Boomsticks: Three days ago I didn't know they existed...

...now I gottagottagottahaveone.

(It'd look so cool next to my Radom.)

Books: What a fascinating modern age we live in...

I take back everything bad I've ever said about Amazon.com.

Ten minutes ago I was sitting on the porch, turning the last page (literally) of the book I was reading and wondering what I was going to do to keep myself amused for the rest of the day, when a DHL van pulled into the driveway. The driver hopped out and asked "Tamara?"

"Yo." I raised my hand.

"Package from Amazon."

What absolutely perfect timing!

Blasphemously happy.

I probably shouldn't admit this, because it will cost me what little conservative street cred I have, but I was smiling when I saw that Santorum (Wahaabist- PA) got stomped. He's a microcosm of all that's wrong with the GOP. Bigger government? Not a problem, as long as that bigger government is used to do important big government things, like give state-mandated marriage counseling to divorcing couples. Tax reform? Economic policy? None of that's as important as getting Intelligent Design on the curriculum...

For all I know, the new guy will shed his "Moderate Democrat" image thirty seconds after getting sworn in, and I know I'll probably find plenty of reasons to loathe him, too, but at least he hasn't told me to shut up and get back in the kitchen.

"Speaker Pelosi"

Looks like the Dems have locked up the House. Not like nobody saw this coming.

It's funny, because I'm reading The Elephant In The Room right now: If anybody thinks that this is the almost inevitable end result of the complete collapse of the "Republican Revolution" of '94, Iraq or no Iraq, raise your hands. Yeah, me too. Twelve years of GOP control of Congress and not a thing to show for it but some tax cuts and a spot of welfare reform, and a Democrat president got all the credit for the latter. Enjoy the fruits of alienating your base, RINOs.

On further rumination: I've worked in a gun store during the passage of the '94 Assault Weapons Ban, the eve of Y2K, and 9/11, so I'm ready. Coal Creek employees new to this gig, on the other hand, are probably in for a bit of a shock, because I'm predicting a Christmas season filled with a spectacular amount of panic buying. Get those .50 Cals and Evil Black Rifles now, kiddies. While you still can...

Eighty-nine years ago today...

...famous taxidermy experiment V.I. Lenin got uppity in Petrograd.

Boomsticks: Love is blind.

*Ring!* *Ring!*

"Coal Creek Armory, Tamara speaking. May I help you?"

"Yeah, do you got any Blastomatic 2000's?"

"No sir, I don't have any Blastomatics in stock at all."

"You expecting any in?"

"I'll happily special order you one, but I don't currently stock any Blastomatics. You can read into that what you will."

"You just hate Blastomatics, don't you?" *Click!*

Truthfully, I don't think I "hate" any brand of guns. There are plenty out there that don't do a thing for me, and that I wouldn't buy for myself, but that's because I know what I like and spend my limited personal money on those guns. If I ordered inventory based on what I like, the store would contain nothing but old S&W revolvers, antique military rifles, and $1,000+ custom 1911's. And we'd have one customer: Me.

Because I am in the business of selling guns, however, I have to stock what all kinds of people like. Because showcase space and dollars are finite, I won't be stocking everything. Because our business model is based on happy repeat customers coming into the store and giving us their money over and over again, I sometimes make stocking decisions that raise the hackles of the brand loyal.

I'll call a spade a spade: The "Blastomatic" from the initial phone conversation was Taurus. For about an eight month stretch, I didn't stock in any new Taurus handguns. This isn't because I "hate" them; I don't have the energy or the inclination to "hate" a gun brand. This isn't because I have no experience with them: I've owned several Taurus handguns myself in the past and had satisfying ownership experiences with each of them. More importantly, I'd sold hundreds and hundreds of them over the previous decade, and they seemed to offer good value for the money to the customers. Then, in early '05 something happened. Maybe it was a statistical fluke, but I wound up sending more Taurus handguns back for warranty work right out of the box in a three or four month stretch than I had in the past several years combined:

1) We ordered 25 stainless Model 85's to sell as part of a "CCW Package", with a certificate for our CCW course, eyes, ears, and a box of ammo included. Of those guns, six wound up having to go back to Taurus, for problems as diverse as a hand too short to rotate the cylinder, a cylinder stop bolt that didn't, and congenital absence of a single action sear.

