Sociology Experiment...

Given all the attention paid to bicycle theft on the internets, I decided to conduct an experiment in my neighborhood:

In South Broad Ripple, if you park a shiny light blue and silver 18-speed Wally World "mountain bike" with a matching Bell saddle and a Nashbar luggage rack and a sign that says "FREE BIKE!" on your curb on trash day at 11:00 AM, it will take approximately an hour and a half for someone to steal it. The average thief will be dressed like a FedUPS driver (complete with truck) and, when you wave and say "Just sharing the love!", will wave back and smile.

I'm such a hippie.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

Given the origins of the Modern Pentathlon, this is just Theatre Of The Absurd. Maybe they could replace fencing with Rock, Paper, Scissors. And has anyone checked on the environmental impact of those horses?

I have a question.

With front-o'-the-rag articles like "OMG Our Smoking Laws Are So Primitive Compared To California's!" and "How Come We Let Those Awful Casinos Prey On Gambling Addicts?", why do papers like the Indianapolis Red Star go through the charade of having a separately labeled "Editorial" section anymore?

Overheard in the Hallway:

Me: "I'm glad to see the 'colander-on-the-face' meme getting a little traction."

RX: "It's because of you that I bought a colander. I had a mesh strainer before, but then I realized what a valuable raw material colanders would be after the apocalypse."

Me: "We should buy several. That way we could outfit a whole bunch of Lords of the Wasteland."

The Old Issue.

New Jovian Thunderbolt ruminates on that perennial favorite internet argument, the never-ending Great U.S. Army Cartridge Dispute.

No, not ".308 vs. .223"; he's doing ".45-70 vs. .30-'06".

Today In History: "Unræd" means "bad idea"...

The king of England in the latter half of the Tenth Century, Æthelred the Deuce, (known to history as "Ethelred the Unready",) was getting pretty tired of Viking raids all up and down the English coast. He was especially annoyed at reports that the raiders were being given aid and comfort by the undocumented Danish aliens who had been settling in the eastern half of the country.

Therefore he launched a cunning plan: In order to cut down on the amount of assistance they could give the seagoing freelance tax men, he would have all the Dane settlers in England put to death. Every man jack of them. Every woman jack and child jack, too. The massacres were carried out on St. Brice's Day, November 13th of 1002AD.

Unfortunately for Æthelred, one of the woman jacks he had killed had a brother, and her brother was currently working as a king in Denmark, going by the rather butch handle of "Sweyn Forkbeard". Sweyn saddled up his posse and after the requisite amount of burning and pillaging and bribing and betraying, Æthelred skipped town for Normandy ahead of the Viking horde and Sweyn was crowned king of England, too.

With two crowns under his belt, as it were, Sweyn only needed to conquer three more countries and he'd get the sixth free, but he died before he could get any more punches on his card, leaving his son Canute to deal with Britain and Æthelred.

Morning Navy video...

(H/T to Any Minor World.)

Deja vu all over again.

After this morning's Afghanistan announcement, I'm realizing that once again we have an administration in Washington that is nowhere near as malevolently competent as its detractors paint it.

Just once in my life I'd like to be sitting on a bus that was going over the cliff because a calm, steady, evil hand at the helm was steering it towards the guardrail and not because the driver is in the back with the map upside down, dithering and arguing with the passengers.

Internet Gun Forums Are Funny.

So I recently posted about the P-Mag 20-rounder that I inadvertently trashed at the Appleseed Shoot. I made it pretty clear in the post and in the subsequent comments that:

• I like P-Mags and have had good luck with them for many years,
• This is the first time I've managed to break one (and not for lack of trying,)
• The fault was entirely attributable to operator error.

The post was linked to at Arfcom, however, and the jihad began. zOMG, I had slandered somebody's favorite magazine! Heresy! Infidel! Unbeliever!

I wish I lived in one of those happy universes where stuff never breaks and therefore people can safely get their egos all tied up with what is, at the end of the day, a sub-$20 piece of gear that is essentially disposable, being a wear item and all.

BTW, props to the guys at Magpul for their swift response at the forum. They make good gear and have always been a pleasure to do business with.

(Incidentally, the go-to mags here at home are the same Magpul 30-rounders that I've used for years.)

East vs. West

(Well, actually more like "Midwest vs. West", but it doesn't scan as well. Anyway...)

Apparently when gunbloggers out in the hairy-chested West hit a deer on the way to a blogmeet, they don't let it divert them from a good time.

Meanwhile, here in the sedate and whitebread Midwest, when a gunblogger sees a deer hit on the way to a blogmeet, he eats it raw on the side of the road.

Speaking of Ruger...

Being perpetually late to the dance for the last couple decades hasn't seemed to hurt their profits...

Most popular.

With the announcement that Ruger is definitely maybe coming out with a 1911, that means the market is more or less officially oversaturated. You can now buy a 1911-pattern pistol with nameplates from Armscor to Z-M Weapons, with price tags anywhere between the low three bills to Infinity-And-Beyond. They've been made in nine countries that I can think of, off the top of my head. But does that make them "Most Popular"?

I'd reckon that the Browning High Power or CZ-75 would probably take the global title...

The thin veneer of civilization continues to hold in Middle America.

The much-feared Anti-Muslim pogram by the denizens of Bitterclingerville continues to unhappen, much to the chagrin of our betters; they were so looking forward to another round of righteous tongue-clucking and finger-wagging.

If I die of atherosclerosis this afternoon, it's Marko's fault.

So I had some bratwurst in the fridge that I'd picked up from the Fresh Market on Monday, and I was beginning to get that "use it or lose it" urge. And I looked in the spice cabinet and there was a big baggie full of curry powder. And although we had no ketchup, we had a bottle of Heinz chili sauce, which Bobbi swears is superior to ketchup for any purpose...

Suddenly I had an epiphany...

Armistice Day.

On the eleventh hour
Of the eleventh day
Of the eleventh month
The guns fell silent.

.

Wish I'd written that.

