"Redefined", "Broke"; it's such a fine line...

So George W. Bush claims that he "redefined" the Republican Party.

With his "Compassionate Conservatism" and lines like "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move," it's obvious that he spent too much time listening to his daddy and not enough time listening to his daddy's boss.



If you haven't yet read Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservativism Brought Down the Republican Revolution, I highly recommend it.

With a dead gay guy for a surfboard...

...and enough crocodile tears to float him, Nancy goes media surfing.


(H/T to New Paltz Journal.)

I'm lost at high finance...

So, what's all this about seizing Pugsley's money in Andorra?

He was giving it to terrorists? Buying stuff he wasn't supposed to be? Was this the Venezuelan government's cash, or was this Pugsley's private slush fund for hookers and blow and Che Guevara tee shirts? Help me out here.

Dialogue on racism...

Ongoing here, here, and here.

Shermlock Shomes asks the important question.

(For the record, the very word "race" is as quaint as the word "phlogiston", and reflects about the same era of scientific theory. Any school of thought that gives weight to "race" is right up there with phrenology for predictive power.)

You'll have to answer to the Coca Cola company...

It appears that the White House's nanny state nattering about a sin tax on sodie pop has displeased the Pope of North Avenue.



As a comparison of relative power between the President and the CEO of Coke, you'll note that President Barry hasn't yet given his rabbis in Chicago their Olympic games, but Bob Goizueta sure as heck got Atlanta theirs.


(H/T to Unc.)

CSI: Lafayette.

The current suspect is the D&D geek, in the driveway, with a broadaxe.

A large, medieval-style weapon was recovered at the scene.

McCoy described it as a doubleheaded, broadax with two 6-inch, stainless steel blades protruding from opposite sides.

Those East Coast college kids ain't got nothin' on the ones out here in flyover country...

Someone has a lucky day...

There are several novels that I try to buy every time I find a copy for sale cheaply, just so I have enough on hand to pass out to friends for subtle proselytization purposes: Starship Troopers and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, stuff like that.

J. Neil Schulman's Alongside Night would be one of those books of which I keep several copies in stock, but for how scarce it is. Well, my roommate happened to stumble across a copy in the used book store yesterday, and not just any copy, either.

Pocket pistols...

Comparing John Moses Browning's two most successful .32 caliber pocket pistol designs is like night and day.

The Colt 1903, save for its simpler blowback method of operation, is very like a scaled down version of one of his larger, short recoil-operated pistols. It has a familiar arrangement of hammer, sear, and disconnector, operated by a sliding trigger, all of them, along with the grip safety, tensioned by a three-fingered spring.

The FN 1910, on the other hand, is a scaled-up FN 1906 Vest Pocket .25, all the way down to its pivoting trigger and coil-spring-powered striker. Despite having handled and fired numerous 1910's before, I had never really noticed that, probably because at the time I didn't have a lot of hands-on experience with the smaller .25's.

The strange part is that the Colt Pocket Hammerless, despite being the physically larger of the two, feels a lot smaller in the hand. The grip feels much slimmer, and the whole gun has a rounded, "bar-of-soap" feeling that makes it so amenable to being slipped into a topcoat pocket. The FN 1910, meanwhile, actually feels bigger than it is; the squared-off grip has a chunky, hand-filling feeling that reminds one that this gun was far more likely to end up in official flap holsters than in civilian coat pockets.

On the other hand, holding a 1910, you now know the answer to "What gun for Archdukes?"

I need to get them side-by-side on the range...

I can smell the metal shavings and hear the cussing...

Will's learning to cut & thread barrel shanks. Next he'll be cutting chambers.

Watching that stuff get done really gives one an appreciation for good gunsmiths.

Falling into the internet...

Les Jones links us to three tales of inflation.

Fascinating stuff.

The Downward Spiral.

Jimmy Carter just gets crazier and crazier as the years go by...

"I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that shares the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans." "That racism inclination still exists, and I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people -- not just in the South but around the country -- that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. I think that boy is perfectly qualified to lead this country."

Okay, I made that last sentence up, but given all the other bizarre crap that's popped out of Jimmy Carter's mouth since he went crazy just after the turn of the millennium, it wouldn't have shocked me one little bit.

Back when he was still in the big chair, busily flushing the country down the tubes, I had a really hard time hatin' on the man. Despite all his preachiness, all his pious wrong-headedness, Jimmy Carter came across as though he had not a mean bone in his body. For the first decade or so after he was run out of Washington on a rail, he confined himself to writing mindlessly cheerful little books that read as though they'd been ghost-written by Stuart Smalley and building houses for poor people with his own two hands and that was okay by me. I kept referring to him as "America's best ex-President".

And then sometime around '03 or '04, he just went completely nuts.

Put a sock in it, Jimmy, please. I'd like to remember you as a friendly, if misguided, useful idiot, not the withered old sack of vituperation you've turned into.

Your daily moment of pop culture wisdom:

The movie Ruthless People had a line in it that suddenly has new relevance for me:

Lt. Walters: "This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him."

The guys at Men Are Not Potatoes have found someone who fits that description to a "T".

You have to wonder how someone like that remembers to fricken' breathe.

Heh.

Filed under: Words I never thought I'd type...

I'm not sure exactly what it says about this administration that it makes Bill Clinton look better in retrospect, but it's nothing good.

The current freak show staffing the Executive Branch manages to combine the worst aspects of the ideological do-gooder ineptness of the Carter years with the well-oiled thuggishness of Clinton machine politics and the imperious self-righteousness of Dubya fresh out of a prayer meeting.

We've gone from Lyndon Baines Bush to Richard Milhous Obama...

A Blighted Christmas...

We had a global economy that had been artificially launched into orbit by people buying crap they didn't need with money they didn't have. When the money they didn't have dried up, then they couldn't buy the things they didn't need. And then all the boats that would have carried the things they didn't need to the stores that now can't pay their rent wound up parked here.

The only "green shoots" I see there are kelp wrapped around the anchor chains of idled container ships.



(H/T to Billy Beck.)

Overheard in the Bedroom:

The TeeWee in Bobbi's bedroom, used as an alarm clock, had come on with the volume turned to eleven. I couldn't help but overhear that after an automobile accident in town, someone was rushed to the hospital in "serious condition". How come nobody's ever rushed to the hospital in hilarious condition? Or whimsical condition?

.............................................................................................

So Patrick Swayze has shuffled off his mortal coil. Who will defend us from Cuban paratroopers now?

..............................................................................................

Also according to the TeeWee, Whitney Houston is going to be on Oprah's show today. I would pay good money to see Whitney accidentally stray too close to Oprah and get devoured like a drumstick in a shark tank. (I was always afraid that was going to happen to one of those Haitian kids who got within arm's reach of Sally Struthers during those charity commercials.)

..............................................................................................

