Blog Stuff: Additions to the blogroll...

All of me here at VFTP Command Central would like to welcome two new additions to the blogroll. First up would be my friend Matt G at his online digs, Better And Better. I've been knowing Matt for better than half a decade through various online bulletin boards, and have even been fortunate enough to have gone deer hunting with him. (You'll note I said hunting and not shooting, though it weren't for lack of "want to".) He's a thoughtful and intelligent guy; I think you'll enjoy his stuff.

Also freshly added is the famous Bruce of mAss Backwards. I've only recently taken to reading him on anything like a regular basis, but the amazing tenacity of this guy fighting the good fight trapped behind the lines in Kennedy Country deserves at least a tip of the hat, if not an airdrop of supplies.

Boomsticks: Gratuitous Gun Pr0n No. 37

Springfield Armory V10 Ultra Compact and Microtech Lightfoot LCC/DA.

V10 with Microtech Dragonfly.

The pistol sports a Wilson grip safety, Novak sights, a long STI trigger, and Navidrex contoured ebony grips. All custom work done by Shannon Jennings.

Politics: "Thanks, but we'd rather freeze in the dark."

Several small Alaskan fishing villages have let Venezuela's tinhorn dictator know that, while they might feel that the current US president may be unlikely to wind up on Mount Rushmore, it's really none of Chavez's business, and that they haven't really appreciated his recent anti-Uncle Sam theatrics. In response to the Che Guevara-wannabe's grandstanding offer to help them with charity heating oil, they've told him to stick his oil where the sun doesn't shine, and apply a match.

Well, it's official: Dr. Evil has the bomb...

Well, a bomb, at least.

Actually, he may not even have that, since he just set it off, but he could make more if he wanted. And don't you forget it.

China described the test as "brazen", which might qualify as the understatement of the year. Unwilling to be outdone in Strategic Intercontinental Understatements, the US said that an NK nuke test would be a "provocative act". Off the record, a US DoD source said "We've been telling you and telling you, so don't even pretend to act surprised."

Publically, the South Korean president wanted the world to know that the ROK would "react sternly and calmly". Privately, I doubt he was all that calm.

More as the story develops...

Taxonomy of Modern Dangers: Deception and Adaptation.

One day Bob the Gunsmith was getting ready to hike across the vacant lot to the local truck stop for comestibles and combustibles.

Ever concerned about preparedness in the face of Modern Dangers, I asked him "What will you do if you're walking across the field there, and you're suddenly surrounded by a gang of migratory hippies?"

Without missing a beat in the face of such a non-sequiturish inquiry, he replied "I'd tell them I have beads to trade for stuff, and befriend them."

"But what if, while you were talking to the hippies, a troop of ninjas showed up and, seeing you consorting with their mortal foes, took you for one of them when they attacked?"

"I'd kill the hippies and explain to the ninjas that it was all a clever ruse to gain the hippies' trust."

Thinking on your feet: How to survive Modern Dangers.

Today in history:

135 years ago
When we were all in bed
Old Mrs. Leary
Lit a lantern in the shed
When the cow kicked it over
She winked her eye and said
"There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight."

Bachelorette chow. Now with flavor!

Living the single lifestyle as long as I have, I've never been much into cooking. Long hours and limited free time to read and whatnot mean that I'm fairly happy with my current limited kitchen setup in my little lakefront cottage, which consists of a refrigerator/freezer, toaster oven, and microwave. (Big plans are afoot to add a single burner eye, greatly broadening my culinary horizons.)

Restaurants have satisfied my needs for a properly balanced diet, allowing me to supplement my microwaved fare with products from the other major food groups, including the steak group, the reuben group, the BBQ rib group, and the philly-hold-the-peppers-and-mushrooms group.

I especially love reubens, so y'all please don't laugh at this: I was at the store picking up ingredients for my two favorite homemade sandwiches (roast beef, swiss, & horseradish on rye, and prosciutto, provolone, & honey mustard on ditto,) when I noticed (duh!) that you can buy sauerkraut! That's right: big ol' glass jars of imported kraut! And there was rye bread already in my shopping cart! And dressings were right down the same aisle! And the deli has corned beef!

I don't have to wait for the corner delicatessen to open to get a reuben, I could make one right at home! Oh... my... gawd! (Other shoppers were somewhat distracted by my sudden squeal of delight.)

Makes me sound a little dense, doesn't it?

Anyhow, they turned out delicious and I am ever so proud of myself. Yum.

More Pakistani blues...

I've mentioned India's escalating feud with Pakistan, and the likelihood of it breaking out into a shooting war, before; I've also mentioned that the fact that NATO has troops in Afghanistan on Pakistan's northern border changes the dynamic considerably from earlier Indo-Pakistani flareups.

Apparently, NATO unit commanders in-theater agree.

Musharraf has a tiger by the tail, only nominally in charge of a military and national intelligence service riddled with Taliban and Al Qaeda sympathizers, at the helm of a nation ready to topple to a fundamentalist Islamist revolution at any time.

Will NATO play hardball? Will India's grievances trigger another shooting war? Will Iran and longtime ally-of-convenience China stand by if that happens?

Tune in next episode and find out.

(H/T to Never Yet Melted.)

From the Vault: The Last Horse Pistol.

While it's common to imagine that cavalry went the way of the Eohippus some time in the muddy Spring of 1915, it just isn't true. Most all of the major military powers retained cavalry formations into the WWII years. Russia and Japan both made extensive use of mounted troops, and the last United States Army cavalry charge was made in January 1942 in the Phillipines by three platoons of the 26th Cavalry.

Since the days of the Sixteenth Century caracole, the pistol has been the traditional sidearm of the mounted soldier, and pistols designed as such are frequently easy to tell from their "badge-of-rank" kin. As far back as the days of the percussion revolver, the Colt Navy had a .36" bore, while the Colt Army, a cavalryman's weapon and expected to be able to kill a horse, was a .44.

ABOVE: ViS wz.35 Radom, photo by Oleg Volk

Poland's cavalry had long been emulated in Europe, and as the newly-reconstituted nation built up an army after WWI, they searched for a domestically produced sidearm to equip their cavalry troopers. In 1935 a design by Wilniewczyc and Skrzypinski was settled on and, dubbed the ViS wz.35, was adopted by the Army that year. It was made at the Radom plant with the assistance of Fabrique National engineers working under contract, and offered an interesting blend of familiar Colt/Browning features with some new touches.

LEFT: Radom disassembled, showing its Browning heritage.
Photo by Oleg Volk

The trigger was a sliding affair, similar to that used on many Browning designs, and the grip safety would be familiar to any user of Colt pistols. The gun was a short-recoil-operated, tilting barrel 9mm, with a single column magazine. It had a butt slotted to accept a shoulder stock, and was provided with a decocker so that the trooper could more safely return it to his holster with one hand than if he was trying to control the fall of the hammer with his thumb while astride a possibly skittish mount.


RIGHT: "S"-rune on barrel lug, indicating contract manufacture for Waffen SS, most likely by inmates at Mauthausen.
Photo by Oleg Volk.





After Poland was overrun by the German and Soviet invasion of 1939, the Radom plant fell in the German -occupied half of the country and the Poles were soon forced to churn out arms for their conquerors. The wz.35 was a common issue weapon to the Waffen SS, and as that force grew, the pistol was simplified in manufacture so as to keep up with demand. Polished bluing was replaced by a brushed finish that got rougher as the war went on; the slot for the shoulder stock disappeared; finally the frame-mounted takedown catch was deleted. Late-war guns produced by Steyr using slave labor are wretched indeed, with extremely coarse finishes and crude wooden slabs for grips.

In 1945 the Radom plant was destroyed by the invading Russians; it was a sad ending for the last horse pistol.

Tennessee doctor wins Ig Nobel prize...

...for nineteen year-old paper on "Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage".

He claims that, being a serious heavy hitter in the cardiac research field now, this sudden attention being paid to a radical treatment he tried some two decades ago is a little embarassing.

Geez, stick your finger up someone's poop chute, write a paper about the experience, and folks just never let you forget about it...

