eye on some of the darker spots, lest they return to their former state, but we can now put the cup into the stove, put the canteen in the cup, and slip the steel cooking cover behind it, and fasten the whole to the incomplete Go bag, now including water, a means to boil it, and a way to cook almost anything, anywhere, with sticks of wood or a fuel bar.

The sins of Private Smuckatelli have now been expiated, and the Go bag is the better for it.



*[Revisited an hour later, the privates were intact, but two crowbars were broken in half, two were bent double, two were inseparably fused together, and two were completely missing, even after sifting the sandpile. True story.]

SCOTUS Decides Racism Is Racism; Liberals In Shrieking Hysterics

 

Read it and cheer.

I'm sure the fact that the three dissenting justices were all moonbat Leftist harpies is just wild coincidence.

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Sunday, June 25, 2023

For The People With Half A Brain:
























And you know who you are.

So do most other people, and we applaud your ceaseless willingness to do faceplants to entertain the entire internet. You have the right to remain silent, but you lack the ability.

In today's example, by cock-a-doodle-dooing over the speedy conclusion to the Prigozhin insurrection in Russia.

Believe me when I say leaving your mostly anonymous rants in the spam bin was an act of sheerest mercy on my part.

So as the tiny-minded among the population strut their lack of basic perception and geopolitical ignorance, a few pointers.

1) Putin won second place in yesterday's insurrection.
Everybody who can walk and chew gum at the same time knows this, because strong leaders winning wars and uniting countries behind their cause don't have armed insurrections marching on their capitols.

This can be disproven:

Remind the class how Washington was forced to turn around, and hang the Continental Congress because of Valley Forge.
Then tell us about the time Andrew Jackson surrendered New Orleans, because President Madison had left him with nothing to defend it from the British.
Recount for us the stirring tales of McClellan seizing Washington D.C. after the debacles in Virgina because of Lincoln's incompetence.
And that time Stonewall Jackson held Jefferson Davis hostage until he had properly equipped Jackson's Brigade with arms, food, clothing, and shoes.
Who can forget the rapid capitulation at the Alamo, when the defenders there, realizing Sam Houston had sold them out, captured Travis, Bowie, and Crockett, turned them over to the Mexican Army, switched sides, and declared their undying allegiance to Presidénte/General Santa Anna.
That time Teddy Roosevelt charged up Capitol Hill, and laid waste to the Congress for the disastrous Cuban campaign.
The Lost Battalion in France surrendering en masse.
Admirals Stark and Nimitz threatening to shoot FDR after Pearl Harbor.
MacArthur's mutiny after the fall of the Philippines.
The 101st Airborne's tragic surrender while surrounded at Bastogne.
The Marines who converted to communism at the Chosin Reservoir.
And on and on.

Oh, wait. None of those things ever happened.

Vlad has been sucking ass since he set off on this futile quest, and yesterday only underlined it in red ink.

"Vladimir Putin is far weaker than his propagandists in both Russia and the West would have us believe.

And how could he not be the target of withering scorn and derision?

He’s driven Russia off a cliff and has no idea of how to bring about a soft landing. Given the disastrous shape of his army, economy, and realm, it would be a downright miracle for no opposition to his self-destructive misrule to have emerged."


2) Putin negotiated with terrorists.
What else do you call such a 180° whiplash-inducing switch as was seen from Friday to Saturday?























QED

3) The Russian military is weak.
So weak they negotiated, rather than stand and oppose Wagner Group and its warlord.
They lost men, two helicopters shot down, and Wagner took a regional military HQ intact, with hardly a shot fired. Nobody was dying for Putin on home turf.
And Putin negotiated, because they genuinely didn't think they could stop Prigozhin before his forces got to Moscow. Nor were they entirely sure the military would fight Prigozhin to defend them, neither far away nor near to Kremlin HQ. (Being a dick-tater is all hell.)
When you're strong, you crush the opposition, and hang the traitors.
You don't cut them any slack, let alone cut them deals worthy of a Hunter Biden plea bargain.

4) Russia's Ukraine campaign is further weakened.
Russia only has about 500K ground forces.(Or did, before last February. Now, it's more like 300,000.) And now the 50,000 mercenaries of Wagner Group are no longer an option.
Supposedly, they'll be contracted directly into the Russian forces.
As. If.
If they remain as a group, they remain the same threat to state security they were to Moscow and Putin the minute Prigozhin decides to renege on the deal, and turn the insurrection back on.
If Putin breaks them up and parcels them out, he spreads unreliable elements into every command in the army to which they're detailed, sowing the seeds of a bigger mutiny next time. And guarantees a next time.
And if Putin tries to eliminate them and/or Prigozhin, and Russia reneges on the deal, the original causa revolutionis is restored, front and center.
Heads they win, tails Putin loses.

