Blog Stuff: Overheard at Work.

Coworker: "Are paychecks here yet?"

Me: "Nope, not 'til tomorrow."

C: "Oh, okay."

M: "You know who I blame?"

C: "No, who?"

M: "The patriarchy."

C: "Me too."

M: "You can't. You're part of the patriarchy."

C: "I am? Then how come I'm... Wait, how come you're my boss?"

M: "It's a global system of oppression. Or something. Stop asking complicated questions."


Next time I'm blaming the Albanians. They're unlikely to put up much of a fight, being several thousand miles away and all.

I have a new favorite Weekly World News headline...

The reigning champ for the last twenty years has been UFO Aliens Rape Nun, Baby Lives To Speak Intergalactic Language.

It has finally been unseated by Redneck Vampire Terrorizes Trailer Park (sure to strike a chord with the paper's target demographic), complete with a photo of the bucolic undead horror.

Boomsticks: Gratuitous Gun Pr0n No. 43

.32-20 Hand Ejector Model of 1905, 4th Change

Today In History: What do you get the maniacal sociopath dictator who has everything?

Today marks the 62nd wedding anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Adolf Hitler. The happy couple soon after boarded the cyanide express for a honeymoon in Hell, where they have since taken up residence.

Nirvana.

A brisk top-down drive in a Kraut roadster, A Mencken Chrestomathy, a rare steak & eggs, and a draft Newcastle: If there's a better way to spend a lazy morning and still keep your clothes on, I don't know about it...

Blog Stuff: Boomsticks stuff in the works...

1) The thrice-verdammt Springfield '03 piece should finally go up at the other place this week.

2) ".32 H&R: The Poor Man's Magnum" is in the works...

3) ...as is a review of three $100 holsters: Galco Royal Guard vs. Brommeland Gunleather MaxCon V vs. Milt Sparks Summer Special. (Thanks to the traveling Galco salesguy. Between pumping him dry and getting a bunch of info from Gary Brommeland secondhand via Tony at work, I am about ten times smarter regarding holsters than I was this time last month.)

4) Last is the tentatively-titled ".32-20 Blues".

Yay! Brunch at Charlie Pepper's!

Steak & Eggs today, I think.

Will someone explain to me why I have to hurry and beat the After Church Rush to get a seat in the smoking section of a bar?

There must be a lot of Methodists around here or something...

YouTube bonanza over at Les Jones joint!

Watch every great car chase scene in movie history, then vote for the best.


(Which is Bullitt, in case you were wondering. With a big block Mustang and a 440 Charger, you don't need the foley guys to dub in squealing tires and motor noises.)

Quake in Solomons brings old legend to the surface...

Despite having no clue as to what particular boat the earthquake has raised to the surface, any mention of PT boats starts journalists chattering about JFK in almost Pavlovian response.

Amazing how many tales of Kennedy heroism involve wrecking your vehicle and swimming for help.

Wish I'd written that.

Exactly right.

I wouldn't put it past them to try to bring back the concept of the deodand, though. This is a society where people buy magic rocks to focus their spiritual energies, after all...

Boomsticks: A bleg.

I am looking for a 9x25 Dillon barrel for my Delta Elite. I just want to play around with loads that toss 115gr bullets at 1800fps from a pistol, mostly for the pyrotechnic excitement. I've spoken with Mike McNett as well as the folks at Storm Lake, but figured I'd turn to the lazyweb as well and see if anyone has a lead I can follow up. You never know...

"Yo, homie...

...I pwn j00r briefcase."

Heh.

Now that's a a fast draw. Eat your heart out, Tom Cruise.



(H/T to Texican Tattler.)

I hate low-rise jeans because...

a) They make me feel fat and old.

b) When you carry a full-size Government Model inside-the-waistband, the holster winds up sticking down past your butt. This is annoying when sitting.

The Hinson case in a nutshell:

If he's lying, God needs to smite his trailer.

If he's telling the truth, God needs to smite his trailer and the whole rest of the park.

Either way, his trailer's smote.

You can't make this stuff up.

So Kenneth Hinson has been acquitted of the charge of kidnapping and raping two 17 year olds and leaving them to suffocate in his underground sex dungeon behind his, um, "modular home". See, he pointed out to police that it wasn't really an underground sex dungeon, just sort of a hidden crawlspace where he stored the bales of marijuana he sold. And he didn't rape them, okay? Because it was all consensual, and they made the whole story up so that he wouldn't come after them after they boosted some of his dope after their little bondage soiree. And just because he'd been convicted of raping a twelve year old girl before didn't make him guilty of this current crime.

I am not making this up.

Given the facts as stated above, I'd like Pat Robertson to explain to me why God hasn't leveled Darlington County, SC with fire and brimstone, collateral damage or no, just to be sure.

PS: While a primered '77 Camaro is nowhere mentioned, you can be sure that one is at least peripherally involved in the story.

