Time Machine.

My uncle had these books in his bedroom when I was little, and when I'd stay over at my grandparents' house, I'd always sneak off to a corner and lose myself in them.

They were a hardbound collection of some classics: The Jungle Book, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Swiss Family Robinson, et cetera, except they were not only illustrated, but they were also packed with footnotes and drawings in the margins, explaining unfamiliar terms, showing pictures of animals and things, and generally filling in the backstory for an eager young reader.

I have been totally tortured for the last thirty years trying to explain these books to people, and looking for them in used bookstores, because I could not for the life of me remember the name of the series or the publisher.

And now look what Brian J. Noggle should serendipitously post up on his blog...

Bless you, Brian, from the bottom of my heart.

Slick interpretations.

While it might be hard to pick up from most news coverage, oil companies are not actually formed for the purpose of coating the oceans with petrospills. Nobody sits around the offices of Shell or BP and says "Bob, draw me up a memo for how we can have a new oil spill next week." Believe it or not, they try as hard as they can to avoid those.

As a matter of fact, they hate them even worse than Greenpeace does. See, whereas your typical filthy hippie looks at events in the Gulf and starts crying because they see all the poor fishies and birdies getting oil on them, your typical BP exec looks at the events in the Gulf and starts crying because he sees a giant freaking hose spraying money like a broken water main.

Plus, they'll need to pay to clean the giant money slick up.

And then they'll get sued.

That is a better incentive to not spill the stuff than any number of picket signs.

QotD: "That's great it starts with an earthquake..."

You should go read the whole thing at PDB:

Rome didn’t burn in a day. History isn’t granular, digital transition but decidedly analog. ...

... Humans naturally and constantly recalibrate their definition of normalcy in order to stay sane in a fluid universe, and the expected level of civil service is one of them.

...and I feel fine.

Lazy cat.

Cats do not bury their droppings because they are "neat" or "fastidious", they bury them because they are ambush predators and they don't like leaving signs around warning the food that death is lurking in the bushes.

Rannie, on the other hand, seems to have figured out that she's in no danger of scaring off the kibble bowl and so she'll just give the wall of the litterbox a couple of pro forma scrapes and then get back to power napping in a puddle of sunlight, leaving mommy to take care of that smell.

Drill, baby, drill.

CNN has a poll up on the recent conveniently-timed oil platform whoopsie and its impact on how you feel about offshore drilling.



While the Governor of Florida would rather huddle in a cave wrapped in synthetic rabbit pelts than risk a spill, most people seem to understand that, for the foreseeable future at least, we still need the dinosaur juice even if it means the occasional un-photogenic seabird. Once we get enough nuke plants online, we can throttle back on the drilling.

Personally, while most people are wringing their hands about getting oil on their seabirds, I'm freaking out because they're getting seabirds in my oil. A couple of baby albatross feathers will clog up a fuel filter like you wouldn't believe.

Hope and Change!

Free Speech Zones?

Meet the new boss...



(H/T to Breda.)

Get a tan, go to jail.

Meanwhile, back in the XIIth Century...

"The public expects us to act firmly and swiftly if we see any social misbehavior by women, and men, who defy our Islamic values," Brigadier Hossien Sajedinia said.

"In some areas of north Tehran we can see many suntanned women and young girls who look like walking mannequins," he continued. "We are not going to tolerate this situation and will first warn those found in this manner and then arrest and imprison them."

Whoah.

Yeah, this is the kind of guy I want having access to nuclear weapons. Evil is one thing; evil, crazy, and dumber than a bag of hammers is another matter altogether. They might decide to nuke Cozumel to save the Earth.

Dense as Steele.

Sometimes Steele can be denser than lead, apparently. With news that the Florida Governor might will jump ship to dodge a stiff GOP primary and run for Senator as an independent, Michael Steele uttered this gem:

"That's a real possibility," Steele said of the chance Crist could win in a three-way race. "It's a dynamic that's unfortunate in my view. I think that the voters out there should be given a chance to have a clean call between the Republican nominee and the Democratic nominee..."

Yeah, I know I'd feel really deprived of my chance to make "a clean call". By golly, a clean race between a Dem and a GOPer is my right!

(Side note to the fifty-eleven GOP candidates clogging my local airwaves for the impending Indiana primary right now: If you spend the first three quarters of your commercial playing patriotic music and talking about family and right-to-life and suchlike and then, right before you say "I'm Joe Hoosier, and I approve this message," you squeeze in "andI'minfavorofsmallergovernment," you are not getting my vote. Y'all spent the first half of this decade rearranging your "family values" deck chairs while metastasizing the government. Some of you are obviously not getting it.)

Bizarre video artifact...

Robb's post here led me to this wild video of a turboprop in action. The spinning prop and the iPhone's video recording properties create something that hasn't been seen in the air since Timothy Leary last looked out the window of a puddlejumper. I can see the music!

Crazy man with a gun!

Quick! Call the cops!

Except it is the cops. And these ones apparently took enough umbrage at being taped that they threw the guy in jail, but only after tossing his house on a warrant for some very dubious charges.

Granted, the guy on the bike had earned a traffic citation fair and square, but what was Officer Martin Riggs Joseph Uhler going to do? Ventilate him for speeding? Last I heard, 30 over wasn't a capital offense anywhere outside of Ohio, and even there they usually do the whole courtroom-'n'-jury thing and don't just punch your ticket in the roadside ditch.

For the record: Plainclothes traffic stop in unmarked unit w/drawn gun = Very Bad Idea.



(H/T to Unc.)

It's a small world after all...

Now little Muslim kids can get banal, preachy, religious-subtext comics, just like their Christian brethren!

Protip: There is hardly anything more likely to make your kid grow up to be a cynic than trying to slip Jesus or Moses or Mohammed into their comic books. I'm just sayin'.

Rule Three.

Unless this guy's .38 was extremely unusual, he's lying:

A Lake City man accidentally shot himself when the hammer on his firearm caught on a furniture drawer and it discharged, a deputy reported.

It is, I suppose, conceivable that it was an SAA clone with six beans in the wheel, or that it was a prewar relic and he was "putting it in the drawer" with approximately the same speed and force it would experience with a four-foot fall, but generally any time you hear the words "it went off", you may safely ask "And whose finger was on the trigger?" Because someone's was, sure as God made little green apples.

Seriously, go to a gun store or gun show and watch people's hands; Rule Three is violated constantly as fingers get drawn to triggers as though by a magnet. Don't be shy about calling people on it. It's your soft, squishy pink stuff that you don't want holed, after all.


(H/T to Unc.)

Overheard in the Dining Room:

RX: "Our textbook had a picture of three skulls, labeled 'chimpanzee', 'Neanderthal', and, I quote, 'modern Frenchman'."

Me: "Did they show a human skull for comparison?"

Remember: The wogs start at Calais.

Anyhow, been off on a biology tangent lately, having just finished Your Inner Fish. It's another of those books that really makes me want to have a beer with LabRat.

Oh, hell no.

Six years after the state Supreme Court dismissed his $433 million lawsuit against the gun industry, Mayor Daley today called for a change of venue — to the World Court normally reserved for disputes between nations and crimes against humanity.

