Uh Oh

Anyone familiar with the Taxonomy of Modern Dangers is aware of the potential monkey menace. Well it looks like things are jumping off in Thailand.

Warring monkey gangs? Like the Jets and the Sharks?

"Familiarity with firearms"?!? 

I hope that just means that the macaques recognize the tranquilizer guns the cops are using and flee before they can get darted. Because the other possible interpretation is... well, we've all seen that movie and it doesn't end well.

Wait, we have the org charts for the gangs?

Clearly, there's only one solution to this problem: We have to get a monkey boy from one gang and a monkey girl from the other to meet and fall in love...

"Two troupes, both alike in dignity,
In fair Lopburi, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where monkey blood makes monkey paws unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife."

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Rise of the Machines

The opening shots in the Humans versus Robot Dogs war have been fired in Massachusetts:

Moreira was barricaded inside a home on St. Francis Circle after a 911 call about a person holding someone else at knifepoint, police said at the time. The person escaped, but when officers arrived, at the home, Moreira allegedly opened fire on a SWAT vehicle and periodically shot near the officers who’d circled the home.

State police eventually decided to send in three robots, including Roscoe, to find where in the building Moreira was holed up. Roscoe cleared the top two floors of the building, then discovered him, holding a rifle, in the basement, police said.

He knocked the robot dog down, then started to walk up the stairs, but, when Roscoe righted itself and started following him up the stairs, he knocked the dog over again, then shot it three times. Its pilot lost communication with the dog.

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The real dangers of Halloween...

Can we not talk about the real danger of Halloween, which is not fentanyl-laced Good ‘N’ Plenties and razor blades in kumquats, but the fact that the streets will be crawling with zombies, pirates, and ninjas?

Lock your doors and turn off all outside lights to ward them off!

Seriously, though, the last few years we've just been turning the lights out. Most of the little kids in the immediate neighborhood had grown into their teens or their families had moved, and the number of tricker treaters had dwindled and was skewing heavily toward kids who should have been too old to be out scamming free candy with a half-assed costume.

Over the past year, though, at least two families with small children have moved into the 'hood. There are enough houses that put on pretty elaborate productions that they should be able to get their sugar fix without Roseholme Cottage's participation. Possibly next year.

The Samurai Clown Menace

The clown menace is a real problem, especially when it's samurai clowns gone rogue.

The sword-wielding clown -- who also wore a white t-shirt, gray sweatpants and black socks during the robbery -- grabbed some cash out of the register then ran off into the woods, police said.

Much like the upsurge of piracy on the world's oceans, this is obviously the result of too few ninjas around to keep the samurai clown population in check.

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What Soda for Bear?

“Thank you all for coming to Intern Orientation. In your packet, you will find your uniform. Questions?”
“Ma’am, it’s just a red shirt?!?”
“Yes…?”
“Well, there’s just one…”
“You won’t need more than that. Everyone wearing brown pants as I said in the email? Good!”

— MateoG (@MateoG) June 30, 2022

Slightly Sweaty Terminators

So the scientists are all excited that they've covered a robot finger with living flesh. They even note that it's "slightly sweaty."

Japanese scientists have developed a “slightly sweaty” robotic finger covered in living skin in an advance they say brings truly human-like robots a step closer.

The finger, which was shown to be able to heal itself, is seen as an impressive technical feat that blurs the line between living flesh and machine. But scientists were divided on whether people would warm to its lifelike anatomy or find it creepy.

I don't know about you, but when I read that, all I'm hearing is...

Underneath, it's a hyperalloy combat chassis, microprocessor-controlled. Fully armored; very tough. But outside, it's living human tissue: flesh, skin, hair, blood - grown for the cyborgs.

You've got government officials telling you you don't need AR15s right about the time that Google's developing an AI but firing the guy who tried to make friends with it, while the Japanese are on the verge of building a killer cyborg for Skynet to drive.

I think it's time to make sure that every strategic weapons launch system on the planet is good and air-gapped.

It's like these scientists don't even watch movies.

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We knew this would happen.

A man dressed like a ninja was shot by French police after he attempted to attack two officers with a sword in the western city of Cherbourg on Thursday, authorities said.

The incident escalated as two female police officers approached the man to question him regarding a car theft.

"He was neutralized with bullets," the Cherbourg press office told CNN, however they could not say what condition the man was in.

I could have told you this would happen. Once you exterminate all the pirates, your ninja population explodes, without their natural predators to keep them in check.

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Apocalypse Now

Sure, sure, we've had some bad rain and flooding incidents here in the US in the last couple years, but in Egypt they've taken this to the next level. They found a way to add an extra little dash of awfulness to a plain old flood!

I've seen school delayed because it was too foggy to safely run the buses, and I've gotten to stay home from school because of snow and ice, but I have to say that school being closed because of a swarm of scorpions is entirely outside of my experience.

You gotta wonder if the old timers in Aswan are all like "In my day, we didn't shut down school for any scorpion swarm. Heck, Ahmad got stung on the playground and had to get carted off in an ambulance and we didn't even pause our soccer game."

Al Jazeera's piece clarifies things a bit, saying it was the weather that caused the school closures, not the plague of arachnids, which leads to the obvious "Well in northern Egypt we know how to drive in floods!" joke.

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Better Guns Than Karate

I can't believe the literally hundreds of times the soft melodies of this song have wafted past my ears over nearly twenty years without me once actually processing the lyrics...



Yoshimi, girl, if you're really gonna defend Wayne from those evil space robots, karate and vitamins aren't going to be as effective as a trusty blaster at your side.

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Word of the Day: How to Speak Tamarese

Bearthread {bār-thrĕd} (n.) Interminable discussion threads on internet gun fora devoted to rationalizing purchase of exotic firearms solutions to fantastically unlikely problems. 

