The Lineage of Grendel
Grendel was the name of this grim demon
Haunting the marches, marauding round the heath
And the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time
In misery among the banished monsters,
Cain’s clan, whom the creator had outlawed
And condemned as outcasts. For the killing of Abel
The Eternal Lord had exacted a price:
Cain got no good from committing that murder
Because the Almighty made him anathema
And out of the curse of his exile there sprang
Ogres and elves and evil phantoms
And the giants too, who strove with God
Time and again until He gave them their reward.
– Beowulf, Seamus Heaney (trans.) Lines 102-114
RIP Tina
Dead at 83 after a prolonged illness. She was a little larger than life but nobody could say that she had an easy ride. All glory is fleeting.
In Ukraine
(RFE/RL) Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of Russia’s Wagner private mercenary group, says his troops will leave the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut between May 25 and June 1. Prigozhin recently claimed his troops had taken Bakhmut after the longest and bloodiest battle since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, while Kyiv denied the city had fallen. In a May 22 audio report on Telegram, Prigozhin reiterated his previous statement that the ruined city will be handed over to the regular Russian military, adding that the Defense Ministry should create “a platoon of generals” to hold Russian positions in Bakhmut.
Wagner Group
(RFE/RL) …In a video released around the time Russia was marking the May 9 Victory Day holiday, Prigozhin stood in front of a pile of corpses he said were those of Wagner fighters and accused senior Russian military leaders of causing their deaths through incompetence. Prigozhin has been particularly cutting in his criticism of the chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who has long been considered one of Putin’s closest advisers.
Russian Private Military Companies
(RFE/RL) It’s not just Wagner Group anymore.
From The Guardian
Vladimir Putin wanted Russia to join Nato but did not want his country to have to go through the usual application process and stand in line “with a lot of countries that don’t matter”, according to a former secretary general of the transatlantic alliance.
George Robertson, a former Labour defense secretary who led Nato between 1999 and 2003, said Putin made it clear at their first meeting that he wanted Russia to be part of Western Europe. “They wanted to be part of that secure, stable prosperous west that Russia was out of at the time,” he said. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ And [Robertson] said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”
The account chimes with what Putin told the late David Frost in a BBC interview shortly before he was first inaugurated as Russian president more than 21 years ago. Putin told Frost he would not rule out joining Nato “if and when Russia’s views are taken into account as those of an equal partner”.
He told Frost it was hard for him to visualize Nato as an enemy. “Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilized world.”
The article is behind a paywall but I excerpted it here for you.
Identify the Aircraft – try to be specific
This one may be a little more difficult, Beans. ID this aircraft too.
ID the Tank
Meme of the Day
Bullet Points:
** How to professionally say, “Fuck around and find out.” — “Please test that assumption and take note of the results.”
** The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which is funded through a mandatory tax on those watching live television on penalty of fine or imprisonment, announced that its news division will feature a new team designed to dispel disinformation dubbed “BBC Verify”.
** Until this week, Sam Brinton, formerly hailed as the first “non-binary” senior federal official as head of nuclear waste management has avoided jail or prison, despite two guilty pleas for luggage theft at airports in Las Vegas and Minneapolis. But with his arrest as a fugitive accused of a third luggage theft at Reagan National Airport in Washington, he is about to experience life as a jailbird. Marjorie Hernandez of the New York Post reports.
** The reparations-for-grievances industry is falling on hard times.
** Pride Month at Target? Any customer who chooses not to shop at Target because its product line does not match their values, is somehow violent, a domestic terrorist, all the things Pedo Joe’s administration claims are the “real” threat to America.
Now that customers have learned the power of their boycott — for example, in the case of Bud Light, which featured an ad by a transgender activist whose schtick is mocking women as flimsy 1950s-style ditzes — they very well may be ready to act again to send the same message to Target, and Target now knows it.
A Target insider said there were “emergency” calls on Friday and that some managers and district senior directors were told to tamp down the Pride sections immediately.
