Sunday Music: Happy Hallowe'en Mix

Something appropriate for the season...

More cowbell...?

Best wishes for a safe and happy holiday week to you all. Back in a week or so...

Sunday Music: Already Gone

 Hopefully auto-timed posting works...

One of the early Eagles' earliest Top 40 hits, from '74, with 3/5ths of the classic Eagles line-up, and Don Felder supplying the classic guitar riffs on this one.

Because I am. Enjoy.

Update, from Somewhere North Of Mexico: 

BTDT, Got the "Special Percussion" endorsement and commemorative t-shirt. Good times.

Safari Walkabout

I haven't taken an actual multi-week GTFO of Dodge vacation since...2000.

That one was to perfect beaches on the Leeward Coast of Maui, with a beautiful and long-legged blonde lady. One that eventually got away. Not doing that trip again until the locals there decide whether they're in mourning, or want tourists, and come up with an answer they can stick to. And a fiancée that'll stick around, instead of fool around. Don't need the drama on either score.

Turns out I had to take this time off, because I've banked so much vacation time on the books at work that I start losing it if I don't.

And despite pondering long and hard about where I'd go, for about a month, nothing really came to mind. Still hasn't.

Thus no plane tickets. So it's me, and a tank of gas. Or three.

If I post anything this side of early November, I'd be surprised. There will probably be a couple of timed posts for Sunday Music, but not likely much else. And maybe not even that.

As I told CW over at Daily Timewaster, I may take a camera and see if I can find him anything suitable for his Friday Open Road posts.

I may go sit by a pool or beach, I may go play with wilderness and survival skills, or I may go visiting places I've never been, or haven't been in a long time. Perhaps a mix of all of the above.

At any rate, my bills are paid, there's both a packed suitcase and a backpack in the car, I have a paycheck that isn't spoken for, and nowhere to be for a couple of weeks that I don't want to be.

This chair behind the keyboard isn't going to be one of those places. Anyone thinking (or wishing) otherwise is in for disappointment.

Last I looked, I get between 6K and 10K hits/day here. And while that always humbles me, I'm sure you'll all live without me for the hiatus, and the Usual Couple Of Wiseasses will have to go back to hitting themselves in the head with hammers for amusement, like they obviously do most days.

The rest of you not so handicapped will doubtless find plenty of other fodder on the 'net - and in life - to entertain yourselves while the free ice cream machine here is turned off. We commend to you the right-hand column, for openers.

Heaven knows, quite a lot could happen in two weeks. Or not much.

Whether we ever come back is a question for fate, heaven, and happenstance, to be settled another month than the current one.

We leave you all our best wishes.

This should be fun.

Chess, Not Checkers

With all due respect to Matt Bracken,

we propose the US military pursue a less-retarded approach 

to the Eastern Med:

Erdogan is his own worst enemy, and Turkey needs to be saved from him, even at the choice of removing him from power and halting his futile pursuit of delusions of former grandeur.

This isn't 1960 off Cuba, and you don't stall until your only choices are bad and worse.

We're not there to intervene in the original conflict. We're the guys at the barfight with the sawed-off shotgun, keeping the original fight a one-on-one match-up.

Hamas bought their ticket; now let them ride that bull the whole eight seconds.

If that means Erdogan catches a bellyful of buckshot for interfering, so be it.

Literally no one will miss him by day after tomorrow.

Don't start nothin', won't be nothin'.

A Lot Of Choices Are Easy

The most retarded thing we ever did was get between the IDF and the PLO in Beirut. This could have been over 40 years ago.

The absolute last thing we should do now is try to get between the IDF and Hamas in Gaza, under any pretense or circumstances.

Hamas poked the bear. Let the bear have his luncheon, uninterrupted.

And if Turkey keeps rattling their tiny butter knife saber on the periphery, they need to find out how strategic a mistake it is to screw with carriers using surface ships, when you also don't have any submarines.

Perhaps Argentina could send them a cluebat on that score.

Erdogan could also find out about regime change, first-hand.