Today's Final Jeopardy. Remember to write your answers in the form of a question.

Side effects.

As a side effect of being sick yesterday morning, I was exposed to a full dose of the Today show, or at least the parts I didn't doze through. Some observations:

• That Hoda chick is tall. And I don't say that lightly. And her name is frickin' cool.
  
• Why do they hate Al Roker so much? Every other time I see the dude, he's leaning at a 45-degree angle into a vicious wind, dodging flying debris. I think they send him into the middle of hurricanes because they're trying to by-god kill the man.
• Some lady is training special "labradoodles" to act as "smelling nose" dogs for kids with peanut allergies. Where were these kids when I was little? I mean, we got the one regulation Frail Child per classroom, but now it seems like half the class is running around with asthma inhalers and epipens, making Eddie Kaspbrak from It look like the "After" picture from Charles Atlas ads.

Conflicted.

So, Johnny Muhammad is smoking a camel turd in hell this morning.

You know, I have reflexive problems with capital punishment simply because I don't trust the same organization that can't get a letter across town in less than a week to kill the right dude 100% of the time, plus I don't like what it says when we acknowledge that "society" (read: 51% of voters) has the power of life & death over any one lowly individual.

On the other hand, Johnny Muhammad is smoking a camel turd in hell this morning, and I'm having a real hard time being all tore up about that.

Hard lessons unlearned.

According to some accounts, Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Thoreau replied, “Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?”

At least I'll have good fellow jailbirds.

I am become Death, the Destroyer of Gear.

Over the years, I have broken a lot of AR magazines in a lot of exotic ways. At the Appleseed shoot, I broke my very first Magpul P-Mag, and broke it in a suitably bizarro fashion.

As we were preparing to fire our first string from standing, I slapped the mag home in a brisk fashion. Perhaps too brisk. As I went to tug on it to make sure it was seated, my hand reported to my brain that maybe a little less magazine was protruding from the weapon than is usual. I finished tugging and went to hit the bolt release and it wouldn't budge. Ripping the charging handle got no results and so I rolled the carbine to port and gazed stupidly into the receiver and the problem was immediately apparent: Apparently I had slapped the magazine past the catch somehow.

After the malf had been safely cleared, I looked at the mag, and as best I can tell what happened was as follows: When I went to smack the magazine home, my trigger finger was apparently partially depressing the mag release. The nubbin of the catch that was left protruding into the well combined with my vigorous slap on the mag to shear part of the tab on the mag away, allowing the magazine to override the catch and bind the bolt.


Okay. The first step was to fling the magazine back from the firing line, rather than dropping it at my feet, where it might get mixed up with the others. The next prep period, I marked the magazine. Now the P-Mag presented me with another problem: Normally I would stomp or hammer a magazine flat before throwing it away so somebody won't get themselves killed trying to save a few bucks by fishing a busted magazine out of a range trashcan. Absent tools which I didn't have ready to hand, like maybe a hammer and chisel or a gas axe, that wasn't going to happen on this day. So I marked it very distinctively and packed it home.


I guess I'll keep it for a souvenir. Far away from my other mags.

Gun School: The place to go to break gear.

Whimper.

I have got a the mother of all headaches this morning, complete with vertigo and a couple degrees of fever.

What I'm being punished for, I don't know, but it must have been bad. My head feels like it's been inflated to 1,000psi; I'm seriously considering the merits of a bit of trepannery...

Bleed it out, welcome to the occupation, Gallileo...

One of the neatest features of iTunes is the "Top 25 Most Played" list, since it increments its song counts every time I plug my iPod into the eMac I use for a media server. Without further ado, here are the 10 songs most often played in VFTP Command Central and the Zed Three:

1. "Viva La Vida" Coldplay
2. "Get In The Ring" Guns N' Roses
3. "New Dawn Fades" Joy Division
4. "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning" Smashing Pumpkins
5. "What U Lookin' At?" Uncle Kracker
6. "Galileo" Indigo Girls
7. "Bleed It Out" Linkin Park
8. "The Great Destroyer" Nine Inch Nails
9. "Welcome To The Occupation" R.E.M.
10. "Space Is The Place" Spacehog

Undeader.

Maybe the awesomest action shooting course ever.

Inspired by Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International.

Why you should not have overdue books...

My pal Breda shoots an M1A for the camera. It probably took a paint scraper to get the grin off her face afterward.



(Especially amusing are the gents in comments offering dozens of bits of advice, almost 20% of which are factual... ;) )

Armor Piercing Projectiles Bounce Off Bullet-Proof Ignorance.

The SS190 AP loading of the 5.7x28mm cartridge, about which several in the media are prattling on as though they knew from which end of the weapon the bullet emerged, is not just "restricted", but actually illegal to import for any use but law-enforcement or the military. To the best of my knowledge, it cannot be purchased from Joe's Police Supply Co.; it sits in a customs-bonded cage at Fabrique Nationale's South Carolina facility until an order comes directly from a government agency. So that's not what was used at Fort Hood.

Further, unless your target is swaddled in Kevlar, the "super-scary cop killer" bullets are probably less effective than the plain vanilla kind.

Basically, even bringing it up is a red herring. Doc Jihadi could have done every bit as much damage with just about any pistol.

Yay, books!

I'm reading Robert Kaplan's Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts, which is the follow-on volume to his excellent book Imperial Grunts. Mr. Kaplan has basically spent several years bumming around the U.S. military, embedding with various units and telling their stories. From a Special Forces base in Colombia to a platoon of marines training local troops in Niger to a couple of weeks on a nuclear sub on exercises in the Pacific, he gives an even-handed close-up view of the American military's activities around the globe. Must read.

Where in the world is Tamara Sandiego?

Last Sunday I had breakfast on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building. Yesterday, I had breakfast at the Cracker Barrel in London, Kentucky. In between I went to book stores in Chicago, raked leaves and rode bicycles in Indianapolis, and went to an Appleseed Shoot in Maynardville, Tennessee. I've been such a busy little blogger.

Twenty years ago...