Good. Let's hope justice is served.

ATLANTA (AP) — Three current and former police officers have been indicted in the shooting death of an elderly Atlanta woman during a botched police drug raid.


Hopefully the whole sorry Kathryn Johnson affair will become a turning point in the way we're conducting the War on (Some) Drugs, and not just go down as some aberration.

(H/T to Michael Silence.)

Don't you hate it when...

...you have a whole whamdigeous post whirling around in your head for two or three days, almost fully-formed, and you can't quite get it out through your fingertips? Me too. I hate that.

Nothing like needing a kleenex first thing in the morning.

You'd better come home safe, John.


(H/T to Brown Valley Kingdom.)

There's a poll up...

...at Michael Silence's blog regarding the Sheriff of Knoxingham's new deputy/revenue collection agent, R2D2. Feel free to offer your opinions.

Myself, I find it highly ironic to think that the Mountain Boy would come tearing down Thunder Road and get a ticket mailed to him from a robot revenooer at the intersection of Kingston Pike and Morrell.

Gun Nerd Humor:

"New OODA Loops stay crunchy even in milk!"

Boomsticks: In 9mm AR news...

It has become my considered opinion that while the polymer ProMags may be fine for plinking & range use, I'm very happy that I came off the ducats for a few Colt mags just in case I ever need to use this thing for anything mission-critical.

Also, Magpuls are nice on 5.56 mags, but darn near necessary on 9mm sticks.

Someone needs to explain to Sheryl Crow...

...that most paper in the US comes from tree farms; loblolly pines and such grown expressly to produce paper.

In that light, avoiding paper to "Save the trees!" sounds as idiotic as avoiding bread to "Save the wheat!"

Excuses.

Feeling like I've got round two of whatever I had last week.

Plus the 'net connection at home is hosed.

Perkier later, maybe.

Overheard at the gun show...

While walking past a table where three old codgers were talking politics, I couldn't help but overhear:

"They shouldn't oughtta let that woman run for president; she's already served two terms."

Blog Stuff: Overheard on the Porch.

I dragged poor Gunsmith Bob to the K-ville Blogfest at Calhoun's on Saturday night after work. We got to meet lots of new people, and had an enjoyable conversation with a couple of the bigger rock stars of the blogosphere.

Later that evening, back at home on the porch, Gunsmith Bob was contemplating the lake while I was lost in my book. After a bit, he spoke up:

"Well, that was really enjoyable."

(Without looking up from my book) "What? Adult conversation?"

"No, I meant... well, yeah, actually."

Blog Stuff: Reason #1,617,923...

...that I'm glad I don't own a working TeeVee.


(H/T to Victory Soap.)

Boomsticks: Liars, or just ignorant?

With the one-note chorus in full song, we are again treated to the phrase "the easy availability of guns", with the subtext being that if guns were somehow less easily available, Things Like This wouldn't happen.

I've said it before and I'm going to say it again: Never in the history of our republic have guns been more difficult to purchase. Prior to 1968 they could be purchased through the mail. Between 1968 and 1993, all you needed to do was sign a form, in pink crayon if you felt like it, saying you weren't a junkie, commie spy, or crazy, and you took your gun home with no questions asked. The background check didn't appear until the passage of the Brady Law in 1993.

Name a mass shooting that occurred before 1968. How many between 1969 and 1993? How about 1994 and beyond? Folks, whatever the causative variable is here, it is not the ease of purchasing a firearm. If you want to play the statistics game, mass shootings in this country have trended upwards in lockstep with the difficulty of purchasing firearms. Am I suggesting that is the cause? No, but it makes every bit as much sense (or not) as the old "easy availability of guns" saw. Go find another bus to ride, because this one isn't going to your stop.

Going Antiquing!

There's a gun show in town this weekend; I'm off to buy some beef jerky and wander the aisles looking for an old top-break Smith or an antique military rifle. Yay!


3:15PM EDIT: Score! I've been looking for a reasonably-priced shooter-grade .32-20 Hand Ejector for absolutely years, but all the ones I'd seen were either pristine and priced to match or looked like they came up off a U-boat wreck. Today I found a nickel 5" specimen in probably 75-80% condition. The guy had a $350 tag hanging on it, which was really way more than I planned on dropping today, so I passed it by on my first circuit. As I came around the second time, I stopped, stared wistfully for a bit, wiped the Cajun spices off my hand and asked if I could handle it. The guy said yes, so I picked it up, careful to handle it only by the stocks or through the fabric of my jacket, and started peering more closely at the piece, checking the bore and whether all the serial numbers matched.
"I can move a bit on the price," the seller volunteered, unprompted. I kept silently looking the gun over.
He piped up again "I can sell it for $250."
"$250 I can do," I replied, reaching into my pocket.