Apparently Jay Leno is not dead yet.

TamFM.

The iPod served up a tasty stew of mid/late-'80s R.E.M., Concrete Blonde, and Jesus Jones while I was out and about today.

(Although it incongruously dropped a Die Krupps cover of "Enter Sandman" in between "Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)" and "Disturbance at the Heron House"...)

Well, well, well...

You gotta wonder how that link surf started out...

A fascinating interview...

An interesting interview with a WWII Russian tanker who served in the 6th Guards Tank Army, equipped with 76mm M4 Shermans.

Pics from Petrograd on the Potomac this Past Weekend:

JayG has some, with good ol' JayG commentary: Clicky.

I am not a luddite.

I'm just stingy on certain things.

I actually bought a Game Boy Advance. Yes, I know that it was last considered cutting-edge almost a decade ago, but I'm not the kind of person who spends a C-note on a toy like that; it cuts too much into my ammunition budget. The local game joint, however, has a splendid collection of Old Stuff That Beeps, and when it gets cheap enough, I can't say no. ("Ooh, look! A Sega Dreamcast!")

It got me looking at the current state of the art in hand-held video entertainment on Wikipedia and, boy howdy, has that stuff come a long way since the blinky orange LED's of my childhood.

:(

I was saddened to read last night that James Rawles' wife, Linda, has passed away.

My sincerest condolences.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith go to Washington.

So I see that the storming of the Bastille went down peacefully over the weekend. The incredibly self-absorbed Barry O. has apparently said "l'etat, c'est moi," and continued prattling about socialized medicine, but others surely took note.

The earliest CNN pieces I read made noises about "tens of thousands" of protesters. Which is funny as all get-out, because anybody who looks at those pictures realizes that if that's "tens of thousands", then Louis Farrakhan had a Fifty Man March.

The best comment from the weekend was when the Mouth of Sauron... er, the White House spokesdrone made a statement indicating that he knew nothing of the march beforehand and that he didn't know "which group" this was. Nothing else better betrays the difference in mindset between Them and Me. To them it's all about The Group. This must have been some "Group", with newsletters and dues and party cards and marching orders and leaders; spontaneous organization outside the structure of some hierarchy is completely foreign to herd animals like that.

Today In History: Melodramatic Checkouts...

On this date in 1759, British General James Wolfe died in what was apparently an extremely picturesque fashion on the Plains of Abraham before the gates of Quebec, thereby missing out on the post-victory kegger and two-and-a-half centuries of bilingual street signs.

There is no truth to the rumor that the dude in the mohawk in the left foreground is pondering Wolfe's last words, which allegedly were "...my God, if I'd known what they were going to put on the french fries, we'd have just got back on the boats..."

Protestant guilt.

I've been horribly unproductive lately with... er... The Arms Room.

I'm going to try to remedy that.

Something in the vodka...

Stumbled across during my latest wikiwander:


The Wing-In-Ground Effect version of the yeoman 62-year-old An-2 "Built-In-Headwind" cargo biplane. Because... because... well, just because.

TamFM.

What radio station would have served up Ministry, the Sex Pistols, Linkin Park, and Concrete Blonde, back-to-back-to-back (and commercial free!) on my run to and from the grocery store?

The best thing about my iPod is that I like every album in there well enough to have actually paid money for it. That's a pretty good filter, right there. Worst case scenario, it's a track for which I'm just not in the mood, and a click of the skip button lets me try my random luck again. How did I suffer with a mere six-disc changer before this?

There's a little record shop near my crib that has big bins of $4.99 CD's out front in "Buy 1, Get 1 Free!" bins. Now I'm filling in holes and even replacing stuff that I previously only had on cassette; I haven't had such audio bliss in the car since I made my first mix tape...

The War on a Noun.

They hate us because of our freedoms, or so we were told, and so we've been trying to make Them hate us less ever since.

One step was the Internal Passpor...er, "REAL ID" act of 2005, which mostly succeeded in making married women who had taken their husbands' last names tear their hair out at the DMV, at least in states that fully implemented the procedures.

That last detail contains the rub: Half the states have given the feds the finger on REAL ID.

Stung, the .gov is trying again, this time with... REAL-ish ID!

Modern ruins...

Abandoned Russian military cities and fortifications on the Kola Peninsula.

The place is almost as run-down as Detroit.


EDIT: Speaking of military ruins, here's the satellite view of the remains of the KMS Tirpitz. Note the neat circular ponds along the adjoining shoreline, created by stray 12,000lb. "Tallboy" bombs.

Let's chat, shall we?

I know Congress and the President were running around calling all kinds of stuff "Patriot This" and "Patriot That" back in late '01 and early '02. Everything from bills to nominate this as a day of remembrance to bills to wiretap phones was hung with the appellation in a fervor of bipartisan bonhomie.

But we already had a "Patriots' Day", although I wouldn't expect a soul in either house of Congress to have the faintest grasp of the date and its significance.

This should be "Massacre Day" and stir righteous anger, not endless navel-gazing and hair-shirting.

Here I am!

So yesterday I pretty much spent the entire day with my nose in a copy of Foreign Enemies And Traitors, the conclusion of the trilogy that began with Enemies Foreign And Domestic.

Matt Bracken's novels are probably the best-written and most plausible feeling of what has grown to be an entire crowded genre of books; a genre that took off with John Ross's Unintended Consequences and now includes entries by everybody from Tom Kratzman to Boston T. Party. The first two books, EFAD and Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista, can leave one feeling a little unfulfilled; Matt creates some very sympathetic heroes (and heroines) and some deliciously boo-able villains, but for the most part the good guys only got the most Pyrrhic of victories and the worst of the villains never got stomped as thoroughly as they so righteously deserved.

Given that, Foreign Enemies was positively cathartic in places. Without giving away too much, let's just say that Matt doesn't end the series with a "To Be Continued..." It's over.

And I don't often grin like an idiot and occasionally cheer out loud while reading a book.

Your Thursday morning doom'n'gloom:

While the "zomg every single microchip will be slagged!" view of EMP is a little overstated, it's still a fact that anything plugged in to the grid is as good as toast, and that includes most of the grid itself.

What's being done about it? Well, there was a conference-type thing, but it wasn't, you know, official.

Meanwhile, hey, how about some socialized medicine!


(H/T to SurvivalBlog.)

Mmmmm...

Breakfast with Shootin' Buddy at Cafe Patachou.

I had the Overachiever omelette (bacon, cheddar, sour cream, and horseradish) again. I'm so predictable.

Now to email; I'm swearing a mighty oath to dig out from under a week-long backlog.

Sometimes I get reminded...

...that I'm not on the same page as everybody else.

I mean, my first thought when I saw this picture was "Oh, a British Q.F. horse artillery piece. Everybody knows what one of those is, because it's the gun from the duel at Néry, where three Victoria Crosses were awarded. That's the gun from the famous painting in the Imperial War Museum..."

