It must be the new math.

Apparently Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons programs and the ever-present threat of a Qutbist takeover of Pakistan's atomic arsenal make the world a safer place.

Or maybe it's just Obama. We should give him another Nobel just for this!

That's awfully weird to the Southerner in me...

We're entering day three of the melt now, and the temperature last night didn't dip below thirty. It was weird taking the trash out front, with the yard covered by melting slush with patches of wet green grass showing through.

I'd think the yard would be a morass by looking at it, but then I'd step on it and it would feel like astroturf over concrete. Ground frozen hard for two or three weeks apparently doesn't thaw very quickly.

Epoch-spanning global conspiracy exposed!

Do you read The Gormogons? You should.

Well, darn, and here I was going to buy the DVD...

Actual line from Avatar script:

INT. ARMOR BAY – DAY

TROOPERS issue automatic weapons and magazines to a long line of mine workers. The miners lock and load like the redblooded redneck NRA supporters they are.

Well, gosh, what am I going to do with the money I didn't spend on the DVD? Hmmm... Ooh, I know! I'll give it to the NRA! Like any self-respecting redblooded redneck bitter clinger.

I hope you choke on your arugula tonight, Jimmy.

Doom, despair, and agony on me.

So I've been reading about life during the Great Depression lately, partly for entertainment and partly for information. Hopefully it's more for entertainment, but lately I'm looking around the news and just not getting that recovery "vibe", man.

For example, I see that 2009 was a banner year for foreclosures; Nevada seems to have hit a foreclosure rate of one mortgage in ten:


I'm thinking that if you're looking for a field with growth potential, you might want to look into what it takes to be an auctioneer.

Meanwhile, with tax revenues cratering, state budget shortfalls are getting huge, as the towering entitlement edifices of places like California and New York are left with nothing to support their pie in the sky programs:


Of course, this leads to talk about fixing the problem by raising taxes, instead of shutting off the spigot to the trough:

But borrowing is no help in fixing so-called structural deficits, in which spending exceeds revenue over a prolonged stretch. And so far there has been little sign legislators are willing to make the obligatory tough choices, particularly issuing more or higher taxes.

Many of the so-called fixes for current state deficits are mere Band-Aids that push the problem forward rather than address it, observers said.

"It's surprising that political leaders don't seem to be taking seriously the magnitude of the problems," said Reschovsky. "You would hope it wouldn't come to this, but it might take schools closing and programs being eliminated to create a sense of urgency."

Well, you're right there, Mr. Reschovsky, but for the wrong reasons. It's time and past time to do a national gut check: How much are we willing to raise taxes to provide for crappy services the government doesn't provide very efficiently in the first place? Or would we rather admit that this jalopy's just not worth fixing, write it off as totalled, and go back to doing for ourselves? State legislators have a historic opportunity to slash deadwood here, rather than continuing to try to buy Band-Aids by the bushel.

Oh, hooray!

Guess what I found at my local DVD/vidjo game emporium?

The boxed set of the first season of The Muppet Show!

It has aged extremely well, too. In the largely non-television-centric household in which I grew up, it was the only time the family gathered 'round the idiot box. Watching it again after all these years, I can see why my folks seemed to enjoy it as much as us kids.

And Waldorf & Statler are still like unto gods.

Halfway to England.

The authorities advised him to get his family out of town for their own protection, and then arrested him for trying to protect them himself.

Fan-frickin-tastic. You're supposed to pay taxes to the government to fund essential services, not so you can essentially get serviced by the government.

QotD: Chris Muir wins the internets.

"Tactically, ma'am, it would be hard to get Obama's head under a beer tap."

Now that's funny, right there.


(Yeah, I usually save up my DbD to read a week or so's worth at a time. Sue me.)

Funny, I don't feel very child molester-y.

The Muncie Puppy Trainer wrote a charming editorial yesterday, containing such gems as

Say, for example, you want to find out whether there are any convicted child molesters living in your neighborhood. You have young children, and like any good parent, you look up the information on available Web sites. Your research uncovers several living in your neighborhood. If you want to know whether they have permits to carry a gun, you can get that information.

What are you trying to say there, Mister Journalism Major?

See, there are a few issues with your example:

1. Child molestering is a felony. Since felons are barred by state law from having toter's permits and banned by federal law from so much as touching a gun, your fears start looking a little straw man-ish.
2. There is a little bit of a difference between a sentence handed down to a guilty criminal and a license bestowed upon successful completion of a clean criminal background check. See if you can guess what it is.
3. I fail to see how the fact that my neighbor has successfully swum upstream and spawned gives them some magic right to get all up in my business. I'm sure you're all about my "right to privacy" when it comes to my reproductive organs or my medical records, so why the two facedness when it comes to whether there's a pistol in my purse or I'm just unhappy to see you?

It's against the law for a child molester to own or carry guns. It's not against the law for a child molester to write newspaper editorials, however. Not that I'm implying anything, of course. But don't parents with small children have the right to know?

Pound sand, newspaper lad. I'd say "I hope you freeze in the dark," but you're in Muncie, so that would be redundant.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine...

I've just finished The Worst Hard Time and I'm still not quite ready to wash down a bottle of sleeping pills with a fifth of vodka, so the next book up is A Good Day's Work: An Iowa Farm in the Great Depression which, to judge by the cover and a quick skim, is hardly a 4H recruiting poster. If that doesn't do the trick, I can always go watch The Road this weekend.

It's all relative.