Now I have a .32-20 Hand Ejector Model of 1905, 4th Change. The serial number looks to place it within the 1920s, but I'll need to get it lettered to find out for sure. Pictures et cetera forthcoming.

Boomsticks: What to do in the absence thereof.

There's a very interesting discussion running over at PDB's joint regarding preparedness in a victim disarmament zone. Here in Knoxville there are lots of folks who, via working at the University or out in Oak Ridge, spend their days in what PDB referred to euphemistically as "non-permissive environments". This was the catalyst for his question "What's in your Manpurse?"

Some of the stuff I thought was obvious; good first aid gear and the like. Others made me smack myself on the forehead and wonder "Why didn't I think of that?", like a couple of rubber doorstops. Professor Librescu would probably rather have left a doorstop behind and been a live witness rather than a fallen hero. (Personally, I think it would have been nice if he'd been allowed to be a hero by shooting the killer instead of by dying valiantly, but that's another conversation altogether.)

Anyway, go check out the discussion. There's some outside-the-box thinking going on.

Happy Earth Day!

They found that missing nine year old in China in the belly of a crocodile. Also, some lions in South Africa mauled a game preserve owner to death.

Love your Mother! :)

Blog Stuff: Notes from a day off.

So it's Friday evening and I'm lounging on the porch, book in hand, watching the sun set across the lake. Gunsmith Bob shows up and saunters onto the porch.

Bob: "Hey, look! There're goats in the field across the road."

Me: (Not looking up from book,) "Yeah, my landlord's farm project has started. They were there last Friday, too."

B: "They were? Hm. Lets go look at them."

M: "What's to look at? They look like goats, Bob."

B: "Still, we could walk over and look at the goats."

M: "That would involve actually walking."

B: "It won't make your legs fall off, y'know."

M: *sigh* "Okay."

(Insert trudging noises.)

B: "Now these are young goats; only three or five months old or so. When they get bigger, they'll... Oh, isn't that cute."

M: "Wha...? Oh, look. Tippy is a boy goat. Y'know, I'm wondering what horrible wrong turn I took in my life, and when I took it, that resulted in me being almost forty years old, standing in my front yard on a Friday night, cigarette in one hand and beer in the other, watching a goat blow itself. Which circle of Dante's inferno is that? Is that the seventh or eighth circle, with the auto-fellating livestock? I want to go back to the world of ten minutes ago, when everything was happy and wholesome."

Hopefully y'all are tortured with the same mental picture now, because misery loves company.

Politics: The more news I read...

...the more I think that the last person to have a coherent and realistic policy towards the Middle East was Vespasian.

Blog Stuff: zomg!!!1!!1!!one! It's teh intarw3bz stuff!

It has been brought to my attention that my blog is read by folks of more than one demographic niche.

Therefore, by way of explanation, I would like to point out that Michael Crichton's State of Fear does not actually contain 1,337 pages. When I said "his mad, 1337 page-turner writing skillz", I was referring to his talent for writing page-turning plots, which is very great. Or elite. Or "leet". Or "l33t". Or "1337". This is what we call "gentle ironic self-mockery of teh intarw3bz culture".


(EDIT: I'll bet people who watch this space using RSS or other site feeds sometimes hate my guts. It took about six edits before I was happy with all the punctuation, italicization, and 1337-speak. That's an awful lot of hitting the "publish" button for one post. Look! I'm about to hit it again!)

(EDIT^2: This one was just to be cruel. :p )

Books: If you tell anyone...

...that I am reading a compilation of romance short stories, I will come to your house and shoot you right in the kneecap. After I put down this kleenex.

(For Lois McMaster Bujold fans, your Vorkosigan Saga collection is not complete without the short, "Winterfair Gifts", contained herein, which takes place at Miles's wedding.)

Attention CCA customers...

Please do not say "There's a bullet stuck in the barrel" when what you mean is "There's a cartridge jammed in the feedway."

Believe it or not, the two sentences are not interchangeable, and actually mean very different things.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

April 19th, 1993.

"People like the militia have a whole bunch of crazy ideas... However, they have two pieces of truth in all the craziness. One is 'Look at what happened at Waco. And the government hid its mistakes and concealed its misdeeds.' And the other piece of truth is that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms made this attack on Waco because Koresh's followers had guns. And the militas have guns. So the militias have these two kernels of truth in all their craziness about our government: Waco, and the fear that the government will come after them because they have guns." -Dr. Alan Stone

April 19th, 1775.

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world"

Happy Patriot's Day to each and every one of y'all. :)

Books: Damn Michael Crichton...

...and his mad, 1337 page-turner writing skillz.

It was 4:49 in the AM before I finally said "No! No more 'just one more page'! It will still be here tomorrow," put State of Fear down and went to bed.

Thanks a lot, Kaylee. :)

Blog Stuff: Random coolness from the intarw3bz.