5) Prigozhin is a Russian rock star and folk hero.
Nobody was protesting him when he took the HQ in Rostov-On-The-Don. They were cheering the man who told the government where to head in. They were posing for selfies with him, FFS. Putin and Shoigu, by contrast, are the LBJ and McNamara of this war. People don't pose with them, they throw bombs at them if they get the chance.
Prigozhin:"The president is wrong about the betrayal of Motherland. We are the patriots of our homeland; we fought before and we are fighting now. All the fighters of the Wagner private military company. And no one is going to surrender at the request of the president, the FSB or anyone else. We do not want the country to continue to live in corruption, deception and bureaucracy....”
Average Russians are eating that shit up, with a ladle.

6) Every other Russian Federation republic, especially the troublesome ones, noticed 1-5.
Putin just invited the next dozen insurrections. When you give a mouse a cookie...

7) China saw how weak, fragmented, and dysfunctional Russia is. And Putin's precarious perch atop the crumbling edifice. And the Russian Army's inability to end the insurrection on the terms demanded early on by Putin and the Ministry of Defense. India saw it too. So did Iran. So did 160 UN member nations. Putin pulled his pants down, showed his ass, and slapped his bare ass cheeks in front of the world, and Prigozhin made him do it. Everyone knows Putin, the government, and the Russian army are paper tigers. (As if getting kicked in the dick daily for 16 months by a country and people a fraction of Russia's size and power wasn't enough proof in that regard.) 

8) There is no walking any of that back. Witless wonders think Friday's coup will be memory-holed by those of us who pointed it out, now that it's "over". As. If. 
Friday was Von Stauffenberg bombing Hitler's meeting. When you're winning a war, your own side doesn't try to take out your leadership.
And even Hitler didn't send the plotters on R&R, nor forgive and forget the attempt. Putin did. Because he had no other choice.
The only thing that'll be memory-holed is the Putards trying to pretend this isn't the glaringly obvious proof that Putin, the war, and the Russian Federation are a failed leader, a failed effort, and a failed state. 
Gaslighting that reality is what they do when reality pisses them off. 
"Putin's playing the Long Game." 
"Any Day Now™" Russia will show you!"














Recall, nota bene, that I told you on Friday this was the beginning of the Russian devolution. It's the biggest crack to date - so far - in a shattered pile of festering shite.
You will see this material again.

"Russia today increasingly resembles Russia in 1917, a comparison that even Putin made in his address. An unwinnable war, a collapsing economy, a demoralized population, a fragmented elite, an incompetent leader, and an ineffective and demoralized army led to regime collapse and revolution then, and are very likely to lead to similar outcomes today."

9) And knowing that is what has Putin, 100 toadies nearest him - including every military leader thereabouts - and ten other Russian sub-states and other sovereign nations at minimum now paying attention, and they'll be looking for ways to shake Putin's tree, like a chimp-out mob rocking a police car before they finally flip it over.
You ain't seen nothin' yet.

10) So for those of you who couldn't help half-wittedly creaming yourself over the speedy conclusion of the first bog-obvious and indisputable armed mutiny inside Russia, maybe stop thinking with your little heads, and use whatever stump you've got protruding from your collar as something besides a hat rack. Because if you don't, that stinging sensation down there is going to be you, the next time you jump all over your junk, with cleats on, like you're doing this time. And like beating your heads against a brick wall, it'll feel so good to stop.



Sunday Music: Love Shack

 


The B-52's #3 hit from 1989, when you couldn't go anywhere without seeing it or hearing it twenty times a day, and it still wasn't enough.

Saturday, June 24, 2023

And The Hits Just Keep On Coming...


 













NM Prosecutors charge Rust armorer with evidence tampering, drug charges

Christmas in June, I tell ya!

From Variety

In a filing earlier this month, special prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis alleged that Gutierrez Reed had been “drinking heavily and smoking marijuana in the evenings during the shooting of Rust.” They argued that was relevant to the case because she was “likely” hungover when she loaded a live round into Baldwin’s gun.

They also alleged that after the shooting, Gutierrez Reed had “walked off with the firearm for a considerable amount of time” before the deputies arrived on scene.