...I was flipping channels on the TeeVee. One local channel was covering the revels surrounding the Georgia-Florida game. I changed channels to see a similar, but far more boisterous, scene and thought "Wow, they're really getting out of hand down there. Waitaminnit! That's the frickin' Berlin Wall!" I started dancing in my living room...

Sincerest apologies.

I meant to write something today; I really did.

However, after a long range day yesterday and spending the first half of today on the road, I am completely whupped. I am going to put enough hot water and bath salts in the tub to make Tamara stew, and then go to bed early.

I swear I'll get back to this blog thing tomorrow.

Fool on the hill...

I went to my first Appleseed Shoot today. While I did not shine, at least I did not completely disgrace myself.

The range was on a fairly pronounced slope, with the targets upslope from the firing line.

I feel like I spent the entire day standing, sitting, or lying on a hillside. In other words, it feels like a team of angry midgets have worked me over with tee-ball bats from about kidney level on down.

More in a little bit.

Safe at home...

The more I think about it, the more pissed off I get at the "this is our home" comment from the completely unsat and hopefully about-to-fall-on-his-sword General Cone.

Sure, General, your troops were "safe at home"... in a war with no fronts.

They were every bit as safe at home as the crews of the USS Cole or the battleship Arizona. Safe at home like the Marines in their barracks in Beirut.

An army at war does not have the luxury of "safe at home". Do you think the bomber crews of the Mighty Eighth landed in southern England after pasting the hell out of the Nazis and called out "Olly olly oxen free! We're safe at home now; we'll be putting on our slippers and lighting a pipe. No fair bombing us 'til tomorrow, Adolf!" or do you think they made sure that there were plenty of slit trenches, anti-aircraft guns, and armed guards on the base?

Do our people need to wear full battle rattle to go to the infirmary? No, but the idea that our highly trained all-volunteer army should walk around in condition white with empty holsters and bull's-eyes taped to their backs during a war and right in the middle of what is, to be honest, quite a tempting target is delusional at best and a grave insult to our troops at worst.

General Cone, a professional soldier should be mortified to have accidentally let slip that line about being unarmed at home. You are absolutely responsible for everything that happens in your command. Act like it.

The very model of a modern major massacre...

Some of my favorite highlights in this endless blooper reel thus far:

1) Your next door neighbor, last name Hasan, starts handing out copies of the Koran and giving away his worldly belongings one fine Fall morning? Hey, Zippy! Climb aboard the Hint Train; next stop: Clueville. Quick! What's the number for 911?

2) Apparently Maj. Hasan didn't want to get deployed, in which case he had chosen a mighty odd line of work, unless he thought he was signing up for the Salvation Army and walked into the wrong recruiting station by mistake. Although you'd think all the tanks parked around Fort Hood and the address on his paycheck stubs would have tipped him off to his error.

3) The cherry on the icing of the cake of the night was the mealy-mouthed General Cone simpering from the lectern about "We don't go armed around here, this is our home," which caused me to look at the loaded pistol on the nightstand in bafflement. I thought Texas had that "Castle Doctrine" thing? I know Texans on the internets are always bragging about how it's legal for them to shoot someone stealing their hubcaps after dark, so I'm pretty sure a guy Allahu Akhbar-ing his way through a hospital waiting room gets the green light in the target selection sweepstakes. If they had been allowed to carry their damn guns, maybe somebody could have smoked Hasan before he rolled up a body count like an NCAA basketball score. Even the most ardent gun banners are always shooting off at the mouth about how "only the police and the military are qualified to carry guns" so how come they were unarmed and defenseless by edict here?

It's all in the name of cash safety...

Baltimore can only put up robot speed cameras in school zones, which cramps the revenue flow from Officer R2D2... unless you create bogus new "school zones".

Just like the last Great Depression...

...the antics of G-men and bank robbers are filling the headlines.

Unacquainted with logic...

Stating that the fact that Nazis performed "science" experiments on concentration camp inmates proves that science is somehow corrupt is exactly as much of a non sequitur as stating that mathematics is corrupt because they counted them.

Custom ARs.

You may notice that some people get snotty when someone refers to an AR as a "custom" rifle. Part of this is because of the nature of the AR's construction: Being more or less entirely modular, with the same high-end components, some simple hand tools, and a bit of care, you could assemble a rifle in your basement that was pretty much the equivalent of anything you'd get from Baer or Wilson. There's very little in the way of hoodoo and tricky stuff in knocking an AR-pattern rifle together that justifies paying a custom house premium for assembly.

On the other hand, were you to start with a semi-inletted walnut stock, a Swedish Mauser, and a name-brand barrel, it would be helpful if you had such tools as a lathe and a mill in your basement, as well as being a dab hand with a rasp and a file.

Overheard in the Office:

Me: "Huh. Neda's story is back front page center at CNN.com after all this time. We're gonna hit Iran."

RX: "We don't have every war Mr. Hearst wants us to have. Only about sixty percent of them."

Me: "I'm so cynical."

RX: "You're more cynical than that."

Moneypits and you.

Having commissioned more than a couple custom guns over the years, one of which was a rifle, I have one piece of advice to offer: Never think that the acquisition of this fine firearm of your dreams is some kind of "good investment". You will most likely spend far more on having the firearm built than you could ever possibly hope to get out of your dream gun, unless you just so happen to find another person whose ideal rifle is a left-handed Remington action in .264 Winchester Magnum with a heavy barrel and a synthetic stock with a 15" length-of-pull.

Meanwhile, at the other blog...

I guess the "Sunday" part of "Sunday Smith" is just kind of a meaningless tradition now...

Anyhow, there's a new Sunday Smith up.

It had to happen.

¡Blackhawk! is marketing an actual turse. (Tactical pURSE.)

No burying it under euphemisms like "messenger bag" or the like.

Hope and Change!

Chicago politics writ large: Reward your supporters and punish your opponents.

RTFM.