You know it's been bone-cracking cold for a while when the mercury kisses 34°F and it feels like sunbathing weather.

A jog around the blogs:

Bore Patch on the Massachusetts senate race:

Anyone who believes that the Democratic Party is the "party of the little guy" today is stuck in 1972.

Scooteroi on the Green Shoots of Recovery:

As a small business owner, not only am I considering getting out of certain businesses and limiting the scale of others, I have scaled plans for a new business way down and delayed executing those plans until I can get a better feel for what the Masters of Disaster in Washington D.C. are going to stick up my backside. Circling the wagons is the smart move when the arrows start flying.

Old gun pr0n.

Sebastian has an illustrated piece up about his Webley Mk.IV.

The swaggering arrogance is simply breathtaking...

Over at The Travis McGee Reader, I was informed of the latest attempt by the government of New York City to meddle in the affairs of the rest of the nation: Apparently the plebs there won't Do Right and eat less salt, so Steps Must Be Taken:

But, Farley said, simply asking the public to be more careful about what they eat hasn't worked...

Jesus wept, the man sounds like an Ayn Rand villain! "Well, we asked you proles to cut down on your salt intake, but you wouldn't do what's best for you. Now we'll have to order the manufacturers to remove it from your food."

What's appalling is that New Yorkers have apparently grown docile enough to tolerate being spoken to like this.

Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg puts salt on his salt, and then rolls it in salt. Apparently members of the Inner Party have different dietary needs than you proles. It's hard and thankless work governing all you little people, you know.

Brrrrr! Now that's scary.

Continuing my reading of The Worst Hard Time, I hit these passages in Chapter 9, titled "New Leader, New Deal":

Entire towns were broke, shutting down city services. In the string of communities that had sprouted up along the new rail lines, schoolhouses closed, unable to pay teachers or heat classrooms. Texhoma, just up the road from Dalhart, disconnected its streetlights. Couldn't afford to bring light to darkness.
...
In the capital, a whiff of genuine class warfare was in the air. Congress voted to raise taxes across the board on the wealthy to cries of "Soak the rich!" Others pushed for an estate tax, taking nearly half the worth of anything over ten million dollars.

Whew! Scary stuff! Glad that's behind us... Hey, just as an aside, have you read about Muncie's new money-saving plan?

Overheard in the Hall:

RX: "Do you not like Qdoba?"

Me: "I like Qdoba just fine, as long as I can avoid getting the rice and the legumes in my burrito."

RX: "Mm-mmm! Rice and legumes are the food of the gods!"

Me: "The slightly emaciated, flatulent gods, maybe."

The eternal present...

I'm reading The Worst Hard Time right now, an amazingly gripping history of the Dust Bowl era in the high plains. It's one of those rare history books that is as compelling a page-turner as any novel; I only set it down long enough to sleep last night and picked it up again right after breakfast today, anxious to get back to the story.

My copy was obviously used as a text in a college course. To judge by the yellow highlighter peace signs & flowers and loopy cursive handwriting in the margins, it belonged to someone whose name ended in an "i" with a heart where the dot should be, such as Cindi or Tiffani. The thing that totally derailed me came at the start of Chapter Four, which begins:

By the summer of 1929, the United States had a food surplus, and every town along the rail lines of the southern plains sprouted a tower of unsold wheat, stacked in piles outside grain elevators.

In neat, bubbly cursive in the margin is scribbled "What did they use for elevators back then?"

As LawDog would say: "Ye gods and little fishies..." (...or as Billy Beck would say, "Welcome to the Endarkenment.")

We are truly condemned to repeat it.

It really is the juice.

In honor of McGwire's totally unsurprising confession...



At least my favorite baseball players won't be getting any asterisks next to their numbers in Cooperstown...

The death of adulthood.

Florence King has described America as the land of King Kid, where we adore youth so much that we never stop dressing and acting like them, no matter how silly it makes us look.

Seen at Kevin's was this blurb from CNN:

James Cameron's completely immersive spectacle "Avatar" may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.

On the fan forum site "Avatar Forums," a topic thread entitled "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible," has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope.

You know, I got all torn up that I couldn't go to Middle Earth, too... when I was twelve.

We need to spread a meme that if you kill yourself, especially in a humorous and public fashion, you'll go to Pandora and become a Na'Vi.

QotD: Mike and Breda win the Internets.

"I wonder if there are shows for other ethnic groups, like Germans."

"No, there are definitely no shows for Germans. Germans are boring."

Mike nodded in agreement. "Yeah, but we want Germans to be boring...because when Germans start to become exciting, that's when France gets invaded."

That's pretty funny right there.

Your USRDA of Humorlessness.

Apparently, there is an enzyme in animal proteins that is required to maintain a healthy sense of humor, because so many people seem to lose theirs after going vegan.

Witness: Rustmeister posted up the spoof about the animal rights protesters throwing fake blood on the leathers of Hell's Angels instead of the furs of middle-aged women. It's apparently making the email rounds again and anybody who reads it knows it's parody; there's not a PETAphile on this planet with enough courage of their convictions to go protest the wearing of steak wrappers at Sturgis.

Who was his first commenter? Some neurasthenic blogger from Illinois, informing him in a huff that it was a hoax. ("Hoax" apparently being as close as her mouthparts could come to pronouncing "joke".)

Ah, is there any wine so sweet and intoxicating as the tears of a hippie?

Westward through Panama to the Atlantic.

Take the trip in two minutes on video.

