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- It depends on how you define "practical": Wilson discusses allocating more gun money to "practical" pieces rather than collector arms in 2012, to which I replied "If you think that things are going to go all colander-on-the-face, then yes, an M4gery is worth a pile of K-22s and Colt Gold Cups. But if you're expecting civil order to remain relatively intact through a period of economic turbulence and inflation, collectables historically perform well in those periods, as people are desperate to turn fiat money into tangibles as soon as it hits their hands." And you can't shoot a looter with a Willie Mays rookie card or a Gibson Les Paul, but a 1912 97% NRA EXC Smith & Wesson Triple Lock is still a .44.
- I want the Broad Ripple franchise for this.
- Monster Hunter International: confusing hippies since 2008. Check out this thread on a discussion forum. You gotta love the original poster's claim that a great big accountant who shoots guns is an unbelievable character (gosh, where could Larry Correia have come up with that idea?) My favorite was the guy on page three who implied Eric Flint somehow wasn't authentically Left Wing because he wrote for Baen. Listen, you patchouli-reeking tea-room radical, Flint's a frickin' card-carrying Trotskyite! You get any farther out the left wing than that, you'll trip over the winglet and fall off.
40 comments:
I can't say too much abo it the pistol side of things, but as for the decline in interest in collectible rifles, I think it has a lot to do with the massive supplies of surplus ammo drying up. At this point in time you simply can't find any rifle ammo cheaper than that for the AR and AK.
All I need is one last shipment of 6.5 Swede to hit our shores, so I can stock up a couple dozen cases.
A rifle's value as a collectible often has nothing to do with whether ammunition is available or not, though.
Tam...
Please tell me you don't actually want me to wade through a multi-page forum-fap on the political proclivities of Baen writers.
Life is very short, Tam. Let's talk about important things instead. .45 vs. 9mm comes to mind. Or how many rails are required before a rifle can be called tactical.
Joel,
Hey, it's not a homework assignment or anything, I just thought it was funny, in a "WTF? Over." sort of way... :D
My Buddy the (Retired) Gun Smith just shelled out $1,500 for a 1943 dated Ithaca 1911A1. He told me that he bought it as "Investment" towards his older age. But he thinks that it's all been Downhill since Big Army bought the M-14, so he's a little "Stuck in the '40s" anyway.
Having said all that, I don't think any Goblins who would try to go after him would care that they met their maker with a .45ACP round in the chest that came from a 68 year old 1911A1 rather an 2 year old Glock.
Hey, it's America. Just be glad that people are buying Guns, whatever their reason. What should they be doing with their money instead, buying Stock in Solar Panel companies?
Tam,
"If you think that things are going to go all colander-on-the-face, then yes, an M4gery is worth a pile of K-22s and Colt Gold Cups. "
I still recall "Wolf and Iron", and Heinlein's "Door Into Summer", In both, the emphasis is to avoid the powerful weapon. That the brain is the part that will aid survival, and the more potent the weapon, the less fear you proceed in, the more likely you encounter something your powerful weapon won't win against.
Marauders and main battlefield scenarios excepted, of course. But then there is the line from Johnny Horton's "Battle of New Orleans" about "opened up with squirrel guns". And the whole Revolutionary thing about armies in good order with battle field pieces, vs. the farmers with their pot guns. Dickson makes the point that the sound of a .22 firing carries less than of a larger firearm, which could help avoid the attention of boogers, zombies, marauders, and the BATFE/Brady Bunch.
Wow...leave it to the hippies to get incensed that someone would fall outside of their apparently very-strict rules on what constitutes an acceptable "nonconformist".
Gorsh & gee-whiz.
Brad,
Aren't you thinking of Tunnel In The Sky?
While I have tremendous respect for Mr. Heinlein, the man who wrote that novel was a 48 y.o. ex-squid SF writer and very casual gun buff. Not one of my go-to sources for firearms knowledge. ;)
Tam
Re Collecting: Every time I think about selling the pre-64 Model 70opr the Belgian made Auto 5 "Sweet Sixteen", I go lay down until the thought goes away. Someday. Maybe...
Re Heinlein, Flint, & Correia: You plannin' on Sacred Cowburger for dinner? You're right, of course, and I speak as one who grew up in an area where just about everyone read all of Heinlein before reading any other SF. He knew the guns he shot in the Navy, and that was it. Too bad he had little occasion to write five inchers into his books...
Loved the bit on MHI.