Neat-o!

(1:1 scale.)

Restraining orders...

...would be more effective if they were written on kevlar and taped to your chest.

Boomsticks: Licensing guns.

Thanks to psycho-boy, the one-note chorus has started chirping again, asking their thick-witted questions. LawDog has handily demolished the "Why don't we license guns like cars?" line, but I'd like to expand on that one with a little thought experiment I picked up from Marko back in the day.

When someone asks you about licensing and registration, pick up a pen and a sheet of paper. Tear the paper in half and hand half to your questioner. Say "Okay, this pen is a gun. The paper I'm holding is my license and the paper you're holding is the registration. Using only these two pieces of paper, explain to me just how you are going to keep me from shooting someone?" After the initial red-faced sputtering, the responses are invariably hilarious.

Pugsley gets a part time job...

...as a spokesman for the Cuban state medical system. (You'd think that dictatoring would keep him too busy for side gigs.) He'd like us to know that his buddy and mentor, Fidel, is doing better and better every day. Really. He's almost in the best shape he's ever been in. In fact, Steinbrenner's people have been trying to offer him a contract to start for the Yankees. No, we cant see him or talk to him. But he's really doing swell. Honest.

Dark humor.

So, the link at CNN.com says "Beautiful, clever, talented victims honored".

Homely, dull, clumsy ones forgotten already, I guess.

Using a keyboard like Ruth used a baseball bat...

Marko hits another one over the fence and into the cheap seats.

A further note on yesterday's events.

Let's not forget that we are currently at war with an enemy whose sole tactic is the sensational and public mass murder of innocents.

To think that they are not taking notes on our response to Monday's events is willful ignorance at best, if not criminally naive.

Gray.

Yesterday morning started off badly. First off, it was Monday, which we can all agree is never a good thing. Still sore and achy all over from whatever bug I had, I sat down at the computer to try and scare up something to blog about, and wound up reading Bill Whittle's essays on "Seeing the Unseen". Still smarting from that heartening reminder that a large part of my fellow inmates in the monkey cage possess reasoning skills that would do a disservice to a lobotomized Shih T'zu, I sat on the porch with my current reading material, Radical Eye For The Infidel Guy. It should have been funny; it had been the night before, at least. Now it just left me feeling hollow. Yeah, yeah, it was all obvious, but that was the worst part: It was all obvious. Obvious that people can do evil things because they apparently like to believe insane stuff.

I gave it all up for hopeless, showered, and drove to work. I walked in the door and was immediately asked if I'd had my radio on. Setting down my lunch sack and hanging my carbine on the wall, I answered "No, why?"

"Mass shooting. Virginia Tech campus. Twenty-something dead, and counting."

The bottom dropped out. I'm afraid I probably owe my employer whatever he paid my body for being there yesterday, because my heart went home sick right about then. I did my best to phone it in, but it all felt so hollow when one of our regular customers, a retired Winchester engineer, came in to shoot that evening.

"This is a hell of a way for my alma mater to make the national news. We had pistols in our dorm rooms back then. I carried mine on my hip through the cafeteria more than once if I was on my way to the range after eating. We never shot anybody. Why this? Why now?"

What could I say? "Gee, I'm sorry that the human race is crazy, and getting crazier by the day"?

Now comes the media-fueled search for blame, the hounding of the victims and their families, the search for political advantage preached from atop a rostrum built of still-cooling bodies...

If only, if only, if only... If only the killer didn't have a gun. If only Professor Librescu did. If only... If only the killer hadn't chained the doors. If only the students had rushed the killer instead of the exits. If only...

It's days like this it all turns gray. It's days like this I just don't want to play anymore. It's days like this.

Doctor's orders:

"Scorn pain: either it will go away, or you will." -Seneca

Blog Stuff: 59th Street Bridge has collapsed on me (Feelin' ooky.)

It must be time for my annual bout with... whatever it is I seem to get afflicted with. Headache, fever, sore throat, achy joints... blech.

I don't even feel like sitting on the porch with a book. Of course, it's like 39 and icky out there, but I wouldn't feel like it even if it was sunny, calm, and a balmy 75 degrees. I'm going to take a long, hot bath, then climb into bed and draft a cat into performing heating pad duty.

Al Gore must be in town...

Windy with some rain showers. Snow may mix in. High 48F.

I thought it was March that was supposed to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb?

It's not finking if I don't name names...

*RING, RING*

Tam: "Hello?"

Friend whose name is being withheld to protect his dignity: "Hey, have you guys left the house yet?"

T: "No, why?"

F: "Well, I just cornered a big raccoon on the porch, and it's acting a little aggressive, and I went inside to get my .22 pistol, and I can't find any .22 ammunition anywhere..."

T: "Your signal's breaking up; I could swear I just thought I heard you say you don't have any .22 ammunition."

