My new Holiday

Come June 12th, I'm going to pull the Mustang out of the garage, check that it's full of Mobil 1 10W-30, and let the fucker run for at least an hour in my drive. Just because I can.

Really, I want the Medieval, Pagan worshipping fucktards to make some kind of statement...IN MY FRONT LAWN about this.

I need some target practice.

Truly humbling

Along the same vein concerning romantic piano music that I previously touched on here, I found a few performances that were not only startling, by the simple fact that they were being rendered by kids, barely out of diapers, but the technical expertise and outright mastery of the essence of the pieces gave me the chills.

It's all Chopin, all the time around here:

Nocturne Opus 9, No. 2. It even sounds pretty good on that wheezy upright, I think.

Then, we move on to a 10-year old playing Etude 24. Watch the hands!

Next is this one, Nocturne Op. 20 in C sharp Minor, Posthumous, which left me jaw agape. Simply unbelievable. How does she even reach the effing pedals?!!!

Just for shits and giggles, here's a rather exceptional rendition of Koelling's Rhapsody. The boy simply owns it.

That shit just pisses me right off.

What was I saying, again?

It now appears that the State of Texas, or at least a branch thereof, the DFPS, has overstepped its authority on that whole mess, and been told about it.

That's about as good as the situation is going to get, I'm afraid, and that's just too fucking little for my tastes, as the thugs who pulled the whole thing off in the first place, from the Gummint Bureaubots to the actual doorkickers, need to serve time in prison. ALL OF THEM!

They should all lose their jobs. Pensions? Gone. Badges, NEVER TO BE WORN AGAIN, ANYWHERE! As far as I'm concerned, the FLDS members who've been put upon can go after the individual assets of the people who perpetrated this mess, too. And no, I'm not being too harsh on those statist assholes.

Fuck 'em.

Is the man this stupid?

Saw this a day or two ago on the news. Here's the part that gets me:

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,"

Where to begin?

Aside from the fact that humans can, and have, developed their own energy resources, throughout history, and will probably do so well into the future, we can all use as much as our bank account can afford to pay for, not as much as someone else thinks we should. Is that clear to you, Barry? Yet this whole matter is best summed up as being some sort of popularity contest by that sniveling little shit.

Honest to god, does the man not actually think about the words (ideas are attached to such things, BTW) that are coming out of his mouth?

Is he being purposely obtuse? Does he actually believe he has any right, much less the authority, to do what he is suggesting? My guess is that he does, and a good many people in this country think the same. Dolts.

Actually, I dare that dumb motherfucker to keep going along this ridiculous line he's proposing, just so I can be proven right about all of it. It can be summed up by its ultimate conclusion, tyranny.

Dark days to follow, for sure. I can't wait.

UPDATE: Was just doing some blogrounds and ran across the same shit, but put in a much better, and funnier, way, courtesy of Al, at Cold Fury.

Arming up before the storm

Jeff at Alphecca is looking to add EBR's to his personal armory before one of the louts gets their filthy mitts on the levers of power.

The comments section over there is filled with some good stuff regarding what can be had for the available funds that Jeff is going to be laying out. Most of it centers around obtaining at least two SKS rifles, as the budget is around $1K, with plenty left for ammo. This is excellent advice for someone, or a family, on a budget. However, it's not the best choice, either, in my estimation. The SKS is far too long for its intermediate cartridge, is too heavy for most, and its ergonomics just suck, generally.

Regardless, it's a good read through there to see what others have in mind and making adjustments for ones particular situation and available fundage.

Some sort of heavy-duty AR with a BUNCH of good mags and maybe a BETA-C are looking very attractive to me right now.

Hope he likes the taste of shoe leather,

I'm beginning to think Kim is watching too much Top Gear, and is getting to be rather like Jeremy Clarkson; full of bits that read and/or sound well regarding things he should know something about, but every once in a while, just like Clarkson, he sounds off and makes his ignorance known. So, Kim, like Clarkson, thinks the 'Vette doesn't handle well, and this sort of thing is best left to the proper corner carving models of the European persuasion, I'm to believe.

I couldn't disagree more.

If one is to look at the history and facts of matters such as this, it is clear that the Americans can, and have, done several things to embarass their European counterparts in the field of motorsports, and even on the street, with privately financed teams, starting with Dr. Dick Thompson, American iron has had more than a few technological features that were rather groundbreaking. Yes, yes, those may be "leaf springs, (and) rides like it’s running on wooden tyres," as Clarkson puts it, but those leaf springs are a design feature, not a flaw, as they save space, and weight, if that dolt Clarkson would open his eyes and see the brilliance of the design. It just works.

I've wrenched, by choice or necessity, on a bunch of vehicles since I was in grade school, doing not much other than observing my dad, sitting on the pulled wheel at about age 5, graduating to wrench turning here and there, his skillful eye watching me the whole way. Then came handing him tools or a shop light not long thereafter, to doing oil changes by age 8, again with close supervision.

The shifter tube on the three-on-the-tree F100, in the middle of January wasn't long thereafter, and the steering nut at the top of the column didn't come easily. We swore at that one for a good long while. The clutch and pressure plate on the same F100 was a year or two later. My sister's Buick lunched a head gasket in high school, and Buick 350 heads are heavy sonsabitches, let me tell you. Oil pump on my Mom's Isuzu Trooper, oh, I forget when. The head gasket on my 2.6l Montero let go at about 102,000 miles, which was fairly common, and Dad and I fixed it in one evening's worth of work, again in January. Since then, I've probably diagnosed and fixed more cars than I can remember actually laying a wrench on. I've even restored a piece or three along the way as well.
I suppose there will always be poseurs who open their mouths about things they know nothing about, especially on any kind of practical level, and there will never be any remedy for it, but jeezis, if people are gonna give me their god-damned opinion on something, they just need to tell me the truth about why they like it, or don't, instead of playing it off like they actually know anything about the subject matter at hand.

Vegetable Murder

I stand aghast at the items I've read so far today.

Truly, the world has come off its rocker.

Plants have rights? So now that the Global Warming Death Cultists have brainwashed the masses into believing that eating red meat is somehow causing the ice to melt in faraway places, I can't eat the vegetables, that I've been told since I was a toddler are good for me, either.

So, what is it that I'm supposed to eat that meets with the Greens' moral equivalence standards, Soylent Green.

Tick, tick....