Meme Failures: Grand Master Level

 h/t WRSA

Somebody get that AncientIdiot guy a tourniquet for his junk,
once he gets his cleats out.

This week's Biff Tannen "Make Like A Tree" memery fuckup award goes to whatever midwit functional retard owns the Ancient Wisdom &c. X account involved in the exchange pictured above.

Because only someone with a refrigerator interior IQ could pick such a handle, and be thoroughly unfamiliar with the naked idiocy of what they just burped out.

Word To Your Mother, Fuckwit:

Any dipshit so blissfully ignorant of a basic tenet of military science that's been around for 2,500+ years, and studied by every student of the military arts, including budding young professionals at such places as West Point, Annapolis, and Sandhurst unto the present day, and who has adopted the handle "Ancient Wisdom", has broken the Internet Irony Meter, and stands possessed of a level of fucktarded stupidity impossible to measure with existing instrumentation.

That the military intelligence arm of a country outnumbered roughly 100 to 1 on all sides would pay homage to that tenet of basic military science in their motto is about as surprising as finding ice cubes in your freezer.

That someone should think it a curious thing alien to military art and science, and yet bloviate far beyond the constraints of their humble IQ unimagined even by Messrs. Dunning and Kruger is about as surprising as finding that person's head up their own ass.

That anyone thinks anyone's CIA-equivalent agency practices anything but deception, 24/7/365/forever, and always will, is to bankrupt the value of the word moron, and beggar belief in the existence of the human mind itself. How anyone can be that stupid, and still somehow draw breath and suck food to survive is a medical miracle in its own right, but not in a good way.

Well played, egregiously developmentally delayed example of Fucktardus internetis.

Here's your prize, Ancient Jackass:

We have a feeling the hardest part of this feature as an ongoing thing isn't going to be finding candidates every week, it's going to be narrowing it down to the single most-deserving winner.

Hence a warning to any aspiring memelords:

SSDD

h/t Irish

Why We Meme

h/t WRSA

"Agitate. Always, agitate." - Frederick Douglass

 

Sunday Music: Barracuda

Anyone who ever foolishly opined that '70s music sucked has to contend with the reality of Heart's 1977 original signature Top Twenty hard-rocking shriek at the douchebags they ran into in the music industry. Still one of the most bad-ass hard rock songs of all time.

Vote! Moar! Harder!

Oopsie

Be A Man

 h/t CW's Friday Open Road

Come For The Shock, Stay For The Sheer Terror

h/t wirecutter

What They Voted For - Good And Hard

h/t wirecutter

They Fought The Wall And The Wall Won

 h/t Wirecutter

Music To Wave Goodbye To Gaza To

 

Go. Read. Learn.

If you haven't done your Area Study, you're doing this wrong.

This is not a drill.

Meme Failures: Grand Master Level

h/t Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man

We hereby institute the Biff Tannen 'Make Like A Tree' Award for egregiously stupid failed attempts at humor and/or memery. This is our first winner.

The person who bought this abortion, and photographed it and posted it to the internet (probably the same dipshit)  where BRM found it, just advertised to the universe:

a) Their gullibility for buying such a piece of codswallop

b) The fact they never saw the movies

c) Their utter cluelessness

d) Their overweening desperate desire to be geek hipsters, even burning money in the attempt, but without investing the five seconds of time needed to earn actual cred.

Dr. Sheldon Cooper would mock them for hours.

The colloquial title for such an ostentatious display of such a Grand Slam of Fail is "fucktard".

Well-played, Loser: Grand Master Class.

And to whatever gross ignoramus makes that toilet lid/decal:

 major cluebat.

Here's another even geekier one, and it's been floating around out there for four years. 

Write this on your hand with a Sharpie:

C=H+T : Comedy Requires Humor + Truth

Botch either one and you're just another unfunny goober.

Like the Internet needs more of those.

Just Saying...