This just keeps getting weirder.

Last Friday, there was a story about a guy on the east side of town who called 911 because he "found his wife unresponsive." Emergency services got there, noticed he was covered in what is euphemistically known as "bodily fluids", tyveked him up, and brought him along.

Saturday, it emerges that the house contained roughly a dozen each of firearms and cats, which makes it light on firearms but a bit heavy on felines, at least by my yardstick. Oh, and grenades.

Today we find out that the euphemistic "bodily fluids" in question had, in fact, leaked from his deceased wife's noggin, which is not a usual symptom of Death By Natural Causes. And grenades.

Wow.

Behind Enemy Lines.

The maquisards in Illinois are holding a Town Hall Meeting on the CCW issue with Congressional candidate Joe Walsh on January 21 in Spring Grove, IL.

Vive la Résistance!

School's in session...

Almost everybody knows that Jerry Miculek is like unto a god when it comes to shooting revolvers, but not everyone knows that he's no slouch with a carbine, either.

Thus, it was pretty cool to get an email announcing that Brownells was putting out a set of instructional DVDs from Jerry on his AR carbine techniques:


It'll supposedly be available this month; I know I'm looking forward to it.

Freaky.

"Bugs, Mr. Rico!"

Ick.

Free bullets.

I thought that would get your attention.

Hornady apparently has a promo going on whereby you send in your proof of purchase for various dies or presses, and they send you bullets.

Hm. I do need some dies...


EDITED TO ADD: Did you know that Amazon carries Hornady reloading stuff? They seem to occasionally have smokin' clearance sales on strange die sizes, too, like 7mm Remington Short Action Ultra Mag. We picked up some .25ACP dies for the same $20 low price the other day. Reloading .25ACP should be like building a ship in a bottle...




(H/T to Unc and John D.)

You keep using that word...

...I do not think it means what you think it means.

Apparently an Arkansas doctor got a little miffed at disciplinary action by his state medical board, and so he did what any disgruntled person does: He planted a bomb in the head of the state board's car.

Okay, maybe not every disgruntled person does that, but anyway, the highlight of the whole thing is in the charges:

Randeep Mann, a Russellville, Arkansas, doctor, is charged with one count of using a "weapon of mass destruction" against a person and property and a second count of "maliciously" using an explosive to damage or destroy a vehicle, according to prosecutors.

A "weapon of mass destruction"? Holy crap! Where did he get his hands on a nuke? Forget jail, I'd waterboard the guy to find out if there are any other loose warheads floating around out there or if this was just a singleton. Oh, wait... wait...

On his way to his clinic that morning, the chair of the Arkansas State Medical Board went out to start his Lexus hybrid SUV. Before he ever got into the car, a bomb went off, Duke said.

The blast, heard a mile away, threw Pierce six feet into a flower bed, police said. Pierce lost his left eye in the explosion, and suffered burns to his face.

Hey, the guy survived a nuke? Oh, it wasn't a nuke? Then where are the WMD charges coming from? The only way a mere pound or two of explosive could be a "Weapon of Mass Destruction" is if it went off in the middle of a Catholic religious ceremony.

"WMD": It stands for "Words have Meanings, Dolt," something that is apparently lost on legislators, especially when they go into spasms of lawmaking after big events like 9/11 or Katrina. You can always reason with a panicky legislator trying to look busy in a crisis. You can always reason with the living room furniture, too, for all the good it'll do you.

Pugsley Canute.

Hugo "Pugsley" Chavez, having devalued the candy bar wrappers Venezuela's been using by way of currency, is now warning retailers against raising prices, saying there's "no reason" for anybody to do so:

In the wake of his decision to devalue Venezuela's currency, President Hugo Chavez on Sunday said he would put the military on the streets to ensure that business owners don't raise prices.

Look, Pugsley, unlike your candy bar wrappers, the value of a concrete object, such as a loaf of bread, hasn't changed. That means that if the candy bar wrappers are only worth half as much, it's going to take twice as many of them to buy the loaf of bread. I don't know how you're going to use the military to stop that. Declare war on mathematics, perhaps? Carry out airstrikes on long division?

Let's hope Barry's not taking notes. You know how he likes to sit around the Oval Office, idly scribbling "Mrs. Barack Hussein Chavez" on the back of notebooks in big, loopy cursive.

Just not feelin' it...

I've been phoning it in this morning, y'all, and I'm sorry about that. My heart's just not in it today.

Back later.

Plagiarism: The Plague of the Intarw3bz.

allegedly originally from
LT Bruce Braxton
Master Instructor Trainer
College Park (GA) Police Dept.

Obviously Lt. Braxton is kin to Maj. Caudill.

I'm making popcorn...

Michael Steele calls on Harry Reid to step down due to racially insensitive remarks.

No word on whether Exalted Cyclops Byrd has his boss's back or not.

The larval form of a law...

RobertaX brings a rundown on the various bills currently incubating in the Indiana General Assembly which have an effect on gun owners.

"If this is Tuesday, I must be carrying the Luger..."

Back when I first started CCW'ing seriously, I carried a Glock 23. Usually. Except on those days that I carried my SIG P-228. Or my Colt Detective Special. I even had a shoulder holster to fit my S&W 625.

As years went by, other guns came and went: HK P7s and USPs, Berettas, Browning BDMs, CZ clones... It wasn't until seven years ago or so that I started carrying one gun, a 1911-pattern pistol, in one place, strong-side IWB behind the hip. I also have one backup gun: A short-sight-radius DAO S&W revolver that, in slightly different permutations gets used for purse or pocket or nightstand.