So the guy who managed to blow his finger mostly off with the jet of hot gasses from the barrel/cylinder gap on a S&W 460XVR sued, because he claimed that the instruction manual didn't warn him not to.

The judge apparently pointed him to the part of the S&W revolver instruction manual where it says "Keep fingers and other parts of your body away from the muzzle and away from the gap between revolver barrel and cylinder." At least, that's what it says in the first S&W manual I could lay hands on, a 9/98 revision that shipped with my PC627; the one with the XVR might have some asterisks and exclamation points and daggers and stuff. Anyway, he got sent home sadder, wiser, and poorer. And short a finger.

The moral of this story? There are two: "Read the frickin' instructions, there, Enrico Fermi," and "Is gun. Is not safe."

Meanwhile, SayUncle wonders at the fact that the suit was even brought. After all, didn't the media tell us that the Evil Bush Administration caved to the big bad firearms industry and wrote a special law protecting gun manufacturers from all lawsuits for ever and ever?

Please stay off my side.

When is a shrieking hysterical antigunner not so shriekingly hysterical?

When the person he's accusing of vigilantism is actually engaged in... well... vigilantism.

So both got a concealed license permit and bought handguns. Now they walk with pistols in their pockets...looking for the bad guys.

Luong says, "I don't know if it's illegal to walk around and be bait. I'm kind of fishing for robbers."

Nice work, numbnuts; way to use every bit of that finely-tuned judgment that we all have when we're in college.

Look, there's a word for those thoughts running through your head: It's "premeditation". From now 'til the day you die, if you bust a cap in somebody even in the most righteous of self-defense incidents, any crusading prosecutor who knows which end of a Google search box you type the letters into is going to be able to crucify you as a dangerous lunatic who was spoiling for a fight.

Quote of the Day:

Election Day advice from Jim at The Travis McGee Reader:

Go vote no. Unless unusually special circumstances apply, an anti-incumbent vote counts as a "no."

Don't be a fool!

Tune in to Gun Nuts: TNG tonight! The special guest is my longtime net-pal and hero, Kathy Jackson, the proprietress of Cornered Cat and head editor-what-am-in-charge of Concealed Carry Magazine.

Overheard at the Grocery Store:

Clerk: "I'm sorry, ma'am, I can't ring up this beer 'til 6:00."

Me: "Have you gone mad? It's Tuesday!"

Clerk: "Yes, but it's Election Tuesday. Don't forget that old dumb law."

Me: "What this country needs is more drunks voting."

Clerk: "We sure couldn't do any worse."

I did not know that...

While Wikipedia is rightly derided for the lack of objectivity caused by the easy editing of articles on contentious issues by any random idiot, its true worth is often overlooked: No other place on the internets is a better source of one-stop-shopping for the straight skinny on really obscure stuff.

For example, somebody was passionate enough about tag-team bell ringing to write an article on a topic I didn't even know existed...

Let the ballot box stuffing begin!

Here on Election Tuesday it's time to vote on a date for the November Indy Blogmeet.

Shame!

Ted Danson, who has apparently stolen his new glasses from an elderly lesbian, understands us little people, and thinks that rich elites like Rush Limbaugh should not be taking advantage of us and our simple beliefs and fears.

Look, Ted, first of all, saying "Shame! Shame!" to Hydrocodone Boy is an exercise in futility; I don't believe it's an emotional state he's really set up to feel. Second, can the hypocrisy, okay? To see you up there chastising people for churning up fear and divisiveness by... well, churning up fear and divisiveness is mind-boggling.

Lastly, we circle back around to one of the big problems in our society, which is the idea that line-memorizing clothes horses have anything more valid to say about politics, science, or current events than the hippie on the street corner with a guitar case. The Romans had the right position in society for actors: Above cesspit cleaners, but not as well-respected as a decent whore.

Ted, shut up and entertain me. With a side of fries.

Overheard in my Roommate's Bedroom:

TeeWee Commercial Voiceover: "Save money! Save the environment! Ride IndyGo!..."

RobertaX: "Not until you paint the buses dark blue."

Sorry...

I wasn't very productive today because we hit a couple of fantastic bookstores in Mordor on Lake Michigan over the weekend.

At the University of Chicago Seminary Co-Op Bookstore, a wonderful catacomb-like grotto with low-ceilinged labyrinthine corridors lined with books, I snagged a few readables. One of those tomes was The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. I've been nose-down in it all day.

Absolutely fascinating.

Now I want to meet LabRat over a couple of beers more than ever.

The Navel of the World.

It is a well-known fact in the northwest Atlanta suburbs that the Big Chicken is the Milliarium Aureum of the world. All directions can be given using le Poulet Gran, as we snooty East Cobb types called it, as the starting point.

For instance, to get to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago from my folks' place, you would go to the Big Chicken and turn right...

How to tell if you are a gun blog nerd:

If you click on this link and immediately blow snot out your nose, you are a gun blog nerd.

Make a note...

Can you believe some idiot left for a weekend out of town without making sure she'd have sodas in the fridge when she got back?

That's right, I strolled out the door and left an empty twelve pack of Vault Zero in the refrigerator to mock me upon my return.

Weird dreams.

Oddly enough, I don't often have zombie dreams. Perhaps because I have spent so much of my waking time preparing for the coming zombie apocalypse, they just aren't features of my nocturnal landscape.

My first night in Chicago, however, featured a humdinger of a zombie dream. And in this zombie dream I was completely unarmed. As a matter of fact, scratch "dream" and substitute "nightmare". The last thing I remember about it was trying to talk my way out of getting bitten when I got myself cornered; that's right, I was reduced to tearfully pleading for mercy and attempting to reason with the zombie. For some reason, the zombie was as unamenable to logic as the typical Chicago voter... Wait, that's not a good analogy because, speaking statistically, the "typical Chicago voter" probably is a zombie. There're a lotta stiffs in Rosehill, after all.

I wonder if the fact that I was farther from my sidearm than I've been in probably the last fifteen years had anything to do with it?

In His Footsteps.