Sunday Music: Panama

Third single release off Van Halen's 1984, peaking just like the previous single I'll Wait at lucky number 13 on the Billboard 100, and despite some suggestive lyrics, was written by David Lee Roth...about a car. This was exactly the kind of cut that had transitioned Van Halen from house band to selling out stadiums at the peak of the David Lee Roth years.

Dirty Jobs: Be A Man Among Men

The hard part is making the obvious walk-throughs
look like obstacles.

Economics Is Destiny

Semi-pro thorn-in-the-foot Michael is so busy crowing about his own gains at speculation in penny currencies, he forgot the bigger picture. He also missed that the point wasn't whether or not he could make money, but rather "If Russia is winning so hard, why are they taking it in the ass economically?" 

I mean, geez, I made shit-tons of money off of Batman and Robin, but Warner Bros. walked away in a barrel, with no shirt or pants, and it killed the franchise until Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale got the thing off of life support.

So Michael's comment is like the guys wearing shirts in the movie biz in 1996 that said "Waterworld: I made money." Which was funny to them. To Universal, not so much. Pretty much like everyone who didn't short the ruble feels about how Russia's economy is performing now, and for the interminable future.

The value of the Russian ruble has dropped 40% in a year. Despite Putin pretend-backing it with gold. And it's also the only currency Vlad will accept for Russia's one and only valuable commodity: energy, in the form of oil and natural gas.

So Russia, by destroying the ruble's value, has just cut the price it's getting paid for oil and gas by 40%. Financial genius, right there.

On top of losing 60% of its energy export market overnight since February of last year, for which perpetual loss China and India haven't come close to making up. But they're getting their energy for bargain basement rates.

So the army isn't the only thing in Russia bleeding out its ass.

Moar Winning!!

Russian ruble collapses - again; now worth less than US$0.01.

Spin it, Usual Suspects. The internet needs your comedy relief. Tell us why it's lost nearly 50% of its real value against the dollar - in a Biden economy - in a year.

Any answer that ignores the why of Russia's currency problem, given all their imaginary winning, and/or tries to drive off the road and drag in 57 other non-sequitir excuses having nothing to do with the topic, will be ruthlessly flagged for Arguing Like A Bitch, and consigned to the ether unseen. ZFG.

I'm open to rational financial explanations, on topic. Naked bullshitting or sophomoronic invective from lack of other options disappears like it never happened.

Color inside the lines, or stay home. Crickets chirping will drive the point home just as well.

Bill and Oprah Send Their Regards

 

Dirty Jobs: Be A Man Among Men

 

Democrats Codify Fifth Freedom

h/t WRSA

Dirty Jobs: Be A Man Among Men

Bienvenido a los Estados Unidos, extranjeros ilegales!

 

Trophy Hunt Successful

One shot, one kill.

Preparedness: Always Needful; Long-Term Tyranny? Not So Likely

h/t Bayou Renaissance Man

I didn't feel like I had a long post in me today; just nothing the muse was itching to belt out.

And then, I saw Peter had a long post on various things up at BRM; you should RTWT. 

But regarding one of the sub-topics, i.e. a decades-long tyranny here?

Point Of Order:

Preparedness is a fine thing, but let's get serious.

Everyone who looks at "how it is" in the rest of the world when civilization goes to sh*t, overlooks to their eternal peril a vital difference:

The Rest Of The World isn't armed to the teeth with more loose small arms and ammunition at large amidst the general population than the world's next 10 largest militaries, COMBINED.

FAFO

Which kind of undoes any napkin math on the topic that doesn't take that into account, whether we're talking foreign despots, or domestic wannabees.

Anyone from the nominal Top Dog on down who forgets that factor is going to die with a third eye in their forehead and one heck of a surprised look on their face.

Somebody, anybody, including FedGov, thinks they're going to "lock it all down" interminably, and institute Communist/Medieval serfdom on this nation?!?

Average Joe's toleration of "public good" screw tightening has eroded down to the wear bars on that particular tire. Ain't nobody having another helping of that, nor likely to anytime this century.

It is to laugh.