F: "Hey, the house is still a wreck from moving. Could you just swing some by on the way to the restaurant?"

T: "Sure. Actually I just happen to have a box... in my purse."

Kaylee: "I've got a box in my glove compartment, I think."

F: "What'd she say?"

T: "She said she had a box in her glove compartment. I think we've got you covered. Okay, we're on the way."

It's Buy A Gun Day!

I don't own a Magic 8-Ball, so I'm going to use you guys instead. I was recently reminded that today is Buy A Gun Day. Do I:

A) Go ahead and buy the Surefire M900 that I was planning on buying anyway. (It's not a gun, but it's as expensive as one, and it goes on a gun. I'm going to put it on the 6.8 carbine. This will allow me to move the Pentagonlight and GG&G grip back over to my brown carbine and return it to housegun duty.)

B) Buy a used Springfield Armory Lightweight Loaded that we got in on trade at work. It needs a cleanin' something fierce (the previous owner was apparently unaware that stainless is just that: stainless, not stainnot, and doesn't mean you can store the gun at the bottom of your saltwater aquarium) but I can probably just barely swing it, and I sure do miss my old Lightweight Loaded.

C) Buy the cheaper (thumbscrew instead of ARMS throw-lever) M900, and put the difference down on a sweet little 18" 20ga Remington 870. The rationale here? Bonnie and Clyde stole my shotgun, at least for another week or so, so that should be plenty of reason to buy a stand-in.


I'm feeling pretty much obligated towards "B)", and, frankly that's the way my heart leans as well (Q: "Should you buy another 1911?" A: "Whattarya? Stupid? Yes.")

Tick, tock...

I've got to get out the door and down the road to work in three minutes, and I still can't think of a darn thing to write about. Maybe tonight.

Oh, I'm wearing my cool new MagPul Calico Jack tee shirt. I ♥ this shirt! :)

Taxonomy of Modern Dangers: Are you ready today?

Mugwug reminds us to shift all the guns in the house over to their anti-Zombie loadings for the day.

Happy "hockey mask wearing co-ed slaughtering aquatic zombie day"! :)

Word of the Day: How to speak Tamarese.

Jesus handle: (jē'-zŭs hăn'-dəl) n.

1. The grab bar or handle in a vehicle that you instinctively lunge for as the driver causes it to pull G's around a corner. So named for the involuntary exclamation of "Jesus!" as you do so. "I hate riding in the mountains in your car; it doesn't have a Jesus handle on the passenger's side."

See also: "Oh F__k bar".

Boomsticks: Rack 'em up.

How to operate the slide of an autopistol if you (like me) do not have Hulk-like arm strength:

(All directions will be given assuming that your right is your dominant hand. If God put your right hand on the wrong side, simply reverse the description.)

First, hold your arms bent at the elbow, so that you're holding the pistol in close to your body, about tummy/bottom-of-the-ribcage level.

Next, reach across and grasp the pistol's slide from the top near the rear with your left hand, with your fingers on the right side of the slide and thumb on the left. Squeeze with your left hand as hard as you can, using the whole hand and not just the fingertips; the gun's made of steel, so you aren't going to crush it.

While pulling slightly to the rear with the left, punch away from you with the right, the hand holding the pistol's grip. (You can push a lot harder than you can pull.)

As the slide reaches the rearmost point of its travel, let go of it sharply. Do not ride it forward, as this could cause misfeeds or cause you to pinch the bejeezus out of your hand in the ejection port. Just let go and let it slam shut; it's designed to do that, so don't worry about hurting it.

Practice this a brazillion times, and it becomes second nature, and all your friends will think you're a lot stronger than you are when you're working the slide on big ol' auto pistols with ease. Let them be baffled for a couple minutes, then let them in on the secret.

Like the song goes, "It's actionable for me to say I'm sorry."

Historically, when I see a doctor, it's usually been at the end of an ambulance ride. It was a given that they would do their damndest to reattach anything that had fallen off, and I would do mine to be a good patient and heal. If things didn't work out and the duct tape didn't hold, well, these things happen. That's why they call it "practicing" medicine. I figure if Eleanor of Aquitaine made it into her eighties in an age when doctors, rather than lawyers, were small blood-sucking invertebrates, I should get along just fine with the little contact with the profession I require; they leave me alone, and I leave them alone.

There's another subset of people who seem to enjoy being poked and prodded by physicians, and seek the opportunity out at every turn. I have a feeling that it is this set that generates 90% of the malpractice suits that make everything from ingrown toenail repairs to open heart surgery so expensive for the lot of us. When everything doesn't work out as planned in their encounter with modern medicine, they turn, not to a deep religious faith or a que sera sera outlook on life, but to the "L" section of the Yellow Pages.

It's gotten so bad that states are actually having to pass laws to allow doctors to say "I'm sorry" without it being thrown back at them in court.