Only, oh yeah, not everybody knows about Néry because not everbody's as big a nerd as I am...

Weird hunting regs...

Back when I lived in Georgia, before they "regularized" deer hunting regulations with surrounding states, they briefly had a strange rule for handgun hunting: To be legal, the handgun had to develop 500 ft/lbs of energy at a hundred yards. This pretty much eliminated all but the most powerful .357 magnum handloads, since no factory load in the caliber at the time had that kind of wheaties. It was also silly because the only way it could realistically be enforced would be to have game wardens carrying chronographs in the woods...

Needless to say, that particular regulation didn't last very long.

Within the last ten years, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama have adjusted their statutes for allowable hunting firearms until they were all broadly similar, one notable difference being that GA and AL let you hunt Bambi with a .22" or larger centerfire rifle while TN stuck to .24" or larger.

Not so in my new home state of Indiana. Oh, no. No shooting real rifles at deer up here. Hoosier hunters have to use muzzle loaders or shotguns with slugs or "pistol-caliber" carbines...

This all confused me when I got up here. Despite having Illinois on one side and Ohio on the other, Indiana seemed pretty laid-back about guns. Maybe, like any dumb law in Indiana, it had something to do with John Dillinger? But no, I saw the Johnny Depp movie and nowhere in it did he shoot a deer with a centerfire rifle. It turned out that the regulation sprang from a different reason entirely:

Whitetail were actually hunted to extinction in Indiana in the early 20th Century and had to be re-introduced. When they let people hunt them again, they made them do it with one hand tied behind their back to give the deer a chance. Well, as the saying goes, give a deer a chance and he'll take your bumper. Now the deer have spread like hoofed rats and do $40,000,000+ damage to windshields and corn crops in this state EVERY YEAR and we still have to hunt them with one hand tied behind our backs.

No scoped .30-'06s, no old Winchester "thutty-thutties", not so much as a single shot Thompson/Center rifle if it's chambered in an honest-to-O'Connor bottlenecked rifle cartridge suitable for Bambi zapping.

“Pistol caliber” rifles are okay, provided they meet the following criteria:
a) fire a bullet of .357 diameter or larger;
b) have a minimum case length of 1.16 inches; and
c) have a maximum case length of 1.625 inches.

You know where this leads? This leads to crazed young men taking measurements of exotic AR-15 cartridges and thinking strange thoughts, that's where it leads.

Your morning laugh.

White Wedding: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

Found this at Borepatch and laughed so hard I cried.

Blogmoot for the Blogmeet...

Votes are being cast for the September Blogmeet date over at Bobbi's place. Vote early, vote often!

How many magazines is enough?

Every now and again, I hear someone talk about magazines and "How many is enough?"

As an answer to the question, I've heard everything from "two per gun" to "∞^Obama per gun".

In a magazine-fed weapon the magazine itself, by virtue of being detachable, is the weak link; it's the part most susceptible to loss or damage, and therefore it behooves one to keep a spare. I know that for my collectible autoloaders I try to keep at least one spare and I even have an extra Lee-Enfield mag should the original on either my No.4 or SMLE get lost or go Tango Uniform.

On my recreational/range guns, I go further than that: The five 9mm 1911 mags I have aren't really enough to make me happy, and the even dozen I keep for my Marlin .22s feel like just a good start. For my serious pieces? I'm north of two dozen .45 ACP 1911 mags and 5.56 AR-15 mags, and I buy more every chance I get.

So I throw the question to y'all: How many magazines is "enough"?

Serious question:

Why is a weapon light that is considered eminently practical (if somewhat narrow-purpose) when attached to a plastic autoloader suddenly risible when screwed underneath a wheelgun? Do revolvers convey night vision, thus dispensing with the need for illumination devices? Or do they have built-in IFF sensors?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I laugh at the sight of the pimped tactical N-frame, too, but why?

Recognition Chart:

Handy firearms recognition chart for journalists.

I'm not 100%, but I'm pretty sure one of those is actually an Uzi.


(H/T to Sebastian.)

Quote of the Day: Illegaler edition.

...a man with a gun and restraining order against him (illegal) violated that order (illegal) and shot his family (also, illegal). Why, if only one more law could make it a bit more illegal, then it would never happen. -Unc.

Y'know, magic all the guns away and folks will beat each other to death with hammers.

Hippies, red in tooth and claw...

Now it's come to biting the fingers off people to demonstrate the need for Socialized Medicine?

Here's a timewaster...

Make your own rooney gun!

I knew this whole thing was spinning out of hand when I saw the first M4gery at the range with an airsoft dummy AN/PEQ-4 laser clamped to the crappy plastic Fobus railed handguards. Why someone would bolt a non-functioning fake infrared laser for spotting targets for imaginary airstrikes to their real carbine is beyond me, but there you go.

Other bleedover from the airsoft/Counterstrike kiddies that bugs the snot out of me:

• Any MIL-STD-1913 rail farm gets referred to as a "RAS/RIS". Calling a Yankee Hill forearm a "RIS" or "RAS" is like tatooing "airsoft geek" on your forehead.
• Anything with a can on it gets called "whatevergun-SD". The MP5SD is the suppressed variant of the famous Jerry subgun from the "You Suck And We Hate You" company, so now you hear kids standing in front of the showcase at the local Class 3 SOT and blurting "Awesome, dude! Look! A Ruger Mk.III 22/45SD!"
• Hanging crap on a firearm that makes no fricking sense. If I had a dollar for every 16" M4gery I'd seen with the stepped barrel and collapsible stock, plus a bipod and a $79 Chicom ripoff of the Hubble fricken' Telescope on ultra-tall rings (and no cheek rest!), I'd go buy a new Colt LE6920...
• Airsoft accessories on real guns. Dude, if you've shelled out the big union dollars for a PTR-91, live a little and put a real claw mount on it, not a cast zinc copy that will lose zero if you breathe on it too hard.
  

But, hey, ain't the free market grand? :)

The immigrant-owned dry cleaners had a sign...

...that said "We open lebber's day."

I haven't yet decided if I shall follow suit.

Now taking bets:

Who passes the sillier, more intrusive "zomg swine flu panic!!1!1!!one" legislation: California or Massachusetts?

On the other hand...

Went to dinner at the Brugge Brasserie with Brigid and Bobbi. A pretty darn good time was had by all.

The sun had come out and Broad Ripple was even more crowded than usual for a pleasant late summer evening. It turned out that there was some sort of footrace going on. At least I assume it was a footrace; there were a bunch of people running, and none of them appeared to be pursued by anything and they weren't chasing after anybody, either. Also, they had numbers pinned to their shirts.