Gradually, the other CCW guns got sold off. Pretty much all my handgun shooting was done with one or the other of those platforms: 1911 or double-action Smith. It's one reason that when I bought a .22 caliber pistol, I went with a 22/45 and when my roommate offers to let me shoot her regular Mk.II or Shootin' Buddy brings a Glock to the range, I'll shoot a magazine or two out of politeness before returning to the familiar shapes and control locations of the guns I shoot the most.

It makes a well-worn groove in the mind that is oddly comforting, that one hard-used tool. As Chris Rhines commented in the recent post at Marko's place:

I don’t worry too much about the man with only one gun – he probably bought that gun for self defense, ran a box of ammo through it, tossed it in the nightstand, and forgot about it. I worry about the guy with two or three identical guns, all of them well-worn.

Double Plus Secret Illegal.

Apparently some low-rent thug got in trouble for threatening his fellow grocery store patrons by flashing the gat in his waistband at them. Maybe if they required a license for guns and ammunition?

Zinov was arrested and charged with assault by mean of dangerous weapon, illegal possession of a firearm and illegal possession of ammunition.

Hmmm. Apparently Massachusetts does require a license for guns and ammunition, and he just neglected to get one.

Zinov was out on bail for several cases including another assault, where he is accused of trying to stab a police officer.

Wait, you mean he's under indictment for multiple felonies? But... but... then it would be illegal for him to have a gun! I mean, illegaller than it already was because he didn't have a permit in the state with some of the most draconian gun laws in the nation. The only solution would be to make it double plus secret illegal for criminals to have guns, then those criminals would obey the law.

Things I Don't Get: #261,905

How come people will buy a whole bunch of mags for their centerfire pistols or rifles, but often only use the two magazines that came from the factory for their rimfires?

Time spent loading mags is time not spent shooting; the ideal, of course, would be to have a sufficient number of mags that you could load enough for a whole range session the night before. That's a little improbable but, hey, goals are something to strive for.

Also, if you have only two magazines and one breaks while you're at the range (remember: if you're using your guns enough, they will break,) you're pretty hosed. If you have eight or ten, you'd hardly notice if one went down.


RELATED: ToddG on rimfire practice. Specifically, what it's good for and what it ain't.

Making hippies cry.

The company's head honchos know this geographical fact, but they like the bit of irony that comes from a weapon-gear manufacturer operating so close to the liberal stronghold of Boulder.

"We put Boulder, Colorado, on everything that we make, and really that's just a slap in the face to the hippies," said Drake Clark, senior director of sales and business development for Magpul.

You know, I'd always thought I liked them because they make good gear and have outstanding customer service, but maybe it was something deeper all along.


(H/T to Guns and Coffee.)

Dylanttantes.

So as maybe the last person in the blogosphere to actually read the David Brooks column that's caused all the hooraw these last couple days, I just have to make mention of the part that caused me to giggle the most:

The public is not only shifting from left to right. Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise.

As the "indoctrinated educated class" should know from their anthem back in the days when they were still being educated, it doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

Good Tam! Have a cookie!

I hiked to the Fresh Market for some diet sodas and some bacon for tomorrow's breakfast. To reward myself for the schlep through the snow, I also bought a delicious crème brûlée while I was there.

I mean, the applewood-smoked bacon's a pretty nice reward in itself, but tomorrow morning's a long way off, so... mm-mmmm... crème brûlée.

This is why we can't have nice things...

"Oh, Tamara, you're always being such a gun snob! Always talking about not buying cheap-ass guns and not carrying guns loose in your pocket without a holster and getting some good training! Why are you always pouring the Haterade?"

Because some yahoo's cheap gun (I don't know, but if I had to guess, I'd wager it was a derringer,) falls out of his frickin' pocket at the grocery store, drills a bag boy and then this happens. Nice work, Hopalong.

I don't believe in prior restraint or collective punishment, but generations of Americans have grown up hearing "You'll ruin it for everybody!" and think of that as a valid operating instruction at the voting booth. You know that guy that's going to give them a suitably tragic incident on which to hang their ad campaign? Don't be that guy.

(H/T to Unc.)

Ha!

Found here.

The mass un-shooting you un-heard about...

...because it un-happened.

Rolled Tide.

Apparently the Alabama football squadron took first prize in the Doritos Sheet Metal Bowl last night. Gunsmith Bob should be happy. Today would probably be a good day to get your heater 'smithed, as I imagine he's whistling while he works.

It's like the mutant offspring of Dickens and Orwell...

In the grip of a foot or more of Global Warmening, pensioners in the UK are apparently burning books because coal's so expensive.

Jonathan Stearn, energy expert for Consumer Focus, said: ‘If pensioners are taking such desperate measures to heat their homes it is shocking. With low wholesale prices and increasing profit margins, there is clearly room for energy companies to make price cuts immediately.’

I knew it! This is all George Bush's fault, somehow!

Can't be long now before the old codgers start eating each other, like in that science fiction movie we watched last night, the one where that food products company had that great PR slogan about how they were really just people.

Fundamentally unserious...

The wife of the man who wore Semtex underoos into what our President leaked was a CIA facility is reportedly proud of her husband's martyrdom:

The wife of an alleged suicide bomber who killed eight people at a U.S. base in Afghanistan last week says she is shocked by his actions but "proud" of what he did.