Blog Stuff: Cool!

Apparently if you sit down at your PC in Uzunite, Bulgaria, go to Google.bg, and type in "blind man with a gun", you're directed here.

I don't know if it's what you were looking for, friend, but I hope it was at least amusing. :)

Blog Stuff: Adorable kid pics.

Les Jones has pics up of Katie's second birthday shindig.

This one is especially cute. :)


(If you tell anyone I've been cooing all maternally over cute kid pictures, I'll break your kneecaps.)

It's the end of the world as we know it...

...and I feel fine.

Depending on where you stand politically, I'm either an unreconstructed paleoconservative or a bloody-minded anarchist, both of which supposedly subscribe to the Doomsday Times, but I just can't buy into this malaise.

Here's the human race at the pinnacle of its achievement, mechanisms in place to deliver unprecedented prosperity to any who want it, ready to burst from the egg of its home planet, and still there are those who would feel uncomfortable without their homey little Flagellant nirvana of doom and gloom. Piss on them. Let them go have their snit in a corner. If they want to live in some medieval torture chamber of a world, I have no right to tell them they shouldn't, but they need to go do it privately in a closet someplace, okay? We're busy with the future over here.

Politics: Apparently that yankee busybody...

...thinks that anybody outside the Five Boroughs gives a flying fig about what he has to say.

Hey! Mikey Bloomberg! I know you'll find this hard to believe, but even down here in hayseed Knoxville we have our very own politicians to pester us. We didn't vote for you; you aren't our mayor, so shut up and go pester some Manhattanites.

Quote of the Day:

Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it -Niels Bohr

Somewhere on the back burner of my laptop's hard drive is a science fiction story I was working on where interstellar radios based on the EPR paradox were a major plot device. Now I want to go drag it out and type some more...

Blog Stuff: Today's Googlery...

From Lambeth, London: "Book are window on the past"

They can be, although those that are a window on the future tend to be more entertaining, on the whole.


From Mesa, Arizona: "can i keep a loaded gun in my car"

In Arizona? Probably. (...and just because you're home alone at quarter to one in the morning doesn't mean the shift key is optional, Sparky. Proper capitalization and punctuation make the Grammar Demons happy, and keep them from eating your spleen.)


From El Paso, Texas: "most expensive m1911 handgun"

The one with a botched trigger job that suffers a mechanical failure and puts a slug through the radiator of your neighbor's SL55 AMG.

Blog Stuff: 42%

According to the "Calculate Risk" tab at the World War Z site, that's my chance of surviving Zombie Apocalypse.

Obviously I need more ammo. Thank Wotan we got more case lots of Wolf and S&B in at work...

Dear Mr. Ahmadinejad: Thanks, but no thanks.

Dear Sir,

I appreciate your cordial invitation to spend my vacation in sunny Iran, touring your nuclear facilities to see for myself that they are being used for peaceful purposes, but I am afraid I must decline your generous offer on three counts.

First, I understand your fingerprinting requirement is a sort of tit-for-tat for our government's insistence on fingerprinting your citizens when they visit our country. I recognize why you're doing it, but it's still a little creepy. I don't like it from my own government, much less from a government that has a Bureau of Public Beheadings. Also, in fairness, how many Americans have wandered into your public spaces wearing Semtex skivvies and blown themselves to Pat Robertson in the belief that it will make them a martyr and earn them 72 fixed rate mortgages and a Porsche Boxster in some secular Western afterlife?

Secondly, while I consider myself fairly bright, I'm not likely to be headhunted by Raytheon to design the next generation of nukyular warheads, if you know what I mean. Those could be fuel rods for a civilian reactor, warhead parts, or bits of a moon rocket you're showing me, and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference, so my eyewitness testimony is unlikely to do you any good in the court of public opinion.

Lastly, and please don't take this the wrong way, but I doubt my insurance underwriters would take anything but a dim view of me lollygagging around ground zero your peaceful nuclear research facilities. It'd kinda give me the creeping willies, too, because I'd feel like I had a JDAM targeted at my noggin. Also, while Persian hospitality is legendary, you have to admit that your countrymen have shown a willingness to take mine hostage before and, frankly, I don't look all that hot in a blindfold.

So, I appreciate your offer, but it looks like I'll be skipping the tour of Natanz, and going to Dollywood as originally planned, instead.

Sincerely,

Tamara K.

From the department of Obvious Statements:

Lou Dobbs would like you to know that some people are rich, while others... well... aren't.

Thanks, Lou. I'dve had a hard time figuring that one out for myself.

As an aside, when somebody says "The gap between the rich and poor is widening!" it just grinds me to a halt. I think it's pretty frickin' obvious that if Jane Doe has $100 and Joe Blow has $0, the gap between them is going to widen unless Jane has a lousy night at Texas Hold 'Em. It's pretty easy for Jane to get more money, but it's fairly hard for Joe to get less.

Ah, well. Such is life in the land where generations have been schooled that life should guarantee equality of outcome, not equality before the law.

I don't know what to think...

Part of me is ready to don a Reynold's Wrap yarmulke. I mean, once is a fluke, twice is coincidence, and three times means enemy action, right? I know it's pure paranoia to think it, but when you read

In the nearby town of Bart, Roberts dropped his own children off at their bus stop.

He said farewell to his wife. "He told her he loved her and that was it," said State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller.

...

At home, Roberts had left "rambling" suicide notes, Miller said. Roberts' wife found one and tried to call him. He returned her call on his cell phone and said he wouldn't be coming home.

Miller said Roberts told his wife that "he was acting out to achieve revenge for something that happened 20 years ago."

you instinctively wonder if he signed off the call by saying "I have miles to go and promises to keep" in a dull monotone.

Of course, such conspiracies are nonsense. The fringe elements that propagate those theories seem to forget that they are accusing the same government that can't get a letter across town in a week (or even keep a presidential blowjob a secret) of orchestrating a machiavellian plot worthy of the next Dan Brown novel. The truth is more depressing yet:

Some people are just broken.

For some twisted reason, a reason we will likely never know, a grown male decided that the solution to his life's problems lay in killing a classroom full of young girls before turning his gun on himself. Just all out of the blue and with no warning whatsoever. How do you stop that?

You can't.

How can you predict, prepare?

This being a "gun blog", I know what you're about to say, and it was my gut reflex, too, but it's wrong. This was Amish country. Even if it was legal for teachers in Pennsylvania to get licensed to carry a firearm, there probably wouldn't have been one there; the Amish aren't notably violent people. For the anti-gun reader ready to pipe up in comments, pipe down. This was a grown man in a classroom of children. Young women. Young women belonging to a placid and non-violent faith. He could have walked into that room with a Louisville Slugger instead of a pistol and had his way just the same. He gave no warning. There was nothing to stop him.

So the end result is that this is something about as predictable and avoidable, terrifying and saddening as a tornado.

And, cold comfort that it is, thankfully a lot rarer.

Blog Stuff: Baby pictures, or: The Intarw3b never forgets.

I have somehow acquired something of a reputation as "Conan the Grammarian" on various internet gun boards, hacking and slashing (or at least "carping and whining") my way through the sometimes excruciatingly horrid grammar and spelling that infests these tubes of internets. A use of the search engine over at TFL the other day, however, turned up something that made me a little queasy. Apparently my writing wasn't always very superb, either; at least it seems to have improved dramatically in the last six years...

Behold:

Bear in mind that the Llama, while extremely 1911like, is not really a 1911 'clone'. If it's parts commonality your looking for the Chuck Daly is the winner there. OTOH, a lot of fairly slick little 1911 raceguns I've seen were built on the lowly Norinco platform. Dirt cheap, 100% parts interchangeability, and if you're going to '86' everything but the frame & slide (and probably machine those) who cares what name started out on it: it'll be an "FVK 1911" when you're done. The best shooting 1911 semi-racegun I ever owned didn't have two peices on it from the same company: Essex frame, Remington Rand slide, & etc. but it was well-massaged and you could wow the locals by chambering & ejecting a mag full of empty cases as fast as you could work the slide- outstanding feed reliability for Brownings venerable warhorse designed for a steady diet of round-nosed hardball.