Last time I ate at Brugge, I had the moules frites done up in their Provencal style, and this time I tried the steak frites. Both dishes were flat awesome (although it's a dirty trick to bury that awesome steak under all those frites.) Next time you're in Broad Ripple, you should give them a try!

I'm feeling a bit cheerier already. It's hard to be glum with a tummy full of steak.

Black dog.

Sorry for the lack of posting, kids. Just not feelin' it today.

My day started out bad and has literally gotten worse by the minute. At this rate, I'll be back under the covers before lunch.

Out beyond the last street light...

A favorite pastime in America is to mock the thoroughly corrupt political institutions of megalopolii like Chicago or the District of Columbia. While entertaining, this sometimes makes it possible to forget that, when one strays too far from the turnpike, one can witness similar scenes in played out in miniature in such scenic locales as Possum Hollow, Pennsylvania or Jericho, Arkansas. According to Yahoo news and the AP, in the latter hamlet...

"You can't even get them to answer a call because normally they're writing tickets," said Thomas Martin, chief investigator for the Crittenden County Sheriff's Department. "They're not providing a service to the citizens."

Now the police chief has disbanded his force "until things calm down," a judge has voided all outstanding police-issued citations and sheriff's deputies are asking where all the money from the tickets went. With 174 residents, the city can keep seven police officers on its rolls but missed payments on police and fire department vehicles and saw its last business close its doors a few weeks ago.

Yes, Jericho apparently didn't even have its own cops until a fed.gov grant in the "1990s" (I'm going to use my amazing Kreskin powers to guess "sometime after September 1994") financed a cop shop. Most grants of this nature run out after two years, but the newly-formed Jericho P.D. apparently found a way to keep the dough rolling in even after the federal teat was withdrawn: traffic fines.

The road agent scheme ran on for over a decade and is only in abeyance right now because, and I am not making this up, the cops shot the fire chief in the ass right there in the courtroom when he was contesting his second speeding ticket of the day.

Hey, did you know that the current stimulus schemes are financing police departments for little towns (and additional officers for large ones) all over America right now? Of course, the funding runs out after two years, but I'm sure they'll find a way to keep the new po-po on the payroll...


(H/T to Men Are Not Potatoes.)

Torn...

I'm giving serious thought to shifting my collection around a little bit, getting rid of some newer stainless Smiths (3" 625 in .45LC, 646, 610 3", PC640 and the like,) and putting the money towards some things that interest me more these days...

1. I need at least one Ruger 22/45, although two would be better.
2. Some ammunition and reloading supplies.
3. Picking up an FN 1910 or even a 1903 if I can find a shooter for a reasonable price.
4. Getting a stainless Kit Gun.

If I play my cards right, I might be able to get a second AR lower and finish my rimfire 1911 project and still have dough left over...

We'll see.

Overslept.

A little dried out from the Claritin.

How's things in the world? Michael Jackson still dead?

Claritin-induced thoughts.

• Now that Bengal tigers are about gone and sharks are getting seriously overfished, perhaps we could start a rumor in Shanghai that American feral hog livers will turn Mr. Whipple into Fabio.
• I seem to have fended off the actual sickness-type sickness, but the evil foreign yankee weed pollen has taken the opportunity to fill my sinuses. No joint aches, no fever, sore throat mostly gone, but my head feels inflated to 30psi.
• Why do I have a strange hankering for an FN 1910? It's a really elegant-looking little JMB design, but I need another .32ACP like I need a hole in my head.
  
• I am bad about cleaning my "heavy rotation" guns. My Marlin Papoose, K-22 Combat Masterpiece, ParaUSA LTC-9, and 2" Model 64 all pretty much live in my range bag. The blued K-22 gets a wipedown and bore swab after the range session, but for the most part, those four guns only get a real cleaning when they start having function issues. I feel bad about this and will try to do better, honest.
• Why am I telling you people this?

Frankenstein never scared me...

...and neither do most things in the "horror" genre. Besides, why would I read something to be scared?

Anyway, Stephen King always struck me as an ace storyteller whose true metier was the short story, although he could write a bang-up novel when he brought his A Game, which was about one try in four, by my tastes, with the rest being workmanlike tales with a certain 'contractual obligation' feel about them.

The only novel of his that ever really scared me... I mean really gave me the creeping willies... was Pet Sematary. I was living in a rented room in a lake house in the middle of the woods at the time, and I had finished reading the book at closing time at the little local pub. I found myself sitting there in the front seat of my Z-car after pulling into the driveway just after midnight, and for some reason I just had to reach over and flip the book upside-down before I could get out of the car, because I was actually too creeped out to look at the cover.

It was therefore with some interest that I read this at John Ross's recently-revamped website:

King is alleged to have said that he always wanted to write a book so scary he couldn’t finish writing it, and Pet Sematery came the closest. True story: In 1986 I had to make an emergency weekend trip to London as an underwriter for Lloyds. I decided to stay on Midwest time, staying up at night and sleeping during the day, since I’d be back home in two days. I bought a paperback to read in my hotel room. It was Pet Sematery. Reading that book at 4:00 AM in a strange hotel room in London was an experience I find difficult to put in words.

Incidentally, the only other thing I've read by King that honestly scared me was the short story "1408", from Everything's Eventual, and that had the distinction of doing so in a well-lit, crowded restaurant at lunch.

Triumph of the Swill.

Ten days.

Even a Dead Kennedy can only keep Michael Jackson's corpse off the front page for ten brief days.

Unglaublich.

Back off, man, they're scientists!

Many people are unaware that the 20-lb. brains at Los Alamos have been nuking the undead 'til they glowed since 1945.

If you are moved by their courage and sacrifice, you should go vote for their awesome patch in comments at Larry Correia's blog.

The fate of the free world depends on you. Help keep New Mexico zombie-free!

Untruth In Advertising.

'When Thoreau judged that most men lived lives of quiet desperation I think he failed to consider the fact that, by a merciful provision of Providence, most men have little or no more imagination than an animal. Good reasons for despair may be all around the average man, but he won't see them.' -James Gould Cozzens

This slogan is a lie; a lot of the time it's actually kinda painful, like whenever the television is on or when you accidentally overhear a conversation in public and you think "Dear Shiva, if I had to listen to her go on like that through the whole dinner, I'd be using the fondue fork to tear out my eardrums before the dessert menu arrived."

College students, take note!

In this age of tightening budgets and soaring tuition costs, getting hammered can require selling a textbook or, worse, pawning your X-Box.

Never fear, however: A group of intrepid consumer reporters has thrown caution and their livers to the wind in the search for the Best Cheap Hooch of '09, just in time for back to school! Beverages are rated for color, bouquet, flavor, and similarity of aftertaste to common workshop solvents. See how your favorite libation stacks up: Clickety.


(H/T to Lissa.)

Instant Expert: Just Add Sheepskin.