Defne Bayrak, the Turkish wife of Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi -- a Jordanian doctor identified as the attacker -- said she doubted accusations her husband had been an intelligence agent, but was satisfied he did not die in vain.

No doubt that he was driven to his actions by desperate poverty and grinding social inequality, being a doctor and all...

Meanwhile, the Al-Qaeda operative disguised as a civilian air traveler who livened up flying for everybody after Christmas is going to be appearing in court today, perhaps on charges of attempted littering and conspiracy to commit the dumping of petroleum products and medical waste in federally-protected wetlands.

But, hey, we caught that dastardly Michael Yon trying to sneak into the country. The system worked!

Gates of Vienna...

Polish winged hussars... "March of Cambreadth"... Two great tastes that taste great together.



(H/T to Dad's Deadpool Blog.)

Wasn't that a Dead Milkmen album?

Big Lizard In My Back Seat?

Fun Nature Facts:

The Portuguese Man o' War has a gas-filled bladder that keeps its central structure semi-rigid.

This is so that you can distinguish a large, ocean-going jellyfish from the GOP, which has plenty of gas-filled bladders, but is utterly devoid of anything like rigidity.

Lies and the lying liars who tell them.

In this morning's Indianapolis Parakeet Primer we read this amazing bit of twaddle:

As Straub's predecessor, Scott Newman, has pointed out, Indiana's lack of limits on the number of guns that can be legally bought at one time has made the state a prime source for illicit resale by "straw purchasers." Bad guys come here from other states to load up.

If the ignoramus who typed this had used his layers of oversight with which he'd been blessed upon graduation from J-school, he would discovered that most states bordering Indiana have no limit on how many guns can be purchased at once, either. (I'm not entirely sure how Michigan's handgun permit works, but I know you can buy as many long guns as you want there.) In fact, only a couple of states have any kind of limit on how many handguns you could buy at once, so why these lackwits think criminals would drive all the way to Indiana to do what they could do in their own back yard is beyond me.

But hey, why let the truth interfere with your point?

And these idiots wonder why they're circling the drain...


UPDATE: Bobbi educates the Professional Fact-Checked Journalist on a little thing called the "ATF Form 3310.4".

The transitive property of sluggishness...

My roomie is on vacation, which has led to late nights and late mornings and excessive pyjama-wearing at Roseholme Cottage, because apparently i'monvacationitis is highly contagious.

Trying new stuff...

One thing for which I've been using my AR carbine blue gun is experimenting with the forward support hand hold that has emerged from 3-gun competitions. It does indeed seem to allow for a steadier front sight while moving. This differs from the Modern Technique/Gunsite/Pat Rogers school where the support hand is further aft, perhaps even gripping the mag well.

If you look at the photo of the guys doing VBSS training in the Force Recon article at Wikipedia, you'll notice that the VFG's on their carbines are way aft; as close to the mag well as you can get it without fouling mag changes. In the footage in the alleged SFOD-Delta video here, note that most of the guys have their VFGs way out at the far end, a la the VFG on Todd Jarrett's three-gun carbine. (If you are using a VFG, which is totally optional and not there to look cool, and you have it somewhere in the middle of the handguards where it interferes with moving your support hand around on the weapon, you're doing it wrong.)

A lot of newer material, such as the Magpul training stuff I've seen and the book Green Eyes and Black Rifles, teach the forward hold. I've been airgunning it steadily for a couple weeks now, and need to get out and start trying it side-by-side with what I have been doing, which was parking my support hand on the magwell. I need to get a rimfire adaptor for my carbine, because I know where there are some plate racks and the only way to find out how well this works for shooting on the move is to, well, actually go shoot on the move.

Zing!

Seen at Cold Fury:

They’ve slashed funding for our most modern fighter, the F-22. Obama will not even be photographed with one, unless it sneaks into a State Dinner with a lady in a red dress.

I think someone got a spanking.

Item: Indy mayor Greg Ballard is unambiguous enough on 2nd Amendment issues as to actually get a table at the local gun show to press flesh with voters that own guns shooters.

Item: New hiree, public safety director Frank Straub, opined that "...we have way too many guns on the street and way too many people that own guns."

Item: There was a bit of a stink.

Item: Frank Straub was backpedalling furiously on page A1 of today's Indianapolis Cat Box Liner, saying "Uh, I meant illegal guns."

For some reason I'm getting these mental images involving Ballard saying, in a Slim Pickens voice, "What in the Wide, Wide World of Sports is a'goin' on here? I hired you to be the public safety director, not to piss off the NRA!" I'll bet Frank's still having difficulty sitting down.

Strange native customs.

Have you ever noticed in gun stores that people always want to open the box to look at the ammo? I don't get it, and yet I've caught myself doing it too on a few occasions.

They'll open the box, slide out the tray, and hold up that round of Winchester White Box 9mm FMJ and scrutinize it briefly, as though it were going to be somehow different from every other round of 9x19 FMJ on the planet. Then, the round having apparently passed inspection for its forty-nine siblings still in the box, it is returned to the tray with a satisfied grunt, and the box is closed and purchased.

The steps seem as formalized as a Japanese tea ceremony, and I've always found this particular little behavioral tic fascinating...

I've been giggling all morning.

I thought the TV voiceover said that there had been a missile attack in Braziristan.

Oh, it's like Christmas all over again!

What a thing to wake up to:

Sen. Dodd to retire, sources tell CNN

I do believe in magic! I do! I do!