“We were given 36 hours, told to take all of our Pride stuff, the entire section, and move it into a section that’s a third the size. From the front of the store to the back of the store, you can’t have anything on mannequins and no large signage,” the Target insider said.
** Student Debt – “President Biden is simply transferring the debt from borrowers who willingly took out student loans to hardworking taxpayers who did not. This is no insignificant portion of the population: in fact, eighty-seven percent of Americans did not take out loans. This number includes those who did not go to college, who worked to avoid loans, or who had the grit to pay their loans back.”
For Mike_C
It’s difficult to find true love
Fidel had a big cigar…
AFV is an M8 Greyhound armored car.
-Kle.
Helo: Mi-24P Hind-F ? I think that was the one with the twin 30mm.
-Kle.
Yes, Mi-24P and yes, an M-8.
IDK what the floatplane is, though I feel like I ought to.
-Kle.
I’ve been criticized for making things too easy. I threw that in not as a ringer but as an example of a more difficult one to ID.
Okay, is it the Wight Pusher Seaplane?
Pretty sure that’s the one I was thinking of, anyway… and it looks pretty similar?
Or maybe the Wight Navyplane… can;t find a good picture of that one.
-Kle.
Identify the Aircraft:
1. Mi-24P Hind
2. TBD
Identify the Tank:
American M8 armored car
Identify the Aircraft:
2. Thought perhaps Farman F.30 or 40 but wings just don’t look right nor the fuselage.
No, keep working the problem.
MUCH nicer than my CRKT hatchet.
The last time I was in a Target I noticed that the photos in the clothing section had almost no white people in them. And no few of the models were decidedly hefty. (Perhaps they also use Dove soap.) So “Pride” is not the only part of Target’s agenda.
Fidelito photo goes together with yesterday’s verschlimmbessern theme. So some young guy (20 or so) was apparently on Reddit asking for advice. This guy was living with his 19-yo girlfriend. Came home one day, apartment was silent. SYG goes into the bedroom to find his girlfriend naked on all fours with some big dude he’s never seen before behind her. She sees the boyfriend and starts yelling “Give it to me! Harder!” And stuff like that. Well, clearly she’s not being assaulted, so heartbroken, SYG says, “We’re over,” turns around and leaves the apartment.
Few minutes later his phone starts blowing up. It turns out GF was “trying to spice up our sex life.” She checked SYG’s browser history and found cuckold porn. She assumed he was into it, and arranged the tableau with the big dude to please SYG. But it happened that SYG liked to imagine himself as the cuckolder and not the loser being cuckolded. Oops. So SYG went on Reddit to ask strangers for advice on whether he should break up with his GF because he didn’t want to try to explain all this to his friends or family. This is such a stupid and absurd story I’m inclined to believe it’s true. What a dumb world we now live in. Anyway, no reason why I thought about cuckolds looking at that photo of the senior Trudeau. No reason at all.
Oh yeah. Dove soap? Welcome to the latest front in the Culture Wars.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H5L43Qc7IFM&pp=ygUJRG92ZSBzb2Fw
(1) Do ample women with hideous faces think that a little Dove soap will fix their appearance? I’m not upset at Dove – I mean, go for it Dove if you believe you can sell more inexpensive soap to the aggrieved.
(2) I don’t even want to think of the Trudaus doing a 3-way with The Beard, but Junior clearly inherited some DNA from the donor. By all accounts, Fidel wasn’t a pussy, but Junior didn’t have his upbringing and was raised to be what he has become. Maybe they hoped that he’d gain something genetically from The Beard? I’m guessing that Castro was the alpha male in that joining.
Does Dove soap treat type 2 diabetes? Sheesh. Maybe I should design a clinical trial comparing efficacy of Dove versus an SGLT2 inhibitor.