Ugh.

Ignoring the cheesy use of a line from J. O'Barr's The Crow in the sigline, as well as the bumper sticker-like loyalty to a particular caliber also expressed therein, (and also ignoring things I've learned about firearms in the intervening years, such as the fact that a pistol will chamber an empty case proves only that it will chamber an empty case and speaks nothing of its reliability,) there is a steady stream of errors there that makes me want to [sic] the dogs on that post. So I reckon I will...

Bear in mind that the Llama, while extremely 1911-like, is not really a 1911 'clone'. If it's parts commonality you're looking for, the Chuck Daly is the winner there. OTOH, a lot of fairly slick little 1911 raceguns I've seen were built on the lowly Norinco platform. Dirt cheap, 100% parts interchangeability, and if you're going to '86' everything but the frame & slide (and probably machine those,) who cares what name started out on it? It'll be an "FVK 1911" when you're done. The best shooting 1911 semi-racegun I've ever owned didn't have two pieces on it from the same company: Essex frame, Remington Rand slide, & etc. It was, however, well-massaged and you could wow the locals by chambering & ejecting a mag full of empty cases as fast as you could work the slide: outstanding feed reliability for Browning's venerable warhorse designed for a steady diet of round-nosed hardball.

Also, anybody who uses the word "venerable" in conjunction with the 1911 should be punished. Severely. It was trite and hackneyed six years ago; it's a whippin' offense now.

Today in history: 10/2/1835

The Mexican government's attempt to confiscate cannon from civilians failed miserably at Gonzales, Texas.

Molon Labe, Y'all!

Quote of the Day:

Take care not to feel towards the inhuman as they feel towards men. -The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, VII:65.

Boomsticks: The Sistema Diaries, Volume II.

Sorry about the substandard gun pr0n, but it's oh-dark-thirty hours here and available light photography ain't in the cards today; gotta jet to the shop in a moment to handle some maintenance stuff.

Anyhow, here's how Project Sistema is shaping up:

Take one Sistema...

Parts I already had on hand: Dlask trigger, ParaOrd thumb safety, Wolff 16.5# recoil spring and firing pin spring, cocobolo grip panels from Springfield Pro, grip screws.

Stuff I'd bought: Ed Brown stainless rebuild kit (all pins and small springs), Ed Brown tactical mag catch, Wilson stainless checkered flat mainspring housing (I prefer an Ed Brown or an S&A, but the wholesaler I use was out of the former, and doesn't carry the latter; I'll pick one up later).

Just Added: Cylinder & Slide "Warp Speed" lockwork. Trigger pull is now a crisp 3-3.5 pounds.

I've pretty much reached the limit of what I can do unsupervised, as a lot of the work coming up will involve metalwork. Next up is lowering & flaring the ejection port, some Novak sight cuts, and rounding the tang off the grip safety a la a ParaOrd Tac Four.

Boomsticks: Schooled.

Every time I get to feeling like a big, bad, knowledgeable military surplus rifle collector, two minutes with Google will remind me that I have a long way to go.

I am but an egg.

Politics: A CCTV world.

Big Brother is watching.

This could get ugly.

India claims that the Mumbai bombings were masterminded, planned, and financed by the Pakisani ISI (their monolithic state intelligence service.) The Pakistanis deny everything, of course, but the Indian investigators seemed to have a pretty damning case.

What effect another Indo-Pakistani war would have these days is anybody's guess, now that:
1) Pakistan and India both have limited nuclear capability.
2) NATO has boots on the ground on Pakistan's northern border.
3) The nation-shaped powderkeg of Iran is on Pakistan's western border, and may get all friendly and fellow-Muslim if the balloon goes up.

Interesting times.

Not to pile on Canada or anything...

...but getting all a-twitter about a couple of .30-caliber M240's on some Coast Guard patrol craft doesn't do much for the national image of virility traditionally associated with postcard images of Mounties, lumberjacks, and gap-toothed hockey players.

Trust us: those peashooters aren't on the boats to turn them into "gunboats". They're not there because we're planning on invading Canada (we hope we'll be able to take you quietly someday.) And they're certainly not there because we're all a-feared that the rabid Canuckistanian hordes are about to pour over our northern border, swimming ashore at Lakeshore Drive and terrorizing the shoppers at Water Tower Place.

No, the boats have belt-feds on them because there are things along the shores of the Great Lakes that we'd rather not have blown up, and having a 240 handy could keep them in an un-blowed-up condition.

So calm down and don't panic; we're still your buddies. When we sail the USS Tarawa up the St. Lawrence, then you can panic.

The World Turned Upside Down...

China's building fusion reactors, while New York City's banning trans fats and begging a supermodel to come to her trial.

These backwards nations are too busy with their arcane laws and too worried about pleasing their aristocrat class to make any headway in the serious areas of science or engineering. Such topics are too dull for the flighty natives.

Sigh.

Blog Stuff: I was afraid of this...

(H/T to Jeff the Baptist.)

From the Vault: Revolutionary rotary...

Germany had barely begun issuing the new Gewehr 88 to its troops when it found itself dragged into a courtroom by Osterreichische Waffenfabrik-Gesellschaft, better known here as Steyr. The Austrians took issue with the fact that the German Rifle Testing Commission had more or less pirated the clip loading system invented by Steyr's star designer, Ferdinand von Mannlicher. The resulting settlement allowed Steyr to manufacture Gew.88's for the German army, as well as for foreign sales.

By this time, Mannlicher had a new protege, and Steyr a rising star, in the form of a fortysomething engineer by the name of Otto Schoenauer. He set about making various refinements to the Gew.88 and, when the older rifle began losing ground to Paul Mauser's newer charger-loaded designs, fitted his modified version of the Commission Rifle with a slick new development: A rotary magazine. This magazine had a rotating spindle in it, notched to hold the bullets, and would feed cartidges very smoothly, as it minimized the friction of the cartridges rubbing against one another in the magazine, unlike the staggered box designs common on other rifles of the day. Packaging his new magazine in his latest upgraded rifle, he began shopping it around Europe.

Above: Greek M1903/14 Mannlicher-Schoenauer, Photo by Oleg Volk

The rotary magazine could be charged with a stripper clip like a Mauser, but could be safely unloaded through the ejection port with the press of a button unlike Mauser designs, which needed the magazine floorplate to be hinged down or removed for safe unloading. The rifle itself was slim and graceful, weighing in at only 8.25 pounds even in the full 48" long infantry version.


Left: The rotary magazine, viewed from above. The button on the right-hand receiver wall releases the magazine's contents. Photo by Oleg Volk.


The action was ultra-slick, with a full-length guide rib, and had several safety and reliability tweaks over the Commission rifle, but this didn't help sales. Fearing complications caused by the slightly Rube Goldberg-esque magazine, armies stayed away from the new design in droves, and Schoenauer's baby was flattened by the Mauser juggernaut on the world market.

In the end, the only nation that bought the rifle was Greece, who, in a bizarre twist of fate, found themselves on the wrong side of the trenches from their main rifle supplier when World War One broke out. By the end of that conflict, Greece was badly short on Mannlicher-Schoenauers, and was making up their losses with captured Austro-Hungarian Steyr-Mannlichers and hand-me-downs from their allies. After the war they needed more rifles, but Steyr was located in the new nation of Austria and, as part of the losing side, couldn't sell military arms on the world market under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Relief was to be had in 1926 when Breda, in Italy, was contracted to supply M/S 1903/14 rifles and carbines. The Greeks eventually phased the rifle out of frontline service, replacing it with Mausers, and later, as a part of NATO, with British and American arms. Rumor has it, incidentally, that the Breda contract rifles were actually merely assembled and marked there, and had actually been manufactured at Steyr.

Right: Gew.88-derived action. Used in Greece. Marked in Italy. Made in Austria? Photo by Oleg Volk.

So as a military rifle the Mannlicher-Schoenauer was a flop, but its smoothness made it a very popular sporting rifle. It was successfully marketed and sold as such from 1903 into the 1950's, pretty much unchanged. One reason that original military models are so scarce on the collector's scene today is that most all of them were turned into sporters after they appeared on the surplus market.

