This man obviously has an internet connection.

If somebody else bought a different gun than you, it might mean that you bought the wrong one. But you wouldn't waste your hard-earned cash on the wrong gun, so that obviously means that the other guy bought the wrong one. And is a (stuck-up gun snob/idiot cheapskate), to boot!

In a discussion elsewhere, someone pointed out that it was the same on camera forums and bicycle forums and...

Think about it: Joe Schmoe wants to get a bicycle. He does his research, determines how much he can afford, heads down to the bike shop, chats with the sales clerk, sits on a few bikes... and then invests $800+ dollars of his identity into a chunk of aluminum, steel, and rubber.

So when he gets on the bike forum and someone tells him his Crankrailleur 2000 is garbage and he should have bought a ShockStumper 750, what's he supposed to think?

• He was too dumb to do his research right?


• He's not rich enough to buy a decent enough bike to get into the club?


• He was so gullible that he let the salesman talk him into a bad purchase?


• The other guys on this forum are just stupid snobs who don't know a good bike when they see one and spent too much on their worthless crap?

When people are arguing guns, it's not the guns that they're defending, but their own self-worth as demonstrated through the quality of the decisions that they've made.

(h/t to ToddG)

Tab Clearing...

• Oh. Emm. Gee. I have seen my dream house. Thanks to AngelaG.


• So I'm watching the Dallas tornado footage in slack-jawed amazement at the sight of semi-trailers getting blown around like leaves and then it hits me: "Holy crap, that was shot from a helicopter!" That dude was earning his danger pay. (EDIT: In comments, Zendo Deb points out that it's likely from a tower cam.)(EDIT AGAIN: Nope. It's a crazy pilot, alright.)
  


• I need to get one of those special face colanders for girls.

I have apparently been assimilated.

The other morning, one of the talking heads on the television set referred to 96th Street in Indianapolis as the "Near North Side".

Like a true Broad Riparian, I blurted "'Near North Side'? 96th street is 'way out in the country. Heck, 96th Street is, like, halfway to Fort Wayne!"*

Anything north of 86th Street is "Northern Indiana" and anything south of 38th Street is "Southern Indiana".
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*96th Street roughly parallels the northern leg of Indianapolis's perimeter highway, I-465, and is the boundary between Indy proper and the first 'burb to the north, Carmel.

Off the shelf...

I finished rereading The Hunger Games trilogy preparatory to maybe catching the flick at a matinee this week sometime. The middle book is a little weak, relative to the other two, but I'd forgotten what a satisfying ending Mockingjay had. Of course, given the setting of the books, I wasn't demanding "and they all lived happily ever after." I was willing to settle for "and they all lived."

Now I'm learning new things, like about the geodetic survey of India in The Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India Was Mapped and Everest Was Named. This was, like, a moon shot undertaking in the early 19th Century, and it has malaria and tigers and monsoons and eccentric Britishers and smashing expensive surveying equipment against the domes of old temples to Shiva. Among things I did not know: It's "Eve-rest", not "Ever-est", and "Jungle" is a loan word from Sanskrit that simply means uncultivated or unimproved land. (But now I'm left wondering what the British called jungles before they took over India and stole all their words.)

Things I Don't Get, #352,719

Via Unc comes a link to this post where some mocking is going on of a list of "Britain's most unconventional degrees".

For some reason, everybody is focusing on "Viking Studies" as the target of their derision. Me, I’m trying to figure out what’s so kooky about a specialized history degree. I mean “history” is a pretty broad major, and most folks do tend to focus on one period or culture. Considering the impact of the Viking era in England, I’d be kinda shocked if they didn’t have some strong programs covering it in their universities.

Betcha you can major in Plains Indian (or bison-following Casino-Owning American, as I believe is currently correct,) cultural studies at Nebraska. Granted, unless you plan to be a history teacher, a history degree of any type is not the most remunerative, but the world needs historians and archaeologists and history teachers just like it needs derivatives traders and assistant marketing managers and the third assistant headlight bezel engineer at Buick.

What concerns me more is that a British paper, specifically the "Torygraph", finds degrees in "Enterprise and Entrepreneurship" and "Estate Agency" (that's "Real Estate Sales" in English) to be as risible as bachelor's programs in "Adventure Media" and "Bon Jovi Studies".

Tab Clearing...

• As municipal budgets shrink, I would not be surprised to see downsized police departments focus on "guarding the flagpole" and more revenue-positive law enforcement (crimes involving fines and/or asset forfeiture.) In that environment, Mall Ninja-ing will be a growth industry.


• Pursuing a nuclear bomb to threaten the world? Check. Armies of female ninjas? Check. Ahmadinejad is only a secret island volcano fortress and a white Persian cat away from being a Bond villain, and since he lives in Persia, the cat shouldn't be a problem.


• "I'll take 'Cool Blog Titles' for $500, Alex."

A request:

Can we retire the term "execution-style" from the lexicon in regard to non-state-sanctioned murder?