Firearms laws are pretty complicated, and I'm just talking about the federal ones. Many, if not most, Federal Firearms Licensees don't know half of them. Here's an example: Most gun nuts know the combination of "evil features" that transform a wholesome imported semiautomatic rifle into the dreaded "assault weapon", but how many know the proscribed features for pistols? Self-loading shotguns?

Being the bookish sort and not much liking institutional food, I always read the booklets and circulars that the BATFEIEIO sent out to dealers, but I suspect that many use them to level the legs of wobbly tables. They're so busy staying on top of the big important legalities that the triviata slips by unnoticed; is it any wonder that their default setting so often is "Sorry, can't do that. It's 'gainst th' law"? If people who do this for a living are so often unclear on the arcana, one can imagine the fuzzy notions held by people on the outside.

This is what makes the latest "study" from Professor Wintemute, MD, MPH, especially hilarious: It seems that it consists of going "undercover" to gun shows and taking note of anything that "looks illegal". I'm sure it will be as packed with factual knowledge and sound research as his last effort.

Doc Wintemute has inspired me, however. I'm going to do a study on improper surgical procedures in the operating theaters of America. I'm just going to grab a mask and gown and go hang out in OR's, and note when stuff just looks wrong to me. I'm not a surgeon or anything, mind you, but I've prepared by watching a lot of House and ER, and reading a bunch of stuff. Plus, I'm very concerned about the issue, which should count for a lot.

It sounds like Wintemute has a bad case of what a physician acquaintance referred to as "doctoritis"; the feeling that, once one is awarded that MD (or PhD, or JD,) one is now an expert on everything. As a friend put it on the eve of her PhD: "This time tomorrow, I'll be twice as smart as I am right now!"


(H/T to Unc.)

Urgh...

Sore throat.

Hmmm. Wonder where that came from?

Strange things I want to do...

• Reload .32ACP. Or .25. That would probably have a building-ships-in-a-bottle feel.
• Have one of those little Z-scale choo-choo trains in a briefcase. I'm not sure why.
• Shoot a matchlock.
• Climb a mountain. Not a particularly big or difficult one, mind you. I'm not crazy.
• Ride in a motorcycle sidecar.

Quote of the Day:

Rich Hailey on Awareness Of Your Surroundings:

"Exactly right," I said, "Carrying a gun won't do you any good if you don't pay attention. The first thing you have to do is realize you live in a bad neighborhood."

"No I don't," he answered. "It's the Old City. It's well lit and..."

"Your roommate was robbed at gunpoint at your front door. You live in a bad neighborhood."

"It's not that bad! There are lots of people who live down here and..."

"One more time. You live next to the railroad tracks. Have you ever heard of anything good happening by the railroad tracks?"

Today In History: Anti-Airship Piracy Setback.

On this date in 1925, the U.S. Navy's fledgling anti-Airship Piracy forces were dealt a severe blow when a sudden thunderstorm over Ohio tore apart the USS Shenandoah (pictured at left), killing 14 of her officers and crew. Miraculously, there were 29 survivors.

Awesome!

Get your Dead Commie gear here.

Guaranteed hippie kryptonite.

Farmer-Poet...

Frank talks about his deep roots in this state.

The way he does that, you'd think he was a writer or something. ;)

It's not really a lie if you're sincere...

Assault Rifle: A medium-caliber, select-fire shoulder weapon that bridges the roles between a machine pistol and a full-power bettle rifle.

Assault Weapon: A legislative term describing certain imported weapons that meet a list of defined cosmetic criteria. There were domestic "assault weapons" between 1994 and 2004, but the term no longer applies to anything but imported weapons, and is functionally meaningless outside a courtroom.

Assault Postcard: Mailed to your grandmother by her legislators and designed to scare her bloomers clean off with a combination of misleading photos, B.S. "definitions", and outright lies.

Wookie Suiters vs. Officer Clueless.

The thing that annoys me most about the video, apart from the goofy obliviousness of Officer Rerun, is the handy dubbed-in captioning. You know, where it says something like "Sparky's gonna love the FEMA camps."

Here's why: There aren't going to be any FEMA camps, Zippy. The whole idea of "FEMA camps" gives gives beer-bellied armchair revolutionaries from Cucamonga, California to Camden, New Jersey a nice safe "Go Code" that will never come; a bugle call that will never sound and that they'll only have to answer in their daydreams.

There aren't going to be any camps. Government will get a little more intrusive. Taxes will get a little higher. Laws will get a little more strict. All as we seesaw back and forth between Democrat and Republican administrations, each one tightening their favorite part of the ratchet and never repealing anything. And you'll keep going to work on Monday and tuning in to Alex Jones late at night and waiting for "The Camps" as the signal to start "The Revolution."

And meanwhile, we'll have turned into Sweden with NASCAR and better gun laws; Britain with baseball; a quasi-socialist "Third Way" country with its own American flavor and hot and cold running cable. And half the population wants this; half your neighbors; half your relatives.

And membership at the gun club is down, because who can afford to pay the dues these days, and did you hear how much the insurance is going to be next year? And your M1A will be "pre-ban" again, and nobody will have come to take your guns, and it's a shame about Bob, but he shoulda known better then to try to build that silencer in his basement. Maybe when they transfer him from Club Fed to the FEMA camp, then we'll go spring him...


(H/T to Billy Beck.)

Two Million Points Of Snark.

Four years and five days.
Five thousand and fifty eight posts.
Two million hits.
Go Team Me!

Congrats!

The Instapundit of the gunblog world turns seven...

Not only could they indict the ham sandwich...

...but it's probably actually guilty of at least one federal felony.

Remember, kids: Ignorance is no excuse for a law!

Your Tuesday morning doom'n'gloom:

The bottom line is this: mandated fiscal entitlements, projected into the future, are over 52,000 billion dollars. That will equal 90% of all household wealth in the U.S., and will place a burden of over 450 thousand dollars on every household in the land. This is almost ten times the present median household income level.

Mr. Walker concludes that “We face large and growing structural deficits largely due to known demographic trends and rising health care costs.” Further, “GAO’s simulations show that balancing the budget in 2040 could require actions as large as cutting total federal spending by 60 percent, or raising federal taxes to two times today's level.” -David Walker, ex-Comptroller General of the US.

There's only one way out of this mess, and it ain't gonna be pretty: "Mr. Sulu, fire up the printing presses at warp factor six. Engage!"

(H/T to SurvivalBlog.)

Born to Run.

When a half-hour, two-county chase initiated by Greenfield, IN police on Saturday ended by deploying the stop sticks, officers rushing up to the fugitive vehicle got a surprise: The vehicle hadn't been swerving all over the road at 80mph because the driver was too 'faced to drive; it had been swerving all over the road because the operator couldn't see over the dashboard and hadn't ever driven anything but a video game before.

He was nine years old and peeved about his 8PM curfew, so he stole his mom's cell phone, a dollar "for clothes", and the keys to the family bus and ran away from home and into the next season of America's Scariest Police Chases.