I'm sure Larry will be pleased to hear that neither he nor his lovely wife really exist...
Collectibles are practical.
pax: I've heard from the Internets that Larry is both a racist white tool and a dark-skinned despoiler of white wimmin.
If he can do both, then existing and not existing in Schrodinger fashion would be trivial for him.
A great, big accountant who shoots is unbelievable? I'm an accountant, above average height and (well above) weight, I not only shoot but enjoy philosophizing about what gun for T-rex. Does this mean I don't really exist?
DanH: Yes. All of us gun enthusiasts are cousin humping red-neck retards ... just ask the rabbit people.
( Shatner )
You ... do ... not ... exist.
( / Shatner )
Big accountants who shoot guns are a dime a dozen, but ... big accountants with both
-a rich history of underground fighting
-crazy survivalist fathers
-who keep in all seriousness saying they are just ordinary guys..
That's unlikely.
If I were both a crack shot and a mean hth fighter, I'd never claim to be a normal guy.
Methinks author put (big and normal) in there to make the average, pudgy Joe Gunner more sympathetic to the main character..
Lanius,
Tam's point was that the main protagonist of the MHI series, Owen Zastava Pitt, is modeled after the author himself, Larry Correia. do a litle research. That would be why the commentor's saying that the main character was unbelievable was so funny.
Well, that and the fact that it is a fantasy fiction series about monsters and such which requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief to be able to enjoy in the first place.
I like Larry's monsters much better than the Reed and Pelosi monsters.
Lanius,
If you're so smart, why ain't you rich? ;)
Tam's point was that the main protagonist of the MHI series, Owen Zastava Pitt, is modeled after the author himself, Larry Correia. do a litle research. That would be why the commentor's saying that the main character was unbelievable was so funny.
So he's a crack shot and an expert martial artist with extensive fighting experience?
And he was raised by a crazy Special Forces veteran?
..yeah, right.
If you're so smart, why ain't you rich? ;)
That's a typically American question, as if riches were what everyone should naturally desire*.
I for one would prefer interesting things happening and not having to interact with people whose only aim in life is to get rich. Their ilk has been fucking up my country for
25 years so far...
In fact, I'd love to see them raptured by Mammon or something...as an acolyte of st.Rand , you wouldn't perchance know of the proper forbidden books where such a ritual may be found?
Is America so full of these money-seeking people?
Guess I'll find out, I'm going to visit a friend there soon.
*were you rich at age 26, eh?
*bangs head against desk*
Forget it folks. There are none so blind.
I found this on the third page of the nerd forum (which nerd forum, I hear people asking, but I shall ignore the rhetorical):
I've been listening to the audiobooks at work and I finally realized what the stories are: Shadowrun stories told by the Dukes Of Hazard.
First, I laughed.
Then, I thought, That is a book I might actually like to read.
And then I thought, Actually, if I were still into pen-and-paper RPGs ...
Especially if the GM were to open each session with, "Them Duke boys was in a mess of trouble". Sounds like a gas.
The Pedal Pub is already franchising in the USA. You could lock up the IN concession.
http://twincities.pedalpub.com/
Reports are that it may not be as fun as it looks. You really *do* have to pedal.
I've done the pedal pub,and it's harder work for beer than hashing, which, given some of the trails I've done is saying something.
Matt
St Paul
McFly? Anyone home? One last attempt to get through to Lanius: http://iscifi.tv/podcast/2008/09/28/monster-hunter-international/
After a week plus of posts and debate of safe queens vs. generic stuff I feel a post coming on.
Collectible is a dangerous term and has much to dissuade one from it. OTOH, it can be rewarding and filled with pleasure. You just have to know why you are doing it. Just like Blogging.
I will not give up my insights here. Plus I need some time to compose a post.
'Way back when, when I was learning how to make the world safe for Democracy, I knew a guy who had re-enlisted after a lengthy break in service and a failed career as a stock broker/investment advisor for bulls. His advice was to invest in stuff you know about. "You need to buy guns."
Oddly enough, and apropos of nothing, his first name was Larry, and he was of Portuguese descent.
For the more simple-minded folk incapable of logical thinking and who have not ascended above grade school reading comprehension, I don't dispute him being a large, bald accountant-type who is a good shot. He's got to be if he's also a firearms instructor..
However, the video Mopar posted doesn't prove he has extensive actual hth fighting experience, nor that his father is or was a crazy survivalist with special forces training...