Dick Daley is a venal, corrupt, lying sonofabitch, from a long line of venal, corrupt, lying sonsabitches. What he knows about ethics could be written on the head of a pin, in Sharpie. And this lowdown moral cripple, this wart on the body politic, smarting from one courtroom loss and pissing his britches over the possibility of another stinging defeat, this time in the highest court of the land, wants to run crying to the World Court, a body with all the majesty and legal authority of a mail-order divinity degree from Draw Tippy Turtle U., with his tale of woe.

Get bent, Dick. Go get good and bent.

Molon frickin' Labe, you scrofulous little toad.

Don't shoot the piano player.

Apparently my old home state of Georgia is toying with the idea of allowing patrons to tote in restaurants that serve alcohol bars. Further, the way the bill is written, it would not prohibit you from tipping back a wet one whilst armed. This has caused a loss of bladder control in the predictable places.

But in case you’re worried that someone who’s just downed six margaritas will take permanent issue with the fact that you’ve dipped your chip in the wrong salsa bowl, Fain adds this:

There is, though, a blanket prohibition against firing a gun while drinking in Georgia.

Whew.

It may surprise Mr. Galloway to learn that here in Indiana it has been legal to carry your heater in a watering hole for decades, even while imbibing, and we haven't had any noticeable problem with saloons getting shot up by inebriated toters, probably because people generally have the good sense to leave the iron at home if they're going out to get stinkoed or, alternately, limit themselves to a beer or a glass of wine if they're strapped.

Hoosiers may carry in their car,
Hoosiers may carry in a bar.
Hoosiers may carry on a boat,
Hoosiers may carry... uh... with a goat?

Anyhow, I know that trusting people to make good decisions is foreign to a lot of folks. I mean, who knows where it might lead if we tried it more often?


(H/T to ARCCA.)

Zing!

I heart Mark Steyn:

Everybody knows that when you say “I’m becoming very concerned about unsustainable levels of federal spending,” that’s old Jim Crow code for “Let’s get up a lynching party and teach that uppity Negro a lesson.”

(via New Paltz Journal.)

Why We Fight.

It occurs to me that some newer readers may not be up on the entire "Taxonomy of Modern Dangers" thing, so as a recap, here are several good reasons to carry a gun:

• Zombies (of course)
• Pirates
• Ninjas
• Vampires
• Werewolves
• Bears
• Face-eating monkeys
• Killer space robots
• Hippies (generally peaceful, but can become erratic and dangerous during mating season)
• Various hybrids of the above, such as zombie bears or ninja vampires

Remember: If you are prepared for the dead to walk the earth in search of human brains, then a hurricane or attempted mugging is no big deal.

Pistol Starter Kits.

There's been a bit of chatter about Remington's entry into the 1911 market. 

 I, personally, am not really interested in whether or not the new Remington 1911 has double diamond checkered grips just like great-grandpaw's trench heater. What I want to know is this:

1. Is the frame forged or cast?
2. If it is forged, where is it forged? Is Remington doing the forging themselves, or is it finish-machined Stateside after being imported as an 80% receiver?
3. The guts: MIM or castings or machined?

I do like the fact that the front sight is dovetailed and that the ejection port is lowered and flared. If you had to do those modifications to the gun yourself, it would mean needing to refinish the slide. (Note that with most any decent 1911 by a "name" manufacturer, there's no real need to modify anything, but I have a different set of gun-nerd desires when it comes to a sidearm then some people, I guess.)

You were warned.

I go on and on warning you people about the dangers of face-eating monkeys and nobody listens to me, and then what is this morning's headline on CNN.com?

South Africans battle baboons in city streets.

Didn't I say this would happen? Now maybe people will listen to me and Stephen Hawking about the killer space robots.

Quick! What gun for baboon?

Unexpected tie-in...

I've been reading (and blogging about) Theodore Dalrymple's books.

Cranky Prof has posted a cartoon that's a timely tie-in. (Dirty Word Warning)

I LOL'ed and LOL'ed...

Books: Currently off the shelf...

I was so impressed with Dalrymple's Life at the Bottom that I got a copy of Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses.

This one's much less thematic than the other, being a collection of essays on the slow burning of Nova Roma, and is therefore easier to dip in and out of, rather getting sucked in all at one sitting. Recommend!

Questions Answered While U Wait:

From someone in Denver:


Well, assuming it's a stock Norinco, then the only disassembly tools you'll need are those wiggly bits at the ends of your hands, sometimes referred to colloquially as "fingers". If the bushing is tighter than any Norc bushing I've ever seen, you can use the forward lip of the magazine floorplate as a bushing tool; that's why it's shaped like that.

If someone has installed a full-length guide rod, sometimes referred to colloquially as "the jammer", then all bets are off, and you may need any one of a number of weird accessories, from allen wrenches to bent paperclips, to take your gun apart...

Hello, Kitty.

A homeless guy intervenes in a mugging, gets shivved for his trouble, and bleeds out on a sidewalk as passers-by do everything but rifle his pockets.



He's probably swapping stories with Kitty Genovese right now.

Every now and again, I am forcefully reminded that the biggest difference between humans and baboons is that we have to paint our butts red.

I hope the guy who just snapped a picture of him and strolled on gets hit by a bus, assuming he doesn't see himself in the video and decide to do the right thing with a length of extension cord and a footstool.

QotD: Cynicism edition.

We watched a debate the other morning on Banner Bloomberg's pet TeeWee station in which the question was "Organic foods are marketing hype." Attacking the proposition were such luminaries as the food writer for Vogue, and they handily trounced the other side, made up of people like the former head honcho of food standards for H.M. Government and an actual, you know, farmer.

Quoth my roomie, in disgust:

The more I see, the more I'm convinced our civilization deserves to starve. We're breeding for gullibility. It's painful to watch.

She's right; that audience was the most painful concentration of stupid I've seen in a while. If we'd let zombies loose into that auditorium, they'd have starved to death.

"Fly, my monkeys!"

Sensing a curb stomping coming in November, Barry O. is trying to rally the college students and slacker youth that formed the hard core of his electoral campaign.

In the two-minute and 42-second video released Monday, Obama emphasizes that the key to victory for Democrats in November will be convincing the people who helped fuel his 2008 White House bid - first-time voters - to head to the polls for the second time in two years even though he is not on the ballot.

Of course, that's going to be tough. This is a fickle demographic, and they've watched their demigod ascend to the heights, only to be revealed as yet another suit, leaving behind disillusioned campus organizers without so much as a unicorn dropping or a public option or a gay sergeant to show for it. I don't know about you, but when I was 19, I wanted results yesterday, and Barry hasn't delivered; the sky remains resolutely pieless.

I don't think the flying monkeys are going to come to his summons this time. His election was powered by discontent, but the Democrats represent the Establishment now; discontent is working against them. Plus, there's somebody else that's cornering the discontent market, and everyone knows it, no matter how desperately the media try to cover it up.

It's good to know...

...that some people with mad 1337 production design skillz are still on the side of the angels:



(H/T to Snowflakes In Hell.)

Chicago, part one:

Shootin' Buddy had a seminar to attend in Chicago, and asked if I'd like to come along and make a mini-vacation out of it. We'd stay with his friends in the city, he'd do his thing on Thursday, and then Friday we could take in a museum or something, maybe go out to eat, do some sightseeing, that sort of thing, and return to Indiana on Saturday.