Further revelations are that the chief investigator thinks the D.A.office is nothing but screw-ups, despite the fact that he was the one who wrote up all the clusterf**k of half-assed charges that the D.A. had to drop against Baldwin.

Is there anyone in public service in Santa Fe who isn't a total assclown?

All evidence thus far suggests "No."

Breaking: And The Devolution Begins In Russia

 









(UK Telegraph) Head of Wagner Group Launches Armed Coup Against Russian Army

Not A Joke. Read the details at the link. RTWT. It's worldwide news, as of an hour ago. I could post 80 links. All with the same details.

Putin cheerleaders' response:


(FTR, the Wagner Group was doing most of the heavy lifting, and was the one force universally - by Russian, Ukrainian, and neutral third party sources - acknowledged to be worth a damn on Russia's side in this sh*tshow. Of course, that was before Wagner Group burned through something like 80-90% casualties trying and failing to capture Bakhmut for 6 months. Prigozhin is understandably a tad pissed off about that debacle.)

Yesiree, it sure sounds like Russia's got the Ukes on the ropes, by golly, and Any Day Now™ Russian troops will conquer all of Ukraine. 

When they ride into Kiev on flying pigs.


Babylon Bee headline, tomorrow: Prigozhin Denies Coup Attempt; Russian MoD Sends Him On Next OceanGate Tour Of Titanic

@1:06ff..."one of our commanders...went a little,...funny in the head..."

And now, yet again, an appropriate air:


"Well...shit."

It's truly a sad day for everyone when a murdering ex-KGB Russian dick-tater can't hire a reliable mercenary prison-convict-hiring ruthless warlord who doesn't turn out to be a disloyal backstabbing sonofabitch.


Close Call


In case anyone was wondering: No, I'm not done playing with this topic yet.

G@#D&%%!^, "OceanGate" Was A Metaphor, Not A Design Spec!

The first guy who sends them "Windows For Dummies" is an effing legend.

 



Thursday, June 22, 2023

Fish Food


















1) Rest assured, the bodies will be recovered. You'll see them next season as cod fillets, in seafood restaurants and Gorton's packages everywhere.

2) The takeaway lessons will be simple:

    a) Don't ride in experimental diversity-built rides.

    b) Hire engineers and workmen for competence, not diversity.

3) Yoda's Axiom applies:








Because Mother Nature doesn't grade on a curve at 370 Atmospheres of pressure. (2½ tons PSI, or 800,000 pounds/ft², for Common Core grads, at the depth where sits RMS Titanic. Imagine 14 fully loaded cargo containers, balanced on your lap. Painless and quick.)

Or anywhere else.

And now, an appropriate air:

It's Just An Illusion

h/t ASM@ Borepatch


Mosey over to Borepatch's blog, and read ASM's epiphany on a classic scene in Full Metal Jacket. 

My take?

You (ASM) know no recruit ever saw a doughnut on P.I. Kubrick didn't. 

You're still overthinking it. (And BTW, Pyle confessed to stealing the jelly doughnut in the scene without further prompting. Trying to pin this on Hartman's imaginary dastardly subterfuge is plainly bad movie-watching comprehension.)

The doughnut scene was just lazy screenwriting, and bad shorthand to make a point, nothing more nor less. That's the discovery. Hollywood only does that 24/7/365. (Lou Gossett did it even worse, when he won an Oscar for them making it look like he single-handedly ran a Navy OCS platoon in An Officer And A Gentleman. As If.)

Pyle's failure is that he's Pyle. I knew many Pyles. I had them in my recruit platoon. Some of them hid it better than others. Some didn't even try.

We had "Sniper", caught sighting in his M-16 on 1st MAF's helo as it landed on the parade deck. 

The "Filter Kings", caught smoking a half-smoked cigarette butt they'd found. (The scene where Profile is running around the entire formation coming back from the range in Heartbreak Ridge? Oh yeah, that happened many times in real life. Just ask the Filter Kings.) 

And two outright Thieves who should've been shit-canned from the Marine Corps on the spot in boot camp, and were later court-martialed and shit-canned from the FMF, for stealing ordnance in MOS School right after. Leavenworth Correctional is tough to explain on a resume.

The Corps oft-times fucks up by trying to salvage the unsalvageable, when it should just do them a mercy and kick them out as "unsuitable for military service" for life, the first time it becomes bog obvious.

Not everyone left MCRD in dress blues. Some leave it in Levis. Even two days before graduation. Deservedly.