Allow me to say it, too: Doc, I'm sorry some folks are such complete tools that you need legal protection in order to offer human sympathy. That's gotta suck.

Books: :(

So it goes.

Boomsticks: Does this make sense to you?

Somewhere in America today, a woman is going to operate a doorknob, lock a deadbolt, operate an alarm remote, and operate a door handle. She will then operate an ignition switch and a seatbelt latch, manipulate clutch and gas and brake pedals while simultaneously rowing a gear selector and working a turn indicator switch. Arriving at her destination, she will manipulate all these controls again in reverse order, walk into the gun store, and be told by some bright spark with a barely-room-temperature IQ: "These automatic pistols have too many complicated controls on 'em, honey; whatchoo need's a revolver."

Boomsticks: Gratuitous Gun Pr0n No. 42

Smith & Wesson Model 53-2. This one was made in 1974, the last year of production, and sports the unusual 4" barrel. (Most were 6" or 8 3/8" guns.) The .22 Remington Jet cartridge is based on a necked-down .357 Magnum case, and can spit a 40-grain .222" projectile at well over 2000 feet per second from a handgun, rendering the newfangled FN 5.7x28 a touch anemic by comparison. The gun shipped with chamber liners allowing you to shoot .22 LR cartridges as well, and had a selector on the hammer that would allow it to trip either of two frame-mounted firing pins: one centerfire, and one for rimfire. The radically tapered cases required scrupulously clean and dry chambers to prevent them from backing out against the breechface and tying up the cylinder, and this was what kept the gun from catching on with the shooting public. It's tied, by the way, with my 3" .41 and .44 Magnums for producing the most spectacular pyrotechnic displays on a darkened range...

Boomsticks: Amen.

" John Moses Browning is the patron saint of shooters and weapon designers. This was a man so manly that his sole purpose in life was to create weapons to kill tasty animals and the enemies of our nation in job lots."

I'll further note the following: Look at any photo of John Moses Browning. Do you see God standing there next to him? No. Now, go look at the picture of God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Is JMB anywhere in the frame? No.

It's just suspicious, that's all I'm saying; maybe Lois Lane never twigged to anything despite never seeing Clark and Supe in the same place at the same time, but what do you expect from a print journalist working for a liberal MSM daily rag?

Blog Stuff: It's not just action movies...

I walked into work yesterday, took off my coat, set down my lunch, and wandered smack into the middle of the most bizarre movie discussion I'd ever heard.

He had a point, though, but it's not just action movies...

Gladiator? Die Hard with togas and lush cinematography.

Jaws? Lethal Weapon on a boat and Gary Busey's part played by a robot fish.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is Die Hard, but with a psycho Lee Van Cleef instead of a psycho terrorist.

The Wizard of Oz is Lethal Weapon, with Ray Bolger in Danny Glover's role.

Blog Stuff: Notes from an (Extra!) day off.

I took advantage of being off on Sunday to do something I hadn't done since last Easter: Sunday brunch at Charlie Pepper's! Before working at CCA, the Sunday brunch at C. Pep's was a weekly ritual for me, so it was a great reunion of sorts.

I ordered (and I'm typing this just to make Kaylee jealous, 'cause it's her fave ;) ) the Sunrise Mesa Eggs. Picture this dish: Take two cornbread griddle cakes. Lay a slice of fried tomato coated with cajun spices on each. Top that with ham, then a couple of poached eggs, and finally slather a spicy Southwestern Florentine sauce over everything. Tex-Mex fusion eggs benedict! Yum!

Add a good friend or a good book or both, a cup of joe, and you have very nearly the perfect way to while away a Sunday morning.

This is the kind of thing that really grinds me to a halt...

So, the Illinois State Gendarmerie has put up a web page full of, erm... "helpful" advice for women in case we are attacked. Guns, of course, are a no-no because apparently (at least according to them) we're so flighty that half of the time we try to use a gun for self-defense, we wind up busting a cap in the wrong individual. I'd really love to see their data on that one. (Yeah, you're all the time reading about how some woman in a parking lot somewhere ran her Glock to slidelock in some guy because he pulled a wallet on her. This is me rolling my eyes.)

Instead of a handy, portable weapon that requires no great amount of strength to operate, we are instead advised to attempt to take on a 250lb rapist with a teasing brush or a handful of keys. Brilliant plan, that. "Well, sir, we couldn't revive her, but her assailant should be easy to spot in a lineup. Judging by what she had clenched in her hand in her last moments, his hair should look fantastic."

The worst part, the part that makes me want to scream and throw things at the monitor, is when they drag out the old primate appeasement behavior: "It may sound disgusting, but putting your fingers into you throat and making yourself vomit usually gets results." No. No way. Why should I worry about getting vomit stains out of my clothes when I have the means available to make my attacker worry about getting blood stains out of his? Sorry, ISP, but I'm sticking with the gun.