When I hear "the murder victims were killed execution-style", it takes me a second to realize that the reporter didn't mean they were strapped to a gurney with an IV in their arm or done up extra crispy in an electric chair, but rather that they were lined up against a wall blindfolded and given a last cigarette. (Actually, I don't think they give them real cigarettes anymore, because those things cause cancer...)

For it to be "execution-style", there should at least be an attempt to make a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham of justice, like a signed confession or a kangaroo court, otherwise it's just plain ol' murder.

Watch a pro at work:

Watch Corrine start out at Trayvon Martin, segue smoothly through being caught out in a bald-faced lie on camera, and wind up blaming dead kids on Bush's tax cuts for the rich. Unbelievable.

Part of being a party politician is being able to reflexively tie any random question to partisan politics faster than your eyes can focus.

Tab Clearing...

• Apparently, if you're under the age of 25 and an SF film buff with absolutely no knowledge of history, the modern world as we know it sprang fully formed from the forehead of Luc Besson in 1997.


• Coolest. Science Fair Project. Ever.


• ...and on that day, he will be named the Lord of the Four Winds and Master of the Elements, and will be given the remote control panel for his father's giant robot armies. North Korea may need to import absolutely everything else, but their reserves of hyperboleum appear to be well-nigh infinite.

Overheard in the Hallway:

Bobbi is doing her usual free-association monologue from the shower. I am walking past the bathroom door on the way to a coffee refill.

RX: (Tells joke.)

Me: "..."

RX: "I guess it wasn't funny."

Me: "I'm laughing on the inside."

RX: "No you're not. I just wanted to see how it played out loud."

Me: "You should put it on the internet anyway. Just because I didn't think it was funny doesn't mean nobody else will."

RX: "You didn't think it was funny. I didn't think it was funny, either..." *pause* "I don't get it; government-approved torture is usually good for a laugh."

Clutch the pearls!

I'd like to think that somewhere in Pittsfield, New Hamster, an iPad screen was just covered in a fine mist of whole wheat bagel, organic soy cream cheese, and half-caff latte.
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All Trayvon, All The Time

Over at P-F.com, a 30-year LE firearms instructor made a good post, but I couldn't help but notice that even he had internalized the whole "the dispatcher TOLD Zimmerman not to follow" meme, which is dismaying.

The dispatcher never "told him to back off and let the cops handle it"; that is entirely a construct of the media, based on the brief snippet of the 911 tape where the dispatcher asked Zimmerman if he was following Martin. When Zimmerman answered in the affirmative, the dispatcher said "we don't need you to do that."

That's a pretty ambiguous line. I've used it in situations ranging from "I'd really rather you didn't do that" to "I wish you would do that, but I don't want to be so forward as to straight-up ask you to." From that thin thread, the media has spun the legend of the dispatcher "ordering" Zimmerman not to follow, and Zimmerman "disobeying", and the legend has obviously stuck.

That legend was repeated by the pastor in Indianapolis who marched his congregation into the middle of the street for thirty minutes yesterday, blocking Naptown traffic in an attempt to get justice for Trayvon. I'm not sure who he thought might be driving around Indy on Palm Sunday with some pull in the Florida State Attorney's office, or how blocking their drive might get them to see things his way, but then a lot of things people do leave me baffled.

One of those baffling things is how any incident where the shootee is of a darker hue than the shooter is going to be cast in a Trayvon light now, such as the recent incident in Pasadena, which is just like the Trayvon Martin case, except for the fact that the dead guy was the suspect in an armed robbery call from a victim who had just falsely claimed that the guys who boosted his stuff had guns in hopes of a speedier response from the po-po.

At this rate, anybody shooting anybody will be painted as another Martin/Zimmerman incident, no matter the level of guilt or innocence of either party, as long as the pigmentation differential slope between the participants runs in the right direction.

Like dookie.

Is how I've felt all day.

I've made a half-dozen runs at the keyboard and gave them all up as a bad thing. Maybe better luck in the AM. :(

Sunday morning stuff...

The dream about escaping from the subterranean Nazi prison camp in the Himalayas with Iman's character from Star Trek VI as a guide was really cool up until the part where the tunnel came to an end at an opening over a precipitous drop that would make Jeb Corliss gulp in discomfort, straight down a cliff face to a rocky river partially hidden by clouds. Apparently we were expected to knot a rope from discarded sandwich baggies, secure it to a rusty bolt in the passage floor, and then lower ourselves about twelve feet to another cave mouth below, which opened onto a finished, florescent-lit tunnel with a tiled floor like on the cover of the Moby album, Destroyed.

Oh, and the sound of approaching guards in the distance meant that an OSHA-approved prison-escape climbing rope was not going to be cobbled together out of materials at hand. I was seriously debating which was worse: Getting caught by the Nazis or lowering myself over the void for twelve feet...

Lying in bed this morning, half-awake, I was suddenly gripped with a nagging concern over how to denote the title of a blog in writing? What does the style guide say? I haven't checked yet, but are we supposed to italicize them, like an album or periodical (Instapundit, National Review,) or do we put them in quotes, like a song or essay ("The Daily Kos", "The Uplifters Try It Again")?

