Form a Line, Take a Meme, and Exit the Current Year in an Orderly Fashion

Automotif DCVI...

I was a big fan of the Jaguar XJS as a kid and I still kind of am. Sure, it's a lot less sporty than the E-type that preceded it, but I have a thing for long-legged grand tourers.

If I won the lottery, I wouldn't say anything, but there would be signs. (I'd have to win the lottery, because a thirty-plus year old twelve cylinder Jag is not the sort of car I'd want to keep running on a shoestring budget.)

This one was photographed with an Olympus E-5 and the Panasonic Leica 14-150mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens.

Big Dip

We'd had a string of unseasonably warm weather locally, culminating in a Sunday afternoon high temperature of 67°F, and then the front blew through.

It was quite the front, too. Booms of thunder, which is not typical late December weather for Indianapolis, and they even reported a tornado out in Linton, in Greene County.

After midnight the temperature had dropped below freezing and when the alarm went off here at Roseholme Cottage at 0600 on Monday morning it was down to 23°F, falling to 21°F by sunrise.

When I walked to lunch at 11 o'clock, it was only seventeen degrees out there, with a steady 20mph wind gusting to 35.

It's 14 now, with a light dusting of snow on the ground. I wish it would make up its mind.

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Meme Dump!

Writing Elsewhere...

• Crossover skills from other hobbies that can improve your pistol shooting.


• 1965 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Luxury Sedan: The Rocket Action Car!

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Memes for the Slackest Monday of the Year!

Around the Web

• Techbros are still failing to beat the “Don’t understand Tolkien” rap in their corporate naming practices by naming a super premium home security company after a guy killed by burglars.


• "When A.I. Took My Job, I Bought a Chain Saw": When a copy writer kept losing work to AI, he asked a chatbot for career advice. This piece did not go in the direction that I, cynically, thought it was going.


• An extremely cool piece about the fastest cars available in the United Kingdom, decade by decade. Lavishly photographed automotive pornography.

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Last Sunday Meme Dump of 2025!

Meme Dump!

Early Morning Drives

Foggy, slightly damp, and unseasonably warm yesterday morning. Took the Mustang to the petrol dispensary for a few gallons of mid-grade and then orbited one of my usual loops, languidly surfing on that river of low-RPM torque.

I live in the city, so there's nowhere nearby I can really uncork it, and the streets nearby are generally flat, straight, and on a grid pattern, but you'd better believe I know where every single hill and curve is within a five mile radius and will go out of my way to use those streets.

(The photo below is from a different early morning drive, on the way to gun school last October.)

Automotif DCV...

I always love bumping into this 1966 Plymouth Satellite hardtop coupe (with its sneaky little "408 Stroker" fender badges) out and about in the neighborhood.

This time I had the Sony a77 and the 16-80mm f/3.5-4.5 zoom.

Boxing Day Meme Dump!

That was weird...

Yesterday I noticed I was running low on soda and, not feeling like dealing with the crowds at Meijer, I figured I'd get a couple twelve packs of Mountain Dew Zero and one of diet ginger ale from Amazon.

When you hit the groceries tab at Amazon, you get a drop-down menu giving you three choices, of which only two are relevant if what you want is diet soda, since the third is Whole Foods.

I normally select Amazon Fresh rather than Amazon Prime Same Day. I have no idea what the difference is, so it's just habit at this point.

Yesterday morning there were no available same-day delivery windows at Amazon Fresh. Sad face. So I emptied my cart and figured I'd have to drive over to Meijer and deal with the seething mass of aberrant humanity doing their last minute frantic shopping.

On a whim, though, I decided to check Amazon Prime Same Day. They did have delivery slots available. No idea what the difference is, but there you go.

So I got my soda and avoided the scrum. Hooray!

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Special Bonus Christmas Memes!

Santa just dropped these down the chimney...

Meme Dump!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all my blog readers who do the Christmas thing... although here in the USA, like in most of the Western world, we've managed to make Christmas a sufficiently multilayered holiday that it's possible to participate with any amount of religious content or none at all. 

If you want to do the full midnight Mass experience, we got you covered. If you just want a wintertime holiday about seeing family and exchanging gifts with friends and pretty lights on neighborhood houses, well, we got that too.

(And miss me with your annual "War on Christmas" gripes about how the Woke made it illegal or frowned on to say anything but "Happy Holidays". I realize that's a standard play in the wintertime culture war playbook, the "off tackle left on three" of the Right, and it gets the rubes reliably riled every December, but it is sooooo tired.)

Christmas Eve Memes!

Balmy...

And we're back into the mid-50s for most of this week and could see the mid-60s on Friday, threatening records.

Next week will be more seasonable, though, with a long stretch of sub-freezing days.

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Tab Clearing...

• A Black Dog at Night


• Consumer protections rolled back on payday loan industry.


• "Some Photos From My Family's Archive And The Cult Low Budget Horror Films They Became"

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Meme Dump!

Last Minute

With two-day shipping (free with Prime) there's still time for stocking stuffers.

• There's a cool multitool with a 1911 bushing wrench and other gun-specific tools.


• Or just a classic Victorinox SAK.


• And then there's this little manual Out-the-Front Kershaw.


• The Wedge XT from Streamlight is a popular little 500 lumen rechargeable light and it's on sale! 


• If someone wants to get into a fun kind of photography, the Instax Mini from Fujifilm is a lot of fun.

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Memes for the People Who Have to Monday!

Tab Clearing...

• The Bundeswehr has apparently chosen the CZ P-10 C in Tactical Dirt Color as their next service pistol to replace the HK P8 (aka the HK USP). It will be designated the P13.


• Trade wars have apparently dinged American bourbon sales in foreign countries pretty badly. Jim Beam will be idling one of its distilleries in Kentucky for 2026 as a result.


• A company calling itself Starfighter Space is planning on using surplus Lockheed F-104 Starfighters for suborbital launch services.

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Bonus Jake Paul Meme Dump!

Meme Dump!

Nothing fishy there...

Well, the release of the Epstein Files turned out to be something of a disappointment, since the Justice Department had made sure that ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️ and ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️ were heavily ⬛️⬛️⬛️⬛️ and redacted. Then a bunch of photos were removed from the site yesterday afternoon. Representatives Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) are making Impeach Bondi noises.

Meme makers had a field day...

Over the Hump...

We made it, fellow SAD sufferers. It's the Solstice and the first day of astronomical winter. From here on out to Midsummer, the days just get longer and the nights shorter.

(This will be cold comfort for another month and a half or so before it really starts to get noticeable and the crocuses start peeping out of brown lawns.)

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Christmas came early last night when insufferable internet jerk and accused scam artist and sex pest Jake Paul got his ass knocked out on live TV to the sound of rousing cheers across the breadth of social media.

Hang this shot in the Louvre.

Scattered, Smothered, Punched, Bitten

Have you ever thrown hands in a Waffle House during third shift? If not, have you ever seen hands thrown in a Waffle House on third shift? If neither of those, have you ever even really been in a Waffle House on third shift?


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Meme Dump!