Oh, and about that fragile rotary magazine that militaries of the day didn't like? Maybe it's not so bad; it hasn't stopped Ruger from selling a blue million 10/22's...

Blog Stuff: Zendo Deb hangs up her modem.

The leading source among gunbloggers for heartwarming tales of smoked goblins, as well as cautionary warnings on the ineffectiveness of restraining orders, is taking a break. Zendo Deb of TFS Magnum is using the opportunity presented by some high-speed connectivity glitches to get some work done on her boat.

Hopefully she'll be back, tanned, rested, and ready, before too long.

Opera cancelled for fear of angering Buddhists, Christians...

Berlin's Deutsche Oper has cancelled performances of a production of Mozart's "Idomeneo" for fear of sparking rioting and terrorist violence among Christians, Buddhists, and pagan Greeks.

After its premiere in 2003, the production by Hans Neuenfels drew widespread criticism over a scene in which King Idomeneo presents the severed heads not only of the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon, but also of Mohammed, Jesus and Buddha.

Pat Robertson called for Neuenfels' head on a pike, while mobs of protesting Buddhists wore vests covered with mock sticks of dynamite and chanted "Guatama's will be done; Berlin will burn and drown in the blood of the infidels!" Pagan Greeks paraded with effigies of Poseidon's head and signs saying "Molon Labe!", ancient Greek for "Come and Take It!"

Or something like that.

Sigh.

The above is, of course, heavy handed sarcasm. Nobody has rioted over the heads of Poseidon, Jesus, or Buddha. Three guesses who got their knickers in a twist and caused the opera to be cancelled, and the first two guesses don't count.

An update on the Taxonomy of Modern Dangers.

In an attempt to see if I could rattle a normally unflappable co-worker with a total non sequitur, I asked Shannon the gunsmith, completely out of the blue "Which do you think is more dangerous? Face-eating monkeys, or killer space robots?"

Without batting an eye, he replied "Killer space robots shouldn't be a problem, since you could just rig your microwave oven to produce an electromagnetic pulse, and then take them out with a wrench. I'd be more worried about the face-eating monkeys; they probably travel in packs."

Then he went back to his work as though nobody had asked him a totally bizarre question for no apparent reason.

That was probably some good advice about using your microwave against the killer space robots, though...

Like Chinese water torture...

Saturday was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

It's not that any one single part of it was that horrid; it was just that steady drip... drip... drip... of minor annoyance piled on minor annoyance that makes you want to climb a clock tower with a sack lunch and a scoped rifle.

It started at midnight, as most days do...

Actually, scratch that. It started about 10:00PM on Friday night. My downstairs neighbors were graciously letting me use their laundry facilities, and I was sitting on the porch reading and waiting for my clothes to finish in the dryer. The sky looked a little ominous, so I took my book upstairs, figuring I'd hear the buzzer through the floor when the clothes were done. I reclined on the bed with my book...

...and was awakened at 2:53AM by the sound of cat #2, Random Numbers, yakking on my leg. Let me tell you, folks, it can be hard to drift off to sleep again once you've elevated the ol' pulse with a bit of cat-punting. Then comes the roller-coaster as the adrenal high of chasing the cat under the futon is replaced by the abyssal low of the realization that you have, like a jerk, left your laundry sitting in your neighbor's dryer, and you don't have a damn thing to wear to work tomorrow. After all that excitement, it can be hard to get back to sleep again, so I sat in front of the computer keyboard, surfed a bit, and dealt with a titanic case of writer's block (you may have noticed the staggering amount of my creative output on Saturday.)

Finally got back to bed at 6:00. The alarm went off at 8:00. This gave me almost thirty more minutes to stare at a blank "New Post" screen and its accusatorially blinking cursor before heading to work in a pair of jeans that had one too many holes to really be dress-code perfect. (Makes it hard to be a good example for the troops. Sigh.) It was raining pitchforks and taxicabs outside, the Beemer had already started leaking, and I arrived at work in a foul mood.

I threw some date-critical mail in the mailbox at work, and went back inside to see if we could organize something in the way of food. Lunch plans rose and fell like bad souffles, while my blood sugar started to make like Evil Knievel halfway across the Snake River canyon. After I'd snapped off one head too many, I decided to strike out on my own for lunch. As I grabbed my purse and jacket, my boss came in with the incoming mail in one hand and a soggy envelope in the other.
"Here. The mailman didn't pick this up."
I felt a primal scream boiling up.
I inquired as to the location of the nearest big blue mailbox, and dashed through the pouring rain to the car. By now, the Beemer was leaking like a sieve, and pouring rain was flooding across the road in the low spots.

I went down Dutchtown road, turned left, and came to a stop. The road ahead was under a foot of swirling, muddy water. Quickly reversing direction, I turned onto Lexington and, Huzzah!, a mailbox! I verified that there was a 6:00PM Saturday pickup, dropped my letter in, got back into the car, pulled back onto the road and as I crested a hill, saw that the road ahead here was also flooded out, complete with a stalled car in the middle of the puddle. I retraced my path, drove past the store, and got out onto Lovell, headed for the Turkey Creek shop-o-rama.

Unfortunately, everone else was also headed for Turkey Creek. I sat in the line of traffic, the water steadily drip-drip-dripping on my left arm, and gnawed on my steering wheel in a vain attempt to remain calm. Finally I made it through the intersection and motored toward the Bear Rock Cafe. After a couple wrong turns in the parking lot, I found a space and jogged through ankle-deep water in the parking lot to get to my vittles, for which I had cleverly phoned ahead.

The herd was lined up at the dine-in register, and so I politely elbowed, kneed, and head-butted my way past them to the register clearly marked "Takeout Orders". I gave my name, received the bag containing my reuben, handed over my Visa and... *BOOOM!* With a flash of lightning and a windowpane-rattling clap of thunder, the lights went out...

...

"Oh, sh..."

The guy in line next to me, apparently recognizing me from work, immediately started up. "Hey, don't say 'oh shoot!'. I'd really be worried if you said 'oh, shoot!'. Get it? If you said 'oh, shoot!'?"

I didn't shoot him. I swear. I have witnesses. Nor did I break down into helpless tears, although the temptation was mighty.

The lights came back on, I paid and left, and got in the car for the boat ride back. Turkey Creek was out of its banks by now, and the traffic lights on Lovell at the I-40 off-ramp and at Lexington were both flashing yellow. By the time I finally got back to the shop with my lukewarm sandwich, I was vibrating like a tuning fork.

That afternoon, a friend called.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Tam! How's your day going?"

If you're reading this, I have a confession to make: We weren't disconnected, I hung up. But there's your answer.

Jeff Cooper: 5/19/20-9/25/06

May he rest in peace.

It'd be funny, if it wasn't so expensive...

Your tax dollars at work.

Blog Stuff: Random stupidity, worldwide.

1)Hussein: "I have a demand. I am not going to be quiet."
If we can't shoot him, can we at least stuff a sock in his mouth?

2)Pope Benedict XVI expressed "total and profound respect for all Muslims"
All Muslims? Or just the ones not calling for your head on a plate?

3)Nephew of slain Afghani bureaucrat says "we had no personal emnity with anyone"
Well, except for all those knuckle-dragging troglodytes who were offended that your aunt was the head of the province's women's affairs department instead of being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

4)The nails involved in the incidents were more than three inches long and an 1-1/4 inches wide.
If this keeps up, crayons are going to become blocks of colored wax, six inches on a side. That's going to make staying inside the lines nearly impossible, and damage the self-esteem of generations to come.

Politics: Fallout.

A mosque in Melbourne Florida got shot up yesterday as the Moslem holy month of Ramadan began. Police allegedly found the shooter's hiding spot, complete with binoculars and footprints, including one set that "resembled cowboy boots."