2) We never stocked the 24/7, but we transferred three through the shop. All three went back to Taurus for warranty work.

3) Of the 8 Taurus Model 94's that have passed through my logbook since X-mas '04, two have been shipped back to Miami. One of them took two trips.

4) We sold five Taurus Model 905 IB's in the same period. All but one have gone back to the factory. One had so much endshake right out of the box that it wouldn't reliably light off primers. It went back to Taurus for a fixin'. They didn't. Customer pissed. We shipped it back again with a note saying "Please stretch crane this time!"

Now, there are some guns by the company that I expect problems from (the non-"Pro" Millenniums have had a pretty abysmal track record over the years, for instance,) but the small-frame revolvers are their bread-and-butter guns; the bugs in that design were worked out when dinosaurs roamed the earth. So I reluctantly decided to hold off on stocking new Taurus handguns even though they had once been a great profit center for me, because I didn't want to use my customers as guinea pigs for the company's newly-spotty QC.

Bring this up on an internet gunboard, and you're a hater. Joe Smith has had three Taurus pistols and they're all great and how dare you insult his guns! You're just a snob! Stupid gun store clerks don't know anything!

It gets hard to take, which is why I just don't bother anymore.

As a postscript, I'm a big believer in time and tide changing all things. Back in July, I experimentally started stocking a few Taurus small-frame revolvers back in. Five or six Model 85's and a Model 94 or two later, there haven't been any complaints. Maybe things are shaping up for Taurus. We'll see...

Sorry 'bout that...

Spent my morning revamping my old post on the Webley auto over at the other blog and, whoa! Look at the time! No bloggy for you today.

I do have a couple of planned rants, though:

1) The idiocy of bull-headed brand loyalty (and its equally idiotic cousin, brand hatred) that runs rampant in the intarw3b gun world.

2) At the risk of sounding like some kind of harpy, why I have finally been convinced that intarw3b boards are overrun by guys who are so sexist that they don't even realize it, any more than a fish realizes it's wet.

Anyhow, I'll try and remember to pour the hate-orade when I get home tonight. :)

Random 'net coolness:

1.5V battery made with common kitchen items and pocket detritus.

MacGyver, eat your heart out!


(H/T to Jeff the Baptist.)

Books: Licensed to Kill

So my trip to Borders on Friday netted me a couple of good scores, including the one I'm currently reading, Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror. It's a pretty engrossing book. I'm ten chapters in, and thus far the author has been even-handed and objective. He has obviously spent plenty of time on his research, both stateside and overseas, and has managed to deliver details on everything from his experiences riding along with the Blackwater Mamba Team on its daily runs down "IED Alley" ("The Most Dangerous Road In The World") to and from Baghdad International Airport to the finer points of the machinations behind the contracting process and the bureaucracy surrounding it.

Two thumbs up. Get you a copy today.

Looks like he'll swing.

Nothing like opening CNN.com first thing in the morning to see the following headline:

"Murdering bastard to dance at end of rope!"

Kinda sets a cheery tone for the rest of the day. :)

Politics: The folly of excluding the middle...

As things wrap up towards election day, both parties have pretty much solidified on their core issues: The GOP is featuring the "Terrorists are bad, h'mkay?" and "Speaker Pelosi!!!!!!" planks in its platform, while Democrats seem to be running the same old "Bush = Hitler" campaign from last election cycle.

While both the Democrats and Republicans have candidates out there playing to the nut-fudge fringe elements of their respective parties, it remains to be seen which way the real swing voters in America are going to go. You know the type: Unashamedly patriotic; loves Jesus in a public, but vague and non-denominational sort of way; afraid of gay cooties, but uncomfortable with blatant bigotry; moderately hawkish on foreign policy, but with a short attention sp... hey, are you done in Iraq yet? 'Cause that Kim guy with the missiles is scaring me; economically xenophobic and protectionist; distrusts big business and hates the rich.

These are the people who got Carter elected because he loved Jesus, and then went and voted for Reagan because Carter was wimpy, and possibly a com-symp. In most parts of the country they've remained with the Republicans ever since Reagan, because their social conservatism has thus far outweighed their populist economic views. (You'll note that Clinton won the first time 'round by playing the role of a centrist-to-moderately-conservative Southern Democrat.) I tend to think that as long as the Dems play too far to the left, these voters are going to stay with the GOP, however reluctantly. Some campaigns, like Harold Ford's, would indicate that there are Democrats who agree with that. The Senate race in Tennessee has mostly been an argument about who has a stronger tie to God, mom, and apple pie, and who hates terrorists more.