"The Taurus Judge is the concrete, physical world manifestation of too much bearthread."

Incidentally, if any Hoosiers are looking to rationalize a magnum revolver purchase, here ya go.

I wonder if anyone has any 10mm Trophy Bonded Bear Claw in stock?

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“Why is movie blurry?”

I'm seeing lots of chatter about the cinematography of Zack Snyder's latest effort. Some people seem confused by the blurry backgrounds...

First and foremost, some scenes have a blurry, dreamlike quality to them because of Zack Snyder’s use of the Canon 50mm f/.0.95 lens, nicknamed the Canon Dream Lens, a relatively obscure piece of equipment developed in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s.

Snyder, who also acted as cinematographer on Army of the Dead, specifically utilized the full-frame Rangefinder lenses...

Here's a little more on the Canon "dream lens".

Army of the Dead is a two and a half hour orgy of violence, dark humor, and acre after acre of dreamy gorgeous ethereal bokeh. Not only was it mostly shot with those old Canon f/0.95 lenses, but he had them jammed WFO the whole time.

If you’re looking for a technical instruction documentary on proper firearms handling and helicopter maintenance in a zombie epidemic, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re looking for a popcorn munching action zombie darkly comedic heist flick with FRICKING GORGEOUS CINEMATOGRAPHY as well as all the bokeh? Your movie is here.

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It's not (quite) the Zombie Apocalypse.

It's important to know if the monkeys on the loose are of the face-eating variety or not. https://t.co/eFV8CHa6N1

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) April 9, 2021

The headline is money:

Monkeys were reportedly on the loose in Cincinnati. Police have yet to find them.

Also of note is that the monkeys were spotted in a graveyard. Could this be an alliance between the zombies and the face-eating monkeys? Or, worse, could it it represent an unholy zombie/face-eating monkey hybrid?

If people ask "Why do you need guns?", you just point out the zombie face-eating monkey menace.

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"English, MF'er! Do you speak...or write...it?"

This headline at Newsweek got my eye twitching:

Elderly Man Shoots Dead Assisted-Living Worker in Colorado, Police Say

Do they not diagram sentences in school anymore?

If I were in the old folks' home and saw the dead wandering about, I'd shoot them, too. "The zombie apocalypse is upon us! Shamblers in the wire!"

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Every time you think it can't get more 2020...

Who had "Japanese combatting bears with robot monster wolves" as their guess for November? Because this is pretty lit. Bears fighting robot monster wolves is like the sort of stuff we used to draw in third grade, or a strip idea from The Oatmeal.

Also, what gun for robot monster wolf?

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Now the orcas are going loopy...

 Who had "killer whales get cranky and attack sailboats" as their September 2020 prediction?

 The latest incident occurred on Friday afternoon just off A Coruña, on the northern coast of Spain. Halcyon Yachts was taking a 36ft boat to the UK when an orca rammed its stern at least 15 times, according to Pete Green, the company’s managing director. The boat lost steering and was towed into port to assess damage. 

 Around the same time there were radio warnings of orca sightings 70 miles south, at Vigo, near the site of at least two recent collisions. On 30 August, a French-flagged vessel radioed the coastguard to say it was “under attack” from killer whales. Later that day, a Spanish naval yacht, Mirfak, lost part of its rudder after an encounter with orcas under the stern.

When asked why the orcas, who are known for generally leaving humans alone, had started doing this all of a sudden, marine biologists shrugged and looked at each other and said "Dude, it's 2020. Who the hell knows?"

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That's just, like, your opinion, man...

So the National Park Service says to not "push your slower friends down in attempts of saving yourself", to which I say "You're not the boss of me, Mister Park Ranger Man."

(I will also note that "don't push your slower friends down" is pretty specific, and leaves an array of options like tripping or kneecapping still on the table.)
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This is the most 2020 thing I've read yet.

What gun for one million radioactive communist cannibal ants?

This was a Twilight Zone episode, right?https://t.co/Hi7cCv4Fdp

— Kirk Freeman (@KirkFreemanLaw) August 3, 2020

ETA: And yes, the story itself dates to last year and is reporting on events that had occurred years before that. But that has just given the ants time to get closer.
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Mariprofundis R'lyehianum

Just in case extracting the DNA of the ancestor of bubonic plague from the teeth of neolithic skulls doesn't trigger the final boss fight of 2020 A.D., scientists are also feeding nutrients to dormant hundred-million-year-old bacteria from the benthic mud of the abyssal plains of the ocean to wake them up and see what happens.


via GIPHY

There is no way that HLV2514 is going to get here in time.


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Over/Under on the rise of the machines in 2020?

What gun for terrifying robot pony?

Also, "Terrifying Robot Pony" is the name of my next band. https://t.co/uhGvWJJ7g2

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) June 30, 2020

Fight Club

Now this is pretty hardcore:

"She awoke to the sound of a bear approaching her," Foy said. "It immediately attacked."

The bear scratched the young woman's arms and legs, but then it began to bite her leg. Her wounds were not life-threatening.

"The only weapon she had was her laptop. She hit the bear with it and stunned it long enough to escape inside the house," Foy said.

"She fought back vigorously, which is what you should do with any wildlife in California."

What laptop for bear? This is where you'd want a good, solid 15"-17" gaming laptop with a hefty battery, and not some flimsy little 13" airweight glorified tablet with a keyboard.

[p'''''''-=]

(Sorry, about the above string of nonsense characters. Holden leapt onto the keyboard while I'd stepped away for a moment. Although I note he closed his brackets, which makes him a more fastidious typist than the average denizen of social media these days.)