The words "hate crime" have already been trotted out, making the utterer of those words look like a complete moron. Of course it was a hate crime; the shooter probably hated muslims in the same way that the guys who flew those planes into the WTC or set off their TNT Underoos in crowded bazaars hate infidels. Thing is, the more hate crimes that one side commits, the more hate crimes they are going to generate in return; if there was another terrorist attack on this soil comparable in magnitude to 9/11, there will be hate crimes that make a little gunfire at a mosque look like a friendly "Howdy, neighbour!" There are people still alive who have been in lynch mobs before, and wouldn't hesitate to join one again.

This is monstrous and wrong, but it is very much a part of human nature, and our foes, who have convinced themselves that they are fighting a culture of spineless cowards and degenerates, need to remember that. People, no matter how decent, no matter how cowardly, no matter how self-righteous, can only be pushed so far before the killer ape at all our cores gets exposed, and in this game of tit-for-tat hate crimes, the other guys would do well to recollect that the biggest IED's on the planet are parked in concrete-lined holes in the ground in the American midwest, all ready to be used in the biggest hate crime of all.

300

I am so there.



Number one line from the graphic novel? Easy:

Persian emperor Xerxes (during a parley): There is so much our cultures could share with each other...

Spartan king Leonidas: We've been sharing our culture with you all morning.


EDIT: Bastards yanked the trailer; apparently it was an unofficial leak. That's okay, I am still so there. If you didn't see it, well... boy, did you miss out.

EDIT PART DEUX: ...and now the trailer's back up. W00t!


(H/T to Marko.)

Boomsticks: 1911 lingo...

In the gunsmithing shop at work, there's an elaborate patois that has sprung up around various 1911 bits and modifications. I used some of it on TFL and got blank stares in return, so I thought I'd offer up the following primer:

1. "Series Stupid": Various fiddly bits added to the lockwork to keep the pistol from discharging should you drop it from seven feet up in such a way that it lands muzzle-first on concrete. Termed "Series 80" by Colt or "Series II" by Kimber.
2. "The Jammer": Full-length guide rod.
3. "Lesser Manglers": Forward cocking serrations.
4. "Greater Mangler": Accessory rail.
5. "Marshmallow Impersonating Metal": Metal Injection Molding, aka MIM.

Never let it be said that gunsmiths are timid about having opinions on various topics...

The new look for Fall...

...is "Blackwater Chic."

(As seen here. And I roll old skool; that vest is Royal Robbins, not 5.11, you n00b poser. :D )

Blog Stuff: Fall is in the air...

VFTP Command Central isn't exactly palatial; instead of central heat & air, I get by with a big window A/C unit and a baseburner-type propane heater.

When we had the propane tank topped off a month or two ago, I cut my pilot light on but left the thermostat turned down to the lowest setting. I arrived home to my darkened crib last night to see the eerie glow of blue flames in the corner announcing that it was a mite chilly in here. Time to break out the comforter for the bed...

Y'all have fun now, y'hear?

East TN bloggers will be getting together for a fun evening of debauchery conversation on September 30th, about an hour and a half before I even get off work. The kegs will no doubt be blowing air before I get a chance to darken the door...

Sometimes Google loves me too much...

How the &^#$ did I get to be the number one search result for "pseudoephedrine cook"?


Nothing to see here, Mr. Gonzales! Please move along!

Einstein's joyride.

Here's a tip for you wannabe felons out there: When you and your buddy have boosted a car, and you then have to dodge a speed trap, don't try to evade the heat by crashing through the gate of CENTCOM headquarters. The only way you could make things easier for the forces of Law & Order is if you neatly parallel-parked your stolen vehicle in a cell block at the county lockup.

Good job, morons.

(Then again, if they were smart, they wouldn't be out boosting cars in the first place...)

Ready for the Two Minutes Hate?

Bringing a new interactive dimension to the Gilded Gulag, Middlesborough has added speakers to their array of public CCTV cameras. Now in addition to monitoring the proles as they go about their day-to-day tasks, they can remind them that Big Brother is, indeed, watching.

The Mail on Sunday watched as a cyclist riding through a pedestrian area was ordered to stop.

'Would the young man on the bike please get off and walk as he is riding in a pedestrian area,' came the command.

The surprised youth stopped, and looked about. A look of horror spread across his face as he realised the voice was referring to him.

He dismounted and wheeled his bike through the crowded streets, as instructed.

What the hell? I don't know about you, but I'dve had a hard time not yelling back "Will the nosy sumbitch with the microphone please stick it where the sun don't shine?" This is exactly the kind of thing that would bring my anti-authoritarian streak bubbling to the surface.

I blame it on growing up in an America gearing up to celebrate its Bicentennial, but whatever the cause, I was twelve before I found out that e pluribus unum wasn't Latin for "You ain't the boss of me." If I feel like I'm being monitored, I feel a nearly irresistable urge to run home and rip the tags off mattresses. Yet this seems to be okay with plenty of folks:

Law-abiding shopper Karen Margery, 40, was shocked to hear the speakers spring into action as she walked past them.

Afterwards she said: 'It's quite scary to realise that your every move could be monitored - it really is like Big Brother.

'But Middlesbrough does have a big problem with anti-social behaviour, so it is very reassuring.'

I don't care if it absolutely eradicates street crime, honey; get that camera out of my face before I find a rock and a slingshot.

I guess it's the absolute lack of negative reaction to what I see as stifling intrusiveness that gets to me, just grinds me to a halt. The fact that nobody minds some camera operator watching them pick their nose, or stealing a kiss in a secluded nook after meeting someone new in a nightclub, is a chilling thing for me to see. I get that same bleak feeling I always get at the end of 1984...

"The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning back to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle. Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The longhoped-for bullet was entering his brain.

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

Ugh.



(H/T to The Student Shooter.)

Blog stuff: Go, Lawdog, go!

What you no doubt are -- besides a boil on the arse of humanity -- is a mono-synaptic, pimple-faced, uber-veggie, hemp-wearing, deodorant-avoiding, eco-conscious, midget-zipper-trout with delusions of adequacy...

...and much more where that came from. It's such a beautimous rant, it brings tears to your eyes.

Boomsticks: CCW safety, or "Stop touching that!"

Over at TheFiringLine.com, a poster asked folks if they really carry their guns at home, and if so, why? This of course generated the usual "What if someone breaks in? I wanna be ready!" replies, which in turn triggered the expected "Are you ready for meteorite strikes too?" snarkiness.


This whole dialogue baffles me for two reasons. Firstly, I've been carrying a gun daily for long enough now that it has completely been divested of all emotional freighting. Putting the pistol in the holster in the morning is as routine as making sure my wallet, pocketknife, and store keys made the transfer from yeterday's trousers to today's; it's not strapping on a gat, it's just getting dressed. Because of this, there's an obvious disconnect in the conversation:

"Why are you carrying a gun?"

"Huh? What?"

"The gun. Why are you carrying it?"

"I dunno. I didn't want to forget it at home? What's the big deal about it, anyway? It's just a gun."

See? Same planet, different worlds. To one person it... The Gun ...is an object with some sort of totemic significance. To the other, the question is as inane as "Why are you wearing a hat?"


The second stumbling point I have is a more pragmatic one, and that's one of safety. The pistol on my hip is loaded and cocked. It will be loaded and cocked when it is set gently in its storage rack tonight, and will still be loaded and cocked when it gets holstered again tomorrow morning. Actually, the only time it is not loaded and cocked is when I've shot it dry on the range, or have it torn apart for cleaning; otherwise it is either sitting safely in a storage rack, or safely in the holster on my hip, where there is no chance that it will spontaneously go off. Contrast that with the more typical on-again-off-again gun toter. Here's how that routine seems to go:

1) Wake up in morning and decide that maybe they should carry today. Hmmm... Glock or Kimber? Maybe HK? They decide to take the Glock today. They pick up their (empty) pistol and a loaded mag, chamber the top round off the mag, top off the mag, and put the Glock in its holster.

2) Get done with running errands, get home, take Glock off, unchamber round, do some dry fire practice at the teevee.

3) Buddy calls and invites them to a movie. To pack or not to pack? Better take the Glock. The top round off the magazine gets re-chambered (maybe for the second or third time), the gun is re-holstered, and off they go.