The D.I.s were simply the illusion of perfection, because they only had to put the show on for their shift. It is the most elaborate staged performance in a military full of them. The Blue Angels have nothing on Marine boot camp for creating an illusion. Doesn't matter for recruits, because they're expected to make illusion reality, Or else.

The problem comes when over-eager recruiters are desperate for audience participation, and screen in kids they should've screened out, and knew they should've screened out.

Anybody can do documentaries on Marine boot camp, or BUDS Class 234. It's not hard.

The one I want to see, that would tear the mask off, would be to do a documentary on BUDS Class 234 Instructors Behind The Scenes. Or ditto for Ranger School or SFAS Cadre.

Then the penny would drop. 

The military would crap itself to stop that reality show getting out.

(That's a lot of why The Guardian failed at the box office, despite being an excellent flick: Costner's senior chief was shown to be just as damaged in his personal life as the trainee he was trying to reach, and it was a little bit too on-point for audiences to like. It broke the boot camp movie mold.)

I saw one of the sister platoons' D.I.s in the base PX about a year after boot. After a momentary flashback, the truth dawned. He was just another motor T sergeant, buying T-shirts and socks.

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Memes Are Hard

 h/t WRSA

Courtesy of WRSA's daily Meme Dump, two examples:

FIFY. You're welcome.












This isn't the original meme. And the original wasn't bad at all. But now, the items are in the correct order. (And I'll accept precedence quibbles anywhere after about #8.)

Then there's this example:

It's T-A-I-W-A-N, not T-I-A-W-A-N, Goober.








Brilliant concept. Retarded execution. 

And I may have edited the corner attribution. Learn to spell, Shakespeare. Nothing botches a meme faster than looking like it was cobbled up by an illiterate mouthbreather. (And I say that as someone that's had to fix more than one spelling screw-up after posting it, or go back and make it right before putting it up.)

Don't half-ass this. No excuses: there's SpellCheck and the entirety of human knowledge already there for you on the Internet, if you'd just learn to look things up. If you're going to make memes, Learn To Spell.

Sunday, June 18, 2023

Sunday Music: Take A Chance On Me


Mega-group ABBA's #3 hit from 1978, and their biggest-selling single in the United States, beating the sales of even their #1 Dancing Queen.

Saturday, June 17, 2023

Dept. Of Caprice And Whimsy

 h/t DiveMedic and USAJobs

Get your applications in quickly.

(This embiggens.)

Monday, June 12, 2023

Unintended Consequences

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Sunday, June 11, 2023

Sunday Music: Feel Like Makin' Love

 File under: Badder Than Bad Company


YouTube's algorithms mysteriously burped this hitherto unknown cover onto my electronic doorstep this week. Always liked the song, but with Susanna Hoffs covering it?!? I wasn't sure. But it's Susanna Hoffs. So of course I watched it. And I freely confess, I don't think I ever wanted to be a microphone stand so much in my life before seeing this.

Warning: You may need a fire extinguisher handy to keep your computer from melting down when you watch this live performance from back in '91. And there was no way I was sitting on it, putting it at the end of the current Sunday Music on-deck list. Because why wait? I'm a giver like that. You're welcome.

The only thing that might have improved it would be the re-formed Bangles covering it. But her back-up band for this performance had some mad chops.

And I'm really glad she wasn't covering the Roberta Flack song with a similar title. Wouldn'a been the same at all.

Saturday, June 10, 2023

Thursday, June 8, 2023

Trump Indicted by Chiquitastan DoJ

¡Viva Chiquitastan!









This is my shocked face.

Analysis from CTH:

♦ THE TELL – Here’s the “tell” that every pundit, analyst and litigation expert will pretend they don’t notice.  It’s the funniest part of the entire thing and yet no one, again except us, is noticing it.  The DOJ has already predicated the baseline of their claim by saying they cannot tell anyone, even the court, what the nature of the documents are that underpin their assertion.  Remember, they wouldn’t even let a court appointed “special master” review the documents.

Stop and think about that for a moment.  NO ONE knows what the documents are, and the DOJ has stated they will never say what the documents are.  The DOJ is filing a case about the mishandling of documents, in whatever legal construct they put forth, while simultaneously saying they are under no obligation to tell anyone what the documents are.

DOJ: Trump violated USC 793 in his discussion and/or handling of documents.

Trump Lawyers: What documents?

DOJ: We can’t say, and we won’t tell you.

This kind of blatant pseudo-lawfare bullshit usually only happens in Turd World banana republics. 

Even if he's acquitted, 

The process is the punishment. Exactly as intended.