The Blog Days of Summer?

So, August this year seems to have hit an annual low for me as far as sheer number of posts goes.

On the other hand, it looks like a banner month for hits, since I'll wind up within spitting distance of 90k...

Gun School: 1911 Geek Post

So there were seven 1911's in our class; just less than a third of the shooters. Interestingly, all seven were full-size, 5”, steel-framed guns. The deputy carried his in his duty gear; Shootin' Buddy, myself, and one other shooter carried in our street CCW rigs; the three remaining students used “range/training”-type holsters.

There were two Kimbers: A stainless Gold Combat and one of the new “SIS” guns. I used my Springfield Pro on Day One and switched to my '66 Colt Government Model for the two subsequent days. Shootin' Buddy had his newest Les Baer Thunder Ranch Special; unlike his other TRS's, this one hadn't been to school yet and was still pristine, and I didn't miss a chance to tease him about his “Minnie Pearl Gun”.

The other guy using his street rig was using a 5” Colt, and was having serious issues with the standard grip safety. Like many with adult-male-size hands and the traditional grip safety, when he used a high grip, he wasn't reliably depressing the safety. He solved this with electrical tape. Nobody else had this issue,but almost all the other guns used a safety with some form or another of “speed bump”, or raised pad at the bottom of the safety, to ensure that the meat of the firing hand depressed it completely.

The deputy was using what appeared to be a “Franken-1911”, a common sight amongst Boone County cops, since the sheriff is an adjunct instructor at Gunsite and managed to acquire a bunch of ex-military pistols from the .gov and set them up as Gunsite-esque duty guns. As a matter of fact, the sheriff's son was in the class and shot a beat-to-hell early Yost-era Gunsite Service Pistol, which is, to a modern 1911 buff, about the dead-sexiest thing you could see on a Gun School firing line. There's nothing sadder than seeing a bucks-up fighting 1911 like a GSP, Baer TRS, Springer Pro, Wilson CQB or what-have-you that is all pristine because the owner is too scared of dinging up their precious 'combat' handgun by actually carrying it or using it. Conversely, there's a certain cachet to a gun like the kid's GSP or Shootin' Buddy's older Thunder Ranch Specials that show a lot of good, hard use.

The only gun that seemed to experience mechanical issues was that belonging to the deputy; its slide locked back prematurely a few times. While this malfunction could almost certainly be traced to the aftermarket “extended” slide stop on his gun, its exact source could have been any one of three things...

1. His hand could have been contacting it under recoil. This is the least likely reason, however, as he was a southpaw and this malf usually happens to right-handers shooting high-thumbs.
2. The interior part of the aftermarket slide stop could have been incorrectly dimensioned and was being contacted by the nose of the next bullet in the magazine, especially if it had been jarred forward slightly under recoil.
3. The additional mass of the extended stop may have occasionally bounced up under its own inertia when the gun recoiled. This will be familiar to any Glock shooter who's had the fussy little spring on their slide catch fail.

One may correctly assume from this that I don't much care for “extended” slide stops. Besides, 99 times out of 100, I “slingshot” the slide to release it anyway.

I only experienced one malf with my Colt. During one exercise, we started with a round in the chamber and no magazine in the weapon, and had to engage the target with two shots. We could either fire off the round in the pistol, juice up the gun and engage with the second round, or slap in a full mag and then fire twice. I went with the option that would put steel on target the fastest, despite Louis warning us that sometimes firing a pistol with no magazine can cause a failure-to-eject malfunction that looks like an inverted “stovepipe”, with the spent case dangling into the mag well instead of poking out the ejection port.

I fired and, like magic, there was the spent case, showing base-first out of the ejection port, aided (no doubt) by the stock, stubby, GI ejector in my gun. I locked the slide to the rear and popped in a new mag and fired off my second shot. It wasn't till after that string that I really realized what happened, when one of the RO's said “You got lucky there...” It turns out that I locked the slide back and my weak hand came up with the fresh mag fast enough that the spent case hadn't had time to fall free from the mag well; the new mag forced the empty out the ejection port. I'd been so fixated on the target that I hadn't noticed the mechanical drama.

Today In History: An earthquake where?

On this date in 1886, Charleston, South Carolina was rocked by a brief and vicious tremor that killed about a hundred and did six million dollars in property damage (back when $24 million would have bought you the whole city.)

We visited Charleston a few times when I was young and it's hard to say which sticks in my mind more firmly: the USS Yorktown, or the "earthquake bolts" that protruded from the walls of stately old Georgian houses like the hardware from the neck of Frankenstein's monster.

Quote of the Day: Keystone Kongress Edition.

"Thing is, I wouldn't put it past the guys who gave us the Consumer Safety Product Improvement Act to write something that accidentally regulated every mother making sandwiches for her kids under the same system as the folks who run Mickey D's and KFC." -Karrde

Seen in comments here.

We the uncaring, governed by the incompetent, asked to pay the unimaginable and adhere to the indecipherable...

Korean Cabbage Crackdown...

A local-vittles market in the Knoxville area was told to stop selling a spicy homemade Korean cabbage dish or they'd be in deep kimchi.

Books...

At the Fun Show yesterday I picked up a couple of useful volumes, one of which I'd been meaning to buy and one of which was a complete surprise...

I didn't even know that Hank Reinhardt's The Book of Swords was in print yet, but Michael Z. Williamson had several on his table, and I had to pick one up. Hank was one of the key figures in modern study of the sword as an historical fighting tool, rather than an archaeological curiosity or fantasy wallhanger. I'm about halfway through the book, and it's an enjoyable, rambling excursion through the history of... well, mostly swords, of course, but it bounces off metallurgy, touches down on armor, glances off axes, and generally has the feel of someone who is not only very knowledgeable about a topic but also passionate about it vomiting the contents of their mind onto the page. I consider myself fairly well-read on the topic, but I've already learned a few new things. It will sit comfortably on my shelf next to Burton and Oakeshott.

The other was a reference volume that I've been meaning to add for a while now: Bolt Action Military Rifles of the World. It's a general overview that's light on text, instead being crammed from cover to cover with lavish, full-color illustrations: Closeups of various markings, details on how to field-strip various rifles, pictures of bayonets and charger clips and various other peripheral doohickeys. The book runs more towards captions than paragraphs, but includes bunches of useful tables of maker's marks and translations of foreign numbering systems often encountered on these strange rifles from exotic lands. It makes for a nice bridge between the typical pretty-but-error-ridden volumes found on the clearance table at Border's and the excruciatingly detailed type-specific For Collectors Only volumes that contain things like the genealogical tables of the man who redesigned the rear triggerguard screw on the M1892 variant of the Model of 188...ZZzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Hope and Change!

Remember: It's only overreaching and intrusive when the other guys do it!