I thought it sounded like a swell idea, and showed up at his crib on Wednesday evening. My turse thoroughly denuded of anything remotely weaponlike and carefully inspected for any stray magazines or speedloaders, my purse howitzer tucked away in Shootin' Buddy's safe, and my pockets emptied of everything but my Spyderco Dodo, with its Chicago-legal 2" blade, we hopped in the car and drove north.

The run into Chicago through Lake County, Indiana always reminds me of Frodo & Sam approaching the borders of Mordor: The vegetation gets blighted and unhealthy looking; there are murky pools and low-lying swamps that look like they could contain anything from tentacled horrors to Blinky the three-eyed fish; whole neighborhoods of rusting industry and boarded-up homes can be seen from the highway; and atop a giant black pinnacle on the horizon is the malevolent, unblinking red eye of Mayor Daley... Or maybe it's just the aircraft warning light atop the Sears Tower; it's hard to tell from a distance.

We arrived in Hyde Park a little early, having decided this time to get directions from our hostess rather than MapQuest, so we proceeded to kill a few minutes by picking up some necessities at the neighborhood Walgreen's. Standing in the checkout line my eyes wandered from the photo of a smiling Barry O., autographed for his local drug store manager, to the cigarettes that were proudly listed as On Sale! for something around eight bucks a pack. Did you know that when you suddenly blurt "Sweet zombie Jesus!" aloud in a checkout line, even Chicagoans will turn and look?

Next door was a Treasure Island, whose marquee proclaimed it to be "America's Most European Supermarket", as though that were a selling point; perhaps they were trying to make a virtue out of rude staff and VAT-like prices? Anyhow, after we went in, I couldn't even figure out what was supposed to be so European about it. It seemed like a pretty normal supermarket, about like a Kroger in a nice neighborhood, certainly not as pretentious as a Fresh Market or Whole Foods.

So there we were: Out of ammo, surrounded by hippies, and boots on the ground in the O-zone...

Back from Mordor.

Been in Chi-town since Wednesday night, hence the dearth of posts. (And when I say Chi-town, I mean deep in the heart of the O-zone: Hyde Park, treading the turf where the Dear Leader trod.)

Y'know, I don't hate cities. Actually I like cities. I mean, it's not like I live out in the sticks myself.

I think Chicago's a great place. The only problem is, it's in Chicago.

Modern primitive.

Is the Earth striking back?

No, it is not.

This may come as a shock, but the Earth is not actually sentient. It is not Gaia. It is not your mother. It is a great big rock.

Like all other great big rocks observed thus far, it is inanimate and thus incapable of willful action.

The author of this piece, one Mr. Weisman, gets to ponder about this weighty matter because he wrote a book called The World Without Us, which was aimed right to the wheelhouse of liberal guilt: "I feel bad about me because I fail to live up to mom and dad's expectations. I am a human. Ergo, humans are bad and Earth would be better without us. At least, humans like me and mom and dad are. Charmingly ethnic humans might be okay, as long as they are sufficiently exotic."

Where did Weisman get the chops to discuss plate tectonics and vulcanism? Why, picking up his MA in Lit at Northwestern, of course.

Into the Soylent Green vats with you, prof.

From Persia With Love.

So, I understand that in the era of sea-skimming guided missiles, a small vessel can pack a wallop all out of proportion with its size. I also know that they can be hard to detect, track, and destroy, especially when operating in swarms, but still... when I saw this slideshow of waves of Revolutionary Guard Boston Whalers lobbing hyperactive ATGMs at a leftover naval vessel during a bit of posturing and saber-rattling in the Straits of Hormuz, my first thought was "Oh, noes! SMERSH and COBRA are attacking U.N.C.L.E.!"

Quote of the Day: Cannibal Pot edition.

Billy Beck:

There will be no voting our way out of this, and that is as it should be, in at least one aspect: free people do not supplicate to government. They become manifest in their actions. In any case, however, whole generations have gone down under the rampant delusion that the sources of life spring from everything but individual human productivity: they believe that government can steal for them forever.

His blog has become the definitive Jeremiad of the Endarkenment.

I've got a bad feeling about this...

Fresh from unsolving the health care "crisis", the ruling party isn't resting on its laurels, but rather putting on a full court press for solving the financial "crisis".

The catch, of course, is that not only are there wildly differing views of the proper solution, but there is also little agreement as to the nature of the problem. This is leading to what the press calls "partisan obstructionism", but only when it comes from one party; when it comes from the other, it's called "principled opposition".

Whatever the legislation that comes out of it, odds are good that it will only make things worse.

Train like you fight?

How come when you attend a high-level handgun course, half everybody is using full-size pistols in offset holsters with double and triple mag carriers, but when they leave, all that crap goes back in the range bag and they revert to a Kel-Tec in the pocket of their khakis or a J-frame in their purse?

Similarly, if you take a shotgun or carbine course, the students are slathered in MOLLE-encrusted plate carriers and dump pouches like they're getting ready to retake Fallujah, rather than wearing a bathrobe and slippers, or pyjamas and bare feet, like they would be if they were repelling boarders from the bedroom at 0300 hours.

ToddG ponders on this topic as well...

The Internets: Any Idiot Can Scribble On It.

So, the Wikipedia entry for Thomas Jefferson notes:

He idealized the independent yeoman farmer as exemplar of republican virtues, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states' rights and a strictly limited federal government.

Reacting in predictably Pavlovian fashion to the word "republican", a HuffPo writer suspects tampering by the RNC.

People this stupid shouldn't even be allowed into the Soylent Green vats.

We gave at the office.

Yesterday morning, after roomie had left for work, I was slaving away over a hot keyboard when there came a tap-tap-tapping at the front door of Roseholme Cottage. We weren't expecting anybody that I was aware of, so I went to check it out.

Dressed in my stylish early-morning ensemble of sweatpants and tee-shirt, I padded to the front door in my stocking feet, scooping up a S&W .44 from my purse on the way. Peeking through the window in the top of the door showed some chick I didn't know from Adam's housecat standing on the porch. I cracked the door open and peered around it.

"Yes?"

"Hi! I'm Something Perky That Ends In An 'i' With A Heart For A Dot! We're doing a neighborhood walk, in association with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, offering your neighbors..." *holds up key fob looking thing* "...these personal alarm devices! Would you like to join your neighbors in taking advantage of this offer?"

I glance over at my hand, still hidden behind the door.

"No, I'm good, thanks."

"Oh, okay! Have a nice day!"

CCW in the California of the South.

PDB has a quick breakdown of North Carolina's concealed carry laws, complete with important links, for those heading to the Tar Heel state to attend the NRA convention next month.

QotD: Tea Party Edition...

From Brad K. in comments here:

If every party involved, from the Demoncratic and Republican parties, labor unions, Homeland Security, the ATF, the warrantless phone tappers and the FBI, all the way to Congress and the President, were clearly and strictly obeying the limits of the Constitution - there wouldn't be a Tea Party because there would be little of substance to protest.

Word.

Same planet, different worlds.

From the Brady site:

They're not allowed to bring guns onto the National Mall, but if they had their way, someday they could march into Washington with guns at their sides.

Yeah. Okay. And...?

I mean, guns were all over most every state capital this past week, and nobody busted caps, so what's your problem? You keep tearing at your hair about this blood in the streets that keeps not happening. For heaven's sake, get a grip on yourselves, okay? Everyone with a gun is a violent spree killer armed robber only in the way everyone with a car is a drunk driver or everyone with a p33n is a rapist...