You now live in full-on unmitigated Chiquitastan, beyond any rational disputation.










You can knuckle under and look the other way.


Otherwise, people who've had enough are going to have fight it.

Physically. With bullets launched in malice.

Best wishes with interesting times ahead.

TPTB won't let you.
They're making that excruciatingly clear and obvious.


Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Inevitably, Tragedy Descends Into Farce

h/t McThag 

Better still: By next week, it'll be up to 118%.

Adeus, linda...

 h/t Evil Blogger Lady









We note with a twinge of sadness the passing of Astrud Gilberto, at 83, one-hit wonder from a singer who wasn't, famed for the perfect ethereal melancholy vocal on The Girl From Ipanema, which bossa nova/jazz track we profiled as a Sunday Music pick way back in February 2020. Plucked at the last minute as she, the bandleader's wife, was the only Brazilian handy in the studio who spoke English well enough to do an English-language version of the song, she received all of $120 for her work on that record. Which hit #1 in 1963, and got Stan Getz the first jazz album to ever win a Grammy as Album Of The Year.

Which always deserves another listen from 24-year old Astrud back in the day:


Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Barrett .50 Range Report

Head on over to Commander Zero's blog for the details.

$4/round will do that to ya.


Interesting Times - New Terrorism Milestone: Achievement Unlocked















This little stunt should endear Russia to the world community for another century or so.

Looks like somebody in Moscow decided he had nothing left to lose.

Just a hunch, but I'd bet cash money serious discussions are happening in quiet SCIFs about the possibility of handing nuclear weapons to Zelensky to use at his discretion. It may never happen (one would hope not), but you can bet it's being talked about.

Just saying: This download may come in handy. Your call.

Monday, June 5, 2023

Photo Ops Inbound

Pro Tip: Be the photog. Not the subject.
Picture Day is coming soon.

Sunday, June 4, 2023

To The Class of 2023

 


We have, on multiple occasions, commended to you the humanitarian works of YouTube engineer Mark Rober, the man who has annually perfected the porch pirate Glitter Bomb, and has entertained literal millions by testing the ingenuity of his backyard tree rats, devising ever better squirrel mazes for them to conquer.

This year, MIT chose him as their commencement speaker, and his speech does not disappoint. Frankly, it's better and more useful than any number of attempts by more serious speakers.

Enjoy.

Sunday Music: Simply Irresistable

 


Robert Palmer's #2 1988 song and video, which concluded a rock trilogy that started with 1979's "Bad Case Of Loving you" and 1985's "Addicted To Love" (a previous Sunday Music featured selection), the latter of which is the most imitated and/or referenced music video of all time, by all discernible standards.

Saturday, June 3, 2023

Break YouTube

 "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." - Saul Alinsky, Rules For Radicals


Dear Boutique Tar-Gay,

Congrats on becoming the 2023 exemplar of United Breaks Guitars, served with a six-pack chaser of Butt Light (NYSE value: worthless).  And as usual, you can't buy this kind of business-crashing negative publicity. It always comes to the recipient absolutely free, and overly well-deserved. Braindead Tone-deaf Stupidity: Achievement Unlocked!

You idiots are no exception, and equally clueless how you managed to pour gasoline in your own lap, and then try to stub out a lit road flare with your crotch. Bravely done, mega-morons. Your entry into Jackass: Billionaire Corporate Retard Version is accepted with pleasure. Let the games begin!

The bleeding will stop the minute you stop trying to shoot your own dicks off. Over and over and over. And then make a humble and sincere apology for screwing things up so royally, on behalf of a demographically microscopic group of freaks and mental health cripples, and stop! Stop! STOP! pimping and pandering their disgusting agenda! (Clever readers will denote a subtle hint there.)










(Montgomery Wards, J.C. Penney, and Sears Roebuck & Co. would like a word with you about what happens to slow learners in the retail game. Or maybe you still have some of your Mervyn's former executives on file somewhere. Have a nice trip; see you next fall.)

Until your executive lackwits heed that advice, it's going to be hilarious watching you set yourselves on fire anew, time and time again. And at least your board of directors can get their ceremonial hockey helmets at an employee discount, before next they venture forth into the world unsupervised by any actual competent adults.

What's next? Hiring Bill Cosby as your next celebutard spokeshole, and dusting off the ad campaign for New Coke™? Maybe call it New Woke!? Genius!!!

Well-played, you corporate (or should that be coprophile?) sh*t-for-brains groomers. Be sure to look both ways before getting thrown under the bus.