(and no, I'm not gonna google that. There's a tomato stake that needs corking, bedding properly and it's trigger tweaked)
I actually exchanged emails with Mr. Flint once. We discussed our respective alcohol habits. He has quit his. I am not ready to do that.
He strikes me as the kind of Bolshevik who believes in the worker keeping his rifle next to his lathe, in case he needs to remind the bosses in the Party of their duty. Oh, and he does know how to work a lathe.
Lanius,
Aspie much?
Proof that the basic left-wing/right-wing paradigm had been inevitably shattered came, for me, when the GOP started cheering on Christopher Hitchens as their favoritest Trotskyite, (who even penned an ode to the old boy in National Review), while they also lined up behind Smilin' Joe Lieberman, and the Wall Street banksters underwrote Obama.
Plus, I always figured Heinlein was better for advice on swords than boomsticks.
Aspie much?
Nah, I'm not smart enough to be aspie.
The undead and monsters walk the earth, but an accountant who shoots is unbelievable?
Gee whiz folks... for the critics Re: The Correia's characters.
Nobody wants to read a book about the short, scrawny, nebbish accountant and his adventures avoiding papercuts. the argument reminds me of the Monty Python skit, The Adventures of Ralph Mellish"
"And suddenly, nothing happened!"
I have paid money to buy some of Larry's books, and I am as poor as a churchmouse.
I remember reading his earlier efforts over at the old High Road gun-nerd forum.
I think I'm kinda smart, and at least an half-aspy, and I lurves me some kick-ass heroic fantasy (internally consistent, of course) with white-trash elves, a Shoggoth who is sweet on a human girl, a sympathetic werewolf character, and lots of guns. And flamethrowers.
Jim Baen, may he rest in peace, did more than any other publisher to get SF and fantasy back into the gutter, away from those hoity-toity literary-type folks.
C.S. Lewis himself, who wrote some SF, bitched about the academics who complained about "escapist" writing.
I think he wrote something like, "Who wants to keep people from escaping? Why, a jailor, that's who."
Jim Baen, may he rest in peace, did more than any other publisher to get SF and fantasy back into the gutter, away from those hoity-toity literary-type folks.
(facepalm)
Hoity-toity literary types?
You couldn't be more wrong. Take writers who write both 'literature', and sf.
Iain Banks has won some prizes with his non-sf books(and got fairly rich by writing), but the same critics who responded positively to his non-sf work won't even admit to reading his science fiction.
Sf has never been considered 'literature', by the people who claim to be arbiters of that.
Those literary types are irrelevant anyway.
Baen books is the gutter. And I wouldn't say they publish 'science fiction'. More like 'science fantasy'(just like what Banks writes).. if it has FTL and implausible aliens, it's science fantasy.
A fun gutter to crawl in, but still.. a gutter. Unless you run into Tom Kratman piece.. god. that guy's weird.
If you want to read real science fiction, read Blindsight. Free on author's webpage, widely published too (Russia, Poland, France, Japan, etc)
Marko may think that the Pedal Pub is a German invention(bless his heart), but we've got two or three that make their way around State Street and the Capitol Building every summer. I found it hilarious that once you show signs of intoxication, the rolling bartender reserves the right to kick you off your barstool/pedals. C'mon, don't serious bicyclists usually indulge in carb loading as part of their regimen?
Kratman is only weird if you don't take the time to actually read his work and think your way through it. I am a 25 year old enlisted US Marine, in a combat arms billet, Kratman makes perfect sense to me. I even understand a lot of what he talks about with regards to training and leadership. Why? I live it, every day. I've been deployed to combat zones and he makes even more sense now.
I'm not saying that's what it takes to process and comprehend what he says. What I am saying is that if I, who am definintely not at the upper end of what liberal elitist consider the education spectrum, can follow his work and find in it what makes him such a compelling author, then I must ask: What's your major malfunction?
Furthermore, the purpose of Science Fiction is authors writing about how they percieve the future will unfold. Whether that's Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Ringo, Drake, or Kratman, they write fiction. More specifically science fiction. Your reaction that they are "science fantasy" "a gutter" proves how flawed your logic and thought processes are. All I see as I read your commentary is self-righteous prick who can't admit that perhaps they're the one who is wrong, they're the one in need of self-correction. Get over yourself. You sound like nothing so much as a petulant 12 year-old troll, online looking for an excuse to scream: "Pay attention to me, I can string big words together! If you don't, I'll go WAAAAAH!"
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