(H/T to Sebastian.)

Gun Nuts Radio will return tonight.

Caleb says the special guest will be Todd Green from pistol-training.com, who is fast like a ninja.

Hand on the Glock.

A Famous Internets Person did a piece on how to improve your Glock's trigger pull while keeping your lawyer happy by not removing a bunch of metal or swapping in funky aftermarket parts.

This method will, indeed, remove a great deal of the suck from the factory trigger.

We interrupt this weltanschauung for an accidental brief moment of lucidity...

Roland Martin, a man who spends very little time on the same planet as me, actually managed to squeeze a couple of paragraphs about events here on planet Earth in his last column:

The rise of the Tea Party is being chronicled as a threat to democracy, or a grassroots collective unlike anything we have seen in many years.

As Public Enemy wisely put it with their hit song in 1988, "Don't Believe the Hype!"

First, let's deal with the Tea Party haters. Please, shut up.

How can any liberal, progressive, moderate or conservative be mad about a group of Americans taking to the streets to protest the actions of the country? What they are engaged in is constitutional. The freedom to assemble, march, walk, scream and yell is right there in the document we all abide by.

After thus proving the old adage that a blind pig can find an acorn in a stopped clock twice a day, he jetted on back to Bizarroworld, but it was refreshing to see at least this much honesty from someone with whom I am largely diametrically opposed.

The captive Freud of lib'ral rage...

So, there were some Second Amendment marches and protests around the country over the weekend, including here in Indianapolis, culminating in Monday's rallies, both armed and unarmed, in Washington D.C.

No shots fired. No swarms of inbred yahoos rising from the hollers and bayous of Red State Amerikkka to put civilization to fire and the sword. No cyborg invasions.

Reactions from the soft, toothless, pro-disarmament Lefties on the intertubes ranged from pants-filling shrillness to smug and self-congratulatory Freudian allusions.

Shooting in Indianapolis...

So this guy and his girlfriend are helping their buddy, another guy, move into an apartment down around the 1500 block of Pennsylvania when up walks Sumdood and asks for change for a fiver.

This guy tells Sumdood that there's change in the apartment, so they tramp upstairs, whereupon Sumdood whips out his gat and announces that this is, in fact, a good place for a stickup. This guy responds by pulling out his own heater and airing Sumdood out rather comprehensively:

Someone said there was change in the 3rd floor apartment and Hampton followed the group inside. Once there, he pulled a gun and directed everyone into a back room, police said. While being ushered to the back at gunpoint, Blevins pulled out his gun, turned and fired at Hampton, striking him at least four times.

Nice shootin', Tex.

After Sumdood's innards had reached room temperature, more interesting data came to light: Apparently Sumdood was wired up with a transponder like a migrating Harp Seal.

Hampton was wearing an ankle bracelet brace for an unrelated invasion of privacy and violation of a protective order arrest on April 5.

Obviously Sumdood got lost between his Boy Scout troop meeting and choir practice, and just needed change for a five spot to make a phone call to Father Flanagan to get directions to the Boy's Home where he was volunteering as a mentor...

Seeing as how this occupied only a few column inches on p. A-16 of the local cat box liner, I would have missed it were it not for a post by Shermlock Shomes.

Now, had Sumdood smoked this guy, his girlfriend, and the other guy, on what page do you think that story would have wound up, hmmm?

2,000 Hoosiers...

...filled the street in front of the state capitol building Thursday.

Joanna was there with her camera, in full fangirl squee over speaker Bill Whittle, who was apparently allowed out of California on furlough to attend the event.

Bobbi got a picture from the top of the tallest building in town; her vantage point is from the other side of the capitol building, and you can see that they filled the street in front of it from end to end. Not a half bad crowd.

Speaking of an eye on the ball:

An ongoing war in central Asia, worries about Iran's nuclear capabilities, a political tiff with Israel, the nation's economy at the bottom of a smoking crater, and what issue is the senior United States Senator from New York fixated on? What hill has he picked as this week's fashionable place to die?

Sen. Charles Schumer announced Sunday that several major airlines have promised not to charge passengers for carry-on baggage.

Rock on, Chuck, rock on. You make that whiny thimble-headed gherkin from Minnesota who was foisted upon the upper chamber look positively deep-fried in gravitas by comparison.

An explosion of guilt.

So, how long before the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull is, like the Haitian earthquake, pinned by some tapioca-brained celebrity on the decadent, Gaia-hatin' lifestyle of the West?

They'd probably indict us for the recent earthquake in Qinghai, too, but it's harder to get news crews out to the ass end of nowhere in China and the hotels in Reykjavik are a lot nicer.


EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that I spoke way too damn soon. Look, when the Laurentide ice sheet melted, it may have affected the continent below it and triggered serious seismic activity. The scenic little glacier in some mountain valley in Banff? Not so much. (If you had to look up "Laurentide ice sheet", you are recused from offering an opinion, hippie.)

Oil can! Oil can!

Having spent last weekend at Knob Creek, it's been two weeks since I busted a cap. I hope I remember how.

I'm going to drag the range bag and a couple ammo cans down to Iggle Crick and try and squeeze in some trigger time. (Get it? Squeeze? Trigger? I kill me...)

I've been really slack with my revolver shooting of late, and so I'm going to work the K-22 and the Kit Gun some.

I wonder if I have any zombie targets left?

I feel so... so... dangerous!

The other day we had Slick Willy getting all lathered up about "'hatriot' groups, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters." Now we have Robert Mueller, head of the EffaBeeEye, making it official:

Fifteen years after the Oklahoma City bombing, the specter of domestic terrorism has returned to haunt the Obama administration, with a warning from the FBI that “home-grown and lone-wolf extremists” now represent as serious a threat as Al Qaeda and its affiliates, The Times reported on Saturday.

Wow. I own a gun or three. I might go participate in a 2nd Amendment march today. Does that make me more dangerous than a jihadette with a bomb in her burqa?

We have guys with their jockeys full of Semtex buying airline tickets with cash, and the feds are busy getting spun up about bubbas in Mossy Oak angry about taxes. Way to keep your eye on the ball...

Of course, with this level of fixation, I'm starting to worry about them looking for a van der Lubbe; if their devil doesn't exist, they may have to invent one.

Uh, no thank you...

Marketing ideas I just don't get, #397,641:

Want to smell like a celebrity?

It's gotta be hard, getting that blend of esters of Grey Goose, cocaine, and vomit just right. I wonder if someone will do Eau de Rehab?

I'll pass on this one, I think.

Slow start stream of consciousness...

Woke up late.

Actually watched the TeeWee briefly, getting my intellect insulted by Fox & MSNBC before getting lied to by optimists on Bloomberg and CNBC. I got out of bed, more in disgust than anything else, and decided to do something more appetizing than watching Fox & Friends or Today, like clipping my toenails and then cleaning up some cat vomitus.

Roomie announced that we were down to one egg and out of bread, so I pedaled over to Fresh Market and picked up some of each. (Fresh baked rye: Yum!) The only other bicycles I saw out this early were the spandex & sweat crowd. I kind of rode gently on the way back, what with the eggs in the wire basket; I was a little worried that a misjudged bump at speed would render my efforts for naught.

There's pancetta in the fridge already. Also Emmentaler.