4) After the movie they decide to stop for a beer. Gun is unholstered and put in glovebox. Gun is reholstered for trip home.

5) Nighty-nite time. Gun is unholstered, unchambered, and the chambered round is placed in the mag so it can be chambered again tomorrow (bullet setback, anyone?)

See how much unnecessary futzing around with the pistol that involves? Every time you go in and out of the house you are adding more windows for opportunity for an ND by adding more administrative weapons handling. This is when ND's occur: how many stories of police negligent discharges happened when they were putting their gun in the lockbox at the jail and fumbled it, or when they were unholstering it in the lavatory? Put it in the holster in the morning and, as best you can, leave it alone. If your daily rounds take you to a lot of victim disarmament zones, get a holster that goes on and off easily so that you are handling the holster, not the weapon.

So, long way 'round, there's my answer: yes, I carry in my home, because I'm too lazy and too safety-conscious not to. ;)

It's September 19th, Mateys!

You know what that means, right?

That's right: It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day, ye scurvy dogs!

In just a few hours I'll grab my ARrrrr-15, hop in my carrrr, and drive to work at Coal Creek Arrrrmory.

Best of all, today is Tuesday, which means it's Ladies' Wenches' Day at the Arrrrmory! ;)

All us piratical wenches get free range time! W00t! Come show your pirattitude! (I'll spot a CCA hat to anyone who shows up wearing an eye patch or a stuffed parrot.)

How did I wind up on the wrong side of the cage door?

In a scene that would be right at home in the primate cages at Yerkes, a bunch of folks burned effigies of some guy in a dress yesterday because he allegedly said bad things about their invisible friend. Or something.

As best I can tell, it went down like this: The guy in the funky clothes, who is the head spokesdude for a bunch of people who like an invisible guy, repeated some seven hundred year-old slander about a bunch of people who like a different invisible guy (or maybe the same invisible guy going under a different nom de guerre; theologians differ.) Basically, he implied that they were all violent and warlike. The fans of the second invisible guy, upset at being called violent and warlike, immediately protested this unfair characterization by rioting and promising to go to war against the followers of the first invisible guy.

"We shall break the cross and spill the wine. ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome. ... God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen,"

This would be comical, if it wasn't for the fact that the followers of the second invisible guy are trying their level best to get nukyular weapons.

Personally, I don't see what there is to get all-fired upset about. I mean, so the spokesdude for the first invisible guy said some mean things, but how seriously can you take a guy who wears dresses with red loafers and has a staffer in charge of casting out demons who gets publically wrapped around the axle over children's novels? This doesn't stop the followers of the second invisible guy, though, not for a minute; they can get their noses out of joint to the point of rioting over an editorial cartoon, so actual seven century old slander is like a red flag to them, and rates a spot of nun-killing at the local children's hospital.

*Sigh.*

How did I get stuck on this planet?

Boomsticks: Sistema day!

Friday was pay day, which meant that the Argentine Sistema I had set back could be sprung from durance vile and brought home. This is the first time I've picked up a beater pistol for the express purpose of getting hands-on with it myself to learn more about the way the process works; I figure the more I know, the better a liaison between our customers and our gunsmiths I'll be.

Saturday I replaced all the pins and springs in the gun with an Ed Brown rebuild kit and a Wolff spring package. I also replaced the wretched grips and grip screws with a spare set of cocobolo slabs I had lying around, and then raided my spare parts box for a Dlask trigger and the thumb safety off a ParaOrd Limited I had lying about. I grabbed a box of Remington 185gr MC ammo and took the old beater out on the range and... quelle surprise! No malfunctions! Aren't these unmodified vintage 1911s supposed to be jammomatics? ;) Anyway...

Pics to follow, as well as running commentary as various experiments get tried on the piece.

My gawd! It's like a Dick Tracy rogue's gallery...

Big Boy Caprice, Mumbles, Flattop, Chavez, Castro, Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jong Il's chief henchman, Kim Yong Nam, all gathered at the secret clubhouse of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants all at once. All within inner-tube-and-orange-crate raft range of Florida. You got Chavez running around and swearing that "blood will run" if the US messes with his buddies in Havana or Tehran. To my way of thinking, it seems like a chance too good to pass up. I mean, what the hell am I paying for all these cruise missiles for in the first place?

This Just In:

E. coli outbreak traced to bagged spinach; 1 dead, millions of children ecstatic.

"Now if they could only trace E. Coli to liver and onions," said Jeremy, age six, of Peoria, IL.

*&$%# Blogger...

Sorry for the seemingly narcissistic post; just needed a place to park a copy of this image online where Blogger could find it so I could use it in my profile...

Photo by Oleg Volk.

Irony Alert:

Courtesy of SayUncle, we get a link to an editorial at the Texas Tech daily rag where one Chris Kellerman, with the always-amazing ingenuousness of youth, argues for the repeal of the Second Amendment by throwing out the following line:

The founders are treated like prophets and the Constitution like the Bible. I am so tired of it! People throw quotes from Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin into political debates with me all the time, and I want to hit them in the face.

Let me clue you in on something, Chris; the threat of being punched in the face by strange young men with violent urges is what causes some folks to carry guns. You might want to re-think your phrasing there, sport.

I ain't goin' out like that...

This may come as a shock to people who only know me through my carefully-constructed web persona, but I'm really pretty much a shiny, happy person. I like kittens and flowers and blue skies full of fluffy clouds and smiling Mr. Sun. Also, I carry a gun.

Now, here in the upscale west end 'burbs of Knoxville, the odds of me ever needing to actually use my gat for anything other than a spot of recreational target practice are about the same as the odds of me winning the Powerball jackpot (and I don't buy tickets) but I carry one around just the same, more as a concealed symbol of my personal creed than anything else, the way some folks carry a St. Christopher's medal in their pockets. And my creed is a simple one: "I ain't goin' out like that."

Imagine a happy college campus, set in tightly-gun-controlled Canada. Not just in Canada, but in the part of Canada where they speak French, a language with more words for "surrender" than the Eskimos have for "snow". The only place that could be safer would be at a convention for Mother Theresa impersonators, right? Right. At least until some Emoid freak with a bad 'do, a Matrix wardrobe, and a cheesy plastic Beretta popgun shows up and tries to live out his Quake fantasies in real life.

"I saw the gunman who was dressed in black and at that time he was shooting at people," student Michel Boyer told CTV. "I immediately hit the floor. It was probably one of the most frightening moments of my life."

I ain't goin' out like that. Whether it's some Columbine wannabe who's heard the backward-masked messages on his Marilyn Manson discs, distressed daytrader off his Prozac, homegrown Hadji sympathetic with his oppressed brothers in Baghdad, or a bugnuts whackjob picking up Robert Frost quotes transmitted from Langley on the fillings in his molars, I am going to do my level best to smoke that goblin before my carcass goes on the pile. I am not going to go out curled into a fetal ball and praying for help that won't arrive in time.

Barone said a police officer emerged from a corner next to the cafeteria and fired a shot in the direction of the gunman no more than several yards away and missed him.

Even if the police are right there, it might not do me any good. Heck, I might not do me any good. But, dammit, I am going to try. If a 51 year-old nurse can overcome a hammer-wielding psycho with her bare hands, the least I can do is go out on my feet. I'm not going to wait for the coup de grace under a desk; I'm not going get in the abductor's car; I'm not going to comply with their demands; I'm not going gently.

Barone said as they were crawling out toward an exit they saw a girl who had been shot in the torso and who was face down surrounded by a pool of blood.

He said officers told them: "Don't look, don't look. Keep going out."

I ain't goin' out like that.




UPDATE: Marko weighs in with his views, as well as the Quote of the Day:

(As a side note, "killed by Canadian police" is high up on my list of "most uncool ways to die"...so much for going out in a blaze of glory, loser-boy.)

Blog Stuff: The coolest thing I've seen on the 'net in a while...

One day, back in early '00, a young man named Noah Kalina took a self portrait. The next day, he did the same thing. And so on, and so on, for the next six years. The result, converted to a time-lapse video and set to an original piano score, is an oddly haunting view of someone growing up. Pretty cool.