We'll see...

Books: Not that I'm bitter, or anything...

Since I'm a member of Amazon's "Hey, you spend way too much money with us, so here's some free shipping" club, I usually spend Wednesday night nosing around for reading material for my day off. Pick out a book or two, select Next Day Air for $3.99/item, and hey! Presto! My leisure reading shows up on Friday as though by magic.

So, there it is, Wednesday night. I select The Elephant In The Room and Antique Firearms Disassembly/Reassembly, and note that both contain the reassuring green print stating "Order within the next ten hours and receive your order on Friday, November 3rd!"

I not only ordered within the next ten hours, I ordered within the next ten minutes.

According to order tracking, guess what's showing up on frickin' Monday?

Bastiges.

Now I have to stop at a book store on the way to lunch; my brain is growling louder than my tummy...

Proof that I don't understand economics.

Here's the two headlines from CNN.com's "Business" section this morning:

• Unemployment hits 5-year low
• Stocks struggle on jobs report

So, apparently the highest employment rate in five years is dismaying investors? Please explain, using words of three syllables or less. Thank you.

=100,000,000

According to Netcraft, the Intarw3b now contains:


40,000,000 porno sites

30,000,000 virtual poker sites

10,000,000 lonely singles match-up sites

6,000,000 web pages for real-estate agents, used car dealers, hair salons, and tarot readers

5,000,000 adolescents lying about their age, attractiveness, or gender on MySpace

4,000,000 blogs and/or livejournals

4,000,000 dormant vanity homepages that haven't been updated in six years

999,995 real corporate websites and news media pages

eBay

Amazon

YouTube

The Onion

and some research place in Switzerland.

Impulse buy.

I just had to have this shirt.

For some reason, this just kicks my gigglebox over...

The other night, we had one of those gems of a customer one must occasionally suffer through in Retailville. When Thing One dropped by the shop later that evening, I tried to describe the guy to him thusly:

Me: "Man, you should have seen this dude. He was an okay guy, I guess, utbay otnay ootay ightbray, if you know what I mean."

Thing One: "Huh?"

Me:

"Igpay Atinlay, othermay uckerfay! Ooday ooyay eakspay itay?"

As an aside...

The Radom post that went up over at the other blog today marks my new goal of trying to expand the old "From The Vault" posts that I republish over there with more technical and collector/market value info, vis a vis their original incarnations here at VFTP. I'll probably go back and edit/expand the others as time permits over the next couple of days.

"Might as well face it, your love's an addict."

PDB has an excellent post up on the trials and tribulations that addicts can cause those around them. Sometimes "Get out now!" is the hardest advice to take. The dynamics perfectly parallel those who stay in physically abusive relationships, and the prognosis is the same: Nothing about that person will change as long as you are there to enable them.

Maybe if I make this statement public...

...I'll stick to it.

"I, Tamara, do solemnly swear that I will spend my paycheck wisely on BMW brake rotors, rather than blowing it on frivolous things like antique rifles, gourmet beer, and books."

...but I've gotten so good at avoiding using the brakes (the front rotors are so warped they probably look like Ruffles potato chips) unless absolutely necessary the last couple months. A spin down Mourfield the other day was such a symphony of downshifts and engine-braking that it sounded like the soundtrack from the next release of Gran Turismo.

I could get Brembo OEM replacements from Tire Rack for $170+shipping, but I have neither the time, talent, tools, or tarmac to swap them out. Hopefully I can weasel an appointment at Gillespie this Friday... (That's a VFTP endorsement of Gillespie, BTW; I've been using them since I bought the Beemer five years ago, and have had uniformly excellent experiences.)

Boomsticks: My cross to bear...

A guy just came in and sold the shop three Finnish Mosins, all M39's: A '44 VKT, a '42 Civil Guard, and the absolutely cherriest M39 I've ever seen, a '42 Sako that must've been arsenal refurbished after the war, because there's no other way it could look this primo.

I'm sitting here waiting for the computer to print tags for three absolutely tasty old rifles, and here I've already done gone and promised this month's gun money to someone else...

*Grumble*