Perhaps I will now have some coffee.

Poll tide!

Turk Turon links to a US News & World Report poll on Open Carry:

Go # it.


.

Holster bleg.

Can anyone knowledgeable about U.S. WWII GI accoutrement figure out exactly what this holster is? I know enough about belts and pouches and suchlike to say "Ayup. That looks like one o' them there holster things you got yourself, there."

(Also, as a sort of gratuitous gun pr0n bonus, there are pictures there of a Hungarian-made Jerry pistol, a Luftwaffe-issue P.37(u), which was stuffed in the holster.)

T-bag'd

Four Right Wing Wackos with a roundup of various anti-Tea-Party rhetoric.

The other side thinks that Tea Partiers are a bunch of kooks and weirdos. You know, unlike Leftie protesters, who are models of soft-spoken sanity and well-educated rationality.

Made. Of. Win.

Seen at Every Day, No Days Off, via Unc.

Day in court.

It appears that Charles Dyer has been found Not Guilty on the federal weapons charges he was facing. It would be interesting to know the details of the defense, given the nature of the original charges (allegedly in possession of an M203, the serial number of which allegedly matched one that had taken a walk from an Army base.)

Given the high profile of that video of him in his dress blues, one does not have to own shares in Reynolds or a wookie costume to start suspecting a smear job...

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

The Canal Bistro has awesome Mediterranean, and there's hardly a location more quintessentially Broad Riparian: Cross the rainbow-painted bridge over the non-functional decorative canal to where you see the sculpture of two giant hands raising a huge turtle to the sky, as though Mayor Daley were about to set Barry on a fencepost...

Always read the fine print.

How many of you click "I Agree" on software licensing agreements and suchlike without ever reading the fine print?

Do you know who owns your soul right now? Are you sure?

"By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions."

Thing is, if people had actually read through the form, they could have clicked a link to opt out of the "soul clause" and which would have given them a coupon worth £5, to boot. Eighty-eight percent never read that far, apparently, and are now soulless minions of GameStation.co.uk.

Two Americas.

So Virginia just got a small raft of pro-CCW laws, Alabama just got the prohibition on certain types of NFA weapons overturned, Indiana's parking lot bill passed, Arizona got Vermont-style CCW, Iowa went "shall issue", a bunch of states have passed "Firearms Freedom" Acts, and California...

...well, California, fresh from passing a ridiculously onerous "ammo registration" law, is now making noises about trying to clamp down on its gun owners even harder, this time by prohibiting open carry of an unloaded firearm, which some people have had the temerity to do as a form of protest. Can't have the citizens getting uppity out there.

Increasingly, there are two Americas.


(H/T to Unc.)

Mothernature.

This is my third spring in Broad Ripple but the first one where cars are turning yellow with pollen, just like back home. It's not deep enough to make pollen angels or have pollenball fights or anything, but it's noticeable.

Worse, it's some kind of heathen Yankee pollen to which I have no built-up tolerance. Bleh.

Shooting on the cheap...

Unc has a thumbnail sketch up about his CMMG AR conversion purchase.

Mine has worked fine given two caveats:

1. It needs to be well lubed. A problem with rimfire AR conversions is that they have nothing to prevent them from firing out of battery, and so if the bolt is dry and doesn't quite close all the way, things could get exciting for people to the right of your rifle.
2. Remington Golden Bullets have had me prying duds out of the chamber three or more times per magazine. Have I mentioned how much I hate this carton of ammo? But it's plated, and I vastly prefer plated ammo, since it'll probably not foul the gas port as much.

Tax Day Tea Party.

The Indianapolis Tea Party starts at five today, so that after you've finished earning money for The Man, Coppertop, you can go down to the statehouse and tell him what you think about it.

Various wannabe vote-suckers will have booths set up at three p.m., just in case you'd like to go early and get lied to face-to-face.

Joanna will be there, cleverly disguised as a hippie via the ruse of riding a bicycle.

I'm toying with the idea of attending myself, and I never go to marches, rallies, or protests, but I'm feeling a little fed up these days, y'know? That's the thing about these Tea Parties that the media is completely missing out on: You can get college students to riot over anything, but when you've got Ma and Pa Kettle so pissed off that they manage to squeeze in some amateur sign-carrying and protest-chanting between a hard day at work and picking up the kids from soccer practice, you have wakened a sleeping giant, my friend.

Free Ice Cream Ammo drawing!

A new ammunition company, HPR, is coming online in Arizona and, to drum up interest in their launch, they're having a little contest: Enter here and 100 lucky winners will receive a box of ammo. (Warning: The site features an auto-opening movie with Rock and/or Roll, if you're at work)

Normally you would have to practice and practice and practice like Jerry Miculek to get free ammo, but here you could get some just by being lucky!

Down the wookie hole, Part Deux...

I've been re-reading El Neil's Lever Action: Essays on Liberty, and wondering if maybe I shouldn't loan my copy to Shootin' Buddy just to help him get his wookie suit on, when I noticed that my viewpoint had diverged somewhat from the author's over the years since I first read it.

I used to be hard in his "Vermont Carry or Nothing!" camp, but here, ten years later and seeing that my side has been successfully copying the relentless chip-away-around-the-edges, come-from-all-angles-at-all-levels strategy used by the foes of freedom for the last forty-plus years, I think I'm softening my stance. In rebuttal to El Neil, I'll offer him his own political aphorism:

Let the other guy offer compromises. Think of them as rungs on a ladder. Keep your own goals fixed firmly in your mind and make sure you never move any direction but upward. That's how the other side got where they are. It works. -L. Neil Smith, "Tactical Reflections"

This is how we get from "no carry" to "may issue" to "shall issue but with onerous restrictions" to "shall issue with fewer restrictions" to Vermont-style carry.

Or should I say "Vermont-Alaska-Arizona-?????"-style carry?

Ah, the sounds of Spring...

Birds chirping...

Bicycles whirring...

Lawnmowers buzzing...

And best of all, the music from the ice cream truck!

There is something atavistic going on here, obviously. I don't recollect actually buying anything from an ice cream truck for... oh... twenty-something years, but without fail the sight and sound of one going past can call up the sensations of those days when Summer seemed like an eternity stretching out endlessly in front of me, rather than a brief interval of lawn mowing sandwiched between snow shovelings.

Hi, Paul!

How's it feel to be on the losing side, Paul? Hey, did you hear? Louisiana's passing its own Firearms Freedom Act, Indiana's Parking Lot bill passed, and Arizona just got Vermont Style Carry. We have got your astroturf "movement" down and we are kicking it like a naked fat guy at Altamont. Taste the ash heap of history, you bigoted old Bolshie.

See you in downtown Indy Saturday for the 2nd Amendment March? Maybe we could get a cup of Starbuck's afterward... :)

2nd Amendment March in Indy on Saturday.

Caleb has the scoop.

I'm thinking about going.

Gadgetry.

Maybe it was caused by reading Gibson's Pattern Recognition, but I've had a hankering for a Curta mechanical calculator for the last couple years. I don't need one. I have no use for one. I certainly can't afford one. But these little gizmos trigger the wantsies in me like nobody's business. Like a Leica M3 or a pre-war Smith, they have an intricate mechanical rightness about them, like a little box of elves turning precision-machined gears...

Low-hanging fruit.

I was tickled by the Daily Show "alternate lifestyle" piece on open carry.