Ohhh yeahhh!

"In a world growing ever hotter..." ...pretty much every city in the US is running ahead of schedule for annual snowfall, some by significant amounts.

When Jonestown happened, I was in fifth grade and I wondered how all those people could believe enough to drink the koolaid.

Awww, who's the sad clown?

Days of Our Trailers reports on the lament of the professional gun banner, complaining that nobody takes their astroturf cause seriously enough.

Schadenfreude ist die schönste Freude (denn sie kommt von Herzen.)

They suffer, at the root of it all, from being forced to rally around a zero, a naught, a hole full of nothing. You can't expose somebody to non-guns; no kid has ever wanted a Daisy Red Ryder BB Antigun for Christmas. As Robb Allen put it:

At one of the Gun Blogger get-togethers, I joked around about what gun controllers must do for entertainment – hit up the anti-gun range or go to an anti-gun show.

This make proselytizing difficult.

The people united will never be... something or other!

I'm not good at this "protest" stuff, but anyhow, it seems that the hooraw and furore over the Bloomington Daily Parakeet Reader's CCW database has inspired at least the beginnings of some action in the halls of government.

Keep those cards and letters coming, folks!

Huh.

I wonder what that was all about?

Charlie Foxtrot.

Frank W. James on yesterday's clown rodeo at Newark's hilariously-monikered "Liberty International Airport".

"Liberty International: Where you're free to be probulated!"

Lettin' my geek flag fly.

I want to see this movie. Badly.

Because, you know, space battleships!

Reductio ad absurdum?

Seen in comments at Matt's:

good for you

too many folks out there just ignore laws they find inconvenient, instead of getting off their ass and helping change 'em.

we don't have to like it but we ALL gotta live by the rules

The too-easy Godwin-y response is "How does one say that in German?"

Obviously, at some point, "living by the rules" becomes itself a larger crime. At what point is one justified in substituting one's conscience for the rule book? Is one ever justified doing the opposite?

See what you missed?

Brigid has the quasi-official blogmeet wrap-up, with photos. Including food photos. (You might want to have a napkin handy before clicking the link...)

Random gun stuff.

• Some very informative articles on various aspects of the 1911 over at 10-8 Performance. Well worth the read.
• You know what bugs me? Serious fighting pistols with high-dollar price tags that have obviously never been used for anything but holding down the carpet on the gun safe shelf. Colt Gunsites and Les Baer Thunder Ranch Specials that have obviously never been to Gunsite or Thunder Ranch; HK USP Tacticals with the "Hostile Environment Finish" that have never been exposed to an environment more hostile than the trip from the car trunk to the indoor range. With guns like these, "Not a scratch on it!" is something of which to be ashamed, not to brag on. I hereby resolve to call these "Minnie Pearl Guns" from now on.
• Pat Rogers has been speaking highly of the ARC magazines from Tango Down. I ordered one out of curiosity and as soon as the ground thaws some, I'll try and take it out to the range and be mean to it to see what happens.

World still here?

I'm normally Little Miss Early Riser but, this being the Monday after the holiday season, six turned into seven turned into eight turned into zomgi'maslacker o'clock.

It doesn't help that roomie's on vacation, which causes my subconscious to think that it's Saturday.

Anyway, gotta wake up and get going; the world's not gonna make fun of itself, after all.

Made of Cake and Win. Literally.

Best. Wedding Cake Topper. Ever.

I guess you had to be there.

They were out of regular silhouette targets at the range today, so I opted for a couple of those "photo-realistic bad guy" ones. The first target was interesting: A couple of keffiyah-and-kalashnikov tangos from Central Casting, leveling their rifles directly at you. With the face swathed in the shadows of the head wrap and the muddy browns of the camo jacket, there was a decided lack of "bullseyes", kinda like real life.

The other was a chubby mustachioed dude holding a cute little blond kid hostage in front of him. They looked a little familiar; enough so that when I put my first mag between Mister Hostage Taker's running lights, I blurted out "I just saved Macaulay Culkin from Ron Jeremy!", loud enough to make the guy two lanes over start laughing.

...or be square.

Blogmeet today at 3PM at Brugge.

Hope to see you there!

Words like razors...

It's a joy seeing somebody have fun with a keyboard, whether that keyboard is by Yamaha or Logitech.

Tonight On Fox:

When Mall Ninjas Attack: A look at what happens when overzealous retail security enforcement professionals go bad.

A further lesson: Folks, if you're gonna walk around with your pistol in the breeze in front of God and everybody, you need to know how to hang on to it. Get some retention training if at all possible. And by "training", I don't mean "read a magazine article": Take a class; get a blue gun and work out with a friend with your actual carry rig and in street clothes.

Resolution Rock:

Things I will try to get done this year:

1) The book on rifles; I've been stalling long enough.
2) Submit some articles.
3) I have owned a Trapdoor Springfield for over a year and it has yet to go to the range. I will fix that.
4) Attend a pistol course and a carbine course.
5) I want a Remington 51 and a Savage 1907 to go with my H&R Automatic and my Colt 1903. The whole set, if you will.
6) Ride the bicycle more. Get good cold-weather cycling gear.
7) Set up the frickin' reloading press, already!

Y'all stay on me about this stuff.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

On December 31, the embassy alerted Americans in Yemen to stay on alert for possible terrorist violence.