The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.

"I think the redraft, while improved, remains troubling due to its vagueness," said Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, which counts representatives of Verizon, Verisign, Nortel, and Carnegie Mellon University on its board. "It is unclear what authority Sen. Rockefeller thinks is necessary over the private sector. Unless this is clarified, we cannot properly analyze, let alone support the bill."

Meanwhile, the Democrats have controlled the legislative branch for coming up on three years now, and the oft-derided USA-PATRIOT Act is still with us. I guess they only hate it during election season.

Post.

I aten't ded.

I wondered where I'd left that...

100,000 rounds of my ammunition were unearthed in Serbia; I'd appreciate it if they'd pick up the shipping tab for returning it to me. The anti-tank mines aren't mine, however. I don't know who put those in there.

I must say that the Serbian po-po have laid out the most impressive junk-on-the-bunk display I've seen in a while.

Gun School: Post #4. Hardware.

Twenty-four students.

Seven 1911's, three Springfield XD's, a Browning High Power, a CZ-75 Compact, a DAO Beretta PX-4 Storm, a Beretta 9000S, a Walther PPS, a Bersa Thunder .380, a SIG P-239, two S&W M&P Compacts, and the balance were using Glocks of one sort or another.

The student using the Bersa dropped out after the first day, and the student using the 9000S switched to her dad's backup M&P Compact on Day Two because the Beretta had been all ate up with function issues on the first day.

One of the 1911's was the duty sidearm of a cop, who ran it in his duty gear. Of the other twenty-three students, just under half were using the methods of carry they'd use on the street, while the remainder used bulkier “range/training” type holsters.

I found this to be a little odd, as Louis Awerbuck was more than willing to work with students who were using their CCW rigs: I saw him adapt the traditional “four-count” draw to students using a fanny pack, a carry purse, and appendix carry. Other than those three students, everybody else was using some variation of strong-side belt carry, whether inside or outside the waistband, on or behind the point of the hip.

The student using the Walther only brought the two mags that came with the gun. This was something of a drawback, given their low capacity, and he was sometimes caught flat-footed, needing to thumb rounds into a magazine to keep up with the pace of the drills.

The students with the Bersa and the Beretta Storm still had metaphorical price tags hanging from their guns. While this was, nominally, a Level One defensive handgun course, they probably would have gotten more out of it if they had a little more confidence in the basic manipulation of their firearms; running the slide, operating the controls, and so forth. Louis and his assistants displayed great patience, but it was frustrating enough for the Bersa-toting pupil that she dropped out after the first day. To be fair, I'm not entirely sure that attending the class was her idea.

One of the Glock toters had constant issues with Type I malfunctions, as did the Beretta 9000 on Day One. The Beretta shooter was fortunate in that her dad had brought a spare gun. The cop with the 1911 has a couple of incidences of the slide prematurely locking to the rear, which I am nearly certain could be attributed to the aftermarket “extended” slide stop on his sidearm.

Observations I took away from all this:

1. Even a “Defensive Handgun I” course is not the same as “Your Gun: How To Work It”. In most locales, it is easy to find a couple-hour-long Basic Pistol course. This will help give enough familiarity with the basic operation of your weapon that you can concentrate on the “defensive” aspects of the course and not spend your time trying to remember how to load the blamed thing.
2. The middle of an expensive class is not the time to find out that your gun is a lemon. Take it to the range the weekend before class and put a hundred rounds or so through it. Make certain it's thoroughly cleaned and oiled before class starts. If at all possible, have an identical backup gun just in case your primary pukes halfway into Day Two.
3. Bring enough magazines. Every time you get a break, reload all of them that you can. You'll be much more likely to get your money's worth from the class if you're paying attention to the instructor and not frantically trying to top up the only two mags for your pistol. Bring good, tested magazines, not a bunch of aftermarket South Korean junk you picked up at a gun show the weekend before so you'd have lots of magazines for class. Number your magazines. If your gun starts puking on day two, it would be handy to know that all those Type I malfs are only happening with Mag #7.
   
4. Use your street gear and gun. If your daily carry is a Glock 26 in a bellyband and you take the course with an XD in an IPSC race holster, how many of these skill drills will be directly translatable to your daily life? I took great satisfaction at the end of the day, when so many of the students were stripping off their Gunsite holsters and triple mag carriers, that all I had to do when I left the range was pull my Shoot Me vest back on.

For those who served...

Why not take a vet to lunch?

As Memorial day passed this year, I began to think of this year’s upcoming Veteran’s day and my plan to continue the “Take a Vet to Lunch” tradition started last year. It was at this point that I thought I should spread the word. My plan is to start with a web site, some simple promotion, and hopefully, by Veterans’ Day 2009, every living US Military Veteran will be taken to lunch.

The Taxman Cometh...

The city tax cops in New Haven, CT, have contracted with a private company to drive a vehicle around the city, using a fantastic computerized and infrared-equipped R2D2 unit to take pictures of everybody's license plates, lest someone be holding back dough from the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Lacking a cool state motto, armed Nutmegger villagers are notably not assembling on the village green.



(H/T to Unc.)

I'm THIS many!

VFTP turns four today. That's, like 80 in blog years.

Funny, it doesn't feel like I've been doing this for four years.

Yum.

Roomie just ginned up some pseudo-psalsa using grape tomatoes and serrano peppers from the garden and some black olives from Fresh Market.

It was tasty, and all the more so for mostly coming from the bounty of our lawn & garden...

I'm not sure what to make of this one...

I wonder which faction in the War Of The Nerds this represents?

The cheap shot would, of course, be "The hippie, since it's OS X," but I have a Mac on my desk, and between Charles and Markos, which one's the hippie?

My roommate is a psychic.

Here's proof:

At 8:37AM, a dripping wet, towel-wrapped Bobbi sprang from the shower at Roseholme Cottage like Archimedes from the fabled jacuzzi and said "Oh my gawd, you just know they're going to want to rename the Socialized Medicine Bill after Kennedy!"

At 10:20AM we read this on The Hill's Blog: Byrd wants health bill renamed for Kennedy

I will rent her out to Super Bowl bettors and inveterate pony players for a 20% take of the winnings.



PS: This is the first ever time Sen. Byrd has asked for anything to be named after anyone other than Sen. Byrd.

PPS: If we're going to be naming something after Ted, how about a law concerning nepotism in federal government, or tighter USCG regulations on personal flotation devices in Oldsmobiles?

Worst. Dope Smuggling Plan. Evar.

Investigators in Colorado say they have broken up a massive methamphetamine ring in the Denver area that distributed pounds of the dangerous drug every week and laundered the profits using collectible comic books.

The case was broken open when a detective noticed Jeremy Blascowicz grinding his teeth, constantly tugging at his neck beard, and talking at a high rate of speed for three hours straight about why Secret Wars was, like, a million billion times better than Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Mary Jo Kopechne's killer finally called to account.