(H/T to Les Jones.)

Boomsticks: Coals to Newcastle...

UK cops broke up a smuggling operation that was running guns into England. "Hundreds" of guns were seized from a home in the London suburb of Dartford including, allegedly, fully automatic weapons. The heat in Ol' Blighty doesn't apparently go in for the meejia-photo-op "Junk On The Bunk" display, so it'll be hard for me to work up a full fit of snark, but from the one postage-stamp photo I've seen it looks like the smuggling ring managed to clean out the budget long gun racks at a pawn shop or three.

A gentleman with the impressive title of "Detective Chief Superintendant" breathlessly pointed out that "live ammunition was found lying on the floor." Shocking. Hope he never sees my closet. Anyhow, I couldn't help but note the irony of where the other end of the gun-running pipeline was plugged in: New Jersey. That's right, the state where you need official police permission to buy a Daisy Red Ryder.

Just another shining example of how strict gun laws work so well.

Supermodel (You better work!)

I'm too sexy for my rifle... :)

There's nothing that'll make me feel over the hill faster than standing in front of the VolkMeister's lens, especially in his groovy new studio. That said, some of the pics turned out quite well, and one will be my new blog picture. What I was happiest about were a couple where I was asked to point the carbine as though firing; Oleg gave me a DVD with some of the raw files as proofs and as I was scanning through them, I saw my own form with the weapon and thought "Good hand position, proper trigger finger discipline, nice cheekweld, elbows tucked in, great lean... Work it, girl!" :)

Funny Oleg's Studio story: Back when Marko and I were roomies, we drove out to Nashville for one of Oleg's soirees. Since we were out-of-town guests, he put us up in the only accommodations available. To wit, a big ol' queen-size air mattress in the downstairs room he was using for a studio. The air mattress was in the middle of the floor, surrounded by lights, reflectors, tripods, and other photographic paraphernalia. We both got our PJs on and climbed into the bed. Despite us being just platonic buddies (and graveyard tired to boot,) it took hours to fall asleep because every time one of us was about to nod off, the other couldn't resist humming "Bow-chika-bomp-baa!" a la cheesy '70s porno flick soundtrack, as a nod to all the camera gear surrounding the bed, resulting in fifteen minutes of helpless muffled snickering into the pillow (so as to avoid waking the other houseguests, who were snoring on every other available horizontal surface,) every time the gag was repeated.

Casa Volk ain't the place for the camera-shy, but don't worry: His mad, 1337 skillz will make you look good. :)

What a sucky way to go...

There is a drive to look good in this society. In a previous age, you were compared with the prettiest girl in the village; these days the village contains several billion girls, and the prettiest one gets paid many thousands of dollars to get her picture taken so that it can be put on billboards to remind you that even if you buy that particular brand of clothing, you still won't look like that.

It's enough to make folks self-conscious of their looks. I know that when I'm looking at pictures of me, it's all "Oh, that one makes me look too fat. That one makes me look too gawky. I look like I'm abusing 'roids in that one. Oh, christ, why didn't I take a bit of time with makeup?" It makes it easy to understand the insecurity that makes some folks willing to do anything to look just a little prettier. Plastic surgeons make their Porsche payments because they offer a no-muss, little-fuss nip-and-tuck improvement that appeals to folks who feel awkward about their looks.

However.

At what point does one get the feeling that one's surgeon may not be on the up and up? I mean, there are plenty of only moderately competent docs with proper offices and I-love-me walls papered with the appropriate sheepskins (Old Joke: "What do you call the guy that graduated last in his class from med school?" "Doctor.") in every city in America, so when one is being led into the basement of a residential condominium by a guy with an accent and nary a board certification to his name, does it not get one's spider sense to tingling? Is there not a warning shiver that makes one think "This guy's going to be cutting on my face! What if something goes wrong? What if the anaesthesiologist dicks up? Where's the crash cart? What if I get sucked to death? What am I doing here?"

Apparently not. Apparently the drive to be pretty can run common sense right off the road and into a ditch...

Blog Stuff: Weekend Update.

When we last left our heroine, it was Friday afternoon and she was reading Domestic Enemies on the front porch. She'd left a couple of messages for Oleg, hoping to get driving directions to his house, but she hadn't been called back, so she figured she'd go upstairs and turn in way early (she hadn't had much sleep the last few nights, you see,) and make for an early start on Saturday...

*RING!* *RING!*

"Hmph? Gawurflfrizzle?"

*RING!*

"Mrrphh... Hello?"

"Hey, Tam, it's Oleg..."

Sure enough, it was. It was 9:35 local. Having just had a refreshing forty-five minute nap, I stumbled out of bed, scribbled the directions he gave me on the back of a business card, and made like a character from the Matt Bracken novel I'd been reading: In fifteen minutes, the Beemer was loaded with a backpack full of clothes, toiletries, and a laptop, an armload of guns, and the rest of my "to go" gear. By 9:59 I'd hit the local Kwik-E Mart, topped off the tank with cash, and was westbound from K-town toward the 'Ville on I-40, hoping I didn't have to have a chat with Johnny Law at any point in my journey:

"Do you have any weapons in the car?"

"Sure, whaddaya need?"

A good time in Nashville was had by all, and I'm sure Oleg will have stories and pictures at his place, but my portion of the Rashomon-like tale will have to wait 'til I get home, because it's back to the grind this morning.

Five years later...

Osama's probably cave paste.

My driver's license is a de facto internal passport.

Iran's got the bomb.



Some days it's just not worth getting out of bed...

zomg! That is funny...

Asphyxiation.

Books: Domestic Enemies update.

I'm on page 415, sitting on the front porch. There's cold cervazas in the fridge. Memories of my Terlingua vacation are drifting behind my eyes.

Allen Wayne Damron's Gringo Pistolero is playing softly from the boom box.

On my hip is a big Colt automatic, and on the bench next to me is a Springfield '03. Its sights are set to 800.

Life may be better somewhere, but I'll want to see proof. ;)

Blog Stuff: Whatever generates the hits...

In just one upping-the-ante LawDog post (plus comments), you can get boobies, tits, and big, wet jugs!

*Snerk!*

I love it!

Boomsticks: Caveat Emptor, baby...

"Combat shooting."

It's the last refuge of the incompetent shooter.

Whenever some "Reality-based instructor" tells you that they are going to teach you what really matters about pistol shooting, and their pitch includes things like "the sights don't matter", "tight groups are for prissy bullseye shooters", and "you want your hits to be spread around, so you have a better chance of hitting something vital", what they are really doing is trying to massage your ego, which is bruised by being unable to make an A-zone hit on demand, and trying to separate you from your hard-earned dollars.

If you are bound and determined to tote a pistol with you every day, the first skill you need to master, at least from an ethical standpoint, is being able to place a bullet exactly where you meant to place it. Remember: once it leaves your gun, you are going to pay for every single thing that bullet hits. Take your time; there's no rush. Then work on more rapid fire. Then work on snap shots from the low ready and from the holster. Then, and only then, work on things like "point shooting", "hip shooting", "instinctive shooting", the "speed rock", or whatever the new terminology is.

Don't try and massage your ego by telling yourself that even though you can't hit what you're aiming at, it's because you're a "real combat pistolero".

Remember: You will pay for everthing your bullet hits. Make sure you can hit only those things you want to buy.

Politics: Why Suzy can't dunk.

The Australian government recently spent a wad of money on figuring out why women's sports weren't more popular in generally sports-mad Oz.

A few thousand taxpayer dollars later, they located two culprits:

1.) Spandex.
2.) A lack of burkhas.

I can kinda understand the spandex thing; there have been times in my life when I'd have been less than enthusiastic about donning bike shorts just to play a game. Point two leaves me stumped, however.

"It would be great to see sports clubs look at their dress codes, for teenager girls, but especially for young women of the muslim faith. There's anecdotal evidence that one reason why young muslim women don't play sport is they've got to wear short skirts."

No matter how hard I try, I'm having a difficult time envisioning a quick pickup game of hoops while wearing a chador...

Blog Stuff: I have obviously missed the boat...