I especially liked the fact that it made Paul Helmke look like a dull-witted Grade A tool and a bed-wetting zealot. (Granted, that's hitting from the red tees, but still...)

For your reading pleasure...

Matt Bracken, author of Enemies Foreign and Domestic, the most tightly-written, plausible, and readable book of its growing genre, has a lengthy sample of his new project, Castigo Cay, up for your perusal.

I'll be reading the sample as soon as I'm done with Corpse in Armor. (It says "A Thriller" right on the cover, and it's not kidding: Thirteen pages to your first dead body, and things don't exactly slow down from there...)



(H/T to WRSA.)

We care a lot.

I once met a guy who talks just like Mark Morford writes. Of course, it was three in the morning at a club and I'm reasonably certain the dude was coked to the gills; I don't know what Mark's excuse is.

Anyhow, now he has his pixie dust all worked into a lather about KFC's new Triple Bypass Sandwich, or whatever they call it. He's pretty sure it's not healthy. I'm pretty sure it's not either, which is why I don't intend to live on a steady diet of the things. However I can just about guarantee that you could eat one for lunch a couple times a week with no ill effects, so long as the rest of your diet was reasonably balanced and you engaged in exercise a little more vigorous than, say, playing World of Halo Vice City. It's just greasy chicken, some bacon, and that stuff they call "special sauce" in fast food joints; it's not like it's an Arsenic, Lettuce, and Tomato on toasted Brillo pads.

Avoiding the McGreasewich isn't good enough for Mark, though. Like a left wing version of those guys who worry on the shortwave about the Freemason cattle mutilators hiding out at Area 51, he's sure it's part of a plot by Big Fast Food to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids, make our kids fat, and kill us all. Because that's how those corporate fat cats make their money, see; by killing customers. Every time a customer dies... well, something Underpants Gnome-like happens, but whatever it is, it makes fat cats get richer. (It will probably not come as a surprise to you that Mr. Morford went to U.C. Berkeley; I am guessing he wasn't an econ major, but with Berkeley, you can never tell.)

Maybe it's all a silly, futile argument, a fool's game to point up the obvious evil of such products. These items are legion. They just keep right on coming. What's more, it's just capitalism at work. It's about giving the people what they want, right?

And if they don't really want it -- if, deep down, most humans sense this garbage is hugely unhealthy, that it's a form of slow poison and there are far better and wiser options out there -- well, you do what companies like KFC, Coca-Cola, Kraft, McDonald's and all the rest have done since the dawn of the free market.

You convince the less educated and the gullible that they are wrong, that this crap is actually a good value for your family, nutritious and safe to feed to children, even as you manufacture all the flavors, smells and meat-like textures in a giant lab and sell truckloads of the crap to the poorer classes, until they get fat and sick and die.

See? He cares. He cares about what these... these... capitalists ptui! are doing to the poorer, and I quote, "classes".

Because he cares about this, it makes him better than you. A more elevated being, if you will. Also smarter. Why, if he was any smarter and more caring, he'd have to go into politics. You know, like Al or Barry.

"Come give Auntie Leper a great big kiss!"

All out of the blue, the Brady Bunch has decided to give the kiss of death approval to Stupak, now that he's retiring in order to keep from getting his ass kicked up between his ears come November.

I'm not sure why. Maybe he owes them money or something?

Down the wookie hole...

Pass the Reynold's Wrap yarmulke, but I think Zercool is drawing some historical parallels worth considering here...

Not so hot for teacher?

Phlegmmie ponders on why it seems to be deemed okay for grown women characters to leer at adolescent boys' bodies on TeeWee shows without being all creepy and pervy and Roman Polanski-esque.

I think if the teacher in the skit had been male and the student female, it would have been an outrage-- am I right about that? Remember the whole Mary Kay LeTourneau thing? Who is actually warped, here? Or is this actually funny because the opposite sterotype (Lolita type scenario) is such a hackneyed cliche?

I think it's a question with interesting timing, considering that I read her post almost immediately after being vaguely squicked out, for reasons upon which I could not exactly place my finger, over that "Total Eclipse of the Heart" video this morning.

What would Dr. Helen say?

QotD: The Irreconcilable Differences edition.

From Walter Williams:

The list of congressional violations of both the letter and spirit of the Constitution is virtually without end. Our derelict Supreme Court has given Congress sanction to do anything upon which they can muster a majority vote.

This takes us back to the unconstrained vision thing.

Evil Genius.

Cap and Trade went over like a lead balloon but, like a bad horror movie franchise, it refuses to die.

Now there's an evil new commercial that paints Cap and Trade as the patriotic way to care about our troops in Iraq. See if you can follow this logic:

• Our troops in Iraq are being attacked by more advanced IEDs utilizing EFP (explosively-formed penetrators) to take out light armored vehicles.
• The devices are coming from Iran.
• Iran has oil.
• Therefore we should build wind turbines and solar farms and tax the crap out of our own coal industry. And if you don't support this, you love the terr'ists and hate our troops.

Follow that?

Now, class, everybody break out your handy pocket Constitution and turn to Article 1, Section 8, where you will find a handy list of everything Congress is allowed to do:. Of the items on that list, which looks like the most appropriate response to finding out that a bunch of wogs are killing American soldiers? Should they coin some money? Establish a post road? Diddle with patent law? Hmmm... I don't see "wind turbines" anywhere on the list.

Now, the Democrats took the Legislative and Executive branches on an "anti-war, bring our boys home" platform, but if they can dangle them in front of roadside bombs for political mileage for a bit longer, well, then that's okay, too.

Mrphlph.

I seem to have overslept. I blame staying up to watch Robot Chicken.

Content shortly. In the meantime, perhaps you'd enjoy this video?

Second Tenth Amendment lawsuit.

The lawsuit revolving around Montana's Firearms Freedom Act has gained some fellow travelers.

At issue is whether the Feds are still pretending to care about the Tenth Amendment or not.

Well, I mean, we know they're not, but it would be nice to see them admit it in black and white. After all, the idea of "sovereign states" has been a legal fiction since... oh, exactly this date in 1861, as a matter of fact.



(H/T to Unc.)

Market forces are aligning against me...

I spend a fair chunk of my cash on things made out of copper, lead, nickel, and zinc, and prices on copper, lead, nickel, and zinc are back up and predicted to trend higher.

Or, more accurately, the dollar is getting weaker against things of real value again.

As the guy on the Titanic said: "Look! The sea level is rising!"

Pride of lions, herd of cattle, flock of seagulls, militia of Hoosiers...

Apparently I am living square in the middle of the Vast Conspiracy of Seditious Suburban White Guys, or so saith the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette:

Flatt is the senior brigade commander for the Indiana Militia Corps, a group of Hoosiers who see themselves as not only homeland security in the truest sense of the word, but also as the final backstop when everything goes wrong. Flatt claims membership statewide is in the hundreds.

It's a good thing, too, since FEMA has its big secret detention center right across the street from my favorite local gun store in Beech Grove:

"It's not really paranoia if they're actually out to get you," Flatt said. "They're drawing up plans to round up Americans using foreign troops and put them in detention facilities. This is not paranoid conspiracy theory. I've got photographs and documents."

(H/T to Sipsey Street Irregulars.)

More Knob Creek pics:

The crowd was decent, although it didn't seem quite the crushing, seething mass of humanity that it was in October.