Somebody tries that anyways? Fed agent's pelts - whole body mounts, mind you, not just the horns - would be nailed to every wall from Maine to Monterey, and snitches' and collaborators' heads would decorate every fencepost in sight, from sea to shining sea.

In minutes and hours, like as not, and not in months or years.

And, given so much as a "What for?" nudge, they most assuredly will do exactly that.

This will be no seventy-year slog of waiting for the edifice to fall over of its own weight.

People in this country lack the patience (or innate subservience) for that sort of wait-it-out crap.

They're going to go out and start killing something. More specifically, someones, plural. In job lots. Google "great gross".

Carlos Hathcock had 93 confirmed kills in a jungle war, mostly in a single tour of duty of under 13 months. Chuck Mawhinney's official tally is recorded at 103, and another 216 probables in the same conflict. Simo Häyhä chalked up 542 Reds in only under a hundred days in the snow, maxxing out at 25 in one day. With a bolt-action rifle and iron sights!

Be like Simo.

Put in simple terms, if there's as little as one Simo in 30,000 in the entire U.S., the entire problem is gone - forever - in the amount of time it takes to put one Marine through boot camp. (And the waiting line to sign up for that has gone pretty quiet of late.)

There's no respawn button, they can't shake-and-bake new orcs fast enough to overcome that problem, and even the hordes pouring across the border are going to be headed the other way the minute that happens.

Pepe LePew couldn't clear out a town as fast as two-way gunfire hereabouts is going to solve the illegal alien problem. Least of all if some of it squirts in their direction.

And trying to disarm the populace triggers the exact scenario the feds are earnestly hoping to avoid.

10,000 problem children?

In WWII, under occupation by actual Nazis with SS and Gestapo given free rein, the French Resistance was less than 3% of the total population.

10,000 problem children in this country now would only be 3.333/100,000ths (0.00003333) of 1% of the US population, i.e. 10,000x easier to pull off.

"But Blutto, we're afraid! The government has nuclear weapons!"

Uh huh. And how long can those guys last in that hole if there's 100 farmers with deer rifles up top, and Wyoming, Nebraska, etc. cease to be permissive operating territory?

How long does the flight line last at Whiteman AFB when the locals start popping anyone who gets within 100 yards of a B-2 on the ramp, and you can't land a plane or get a food truck onto the base?

How long you gonna sustain subs when the crew can't return to port, and has to survive on what they can catch freehand off the deck?

Major League Stupid in this country is over in a season.

No one's going to be inclined to wait three generations, and hope their grandchildren someday breathe free oxygen again.

That rot will be burned to the ground in days to weeks.

(Take the J6 mob, this time with actual guns and torches, like a real coup would have included, and let your imagination run wild for about 0.2 seconds. We'd be short about 600 senior government members in a matter of that many necktie parties under those circumstances.)

Speculate all you want about what happens here the day after that.

But a multi-year reign of tyranny in this country is going to be like trying to paddle a canoe up the falls at Niagara.

And that's before the criminals they can barely contain with 90% public support for law and order decide to pile on, because they aren't obeying any stinking laws.

This country will not revert to Zimbabwe. Dodge City or Deadwood are far likelier.

There isn't going to be New York City law at that point, any more than there'll be Moscow or Beijing communism for more than a hot minute.

But Committees of Vigilance and hanging judges will become all the rage. And there's one whale of a lot more people than just 10,000 waiting and more than willing to give that another try.

A long emergency is a distinct possibility.

It would most likely occur after an incredibly brief and brutally violent short-term tyranny.

If anyone's not planning for that, they aren't planning for a long emergency, they're just planning for a long inconvenience.

Best wishes with that outlook.

Accept No Substitutes

Technically Not A Lie

 another h/t to CW

Tip your waitresses. Try the veal. I'm here all week.

English Is Funny Like That

h/t daily timewaster

Even Stupid People Can Grasp This

Sunday Music: That Girl Could Sing

 Jackson Browne's almost-Top-Twenty ballad-to-rock hit from 1980, about the ultimate elusive woman, which was eventually (after her passing) revealed by Browne to have been inspired by one of his back-up singers.