Anyone who wants more reasonable and realistic self-defense tips for women should go here, rather than listen to the distorted garbage on the ISP web site.

(UPDATE: More cool discussion going on here.)

(H/T to David, via Unc.)

Blog Stuff: zomg, that is teh seXXy!

I would murder people in their beds for this keyboard.

Politics: Libertarian Left?

The Alliance of the Libertarian Left? Where do they meet? The next broomcloset over from the Association of Free-Market Communists?

"The Alliance of the Libertarian Left is a multi-tendency coalition of mutualists, agorists,
voluntaryists, geolibertarians, left-Rothbardians, green libertarians, dialectical anarchists,
radical minarchists, and others on the libertarian left, united by an opposition to statism,
militarism, and the prevailing corporatist capitalism falsely called a free market, as well as
by an emphasis on education, direct action, and building alternative institutions, rather
than on electoral politics, as our chief strategy for achieving liberation."

Do you know why this isn't catching on, kids? It's seriously short on zazz. You need to zazz it up a bit. Nobody wants to sit around in a circle, unable to go take a crap without first debating whether it's a coercive, statist crap or not. What do y'all do for fun on Saturday nights, go get in verbal rumbles with Randian Objectivists? Sorta like a Jets versus Sharks thing? You should highlight that, then. Otherwise you'll continue looking as dully earnest as a Nader campaign volunteer.

Ahmadinejad still waiting for tat.

Having extended the "Tit" of returned captives, Iran is making noises about expecting some "Tat" from the UK.

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Iran has urged Britain to respond with goodwill to the release of 15 British sailors and marines held captive in Tehran for 13 days.

The naval crew members were on Saturday beginning two weeks' leave with their families in Britain.

Ambassador Rasoul Movahedian told the Financial Times newspaper that Iran had "showed our goodwill" by freeing the sailors.

"Now it is up to the British government to proceed in a positive way," he was quoted as saying on Saturday.

"...or we'll activate the nanobot spiders coursing through their veins."

Blog Stuff: Some recent thoughts...

1) I will know that I am really cool when I get to carry an M4 carbine everywhere, like the grocery store & the mall, and I have a guy whose full-time job is to do nothing but follow me around all day with a boom box playing the "Imperial March" from Star Wars. Then, then I will truly be cool.

2) While the idea of Valhalla is groovy, what with the "warring all day and partying all night" aspect and all, I think an even better afterlife would be one where you spend eternity hot-lapping the Nürburgring in a Porsche 911 Turbo, while swilling Ruination from the bottle and shooting out the window at road signs with an MP5. Also, Chuck Schumer is wearing a little janitor's outfit like the mascot from Cracked, sweeping up busted bottles and spent brass on the side of the track. That would be a totally awesome final reward. I need to get to work on whipping up a sect where this is the payoff.

Boomsticks: Gratuitous Gun Pr0n No. 41

Here's my Delta Elite project, all... mostly... probably finished:


Stainless Colt Delta Elite. Ed Brown grip safety, mainspring housing, hammer, sear, and disconnector. Wilson Bulletproof slide stop and Wilson grip screws. Cylinder & Slide ambi thumb safeties. STI trigger. Novak night sights. Home Depot tape on the front strap. Big-ass fireballs by Double Tap Ammunition. All custom work done by Shannon and Bob at Coal Creek Armory. Unreasonable demands, fretting, and nagging done by me.

Blog Stuff: Why haven't I read her before today?

Abby with a slam-dunk post on the State of the War. Wish I'd written it.

Boomsticks: Download errors.

The Anarchangel takes on the fallacy of downloading magazines, and notes the two main exceptions: AR15 and Glock magazines. I can definitely concur on both of those (the only feed failures I ever had with my personally-owned Glocks, other than my G30's strong dislike for semiwadcutters, were caused by topping up full mags after chambering the first round.)

Add to the list the famous Wilson 47D eight round mag for the 1911. The combination of follower design and tube length will cause the spring to die a premature death if left loaded to its full eight-round capacity for any great length of time. Some folks rotate their mags; after several rebuilds, I just started using my 47Ds as seven rounders and haven't had to replace a spring for five years (although I probably should do so soon, if only on general principle)...

Let me add some tips for what to do with damaged mags, such as AR mags with spread feed lips or AK mags with feed-disrupting internal burrs: When I'm engaged in a practice session and I encounter a mag with issues, I set it aside in a pile. At the end of the session, I relocate the pile to the nearest trash receptacle after pounding the defective mags flat with a hammer, lest some penny-pinching fool rescue them in an attempt to potentially risk his life in the name of saving a few bucks. I consider it a public service.

(H/T to Unc.)

Politics: Quality of Life.

