TL;DR: Emperor Gropey Dopey's Address

 

SeeBS

h/t Angus 

Priceless.

The only thing funnier and more appropriate would be if they inserted it, fired it, and it somehow went off, live on-air.

I'm pretty sure this guy is their network gun consultant.

Nothing To See Here Dept.

 

The Fox And The Grapes, And The Oscars

h/t ASM @ Borepatch

The award if We ran the Oscars any time in recent memory.

 

For those unfamiliar with the origin of "sour grapes", a certain parable from my namesake might be in order.

Are actors self-righteous virtue-signalling hypocritical lackwits with delusions of grandeur and egos the size of Africa? Yes.

Should people with no experience at a conventional job, struggling to make ends meet on an eight-figure salary, with four trips to rehab, three failed marriages, two arrests, and a viral sex tape (in every sense of that phrase) available on the internet probably STFU, mind their own business, and not try to run everyone else's life? O hell yes.

Is their job easy? Hell no!

And BTW: Anyone who thinks actors (or anyone else) is overpaid, is quite simply a communist. And I mean that, literally. Pop off, and dare me to prove it using your economic ignorance as a negative example, at your own risk of ridicule.

I am second to none in my epicaricacy at the well-deserved tanking of ratings for the uber-woke Oscars of late. But it's possible to go beyond the solid ground of opprobrium for foolishness, and leap headfirst into the Swamp of Foolishness oneself.

Case in point:

"Well, the last thing on the face of the Earth that I would be interested in is watching a bunch of A^ patting themselves on the back, especially for being overpaid to do one of the easiest things that can be done in life."

"easiest things that can be done in life"...??

Let's see if that idea holds water...

Sing Somewhere Over The Rainbow for the class. Flawlessly. Seventeen times in a row. Then do a medley of dance performances from Top Hat to Puttin' On The Ritz, followed by a step-for-step rendition of Singin' In the Rain. While soaking wet. Then swordfight Inigo Montoya and beat him. Segue into your version of the St. Crispin's Day Speech from Henry V , followed by any 5 minutes of James Cagney's dialogue from One, Two, Three. Then give us Tom Joad's speech about a man's soul from Grapes Of Wrath, Atticus Finch's closing summation from To Kill A Mockingbird, the opening speech from Patton , twirl a big lever carbine to hail a Stagecoach, do it again while holding your horse's reins in your teeth after shouting "Fill your hand, you sonofabitch!", beat Marsala in a 7-lap race around the Roman Circus Maximus, then top it by tear-assing around San Francisco in a '70 fastback Mustang chasing a couple of mob hitmen to the death. Hold Bubba Blue in your arms as he dies, and break our hearts. Tell us about your most memorable ocean cruise. Show us - don't tell us - how your life as a poor Jewish Russian milkman would be changed if you were a wealthy man; take us to a pub for drinks with your friend the invisible 6-foot rabbit, and close up by singing a chocolatier's delight in a land of Pure Imagination.

You'll look about as silly as the mouthy brat cat-calling Babe Ruth for striking out, when the Bambino walks over to him, hands him the bat, and says "Okay, how about you try it then, kid?"

Motion pictures are the quintessentially American art form, and a national treasure, which only makes their descent into madness and lingering demise that much the worse for the entire culture.

The ratings this year deservedly look exactly like the Hindenburg going into the ground at Lakehurst one fateful day, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of jackasses. They earned the worst box office and worst ratings in history, with exactly the hubris and self-delusion your comment displayed.

But don't, in your haste to condemn their long-standing jackassery and stupidity, ever kid yourself that you or any fifty other people would, even in five lifetimes, amount to a patch on the underpants of the people that make it to the top of that pyramid. It's one of the most brutally unfair backstabbing bloodsport shankfests ever created by mankind, and the people that are and have been acknowledged masters of that craft, since ever, have more talent in the tip of their pinkies than you or I will ever have in our entire bodies if we lived to 100. The lowest paid actor you ever saw on a screen still beat out 200 people for the job, in a town where you can hit major league talent by swinging a dead cat.

The people running the business for the last couple of decades are most assuredly top-tier world-class @$$holes. And even the biggest @$$holes in that pack could act rings around you, blindfolded, hog-tied, and falling down drunk.

And the only people that know that are every person who every bought a movie ticket or popped in a disc to watch one of their performances.

Hate the @$$holishness of the @$$holes all you want; it's your inalienable right. But please, if only out of self-respect, stop kidding yourself, and quit talking out your other end.

And another thing...

PSA

 h/t Daily Timewaster

Sunday Music: I Melt With You

 Modern English's wondrous one and only hit, still going strong nearly 40 years later.

Genius

 h/t WRSA

In Case You Were Wondering

 

I'm Here.