MG42 4SALE. SRS INQ ONLY, PLZ.

Some reenactors were set up, complete with tent and deuce-and-a-half. They had a Ma Deuce and an M1919 set up on tripods, as well as a 60mm mortar, but the star of the show was the M5 Stuart light tank. This being Knob Creek, I wondered if the 37mm main gun was deactivated, or actually on a Form 4.

The Platonic Ideal of Nomminess.

Culinary genius: Bacon-Wrapped Tater Tots à la SnarkyBytes.

I'll be trying that one tout de suite.

Overheard in Roomie's Bedroom:

Newscaster on TeeWee: "Some air travelers are upset by the idea of airlines charging an extra fee for carry-on bags. After the break we'll hear what one Washington lawmaker plans to do about it..."

Me: "Jesus H. Christ on a turbocharged crutch!"

RX: "It's like living in an Ayn Rand novel, isn't it?"

Seriously, tell me how that is any of the federal government's business? It's getting to the point that whenever little Suzy stubs a toe in Dubuque, within a week we've got some dollar-sucking vote whore clamoring for "Suzy's Law" in Washington, DC. I've got news for you: Every skinned knee in life doesn't need to have its boo-boo kissed by Auntie Congress.

The lawmaker in question, BTW, turned out to be none other than everybody's favorite regulatory busybody, Chuckie Schumer. Just seeing that sanctimonious weasel grin on the TeeWee first thing in the morning makes me suddenly understand Elvis just a little bit better. I'm going to go into business selling armored glass TV screen covers.

It's good to have a back stock...

I can't afford to hoard. However...

• Every time I go to the grocery store, even if it's just to pick up cat food or paper towels, I buy some form of canned good or other long-term-storage-type food. Before you know it, you've got a six month supply of soup and veggies and suchlike.
• Every time I go to a gun show, I buy a magazine for my pistol or carbine. Any time I'm at a gun shop and see a quality AR or 1911 mag in the "miscellaneous stuff" bin, I get one. Before you know it, you've got fifty pistol mags and fifty rifle mags.
• Whenever I need batteries or light bulbs or suchlike, I buy the next size larger pack than I really need and set the extras back. Before you know it, you've got a pretty decent store of both items in the sizes you need most.
  

It didn't fall in a day, either.

I'm on the home stretch in Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower, which is quite good thus far.

He touches on a lot of the more recent theories, including the "Rome never fell, it was just transformed into Medieval Europe," and "Rome didn't fall; it stayed strong to the end but got its butt kicked fair and square by the super barbarians who were just teh awesome and plus more virile and Aryan and stuff" ones, and offers good rebuttals where he disagrees.

I'm interested to read his conclusions, but we've just deposed Augustulus and the corpse of the Western Empire hasn't been kicked to shreds by the Gothic Wars yet, so I've got a few pages to go.

Riddle Me This:

The local Kroger in Broad Ripple is the tiniest Kroger in the world; kind of a 1/3rd-scale version of a modern supermarket. Obviously, this makes its selection of stuff a bit narrower, but it still has most of what you'd expect to find at a grocery store.

It has a full planogram section on one gondola, or whatever it's called in modern retailing terminology, devoted to "green" household stuff; five or six shelves high by three feet wide crammed with Gaia-friendly products from companies like Seventh Generation and Method. They have organic biodegradable non-toxic fabric softener, fer Vishnu's sake...

...but they don't devote two pegs in housewares to clothesline and clothespins.

I don't get it.

The best soundtrack ever.

Some folks like busting clay pigeons or shooting one-hole groups with weird benchrest rifles and probably think I'm odd for getting my ya-yas knocking over steel plates and bowling pins with a pistol. Some folks aren't happy unless their gun has micrometer sights and adjustable everything, and others aren't having fun unless their shootin' iron is an authentic piece of Old West Tech. And for some folks, true shooting nirvana is only obtainable behind a gun with "da switch".

I have an embarrassing confession to make: Shooting machine guns doesn't really do much for me. I mean, I've worked around them for a while and that pretty much jaded me right out of what little fascination they held for me in the first place. It's like a regular gun, but it shoots real fast, and ammo ain't free, y'know what I mean? And jeezis do they get dirty. If someone else is buying the ammo and cleaning the gun, I suppose I'd take a whirl behind the trigger, but I doubt I'd spend all day on the line at Knob Creek. Now, I know other people really get a charge out of it, and that's cool with me.

However, I sure don't mind watching other people shoot machine guns, let me tell you, or even watching other people watch other people shoot machine guns. It's a beautiful sight, watching ammo going downrange by the pallet load, all in an eyeblink and knowing that it's the equivalent of setting piles of Grants and Jacksons on fire, just for the sheer exuberant fun of it. Conspicuous destruction; a unique 20th Century sort of Potlatch, and the crowd is as enraptured at the cordite-scented, ear-shattering destruction as anybody you'd see at a fireworks display or in the front rows of a rock concert. The look on a kid's face as he basks in the glow of total electric candy-coated Armageddon, with his dad standing next to him looking just as entranced, is wonderful. The spectacle is, quite literally, awesome.


Really, what I go to Knob Creek for is the gun show; roaming the tables piled high with stuff, running into people I know, seeing the oddities... It's a really good gun show, but since the whole thing takes place within 100 yards or so of all that Armageddon being unleashed on the firing line, it's even more than that: It's a really good gun show with the bestest soundtrack ever.

Overheard in a Waffle House:

The waiter has just taken our beverage orders as Shootin' Buddy returns from washing his hands...

Me: "Well, he was a very polite young man... Oh my gawd, did I just say what I think I said?"

SB: "You should tell the ladies in your quilting circle about him. Maybe one of them has a daughter or a niece...?"

Me: "'A very polite young man...' Oh, please, just shoot me now."

SB: "No way. You'd shoot back."

Ooh, my poor head...

I don't know what triggered it, but I am sporting a headache that feels like someone whacked me on the head with an axe handle and then gave me a love tap with the other end of the axe for good measure.

I blame pollen.

Machine guns in the morning!

Less than 12 hours to showtime:

Beltfeds and subguns and antitank rifles,
Loud GE Gatlings that ear muffs can't stifle
Cannon and mortars and Tannerite fun
These are a few of my favorite guns!

Tanks for the memories...

We're boots-on-the-ground here in Kentucky and I got to visit the Patton Museum for the first time. It was teh awesome.

I touched a King Tiger! There were just a whole butt-ton of tanks that I'd only seen in pictures, all up-close and not even surrounded by ropes or anything.

Afterwards we went to U.S. Cavalry, and they were having a $50 boot sale! It's like Christmas in April!

Way down the rabbit hole.

So, over at Sipsey Street mention was made that the good old "mobile U.S. Army guillotine train cars" trope is back in the top ten.

This is our third administration that was about to round us up and decapitate us for being black white Christian gay Democrat gun owners militia kooks hippies racists Tea Partiers. (It's a pretty elastic meme.)

If the video at the link doesn't give you your daily dose of crazy, you can always go drink from the fire hose...

Overheard in the Office:

Me: "If you're going to have gun laws, which we do, even though I think we shouldn't, then there has to be a definition of 'gun'. Otherwise you could say 'Well, I took the front sight off it, so it isn't a gun anymore, because I took it apart.' I mean, how far do you have to take it apart before it is no longer a gun?"