Above is a photo of Hyde Park in Chicago. We stayed with friends in one of the lovely old condos on the right of this picture. On the left, obscured by the tree, is the very unit where our Dear Reader lived before Rezko gave him some real estate advice. That's right, I snuck cigarettes on the back porch while gazing down on the very alley that the Anointed One did while he snuck cigarettes on the back porch. That grassy lawn is where his sneakers trod as he walked to the SUV he drove before he bought his Chrysler.

While no "George Washington Slept Here" plaques have been put up yet, Shootin' Buddy's friend has already had to evict at least one pack of bicycle-riding hippies in Obama shirts who had come to wave their Little Red Books in homage at the nascent shrine.

Not in Kansas anymore...

We land-navv'ed our way across Chicago last night to get to a restaurant for dinner, and managed to find ourselves on surface streets in the middle of Wrigleyville. On Halloween.

It's been a long time since I lived in Midtown Atlanta. I wasn't entirely prepared for the sight of Peter Pan and the Lone Ranger walking down Halstead, hand in hand.

"Are you sure that wasn't Robin Hood?" asked Shootin' Buddy.

"No, there was no bow and arrows. Also, the impression was definitely more Sandy Duncan than Errol Flynn."

Broad Ripple may be Berkeley on the White River, but it pales in comparison to the Near North Side on All Hallow's Eve...

The fabulous shrinking submarine...

For those of you who don't know, the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago sports one of the neatest exhibits: An entire WWII German U-Boat, captured intact.

I shot my very first roll of film in that sub, on a school fieldtrip, using a little 126 Instamatic to snap Sylvania flash cube illuminated pictures of my classmate's backs while we took the tour. (Good photo composition being something somewhat beyond me in the first grade.)

Funny, I seem to recall the U-505 being a lot... well... roomier inside. Maybe the Jerries should have looked into using six-year-olds for sub crews in the interest of reducing claustrophobia. Given the loss rates the Kriegsmarine was taking by 1944, they were probably heading in that direction anyway...

I forgot my camera back at Roseholme Cottage, but they don't let you take pictures in the sub anymore, so it didn't much matter.

No sense of proportion...

So I can't get a WiFi signal on my Eee and am reduced to the dead tree edition of the WSJ for my morning cardiac stimulation.

I am not disappointed: Smack in the middle of page one is a story about the Nekkid Pumpkin Runners in Boulder being hassled by The Man. Apparently, one guy streaking through the streets with a gourd on his noggin during All Hallow's Eve was cute, five or ten was a tradition, but the 150 they had last year was getting a mite out of hand, so this year the Boulder po-po is getting ready with the paddy wagon.

Now, while I'm generally on the side of the runners, I can kinda see the cops' point of view, too: There is a law on the books, even if it dates from days when even piano legs were modestly covered. One interviewee's response was priceless, however: "It kind of reminds me of what's happening in Tehran..."

Say what? Look, hippie, nobody's going to hang you or cut anything off, okay? You're exhibiting the same finely tuned sense of proportion as a sixth grader who threatens suicide because she doesn't get to go to spend the night at the slumber party with her friends.

Behind Enemy Lines...

I'm back in Mordor on Lake Michigan for the first time since '84. Hyde Park, to be specific; the throbbing center of the O-Zone.

Posting may be sporadic 'til Sunday afternoon.

Everybody's a music critic...

I don't believe I've ever heard of a fatal coyote attack before.

I'm sure that the fact that I initially broke out laughing at the link makes me a bad person: The link read "Canadian Folk Singer Killed By Coyotes", and my first mental picture was more Belushi in Animal House than something from Animal Planet.

If CNN had wished to be more solemn, they should have written the link to say "19 y.o. woman killed by coyotes", or "Young hiker fatally mauled by coyotes".

Instead, the way they wrote it is almost like a joke. The first word, "Canadian", starts it off on a humorous theme, because Canadians are all intrinsically funny: Witness John Candy, Mark Steyn, PDB, or any random Che-shirted Quebecois Separatist (although the Frog Canucks are trying to be serious, it still counts.)

Second, they described the victim as a "folk singer" and, really, who hasn't wanted to see one of those torn apart by wild dogs at some time in their life?

Color me skeptical.

So the talking head on the local morning news announced, in her most bubbly tone of voice, that the recession is over! As of yesterday! Sure, unemployment will continue to rise and consumer confidence, already at its lowest ebb ever, was likely to continue plummeting like a paralyzed falcon, but GDP had grown. Better than a "jobless recovery", we seem to have invented the "recoveryless recovery"; nobody's working and nobody's buying anything, but gosh darn it, we feel good about ourselves, so it's a recovery!

Never mind that all that "GDP growth" was imaginary, based on moving buckets of water from one end of the pool to another in hopes of raising the water level...

Excuses, excuses...

So my output has been a little low this week because we were early to the blogmeet.

Let me explain: Because we were early to the blogmeet, we stopped in to Big Hat Books, which is right next door to the Brew Pub. Big Hat is a neat little locally-owned book shop; the kind with pieces by local artists for sale and a friendly proprietress who is always eager to help. While there, I picked up a copy of Freakonomics, which I had not yet read.

I polished off whatever I was reading and started Freakonomics after my chores on Monday. Wednesday morning found me driving back to Big Hat for the sequel, SuperFreakonomics. In hardback.

Definitely interesting books. No matter your political orientation, there should be something in either one to piss you off and make you think.

To my soft-hearted neighbors:

I know you love the feral kitties. I, too, am a fan of felines. However, if you give them a steady supply of food, they become like little welfare recipients; logy, dull, and disinclined to work. You cannot then complain when they lose the edge and don't eat the critters in your garden.

Help the kitties stay lean and hungry so they eat the nasty squirrels.

Overheard on the Phone:

Me: "...and there's no off-street parking and I don't have any change and the meters won't take a twenty and I accidentally turned into a bank employee parking lot and I was trapped like a cow in a slaughterhouse chute and now I'm turning out of another employee parking lot and I don't have a hands-free phone..."