From Phil, at Busted Knuckles. RTWT.

Truer words were never spoken.

Most of you know what you should be doing.

(I can think of about a hundred things, just off the cuff. Most of which we've covered, long since.)

Best be about it.

Sunday Music: Save It For Later

 

The (English) Beat's best-performing song, with magical riffs and a tuning mistake that drove it to being a mid-range dance hit on both sides of the pond in the day, and good enough that Pete Townshend and others have stolen it and perform it regularly as well.  Adding to its earconic status is having shown up in half a dozen movie soundtracks, holding up so well after 40 years it was included in the Marvelerse's Spiderman: Homecoming.

Sunday Music: In The Midnight Hour

 

In case 1980's Blues Brothers didn't let you know John Landis loves him some classic rhythm and blues, in 1985, John Landis hired B.B. King to do the entire soundtrack for his movie Into The Night.

It not only got us another good flick and a good soundtrack, it got us B.B. King covering pieces like this Wilson Pickett standard. And B.B. does it better. If I was Emperor For A Day, the horn section would play the instrumental bridge from 1:30 everywhere I went, and at window shattering volume, until you could feel it vibrate your skull.

Movie Review: Knives Out

 

No spoilers.

Not paying attention to kneejerk woke-till-they're-broke Hollyweird, coupled with a pandemic, means there's damned little worth a look. For years.

But the cast, and simple curiosity, led me to pick up a copy of this one the other day. It absolutely breaks the drought, but then it's easy to shine with a movie that's just a movie, rather than an agenda.

If you want a great classic whodunnit, a fun cast (including the late Christopher Plummer in one of his final film roles), and with more twists than an Italian coastal road, this flick is yours to enjoy. Daniel Craig pulls off a new sleuth (with a convincing Southern accent, but then the thoroughly English Vivien Leigh in Gone With The Wind sounded more Southern than family trees that don't fork), and the layout and reveal is first-rate.

This one was simply a thumbs-up watch.

No wokism horsecrap whatsoever, no sex, minimal gore, all story, in a pure mystery yarn the equal of anything Agatha Christie ever came up with, and great entertainment.

Hate on the freak show that is modern Hollyweird all you want. But a movie like this deserves your eyeballs. Give it a look.

Iranian Nuclear Proliferation Talks: Open For Business

How it should be handled:

Oh, wait, I forgot; it's Gropey Dopey handling things. Hang on a second:

Standard terms, of course.

¡Viva Chiquitastan!

Women In the Military Part VI

 h/t The Old Jarhead

What's that? Women can't cut it in the military most of the time? Who knew?

I mean, besides literally everyone, including every veteran since the Spanish-American War.

(REALITY) The U.S. Army, currently stuck in a quagmire over a rigorous new physical fitness test, needs to get its act together and make sure soldiers are ready for combat, say a national security expert. 

The rollout of the Army Combat Fitness Test in 2019 hit a roadblock when initial test scores showed 65% of women failed compared to 10% of men. 

The new ACFT replaced the Army's three-event Physical Fitness Test, which graded soldiers according to sex and age, but the alarming failure rate caused an uproar among Democrat lawmakers who used a 2021 Pentagon spending bill to order a halt to scoring soldiers according to the new test. A study of the test is being done by the RAND Corp. 

According to Stars and Stripes, the fitness exam is a six-event test that is patterned after the grueling CrossFit program with weights and barbells, medicine balls, kettle bells, and a 90-lb. sled to simulate dragging a wounded soldier. 

The new test, which is meant to better simulate combat, includes a "leg tuck" station that 72% of women failed when they couldn't raise their legs to their chin. 

During the phase-in period, the U.S. Marine Corps was the only branch to publicly speak out after its own testing showed female Marines were failing to keep up with males during rigorous combat simulations such as loading artillery shells and carrying a wounded Marine to safety.

And this is after they lowered the bar, by command direction, for everything women try!

Let's talk turkey: No woman has served in the US military under the same requirements as a man since the American Civil War , and not a single woman serving now or anytime in the last century has had to measure up to the same standards as men for so much as one minute of her entire military career. Now that they're being asked to do exactly that, 4/5ths of them can't even meet the basic standard.

It's time women either put up, or shut up.

Meet the exact same standards, or kick them the fuck out, where they belong. Any job a woman can do isn't something that should necessarily be a military job. Put them back in civilian service where they belong, or else end the farcical experiment, and acknowledge there's something critical they lack for combat (that would be called muscle mass), ban them from it in perpetuity, and go back to the status quo when common sense and biology ruled military decisions, instead of woke retardation.

Clerks and jerks? In the rear, with the gear? Fine, sweetheart.