That's like warning Eskimos about the possibility of snow. If you are an American in Yemen and are not constantly on alert for being tossed in a car trunk for a quick drive over to Achmed's Drive-Thru Decapitations, you are either out of batteries for your hearing aid and your seeing-eye dog's starting to smell funny, or you are too stupid to live.

I'd wear it.

This t-shirt, I mean.

Just in case you needed to know...

...how to stack arms.

I know it was pretty easy to do with the '03, '03A3, and 1917, but now that the '03A3 is gone, I haven't checked to see how well any of the other available choices work as the third leg of the tripod. I guess I have some experimenting to do tomorrow...

Oh. Emm. Gee.

What is it about an internet connection that brings out the special kind of crazy in people?

I mean, all you have to do is link to this person's page, and she sends you spittle-flecked emails threatening to sic a platoon of trained attack lawyers on you.

Has anyone explained to her how the intertubes work?

I mean, why not tape a giant "troll me" sign to your back?

Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice.... Beetlejuice!

Zing!

From Krauthammer:

More jarring still were Obama’s references to the terrorist as a “suspect” who “allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device.” You can hear the echo of FDR: “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor.”

Snerk!

This ties neatly into a post at Old Grouch's place I read this morning...

As I keep saying: We are fundamentally unserious.

Obligatory 2009 Recap:

For hopeless geeks like myself who salivate at lists and such, here are the vitals of VFTP 2009:

Visits: 868,866
Pageviews: 1,444,874

Five most-read posts:

1. Some more ruminations on the ammo shortage...
2. What's wrong with this picture?
3. I wondered where I'd left that...
4. .405 Winchester vs. .45-70 Government
5. Life's Great Mysteries: #452.

Five most common search terms:

1. view from the porch
2. books bikes boomsticks
3. booksbikesboomsticks
4. view from the porch blog
5. ammunition shortage

Top Ten Referrers:

1. Say Uncle 54,211
2. Survivalblog 45,357
3. The Lawdog Files 41,199
4. The Adventures of Roberta X 17,217
5. Snowflakes In Hell 15,569
6. Xavier Thoughts 14,189
7. Instapundit 12,737
8. Neanderpundit 10,728
9. The Firearm Blog 10,606
10. The Breda Fallacy 10,395

Top Five Countries

1. USA 810,616
2. Canada 16,481
3. UK 9,215
4. Australia 5,277
5. Germany 5,174

Statistically speaking, you're probably using Firefox on a Wintel machine over a cable modem.

And that's the way it was in 2009...

Note To Self:

Very Important: Do not stop at bank on way to grocery store.

Nine. Frickin'. Degrees.

That's how cold it is out there today.

Rumor has it that Iggle Crick will be open tomorrow. I don't know if I should go shoot outdoors just to prove how tough I am, or punk out and go to Popguns.

I'm off to brave the howling arctic wilderness to go to the grocery store. Back in a few. If I'm not back, send out a search party.

Sign of the times.

In Broad Ripple, home of trendy salons, galleries, boutiques, bars, and restaurants, a new business has opened: In a little bungalow just down from Naked Tchopstix restaurant is yet another one of those "We Buy Gold" joints. You can't miss it, because every morning this past week, with slush in the streets and temps in the teens, somebody has been standing in the left lane right out front holding a "We Buy Gold" sign.

Meanwhile, if you don't want to drive down College Avenue to do it, maybe you could just have a gold party at your house!

Green shoots, my hind leg.

Yeah, yeah, I'm awake already.

Before I do the quasi-obligatory "Look Back At The 365 Days Of Teh Suck That Was 2009", let's see if we have anything out there to make fun of...

Hmm...

CNN rarely disappoints... Let's check the political ticker section...

Wow. There's your year in review right there...

Hey. Hey, you. Mainstream Media, I'm talking to you. Wipe your chin off and look over here, okay?

Look, when I was younger, I had a bit of a thing for Kiefer Sutherland, but I could go more than two sentences without using his name, you know what I mean?

This is starting to verge on creepy, like we're going to hear that MSNBC has cooked up a nice Bo soup, or CBS was found in the bushes under Barry's bedroom window with some rubber gloves and a roll of duct tape. If Barack was one of my friends and Chris Matthews was somebody my friend had just met in a bar, I'd be urging consideration of a restraining order. It is possible to like somebody entirely toooo much.

First post of 2010...

Actually, I don't really have anything to say; I just wanted to post before going off to sleepyland

Happy New Year, and now I'll see y'all in the morning. :)

New Year's Eve fireworks...

...because, hey, it's my blog, and I don't think it has enough explosions on it today.

Honest, honey, it just went off!

The tales that some folks concoct to explain their ND's can get amazingly fanciful...

Ending the year with a bang.

...and if you like guns, Staghounds has photos from an awesome museum, including a real live Puckle Defence.

Dystopia Now!

From a post entitled "Regressives":

If you’d told someone in the ’50s that the toilet of the future would be weaker-flushing and just plain flimsier than the ones they already had, would they have believed you?

I especially liked the part about disposable electronics...



(H/T to The Fourth Checkraise.)

Strange dreams...

I dreamed I was riding to the mall in a car with Shootin' Buddy. We passed a beat-up Cadillac driving in the slow lane that was somehow tooling down the road oriented perpendicularly to its direction of travel. This "sideways driving" was apparently some sort of new fad.

Anyhow, next thing I knew I was at a mall. Santa came to visit the mall. And by "visit", I mean that the skylight shattered and this guy in a red suit and eight reindeer rappelled in behind a flash-bang.