/eyeroll
Less sarcastically, male “representation” in video games is not realistic either. But most men see an aspirational character and say to themselves, “I wanna be more like that. Maybe I should hit the gym.” (Or toughen up, learn some skills, whatever.) Dove is telling us that women (at least some) react by wanting to tear the character down to their own level rather than thinking of building themselves up. Sad.
Many but not all leftists can be identified by their self-loathing. It’s manifested by piercing, facial tattoos, bizarre haircuts, genital mutilation, and by their behavior. Barack’s husband, Big Mike acts out as well. Who can say that Bruce Jenner isn’t mentally ill? And yet, he’s Woman of the Year because equally disturbed people are comforted that they’re not the only ones. I’m not a psychologist, but my profession sent me out among the dysfunctional.
There are a lot of people who have been dealt a low card by life. Some rise above it, and others remain aggrieved. Dr. Jordan Peterson addresses this in much of his lecture series. Men who want to be women and cut off their genitals are still genetically men. Women who “butch up” are still women. No matter how their self-loathing is manifest, and what sort of anti-social behavior they engage in, they all seem to want to be some species of socialist (national socialist included) or communist.
It used to be a haircut for the gals, now they are taking Testosterone. Upside is Gillette will sell more razors and shave cream…unless, that is, the Estrogen-taking boys average out any market sales.
Screw with God’s DNA, reap the consequences…like Hollywood actresses using plastic surgery or cattle clostridium botulinum to maintain a youthful appearance. Doesn’t age well, in fact drops off the cliff like meteor.
He ought to break up with her because she won’t have a conversation with him about important subject matter. Maybe she can apologize by arranging for him to be the visiting team with an unhappy girlfriend.
“But that would have ruined the surprise! Why are you so mean? I was just trying to make our relationship stronger!” Waaaaah!
Yep, he needs to not only break up but also break contact with her. And hopefully she’ll have learned a lesson and won’t pull this sort of chicken-headed foolishness with her next boyfriend. But I’m not holding my breath.
Maybe I fell for an exercise in creative writing, but younger folks tell me they believe it’s a true story, considering the stuff they personally know about. What a goofy world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XJxhZSNahQ
Student loans deadbeats are the same 13% (or less) who shop at Target and cheer on the obesity and pedo normalization, expect to see the blasphemy gear back up front by the 4th. I give Brinton credit, he’s just smart enough not to pull those stunts in a place Soros didn’t help elect a prosecutor.
He’ll act out on his compulsion often enough or in the wrong place and somebody will take him to the woodshed.
I think he IS in trouble fo’ realz this time. His mistake was ripping off an actual African woman, albeit an East rather than West African. (Poor woman didn’t deserve that — Pup-play Brinton apparently stole the samples she was going to display at a trade show and it messed up her business. And although they weren’t particularly to MY taste, she had interesting designs.)
I’d like to think that Justice is being done, but my inner cynic (which is not much different from my quotidian façade) says this is about victimhood hierarchies. Fine. Don’t care, so long as Brinton gets his.
Brinton apparently has not heeded What Not To Wear. The guy is a mental patient on the loose. Maybe this kills the crazy at its root, prison will enjoy his company, and not because of the Jimmy Choos.
He may form lasting relationships that continue outside of the institution.
Turns out he was one of those trans nuns, The Sisters of the something or other.
So I guess in many large companies that fail their history have this happening:
Sitting in a Executive meeting and the CEO says:
“Social Media platforms and schools are saying we need to change our target (no pun intended) market to cater to 0.1% of the population. Effective today all of you are to send the memo to rearrange our advertising and stores accordingly because this is more important than our core business.”
And everyone – still wearing masks,and having left their brains in a jar by the door before leaving their houses – said Absolutely!
Many of today’s compulsive mask wearers are mentally ill.
…or smoking dope to numb foster their narcissism. About half the population.
Typos galore today. Been ignoring the news/spew-age, so that’s a positive.
Nobody’s perfect.
“It’s hard to be humble…”…up until reality hits you in the face.