Combat? Combat arms? Anything within a country mile? No way in hell. No Combat Barbie, ever. Period. 

(That means no shipboard deployment on warships either, unless they can sling 4x4s for Damage Control and carry a full hosepack up five ladders and then put out a fire, after dragging Seaman Fatty McChowhound to safety too.)

And change back to common sense quickly, before Combat Barbie wannabes get themselves and other people killed for their immutable physical shortcomings. 

And the 10% of men who can't cut it either? At a time when the military is the smallest it's been in 100 years, and should have the pick of recruits? 

Those are some douchebag recruiters who need to be re-assigned to someplace seriously shitty for an entire tour, just to drive the point home to stop signing up couch potatoes and nancy boys. Any recruiter not making poolees at least pass a PFT before they sign them up is doing it wrong. Especially for female would-be recruits.

Maybe when it turns out they can only find 10-20% of women a year in the country who can even pass the test to enlist, they'll realize what the problem is. And it ain't the test.

Wait For It. In 3, 2, ...

 

Stolen elections have consequences.

Some of them are also secondary, and tertiary.

Molon labe, bitchez.

How'd that work out last time you tried it?

How about the time before that?

History teaches, but only if you listen to it.

This Is What Happens When We Kick Retards

 

The Good

We were mistaken about how long our reply referenced in the last post stayed up. Small kudos to the bloghost at least, for engaging that much with strange new ideas. For about 3 hours.

The Bad

But then, the same bloghost plopped this Special Olympics-level reply, citing SCIENCE, BITCHEZ!!!!!!!!!

jay352| April 7, 2021 at 9:16 pm | Reply

Protect everone (sic) else? Jesus christ. If your mask won’t protect you, my mask won’t protect you. Fauci and the cdc says that one mask doesn’t work , wear two; even after being vaccinated. Your cloth piece of crap protects no one. Not me , not you. Unless you are coughing, spitting and snotting particles the size of a baseball. Scientifally (sic) stupid? Re-read what you just wrote. Find out the particle sizes of the SARS2 Virus (So named COVID 19 by the media) and see what a mask will do for you. It is airborne for up to 30 feet and will enter through your eyes if they are uncovered. In a study in a German hospital the highest concentration of viral load was found on the shoes of employees. Fuck the stupid mask, fuck the stupid sheep and if you ever accuse me of being unscientific I will ban your ass permenantly (sic) from my site. You need to show me scientific information that some dombfuck (sic) wearing a bandanna (sic) in the grocery store is beneficial before you post it as science .Enough said

The Ugly

Which retort we are forced to fisk, as follows:

1) I've been telling people Fauci and the CDC were idiots not working for your best interest since 2014. You could look it up. Stop listening to them. The media is even worse at explaining science. As your grasp of it ably demonstrates.

2) COVID viruses don't sit dry, suspended in air, like they were Nestle's cocoa dust. They're coming from mucus membranes in your upper airway, therefore flying outward in water droplets of your own saliva and snot.  This is why COVID (and Ebola, like many other viruses) requires droplet precautions.

3) The snot mask keeps your cough and sneeze particles loaded with virus on your side of the mask, instead of flying outwards at 100-200MPH, for 10-30 feet, as they would unencumbered.

If you can find so much as a single mask study anywhere in the First World scientific or medical literature that's looked at that, by putting petri dishes at 6', 10', 20', and 30' away, and comparing viral load deposited with and without a simple snot mask from coughs and sneezes, feel free to cite it, post, and shout it from the rooftops. I'll link it on my blog if you can find so much as one such study thusly conducted, and I daresay my daily view count is probably a bit larger than yours.

4) If you can't find one such study, but conduct such a study yourself, on your own or in conjunction, with even so much as a local high school science class, independently verified and peer-reviewed for repeatability and scientific accuracy, I'll pay you real cash money to subsidize your efforts. If you did that, yours would be the first such study, AFAIK, in the last 100 years. I triple-dog-dare you to do one.

5) The reason the highest viral load is found on shoes is that people cough and sneeze, and the viral particles eventually hit the floor, where your shoes pick them up. QED. Unless you were suggesting that infections are spread by shoe-licking or something equally spurious, what's your point?

Sorry if the realities of how masks do and don't work upsets anyone or their narrative, but physics isn't impressed with anyone's self-opinion.

We're serious about subsidizing actual mask research, because the point is evidently so settled in medical and scientific circles that no one's bothered to see if the masks do what I'm saying they do since Louis Pasteur was alive. It's also so settled there isn't a single hospital in the entire U.S., or most of the developed world, where the surgeons and nurses don't wear masks in surgery to protect the patient from the wearers, precisely as noted, because that works.