The dream, incidentally, was no doubt triggered by the sighting of a 50 Reichspfennig Lagergeld bill from the Orianenburg concentration camp while at the antique mall. I have no idea how Iman or the Himalayas got in there.

Also while at the mall, I picked up a 500,000 Reichsmark note from 1923, when Germany tried to print their way out of their war debt. It was printed in May of '23 and was still a pretty big bill when it came off the press, but by July of the same year, just two months later, you could use it to make small change if someone gave you a 50,000,000 Reichsmark bill for their bar tab. I figured it was time to get into practice handling bills with lots of zeros, because this stuff tends to come on fast. He that hath ears, let him hear.

These are the thoughts that float through my pre-dawn mind.

Overheard in the Parking Lot at the Columbus Hamfest:

Me: "Make sure when we stop at the Antiques Mall on the way back that you lock the car, or someone will put more old radio crap in the back seat while we're in there."

Minitru.

Brian J. Noggle offers a rumination on The Official Narrative.

Orwellian, indeed.
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Overheard in the Office:

RX: "I have an idea for curbing the production of paper money: Every bill must be printed with ink containing a certain legally-prescribed percentage of the President's blood."

Me: "Or some equally-appropriate official... That's brilliant!"

RX: "'I don't think we can print more; it's bleeding me dry!'"

Me: "'Beltway insiders warn of another impending bout of inflation, citing Timothy Geithner's drawn and pale appearance at a recent press conference.'"

This legislation would have bonus side-effects, too, by requiring every dollar to actually exist as a paper entity someplace:

1) Another TARP couldn't happen even if you put the president, his cabinet, Congress, and the entire federal bureaucracy above GS-11 on blood expanders because there aren't that many trees or printing presses.

2) Tying the value of the dollar to something as worthless and ephemeral as wood pulp would make it harder money than anything we've seen in this country in the last forty years.

Quick! To the Wikipedia!

So I killed two birds with one stone the other day.

The chimenea on the back patio had suffered enough freeze/thaw cycles that the spalling on the bottom had gone all the way through.

At the same time, there was a persistent bit of bare dirt in the southeast corner of the privacy fence that is obviously not getting enough sunlight for grass.

A plan is hatched!

I schlepped the chimenea over and plopped it on the ground, nestled in the corner. I will now fill it with potting soil and try to encourage something to grow out of it.

I need to find a subspecies of Hygrangeum* that is shade-tolerant and likes to spread all vine-like along the ground, but won't try and climb the fence and vault into the neighbor's yard like the mutated tendrils from a bad Fifties SF flick in an attempt to strangle their little yappy dog. (Although if it could do that all subtle-like and then vault back into our yard without leaving evidence, I'd take that as a plus.)
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*If you don't mow it, can't eat it, and can't stand in its shade, it's a Hygrangeum.

Wow, what a difference twenty-odd years makes.

Wandering the back corridors of YouTube, I ran across this fan video tribute to the Colonial Marines.

It's been years since I've watched Aliens, probably at least since '03 or '04, and I don't remember the gun handling and tactics stuff being that bad. I mean, yeah, I remember that there was a lot of shooting from the hip, but seriously, seeing the footage again last night of the marines unassing the APC and moving up to the doorway of the complex had me laughing out loud with all the skipping and pirouetting up to the abandoned complex, muzzles pointing every which way, and then just standing in the middle of the doorway when it opened, (the area known as the "fatal funnel") pointing their weapons menacingly from the hip like a Tropic Thunder movie poster.

In the intervening years, it's become the norm for movies to retain consultants to try and add verisimilitude, to the point that the only place you see the old traditions of Hollywood gun-handling are in comedies deliberately parodying the skipping-and-pirouetting-and-standing-in-the-open-spraying-from-the-hip traditions of Hollywood Tactical Movement, and seeing it in Aliens felt awkward for me. The movie has such a place in my memory that suddenly seeing the string holding up the rocket or the zipper on the back of the Godzilla suit was both funny and kinda sad at the the same time.

In fact, I'd wager that, given the way Hollywood influences the evolution of pop culture, Hollywood Tactical Movement may soon be gone from our cultural DNA. Hand some random 21-year-old waiting-tables-until-his-big-break actor an airsoft M16 and tell him "Act like some special operations dude going down a hallway and through a door," and he'll do it differently if he's grown up watching Black Hawk Down and 24 than if he'd grown up watching Rambo and The A-Team.

Iron sights like it's 1985 up in this place or something.

EDIT 2022: In 2017 I revisited the M41 pulse rifle in a piece for Breach, Bang, Clear.

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...and now it's time for the main event.

2.5 hours in the dentist's chair today, and that wraps everything up except for the main event: The whole root canal/crown thing. I am told that, now that I have reached the zenlike state of being able to fall asleep while they're drilling my teeth, the root canals should be a breeze. We'll see.

Now for an aspirin and some saganaki & a gyro salad; my special treat for being good and not squirming around too much in the chair.