Shootin' Buddy: "Okay, where are you now?"

Me: "I'm near the capitol building... uh... the corner of Ohio and... oh, something named after some other Yankee place, I'm sure. I think I can... Yes... I'm turning left on Ohio."

Shootin' Buddy: "Just come back north on Illinois and park by a meter near the restaurant. I'll come feed it when I get there. I'll let you have both hands to drive now. *click*"

I turn back north on Illinois and realize...

Shootin' Buddy: "Hello?"

Me: "Uh, never mind. There's a parking garage right next to the restaurant. I'm parked in it now."

D'oh!

One thing that's always baffled me is the profusion of exotic automobiles you'll see in downtown Indy of a weekend evening. The streets around the circle are almost crowded with exotic German, American, British, and Italian cars. Why anybody would take a stiffly-sprung, low-slung sports car with low-profile tires and a manual transmission and go drive it through that cratered hellhole of traffic lights and one-way streets at parking lot speeds for fun is completely beyond me.

Grrrr...

I'm about to enter deepest Indianapolis to meet Shootin' Buddy for breakfast. I'm studying the map looking for a place to park when it occurs to me that I'd like to meet the inventor of one-way streets in a dark alley with a tee ball bat.

Double the eye candy...

Kevin has some totally gratuitous gun pr0n of the Heym double rifle variety up at his site.

Yum.

You've got the right to protect yourself... if you can afford it.

Bob S. discusses how Texas's CHL system puts a heavy burden on the poor. Tennessee's was that way, too: By the time you'd paid the state and bought your training certs, you were about $200 out of pocket, and that's not even counting the cost of a heater and the means to carry it. That's a sizable chunk of change to a lot of people.

Hopefully they've got somebody around like a Texas version of James Rummel, doing the mandatory instruction out of charity, but I suspect that sort of thing is vanishingly rare.

It's a movement....

It has long been my perception that NFA ownership was increasing. It wasn't until my early 20s that I really got into the whole gun culture, about the time I got my first job at a gun store; at the time, in the early '90s, I could count the people I knew who owned NFA weapons on both hands. Most of them owned full autos of one variety or another, although I knew one guy with a pistol-gripped short shotgun (as a smoothbore handgun, these are registered as an "Any Other Weapon", or AOW in gun nut lingo,) and the only person I knew with a suppressor had it attached to a MAC-10.

Now you can't swing a cat at a gun show without hitting someone selling suppressors, and I'm one of the few people I shoot with who doesn't own a can (or a short-barreled rifle or a full auto or a tax stamp of any kind.)

It looks like my perception is backed up by the numbers.

If suppressors keep getting more popular, I think one of the gun culture's next attacks should be to get them removed from the NFA. After all, they're good for your health!

Pesky rodentia.

Last year, it was chipmunks destroying my feeble attempt at growing corn. This year, it was a squirrel making the pumpkin on our porch look like a JFK jack-o-lantern.

The folks at Locally-Grown Gardens claim they have some kind of pumpkin rodent repellent, but it's too late to save our gourd.

Move over, Elite Team Fighter!

There are things on the intarw3bz that I wish every day that I'd never stumbled across. For example, yesterday I...

Oh, jeez, I'm laughing almost too hard to type...

Yesterday I found what might be the ultimate in internet gun-wanking Walter Mittyery:

Everyone knows that not even an Elite Team Fighter can stand in the face of those masters of Gun Fu, the Grammaton Clerics, right?

Well, I felt better about the world before I realized that somewhere in America, the Star Wars kid's cousin is busting Christian Bale poses in mom's basement with a brace of Tokyo Marui Berettas and telling his friends that he has a black belt in Gun Kata.

Quote of the Day:

From George in comments here:

...and I thought the phrase was,
"PROMOTE the General Welfare", NOT
ENFORCE...?

Huh? What? Sorry...

I couldn't hear what you were saying; I was all absorbed in writing something over at the Arms Room. All the talk lately about loaded chamber indicators and magazine safeties got me thinking...

A man with good taste in firearms.

Frank James writes:

Got another 1903 Colt .32 because my other one is in the shop and has been for some time now. Besides you just can't have too many 1903 Colt .32's.

I have to say that I totally agree. But then I have a weakness for old .32 autos in general, and Colts are just the neatest of the breed. Every now and again I get the urge to acquire a nice little IWB holster for mine because... well, just because.

A bear walks into the grocery store...

Actually, there's no separate punch line. That's pretty much the whole story.

Well, I mean, the critter cops came and rousted him with the aid of the usual Thorazine gats and nets and stuff, but nobody got eaten on the chips'n'dip aisle or mauled in the produce department or anything.

It tasted like pure nomminess.

So the other evening, Bobbi fried up some bacon & egg sandwiches, and cooked a few slices of my pancetta to throw on them. That was the first time I'd eaten it fried up like bacon, believe it or not.

Oh. My. God. It was like bacon, only baconier; the platonic ideal of nomminess.

Yesterday afternoon I fried up the remainder and ate it on crispbreads with provolone. I'm going back to Fresh Market today for more.

The Uplifters are at it again.

Based on statistical analysis, the fascistii are gaining on me.

It took them six years from my arrival in Knoxville to pass an ordinance requiring the wearing of a sweater when it's cold outside; here in Indy it took them less than two.

What? You think my analogy is too odious? Then why did the statement from my Betters at City Hall say "This isn't about business owner's rights; this is about Health!" And as anybody who's ever had a mother knows, wearing a sweater when it's cold outside is Healthy!

A more robust citizenry would have made Christmas Tree ornaments out of any legislators so overreaching in their officious busibodiness, but the flame of the Spirit of '76 guttered and burned out long ago in this fair land. Maybe next we can legislate the proper size of frickin' toilet tanks. Oh, wait...

Words of Wisdom:

"Don't bring a knife to a coffee fight," or "The Starbucks in your hand beats the STI .38 Super open class gun left in the gun safe."

October Blogmeet Report.