RX: "...ultimately, all laws are based on reductio ad absurdium. Er, absurdum."

Me: "Yeah, 'absurdium' is the ore they dig up to make laws out of."

RX: "Law is the dross from refined absurdium."

Money into noise...

Getting ready to saddle up for the drive to Knob Creek in the AM.

Anybody else going?

Man vs. Wild...

Alone in the woods isn't always as "alone" as it feels. Casey shares some thoughts at his blog based on a recent experience...

I said, right out loud, "Holy Crap! You're a coyote!". The coyote looked back at me with a look that clearly said he wasn't sure how humans had gotten to the top of the food chain, if that was my brightest comment.

I remember being in the piney woods of Georgia and hearing rustling in the brush, brush where numerous great big soybean-fed South Georgia feral hogs had been killed over the years, and wishing I had something more substantial in my hands than a falling-block .243 loaded for whitetail. You know, just in case...

The very root of the problem.

All politics is, they say, local, and in local political issues we get to see the Big Problems facing America explained in the most simple and easy-to-understand terms.

For instance, in the fair suburban hamlet of Greenwood, Indiana, people occasionally drive their vehicles into retention ponds and glug their last before they can be rescued. This has naturally raised a hue and cry from the bereaved calling for guard rails around said ponds.

Greenwood looks into exactly how much this will cost, and...

[T]here are logistical issues. Some ponds are on private property, and barriers will be costly.

"We're looking at about $750,000," said Richards.

But the price doesn't put off Mike Farmer's stepfather.

"I don't know how many lives it takes before money doesn't become an issue," said Mears.

Money, Mr. Mears, is always an issue.

I know you don't understand this, but things like guardrails are not crapped out by some benevolent unicorn; they have to be built by people. These people would probably like to be compensated for their services.

We can't just wave a magic wand and make money a non-issue, you dolt. It doesn't work that way, although I can understand how watching Congress at work might convince you otherwise.

Non sequitur.

So the Hutaree thing is clinging like grim death to the front page. The latest news being a tape that the FBI stool pigeon made.

In the tape, Grand Field Marshal (or whatever his rank was) David Stone Sr. starts out sounding like any other disgruntled wookie-suiter I know:

"In this nation, we think we are free, but you need a certificate to be born, a license to drive, a permit to build, a number to get a job and even a paper after you die," says David Bryan Stone Sr., 45, the alleged head of the Hutaree militia,

I'm with ya so far, Dave, 100%.

Get up, stand up! Stand up for your rights! Fight tha power!

...accused of conspiring to overthrow the government and plotting to kill police officers.

"These are permission slips from the terrorists organization called the new world order," Stone says in the tape...

Wait, what? You lost me there. I'm still trying to figure out how shooting the meter maid gets rid of social security numbers and income taxes. Can you run that one by me again?

I'm beginning to pick up the vibe that there's a sort of "Underpants Gnome" revolutionary plan at work here. You know: "Step 1: Shoot meter maid. Step 2: ??????? Step 3: Utopia!"

"Every day, we watch ever so close for those evil blue helmets to appear on our streets -- but as long as through Interpol, law enforcement mercenaries called the brotherhood working for the new world order are doing such a great job, then we don't need to watch for these foreign armies to come to our shores. They are already here," Stone says.

I'm sorry, come again? You're saying that the meter maid is part of the UN interpol brotherhood conspiracy? I'm gonna need some proof on that before I just saddle up and start busting caps, if you don't mind. And when I say "proof", I don't mean "mysterious patterns in the stickers on the backs of road signs".

Curses.

There's a hole-in-the-wall Chinese joint in Broad Ripple called "King Dragon" that has fantastic kung pao chicken. It's not too heavy on the veggies, lots of chicken & peanuts, good and spicy, and is served up in really generous portions.

But King Dragon is apparently a wingless dragon; he cannot fly your food to you, you must go get it from him.

I try and make sure I only work up a serious kung pao chicken mojo on days when I have to run up there to get groceries next door anyway.

San Fran Redux...

Look, if I'm going to suffer the indignities of probulation to board an airliner and fly to a city where I'll be disarmed like a peasant and forced to pay Monopoly-money prices for goods and services in a tourist trap, it's going to be Rome or London, not the City by the Bay.

I'm sure it's lovely, but I'm just really not a "buildings, food, and terrain features" kind of tourist. I mean, I haven't even seen all the buildings or sampled all the food in the city in which I live yet. I know that makes me out to be terribly provincial and all, but there you go.

I'm MacLovin' it.

Well, I thought it was funny...



.

I don't get it...

Joel linked to a story where some New Yorkers got busted for what media types think is an "arsenal".

If they were going for the whole "scary-looking killer death assault gun" angle, then the attached photo was particularly unimpressive: A couple wood-furnitured self-loading shotguns, a stackbarrel fowling piece, a rusty rabbit-eared side-by-side, and a Marlin levergun with, like most Marlin leverguns, too much glass in those stupid Kwiksite see-through rings. So I went and read the article, which claimed that there were a total of thirty guns in the "arsenal", which left the junk-on-the-bunk display in the photo some twenty-four guns light.

Googling up the name of the alleged arsenaleers, I discovered another photo, this one showing a couple .22 crank-cockers, an old sporterized Arisaka, and what appears to be some sort of underhammer front-stuffer, among others, but no pictures of the alleged "assault rifles" or the ten handguns.

The thing is, in the photo accompanying the second story one can clearly see part of a stainless Mini-14 in an aftermarket black plastic side-folding stock just out of frame to the left. That one might be kinda scary looking, in an '80s A-Team kind of way, so why wasn't the photo centered on it? Could it be that all these guns look equally scary to an herbivore?

I doubt it.

Shermlock Shomes is skeptical of Hereditary Congresscritter Andre Carson's claim that Tea Partiers shouted the "N-word" at him not once, not five times, but "fifteen" times.

I am a survivor of Carson's congressional race, which was a sort of Special Olympics of Elections. I have seen him in commercials and interviewed on TeeWee more than OSHA guidelines deem safe; exposure to that many meaningless platitudes is what causes babies to be born with extra heads.

I have yet to see proof that Andre Carson can count to fifteen without pulling off a sock.

Uh, no thanks...

From email:

Dear Fellow Gun Rights Activist,

I would like to personally invite you to our 25th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC), which will be taking place September 24, 25, and 26, 2010 in San Francisco, California at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport hotel.

[blah blah blah & et cetera redacted]

Sincerely yours,

Alan M. Gottlieb

In response:

Dear Mr. Gottlieb,

Thanks, but no. I wouldn't go to San Francisco to judge a naked Russell Crowe lookalike contest with an open bar and free round-trip tickets, even if they let me keep the winner. Have a fun convention!

Sincerely yours,

Tamara K.

Gun School:

It looks like Rob Pincus will be taking his roadshow through CCA in Knoxville again in May.

Unlike old Soviet Union, gun school comes to you!

Somewhere an editor is crying in his beer...

Staghounds reports a bit of an oopsie at The Gray Lady in an article on ChiCom computer espionage.

I got a screen grab for posterity, just in case it goes down the memory hole:



I see sensitivity training in someone's near future.


UPDATE:

That was fast! Winston Smith was at his desk early this morning. I'll bet someone's resume is being updated right about.... now.