(Mac Davis was a genius)
You may be on to something. The vast majority of The Clan Of The Mask that I’ve seen lately have been at target.
I like that, Clan Of The Mask, it’s a cult for sure.
I made a similar hachtchet from the 80s to 2008 I sold them tru catalogs mostly woodcraft
Cool. I’ll advertise them on this blog for you if you want to keep making them, free of charge.
My eyesight got too bad to do that kinda work I mostly piddle around now I had fifteen tools I made plus Windsor chairs leather work and tool and die work jigs and fixture I did a lot of work for the smithsonium and I rebuilt the grist mill at Mt Vernon all while legally blind
H/t…from timber work to fine woodworking, excellent skill set. That scene in National Treasure, “How do guys with a bunch of hand tools build all this?”
One cut and joint at a time.
Russa part of Nato? What good is Nato without an enemy?
The Russians hate the Chinese.
… and the Religion of Peace, especially the Central Asian practitioners thereof.
-Kle.
One benefit of not owning a television is not being subjected to the idiocies of the moment, like Dove commercials. Target is another example of go woke, go broke. Elections have consequences and people can vote their wallets without Dominion counting the votes.
Union Pacific is another company flirting with wokeism. BNSF isn’t. Warren Buffett should be the example other CEOs should heed.
The Trudeaus have had a pretty good lock on Canadian for quite a while. They have changed the majority of the country and not for the better.
Dove commercials. Makes me glad (again) that I don’t have a TV to throw a book at when I get irate about stupid commercials.
Beautiful hammer and axe, true artistry. I would almost hate to use them but wear marks have a beauty all their own.
My same thought when seeing the craftsmanship (proving that “crafts-nonbinary-ship” just doesn’t scan). I’d hate to mark that up, unless it becomes necessary.
“Craftsmanship”
Reeee! “Man!!!” Reeeeee!
Okay, “Craftspersonship”
“Son?” Reeeee! Triggered!
And so it goes. Eventually the nutbag would get around to complaining that the letter “I” in “ship” is aggressively phallic. So you’re right to not even play the game.
I’m now of the mind that the proper first answer is “Yes, craftsMANship, you weirdo.”
For these screaming meemies a ballpoint pen is a phallic symbol. So much in fact they call it misogynistic to the point it creates a sexual harassment f-e-e-l-i-n-g that subsequently generates such fear and loathing that they have to stay laying in their futon, only to text their non-binary friend to run to the local Starbucks drive-thru for an emergency Grande’ Non-GMO vegan mocha latte with soy milk collected from gender-neutral free-range goats…and a gluten free scone.
IDA:
1.) Mi-24P w/n 07
2.)Sopwith Admiralty Type 860
#1 yes
#2 no
IDT: M8 Greyhound?
Yes, a Greyhound. This one was operated by the French in Indochina until a B-40 took it out.
Nice
What threw me off was the open-top turret, as the WWII version had a closed top. Though the proposed tank destroyer version with either a 57mm or 75mm gun was designed as your typical American tank destroyer with an open turret.
Weird. Always wanted one.
NAF N-1.
Size – Audit Murphy was not of physically imposing size.
Audie, not Audit.
And he knew how to kick ass.
Not man in the fight, but the fight in the man.
Clearly “The Leadership” has forgotten how many of us are at the ready to enact righteous moral rectification to their blatant corruption and tyranny.
So…you had to audit your Audie?
Audie audaciously audited Audi in the auditorium.
Audibly, I bid thee adieu.
-Kle.
Bravo.
A great R&B and Torch singer Tina Turner, may she find the peace in eternal sleep. The axe and hammer I could wear proudly on my side and wear marks? Only adds to the patina and bolsters war stories in future taverns…
Naval Aircraft Factory N-1 “Davis Gun Carrier”, 1918.
Hey, I think that’s it!
-Kle.
Don nailed it!!
Canada would have been so much better off if Fidel had pulled out early. Just saying.
There is “a substantial penalty for early withdrawal”…but I agree.