!!!

...and I got two thousand hits in one day for nowt but some lousy bikini pictures?!? I obviously need to rethink my strategy. (...although not breaking out into a raucous, hooting bout of laughter while trying to grope myself in time to a Dubya speech would be a Sisyphean task...)


(H/T to PDB and his obviously selfless dedication to scanning the daily... er,... political news.)

Books: It's gonna be a long night...

My downstairs neighbours dropped by the shop today bearing a little brown cardboard box plastered with the Amazon.com logo. I bounced up and down like a schoolgirl, realizing that my copy of Domestic Enemies by Matt Bracken had arrived.

I got home after work, settled in on the porch, popped open a beer, lit my citronella candle, and cracked the covers. It's now quarter to midnight, I'm one hundred and fifty three pages in, and sleep is nowhere on the horizon.

I'd type more, but I gotta get back to the book.

Review to follow...

Books: A window to the past...

I'm currently reading the Textbook of Automatic Pistols, written by an Englishman by the name of R.K. Wilson. The book is an extremely technical work that is still filled with that eminently readable dry British wit. It's mostly a compilation of articles written for the magazine "Game and Gun" in an England of seventy years past and, seemingly, light years away.

Apart from having to learn new words ("scear"=sear, "half-cock bent"=half-cock notch, "bullet envelope"=bullet jacket,) I'm mostly struck by the feeling of a message in a bottle from a parallel universe. Here are the words of a gentleman who shares my career field, coming from a land where that field is now, for all practical purposes, abolished. They echo to the present from a time of danger, as the publisher's note in the front of the book grimly states

"The completion of this work was interrupted by the breaking out of the present war..."

and the Author's Forward is addressed from his duty station with the 85th Field Regiment of the Royal Artillery.

I wonder where Lt. Col. Wilson's England went?

News Flash: Internet full of white dudes.

Via CNN.com:

Virtually all U.S. schools are connected to the Internet. The gaps in Internet usage between whites and minorities, though sizable, are smaller during the school day.

That's not the case at home.

A total of 54 percent of white students use the Internet at home, compared with 26 percent of Hispanic and 27 percent of black youngsters.

Well, duh.

See, as much as all of us way-cool bloggers would like to deny it, in the larger, relentlessly anti-intellectual scheme of American pop culture, having your nose pressed against a monitor by your own free will in your own free time is still considered a pretty geeky thing to do. And from this dudette's perspective, geekiness seems to be largely a white dude's domain, Urkel notwithstanding.

Hopefully, MySpace will continue to exist as a gateway to the internet for folks who actually got dates in high school and haven't memorized the titles of every Star Trek episode.

The Minutes of the First Monthly Symposium Towards a Taxonomy of Modern Dangers.

The symposium was held in a booth at the Mellow Mushroom pizza joint. In attendance were noted experts on modern dangers; namely Mr. P, Thing One, and myself.

Me: "Okay, we're here to sort out all the modern dangers that require folks to own guns. Everybody knows that the most imminent peril is Zombie Apocalypse, but what about the other dangers out there? What about pirates, ninjas, vampires, werewolves, killer space robots, face-eating monkeys, and hippies?"

Mr. P: "Wait, killer space robots? When did those get added to the list? You guys are just making this stuff up!"

Me: "No, they're dangerous. Trust me on this. You gotta be ready."

Thing One: (looking around) "Why are we in some hippie joint?"

Mr. P: "They have good pizza."

TO: "Ah. Okay."

Me: "Alright; we know that the vampires and the ninjas are in cahoots, because they're both basically shifty, plus they have that whole invisibility thing going on..."

Mr. P: "When's the food going to get here?... Hey, tomorrow I pick up my prescription Wayfarers. Wayfarers are cool; they let you see the ninjas."

Me: "Really?" (Pulls Wayfarers out of purse, puts them on, and scans restaurant.) "Huh. It's true! There aren't any ninjas here. I wonder why that is?"

TO: "It's the hippies. Ninjas hate hippies."

Mr. P: "It stands to reason. I mean, pirates are basically just hippies with a violent streak."

Me: "So the hippies and the pirates are on the same team! That'd make a hippie pizza restaurant the perfect pirate hideout!"

TO: "Naturally. Look there, in the kitchen. See the guy with the bandanna on his head? And the other guy, with the bushy beard and all the earrings? Those are obviously pirates."

Me: "...and pirates can't wear Wayfarers; that'd totally be against the pirate dress code, which is why they keep werewolves around, since they can smell the ninjas. Plus, since pirates are basically frugal, they can save money by feeding the ninjas to the werewolves."

Mr. P: "We have way too much time on our hands..."

Me: "I am so totally blogging this."

TO: "Here comes the pizza."

Crikey!

Okay, call me insensitive, but who didn't see this coming?

Swat the grizzly on the nose enough times, and it gets hard for folks to feign shock when you finally pull back a stump...

Sigh. Light blogging today...

In my younger days, next door to a Geek Store I frequented, was a dry cleaning establishment run by hard-working individuals of Middle Eastern origin. At the tail end of August, a hand-lettered cardboard sign went up in their window, announcing "We Open Lebber's Day."

Much like that dry cleaners, Coal Creek Armory is open Lebber's Day, and I have to get there, so the posting of the minutes of the first monthly Symposium Toward Describing A Taxonomy Of Modern Dangers will have to wait for tonight. Stay tuned to find out:

• What could be almost as dangerous as Zombie Apocalypse.
• How to see Ninjas.
• Why there are no Ninjas at the Mellow Mushroom pizza joint.

...and much, much more.

Books: EFAD.

I'm re-reading Matt Bracken's Enemies Foreign and Domestic to get myself back up to speed on background while patiently waiting for Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista to arrive from Amazon. EFAD is an interesting read, and I'm naturally sympathetic to the heroine, what with her being a motorcycle-riding shooter and all. I remember someone asking Matt if he'd based the Ranya character on me. He replied by saying that he'd written the book before crossing electronic paths with me, but knowing I existed made him feel better about the plausibility of the character he'd written. :)

Boomsticks: "Somehow, I thought you'd be... shorter."

Boy was I all stoked about that Venezuelan carbine. I could hardly wait to get it home; I just lurve handy little Mauser carbines, and with its 17.6" barrel, this one should be even shorter and lighter than my Chilean 7mm carbine.

Only not.

TOP: Chilean M1895 Carbine
BOTTOM: Venezuelan FN24/30 Carbine

As it turns out, due to the fact that the Fabrique Nationale-produced gun is built on the large-ring '98 action, it is (despite having almost an inch less barrel) a pound heavier and a quarter inch longer overall than the earlier carbine. It's a nicely-made weapon; FN Herstal was originally formed to make Mausers under license for the Belgian army, and after WWI, as part of their war reparations from Germany, they recieved licenses for the latest Mauser designs and the right to sell them worldwide. (Incidentally, so did CZ Brno, and both companies eagerly took up the slack left by the absence of Oberndorf on the military arms export scene.)

The Chilean M1895 is about forty years older, and built on the small-ring Mauser action. My example was made by Ludwig Loewe in Berlin to the usual precise antebellum standards of German weaponry. These weapons are an interesting illustration of the proliferation of the European arms industry in the dying days of the colonial era. European arms houses cheerfully sought out contracts with emerging nations, who were all eager to have the latest and greatest weaponry. These two carbines, coming from former Spanish colonies, are chambered in the round originally developed for the Spanish army by Mauser in 1892. Folks can talk about the ubiquity of the AK or the service of the Enfield with a globe-spanning empire or the M16's forty-plus years in the hands of GIs, but from Oberndorf's first foreign contract with China in 1878 to the last shipments from Brno and Herstal in the '50s, when the world wanted rifles, it went shopping for Mausers.

Boomsticks: Gratuitous Gun Pr0n No. 36

Carbon steel, stainless steel, aluminum, titanium, adjustable sight, fixed sight, round butt, square butt, blued, nickel, polished, matte, N-frame, L-frame, six shot, five shot, wood, rubber, mother-of-pearl...

...there's just something about a .44 Special that's... well... special. :)