It is with a less-than-heavy heart that I awakened to the news that the Evel Knievel of Chappaquiddick, longtime foeman of my freedoms, and last withered fruit of a particularly bad crop of jumped-up Yankee wannabe-aristocrats that infested our government, has finally gone on to whatever reward awaits him.

As an added bonus, I will probably not have to hear anything about Michael Jackson for at least a week.

Guns in Parks in K-Town...

Back in my old 'hood, the Knoxville city council will be meeting tonight to vote on allowing CCW permit holders to carry their guns in parks: Rock The Vote.

What's wrong with this picture?

Other than being held by a posturing buffoon, can anyone tell me what's wrong with this man's pistol?

Highlight For Spoiler -> He did not check his weapon upon chambering a round. The slide does not appear to have gone completely into battery. It will not fire like that. He is holding a small and ineffective club.

Marko on gun control...

The truth is that criminals who make a living threatening injury or death for the contents of a cash register or a wallet won’t be greatly handicapped by any laws that prohibit the carrying of guns. They carry them anyway, but as I’ve pointed out, they’d still tilt the favors in their odds even if the magic gun control fairy could make all the guns go *poof* overnight. Gun control is tossing their intended victims into the ring with them after forcibly disarming them…to make sure the violence doesn’t escalate.

It was tough to pick a money quote, so RTWT.

There's a well-orchestrated campaign, all right...

CNN would like you to know that the foes of health care reform are using a well-orchestrated campaign of innuendo, distractions, and smear tactics to derail discussion of the President's agenda and...

LOOK! BUSH! CHENEY! TORTURE! CIA! LOOK OVER HERE!

Invest it wisely...

Much like a member of Menudo whose voice is about to change, car dealers who've been drinking from the Congressional red ink fire hose are encouraged to invest their windfall wisely, as a dry spell is sure to follow.

They're not the "Four Suggestions".

I worked in gun stores for the better part of fifteen years. If I had a $10 bill for every time some yob pointed a heater at me, I'd buy my own gun store tomorrow.

Sure as God made little green apples, when you handed a customer a handgun from the showcase (action open, of course; that habit was so ingrained that I usually accidentally tried to jack the slides on the blue guns we used for light/laser demonstrators), two things would happen:

1. Their booger hook would go straight to the bang switch as though drawn by a magnet.
2. They'd point the muzzle right at my tummy.

Only once or twice in all that time did I give in to temptation and use the following dialog:

"Excuse me, would you please not point that at me?"

"It ain't loaded."

"Yes, well, this one is, and having guns pointed at me makes me very nervous."

Hope and Change!

Barry O. gives Ben a new helicopter.

Earworm...

I'm the old-fashioned sucker who, if she likes a particular album or movie, goes and buys the actual physical CD or DVD.

The iTunes store, however, is perfect for that one particular earworm from a commercial or movie trailer that I just can't expunge without getting it onto my iPod and playing it until I can't stand it anymore.

In this particular case, it was the Smashing Pumpkins tune "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning" from the trailer for the movie Watchmen (and apparently from the Batman & Robin soundtrack, too. Who knew?)

Let's not do that again...

Normally I'm pretty good about noting uses of my debit card in my checkbook daily, but I let it slide a little bit, and then the task looked really huge, and so I let it slide a bit longer...

...and I just spent all morning balancing it; unfolding and squinting at little slips of paper. Ugh. We'll not be falling behind on the paperwork like that again.

The toy police.

"Those who resell recalled children's products are not only breaking the law, they are putting children's lives at risk," said Inez Tenenbaum, the recently confirmed chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The crackdown affects sellers ranging from major thrift-store operators such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army to everyday Americans cleaning out their attics for yard sales, church bazaars or — increasingly — digital hawking on eBay, Craigslist and other Web sites.

I'm trying to remember when I signed up for this crap.

There is apparently no corner of your life into which the government doesn't feel justified poking its regulatory snout, from your light bulbs to your toilet tank to whether or not the teddy bears at your garage sale have too much arsenic in their improperly sewn-on button eyes.

(H/T to SurvivalBlog.)

A more dangerous breed of junkie.

Forget the alleged superhuman strength and obliviousness to pain shown by some abusers of recreational pharmaceuticals; in Canada, they're even more dangerous than that. Up there, not only is the bacon round, but they've got some kind of drug that turns Leroy the Neighborhood Crackhead into Neo from The Matrix:

Drug addict dodged 19 police bullets.

More dangerous than bullet-dodging crackheads, though, are police officers who go running through subdivisions and play Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "I shot nineteen bullets into the air/in whose living room they fell to earth I do not care."


(H/T to Unc.)

Your yard is not a free-fire zone.

An insurance adjuster and two tag-alongs (a young father & his 9-year-old daughter) showed up at a house in Wichita, KS to inspect the roof for hail damage.

Nobody had told the elderly resident, though.

See if you can guess paw-paw's chosen course of action:

A) Hunker down inside and mutter about kids these days.
B) Go outside and engage the trio in conversation to ascertain what they were doing in his yard.
C) Call the cops.
D) Step out on his porch, brandish a gun, and fire a warning shot to hasten their departure.

Exactly.

Maybe he was sitting around in his house and thinking "You know, life sure is dull. I think I'll get myself locked up on misdemeanor charges, maybe get my gun taken away, and get written up in the paper as a dangerous kook."

I'll take "Dumb Ideas" for $500, Alex...

Can you think of a dumber training exercise to use in a CCW state?

Unwittingly, Fisher had driven into the climactic scene in a secret world of shadow theatrics. The man in the ski cap is a stage actor; the agent with the earpiece is a Secret Service recruit.

Every day, as Washingtonians go about their overt lives, the FBI, CIA, Capitol Police, Secret Service and U.S. Marshals Service stage covert dramas in and around the capital where they train. Officials say the scenarios help agents and officers integrate the intellectual, physical and emotional aspects of classroom instruction. Most exercises are performed inside restricted compounds. But they also unfold in public parks, suburban golf clubs and downtown transit stations.

Fortunately these are only going down in Washington DC where it is vanishingly unlikely that any save .gov employees would be packing heat. However, like that goofy L.A. reality show, Scare Tactics, the possibilities for screwups were this to go down in Free America boggle the mind. Witness what happened a few years back when one deputy failed to get the word regarding the frequent Robin Sage exercise at Fort Bragg:

FORT BRAGG (AP) -- A newly released Army report about the shooting death of a soldier during Special Forces training in February is raising new questions about what really happened.

Two witnesses to the fatal shooting give accounts that conflict with the version given by the sheriff's deputy who killed 1st Lt. Tallas Tomeny during the during the "Robin Sage" exercise in Moore County, according to the report obtained by The News & Observer of Raleigh.