We even dug into the so-called mask studies with house trolls Tweedledum and Tweedledumber over at Mike's Cold Fury blog a month or two back, and about 15 seconds' careful research revealed that not a single one of 17 alleged mask studies cobbled together by some third-party lackwit had actually studied the precise point at issue, because apparently no one has conducted any such study in living memory.

No one does such a study because it would be the epidemiological equivalent of seeing if plain water at sea level and 1 Atm. freezes at 32° F.

But, hey, 6000 hospitals could all have been getting it totally wrong for 150 years, right?

With the level of repartee noted thus far, it's 99:1 more likely that rather than conduct a study forcing another mask genius to eat sh*t, we're instead far more apt to be "permenantly bandannaed" from Ike Clanton's site.

Perhaps science (and spelling) isn't your game, Ike. Maybe try a blog about poker.

Proof, if you needed it, that mere possession of a keyboard and a cut and paste function with other people's memes does not a good blog make, but that Dunning-Kruger is still a thing.

Unless he has the balls to conduct such a study, we're done soiling our paws burying another bumpkin in the kitty litter casket he so richly deserves.

But as we noted earlier, people this savvy is why, if you like your pandemic, you can keep your pandemic. 

We thus sadly, and with excruciating disappointment, note our suspicion that Kung Flu hasn't yet culled nearly enough Gilligans for society to be rid of this annoying pestilence, and the co-morbid stupidity and governmental overreach it elicits, like a dungheap drawing flies.

Wave 3.0 was much worse hereabouts than Wave 2.0, so please believe us when we express the sincere hope that Wave 4.0 never happens, let alone surpasses the last go-around. It would be a pleasant surprise if it works out that way. We just wish folks wouldn't run headfirst into the brick wall of Stupid, and validate all of Gropey Dopey's socialist nannyism.

(UPDATE: Color me shocked: Bumpkin got all butthurt after the second reply, and wiped out my comments and his own. {"That will show him!"}  I'm hoping I'm "permenantly bandannaed" too, otherwise I'd feel short-changed. 

So I leave it to readers:

All you have to do is find me one study that shows as much or more virus hits a petri dish at 6', 10', 20', and 30' with a face mask than does without any mask, and you win. Easy-peasey.

Or, run the test yourself.

Too cheap to spring for actual lab tests? Try it with a white bedsheet and a mouthful of grape kool-aid. Show all work. Photo and video proof, or it never happened.

Otherwise, masks perform exactly as you've been told (and told, and told), and I win. QED.

You'd think if it was so obvious that "masks don't work", people would be falling all over themselves to not only do this, but to post the results on YouTube. Sh'yeah, when monkeys fly outta my butt.

So far, the only video there that applies on this question is this one.)

COVIDiocy Strikes Again

Since this comment probably won't last long at the site:

You don't wear an ear loop snot mask to protect yourself.

You wear it to protect everyone else from you.

That's why one jackhole not wearing one in a crowd f**ks it up for everyone.

This is only news for people who flunked eighth grade science.

In other breaking news, you don't need one by yourself, outside in the sunshine; nor all alone in your car.

COVID has mainly served to illustrate how scientifically stupid most Americans are, and how thick their skulls are, when such basic information hasn't penetrated after a year.

If you want protection for yourself, you wear an N95 or better (if you can find one).

O, if only someone, somewhere, had covered this simple information and much more, and posted it on the internet, nearly a year ago, to help out the people not bright enough to figure this out on their own.

Pro Tip: If this level of information is too hard for you, lick handrails and stripper poles, and pee on electric fences.

Now, see if you can guess why I'm busy doing projects instead of reading the 'net or posting anything most days.

Remember: If you like your pandemic, you can keep your pandemic.

Happy Easter

 

Busy Doing...Y'Know...Important Stuff...

 

Don't mind me. Loading magazines. (Really). Was also gifted with a terrific medic bag out of the blue, so I'm getting it properly stuffed and kitted out. The F350 Megabeastmobile wants a new starter, and then it's going to turn into a civilian version of an M923 prime mover/RV. Ring mounted crew-served optional, but not entirely unlikely. That Krag project is still sitting half-started somewhere. Then there's a hatchet to work on, followed by another bolt gun to finish pimping out, on top of a few cartons of this and a pallet of that. And that annoying "going to work" thingie, since the lottery never picks the right numbers for me, along with its never-ending hamster-wheel corrollary, "levelling up my professional quals, certs, and whatnots, etc." Might even go crazy enough to get a Master's, just to be able to download 25 years in emergency nursing into the brighter lights coming up out of the minor leagues. I should have started on all this about 50 years ago, when I was still in grade school. And had the energy. So the days are just packed.

It's not like I'm ever going to shut up, but it's so nice outside lately, and so many other things to...Oh! Squirrel!