I'd write one but, as per usual, the Hoosier Blogmeet Social Secretary has already done a better job than I could. She, like, took notes and stuff.

Why?

Do you know what I just realized is the dumbest gun part ever affixed to a gun? A "loaded chamber indicator".

Dumber than an integral lock, dumber than a magazine safety.

What's it supposed to do? Encourage people to think "Well, it's okay if I point this thing at Cletus over there because the loaded chamber indicator says it's empty..."?

Its very existence betrays a bad mindset to have around guns, which is the idea that "This one's loaded, so I'll treat it with extra special caution!" The problem is thinking that way implies the unwritten corollary that "I don't think this one's loaded, so I can handle it sloppily," which almost unfailingly comes back to bite the unwary in the arse and leave bullet holes in things better left unpunctured.

Shooty (and Eaty) Goodness Weekend Report.

Sunday morning dawned bright and early, as is its wont, and Shootin' Buddy showed up for the drive to the range. As we set off on our normal route, we noticed that Good Morning Mama! Cafe had, instead of the "Coming Soon" sign that had graced it for so long, a sign reading "Yes, we're OPEN!" Almost as though by magic, the truck steered right into the parking lot.

Good Morning Mama! is an offshoot of local favorite Italian restaurant Mama Carolla's, which you know is good because they always have a line out the door like they're giving dollar bills away inside. Their new breakfast/lunch joint didn't disappoint, either. I ordered a breakfast burrito with eggs, chorizo, onions, jalapenos, and cheese, and it came with a cup of chili verde sauce with which to slather it, should that that appeal to you. Shootin' Buddy ordered an omelette yclept "Swiss Bliss", which contained pancetta in addition to the titular cheese.

Suitably ballasted, we headed out to Iggle Crick for the day's blasting.

I broke in the 22/45 by pulling it out of its case, giving the bolt a squirt of dry lube, loading magazines and getting down to shooting paper zombies. The only malf the gun experienced all day was a dud primer on a Remington Golden Bullet. It even ran fine with the godawful Federal bulk pack stuff I was shooting (which, despite being all from the same box, gave reports varying over the decibel range from "CB Cap" to "Stinger".) I hate all the added mechanical goofiness on the Mk III: The "loaded chamber indicator" is the most unnecessary device in Christendom, the mag safety prevents empty magazines from dropping free, and the built-in lock will probably never even have its keys unwrapped. The only real upsides are that it does feel more 1911-like in my hand than the previous iteration and magazines interchange freely with the older model.

Incidentally, the dry lube was great. I got a can of Strike Hold from 3 Part Supply while we were at the show and Shootin' Buddy was standing in a fog of the stuff, having brought dirty guns to use as controls. He was hosing down loaded mags, spraying it into the cylinders of revolvers, going cyclic with Ruger MkII's and a pile of loaded mags to see if he could get it to burn off, the works. I was happy that it greatly extended my range time with my K-22, because the chambers didn't even start to get a little bit sticky until right about when we were ready to go home anyway. Anyhow, good stuff.

Glrg.

So I have a half-completed Sunday Smith to post, a range report to do, and a blogmeet to write up. What did I do? Overslept. Bleh.

Shooty Goodness.

What do we do after the gun show?

Go to the range, of course! :)

Off to breakfast in a bit, and then Iggle Crick. And this time I won't have to look at Shootin' Buddy when he's getting his Ruger 22/45 out of the range bag and ask "Did you bring enough for the whole class?"

7.65 Browning Automatic.

You know, yesterday, I was trying to think of an autopistol chambering in current common use that's older than the .32ACP, and I can't think of one.

The .32 debuted at the turn of the last century in the FN 1900; .30 Luger and .30 Mauser are as old and older, respectively, but neither one is in what I would call "common use" these days. All the older handgun cartridges I can think of are revolver loadings.

Huh. That John Moses Browning guy, he turns up everywhere.

Turse.

The handiest thing to have at a gun show is something in which to carry your scores.

Luckily, ever since I started carrying my 5.11 PUSH Pack, which I got because of the fact that it fits my Eee as though it were made for it, I always have something handy. I have a feeling that most regular purses would not have dealt well with the additional burden of a pint bottle of water, a carton of .22LR, 100rds of 9mm, and a set of .45ACP carbide reloading dies, as well as swallowing the cell phone, cigs, lighters, flashlights, keys, pens, and suchlike that the purse normally holds. In fact, all I needed to do to make it ready for gun show cargo chores was remove the Eee. Tease me all you want about my "tactical purse", but that padded shoulder strap is a godsend when you're lugging an extra five or ten pounds around in there.

Another strategy I have seen used with some success is going to one of the tables manned by a big surplus vendor and buying one of the countless variety of dispatch bags, gas mask pouches, medic packs, or suchlike that they have piled on their table, usually for $10-$20. It's not like you'll never find a use for it after the show.

Something old, something new, something ammo, and something Blue (Book)...

In addition to some .22 and 9mm ammo, I snagged a Ruger Mk.III 22/45 and got a killer deal on a H&R .32 autoloader. Also, .45ACP dies were obtained, and I got a copy of the 5th Edition of the Standard Catalog of Military Firearms. I'll bring my old 3rd Edition to the blogmeet Sunday afternoon and give it to the first person who asks nicely.

View From The Porch:

The seasons are turning again here on the sleepy side streets of Broad Ripple:


...and here you can see why they call it "Fall":


I see more raking in the very near future...

You know what's awesome?

Being mumblesomething years old and still being able to feel like a kid on Christmas morning on gun show weekends.

Shootin' Buddy'll be here in just over an hour.

Other things for which I should keep an eye open: FN 1910 mags, quasi-reasonably-priced .32 ACP ammo, HKS 22-K and 22-J speedloaders. I also want to get hands-on with one of those Bushnell fakeOGs; I'm looking for a temporary dot, for ranges from indoors to across-the-street, that I can use until I've scraped up the gelt for a replacement EOTech.

I hate it when...