During the ongoing hoo-hah over a National Health Care (read: "Socialized Medicine") plan, much is made over 'average life expectancy' as an indicator of Quality of Life when it really indicates nothing of the sort. It merely measures Quantity of Life. Sure, Germany (to take one f'rinstance) sports an average life expectancy of 78.7 years, while the typical American can only be expected to dodder along for 77.7, but tell me this: Would you rather spend 78.7 years with a cradle-to-grave Nanny, or 77.7 years telling the government to go piss up a rope? Yeah, thought so.

Blog Stuff: The Actual View From The Porch

Look! Whitecaps on the lake! The wind is gusting from the west at up to 30mph, blowing the patio furniture around.

We had quite a front roll through last night. Tuesday's high was 81 degrees and right now the temp is 61 and falling. It's supposed to get down to 36 tonight and 28 on Saturday night. The barometer must be spinning like a stopwatch. Ow, my gimpy leg hurts.

I hope this doesn't kill all the pretty hygrangeums. Taking the backroads home from work the last few nights with the top down has been like driving through a darkened florist's shop with the A/C on the fritz.

Boomsticks: Paranoia will destroy ya...

A three page discussion is raging over at TFL on the thin line between preparedness and paranoia.

As best I can gather it resolves thusly:

She's naive.

I'm prepared.

You're paranoid.


Take off the ankle holster in the shower.

Baseball: Yay!

The good news? The Braves are tied for the NL East lead.

The bad news? There are 161 games left to go.

The other good news? There are 161 games left to go.

I don't actually have a functioning TeeWee in the house. Have any of y'all used MLB.TV? Does it unsuck?

Never has so little been said with so many words.

You know it's a slow news day when an AP reporter is paid to write the following copy:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Teen starlet Hilary Duff claims she's never had a problem with her weight, but feels pressure to be thin.

The 19-year-old actress and singer told People Magazine that she's either perceived as too fat or too thin in the media, which she says can be "judgmental and mean."

Amazing. Four more complete paragraphs follow, yet the piece manages to remain semantically null; a perfect, content-free void.

I'm going to work on developing that talent myself...

There's a blast from the past...

iTunes is playing the Cool World soundtrack. I haven't sat and listened to this one all the way through since, oh, like 1992. What a cool tune "Under", by Brian Eno, was. That takes a girl back...

Blog Stuff: Pardon the piccie...

Just toying with using a new profile pic and needed someplace Blogger-accessible to park this...

Photo by (as usual) The Volkmeister.

I just think I look so friendly and cheerful in this picture, even taking the scary rifle into account...


EDIT: F-'in Blogger won't let me internally link pics from my own blog. Bastiges. Suddenly I'm not so friendly and cheerful.

Blog Stuff: For the three or four of you who haven't seen it yet...

The 300 word review of 300.

It's not US for a change.

All through the '70s and '80s, American auto enthusiasts had to hang their heads in shame. After we had given the world the cheap and plentiful private auto, our government regulators were doing their best to screw it up for everyone. Starting in the late '60s, American laws began to demand cars be festooned with reflectors, side marker lights, gynormous bumpers worthy of a harbor tug, catalytic converters and all manner of other horsepower-sapping devices. Since the US market was the 800-lb gorilla of the global auto industry, this had a bit of a trickle-down effect on most every maker's cars, at least if they intended to offer them for sale in the 'States.

Fast forward to the present. Notice anything unusual happening to automotive styling? Maybe, oh, I don't know... like the "grille" making a comeback? What's up with that? I mean, for the last twenty years, engineers in search of aerodynamics had been smooshing the front end of cars down further and further until the last '90s iterations of the Ford Taurus and Dodge Intrepid had lower, snarkier front ends than a 1970's Ferrari; heck, even Hondas were sporting doorstop silhouettes, and now all of a sudden... bam! The radiator grille is back. Cars are rolling around sporting Cliffs-Of-Dover front end treatments, from the moderately exaggerated chrome bars on current Ford offerings to the almost cartoonish distortions of late-model Chrysler sedans. Ford even abandoned aerodynamics for the retro-60's look of a near-vertical front end in its latest Mustang .Why the sudden change?

It's not our fault. Not this time around. It's the Europeans this time 'round. That's right, the same people who carped and moaned when the Jaguar XKE was disfigured by 5 mph bumpers and the Countach's smooth flanks were tarted up with enough lights and reflectors to make it look like a disco ball are now responsible for BMW's that look like Toyotas and Ford 500s that look like bricks. All because the EU wants nerf cars that can hit a pedestrian and not kill them...

If they asked my advice, I'd say make the hoodlines low and sprinkle them liberally with spikes. That'd cut down on jaywalking; or at least the recidivism rate.

Boomsticks: Time for a change.

I think I'll dump all my Smiths and 1911s and stock up on Glocks. After all, the former two are low-capacity guns unlikely to be threatened by any renewed AWB. Mag capacity: that's where it's at.