...I get all choked up first thing in the morning. At least let me get some coffee in me before you get me all teary-eyed.

Yay! Fun Show Tomorrow!

My main goal is a Ruger 22/45. I'm hoping to find a nice used Mk.II, but I'll settle for a Mk.III. Stainless would be nice, too.

I also need to pick up... and this is so embarrassing... some .45ACP loading dies. Probably get some bullets while I'm there, too. I'm assuming the primer situation is still pretty dismal. I know that the Mountain of Geese had nowt but some small pistol primers last time I was there, and Premier Arms hasn't had anything other than 209 shotgun primers since forever.

Unholy Alliance.

In Indiana it is against the law to buy alcohol for off-premises consumption on Sunday. It is also against the law for anyplace other than a liquor store to sell cold beer (although cold wine is apparently a-okay.)

So when legislation comes up that would overturn both these provisions, who do you get opposing it? An unholy alliance of churches who are apparently afraid that people will sneak out before the benediction to get a sixer of Bud before the Colts game kickoff, and package store owners afraid of losing their cold beer monopoly and getting beaten down in fair competition by Kroger.

Politics makes for some unnatural bedfellows.

If you take the king's shilling...

...you gotta dance to the king's tune.

Weird.

Does the little silver status bar across the top of the blog look different, or am I hallucinating again?

An appropriate word.

The word "hero" gets a lot of abuse in today's English, being used for everybody who manages to bravely fight their way out of bed in the morning, and awarded with a gold cluster for athletes and performers.

However, I think we can all agree that if you charge into the flaming wreckage of an 18-wheeler with a cargo of liquid freaking propane to pull the driver from the cab, you get to be called "hero".

Color me dubious.

I know that ¡Blackhawk‼ (FTC Disclaimer: The ¡Blackhawk‼ Corporation has given this blogger a box of free swag approximately 1'x1'x2' in size, as well as let her ride on their rock star bus and watch war movies) makes some pretty decent gear, as well as being the world's third-largest consumer of exclamation points, after Bolivia and Third-Grade Book Reports. Their pouch-y vest-y tactical-y stuff is great, their MOD knives are top-shelf, their new clothing line is comfy and practical... However, I've just never gotten that... you know... "gotta have it" vibe from their plastic holsters.

Now, I have some plastic holsters for 1911s; the aforementioned ¡Blackhawk‼ unit that I use for when I remember to go bowling pin shooting, a G-Code paddle (FTC Disclaimer: The G-Code paddle came out of a big box of prototype holsters for free at a Thanksgiving shindig that this blogger attended along with the owner of G-Code some four years before she started blogging) that also sees use as a range holster, and a Safariland 6280 (FTC Disclaimer: The blogger is not entirely certain where the Safariland rig came from, nor is she quite sure why she has a tactical drop-thigh holster in the first place, as she needs one about like a hen needs a flag) so it's not like I'm totally opposed to the concept. In a completely unscientific "Gosh, this feels sturdy!" test, the Blackhawk CQC stuff seems to fall somewhere between regular type kydex holsters and the run-it-over-with-a-tank Safariland gear. Mind you, I haven't tried destroying my own holsters with a hammer or anything to find out which is actually the X-Tremest!, although I'll be happy to break someone else's gear in the name of science.

What I find interesting is the email I just got from ¡Blackhawk‼ announcing the "selection of the BLACKHAWK! SERPA retention holster system along with select accessory components for the Elite Warriors of the United States Joint Special Operations Community."

Maybe the elite warriors of JSOC aren't as tough on their gear as our local Hoosier gunbloggers?

Happiness on a cracker.

I pedaled to Fresh Market yesterday evening and picked up some fresh-sliced hard salami, pancetta, and Swiss. I have some Wasa crispbread here at the house already. Lunch is going to be yummy.

Bobbi seems a little taken aback at the idea of eating the Italian bacon raw. I told her that it can be eaten as a cold cut, like prosciutto, or cooked, but she's still dubious. It does look kinda like regular bacon, which can be disturbing to the uninitiated, but it tastes like heaven on a cracker...

As an aside, the little detachable shopping basket on my bike is just the berries. If only cars came with a built in shopping cart for the grocery store!


BONUS!: Via Butch_S in comments, GM's 1964 show car with built-in shopping cart!

The post wherein I feel old...

Look, I know that when you send me an email that says "i would like if u could email more pix plz", you mean that you would like me to send you more photographs via email, but would it frickin' kill you to type it in English? If you could only see the spike in my blood pressure when I open an email to see that "txtspk" nonsense...

And do they not teach kids to use the frickin' shift key anymore?

Get offa my lawn!

Grumblegrumble.

Boy, I've been cranky lately. Snapping people's heads off; getting frustrated with the most trivial things. Should I maybe take a break from the blogging?

I know! I'll go search the internets for what causes unusual bouts of sudden irritability. Probably brain tumors or late-stage sudden adult death syndrome; that's usually what causes anything you look up on the internets.

How did I miss this?

Breda points to a review of the Showtime reality show "Lock & Load" that describes the program as "deadly dull".

Let's see: A dinner theater actor decides to make the rent money by manning the counter in a gun store rather than busing tables. And, to jump start his acting career, he's going to record all the transactions where he helps Imogene pick out a Taurus .38 or fetches a set of Lee carbide .45 Colt dies for Cletus and make an "edgy" reality series out of them because, hey, guns are "edgy" right?

And people are surprised to find out that eight hours of slinging guns across the glass is about as "edgy" as watching paint dry. Heck, I could have told Showtime that before they wasted the airtime.

Not my day...

So I've got a bidder on Gunbroker asking for an "actual" picture of the 610.

I explain that I'm across town from the gun and my camera tonight, but the picture on Gunbroker is of the actual gun.

He says it's just a picture from a website.

I say "Yes, that's my website. That's a picture of the actual gun."

He says "I could say that was my website, too..."

Now he's emailing me saying if he's the winning bidder, he doesn't want the gun.

I've had enough for one day; I'm going to bed.