Well, seven reindeer. Donner stayed up on the roof manning the ropes and, I guess, keeping an eye out for the cops. Rudolph's nose was like a red SureFire. They took people's wallets and Santa was taking kids' toys and stuffing them in his sack. Blitzen knifed this one kid who kept screaming. I hid in a planter until they split. It was pretty surreal.

I wonder what kind of sauteed mushrooms were in that take-out box that Bobbi brought home from the restaurant last night?

Reds, Whites, Greens, Blues, Colts.

Disappointed by the Colts' failure in the Lucas Maximus arena Sunday, a former Plebeian Tribune is calling for a refund of the proles' ticket prices.

Primed to fail.

Was an unwritten provision of the automaker bailout that some useless Party apparatchik's art school dropout brother-in-law would get the advertising contract for Chrysler? Who is making these snoozers?

Take the minivan ad: What's your target demographic for minivans? Parents in their late twenties to mid thirties who have outgrown the compact collegemobile with the advent of kid number two or three. I know that when I'm trying to appeal to kids of the Nintendo generation, I always start by filming my ad in black-and-white with a frickin' big band soundtrack.

Or take the ad for the Dodge Journey... Here's a vehicle that illustrates just how badly Chrysler is hurting: The company that just fifteen years ago was turning out love-'em-or-hate-'em bold designs like the '94 Ram is now selling a midsize crossover ute so bland and afraid to offend that you could lose it in a rental lot. The camera lingers on this totally forgettable rolling cypher for what feels like an eternity with no soundtrack save for the breeze over the mike, and then a hushed, cryptic golf-announcer-esque voice accuses me of not believing that the truckette had done really good in crash tests. Not believe it? Buddy, I didn't know your car even existed until you hijacked my TV signal, so well is it camouflaged, and now you're telling me what I do and don't believe? I hope you die in a burning Fiat.

Ugh. Are they deliberately trying to kill Chrysler?

Pants on fire...

Bloomberg calls his little organization MAIG, for "Mayors Against Illegal Guns", but we all know that he really means "Mayors Against All Guns".

Rust never sleeps, and neither does Bloomberg's ego; he's going to ride this pony as far as he can, no matter how many millions he has to put in its nosebag to keep it going.

Pretty soon it will lend new meaning to "taking forever"...

It looks like the time to build a big skyscraper in America is doubling every 35 years.

...and then he does the math.

I LOL'ed.

Rambo.

So there's this guy posting at one of the intarw3bz firearms forums I frequent who has the oddest hangup: Spare mags or backup guns.

He claims to be a retired cop, and in his universe, the only reason that a person (read "civilian") would carry a spare magazine or a backup gun is because they're a swaggering braggart who just can't wait to flash their gear at a restaurant.

(Sidenote: The restaurant bit is important for some reason. In his world, a lot of this ammo flashing goes on at restaurants, with the braggarts in question setting their loaded mags out on the table for all to see, for some reason.)

Now, I've been at steak houses where everybody around the table was using a Benchmade, Spyderco, or Chris Reeves 'steak knife', but that's usually because people prefer to cut their meat with something sharper than the butter knives provided by the dining establishment, however in all my born days, I have never noticed the spare mag phenomenon. In fact, I know that when I'm dining out alone I usually select a seating position that puts my gun side towards the wall so as to avoid spooking the herd and thus allowing me to eat in peace. Where's the Rambo benefit in that?

I thought that the spare mag was for just in case something happened to the one in the gun, or the occasional autoloader malf that requires ripping the mag out of the gun to clear it. I will also admit to not carrying a spare mag as often as I should; my rationale is that, should gun one go down for whatever reason, I can try to pull out gun two while running and screaming.

Bat belts in public: Common phenomenon, or something that only happens in overheated imaginations?


UPDATE: Wow. A real, live Only One. I'm not impressed.

Thank you, Janet.

With your "The system worked" boner, you have provided a sigline that will go down with "The fundamentals of the economy are strong", "Read my lips: No new taxes", and "I did not have sex with that woman."

Good work. The t-shirt hawkers and bumper sticker merchants on Zazzle thank you.


UPDATE: Breda scores with the zinger of the day...

Can't they just put me on a terrorist watchlist so that TSA will leave me alone?

Sauce for the gander?

If the Bloomington, IN Daily Cat Box Liner is a bunch of godless commies for their Hoosier CCW database, why no condemnation for the New York Post article?

Let's try to be a little ethically consistent here, folks.

Antiterrorism Protip:

The father -- identified by a family source as Umaru Abdul Mutallab -- contacted the U.S. Embassy "a few weeks ago" saying his son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had "become radicalized," the senior administration official, who is familiar with the case, told CNN.

If you are afraid that your kid is going to turn into some kind of radical jihadi fruitbasket, the last thing in the world you want to do is send them to school in Londonistan, which is, like, the worldwide headquarters for radical jihadi fruitbasketism, okay? He'd have less chance of running into a wild-eyed mentor in Baluchistan than in Brixton.

A family source told CNN that Mutallab -- who recently retired as chairman of First Bank PLC, one of Nigeria's premier banks --

And stop sending me those emails.

Wait, what?

"fingers stuck in rally car"? Ewww, ick!

(The fact that this was my first thought on seeing the search terms brands me indelibly as a total geek.)

Correlation != Causation.

Seen in comments at TJICistan:

I think that female suffrage has been an unremitted disaster – all of the socialism that we’ve experienced in the US has happened since, and because women have been allowed to vote.

If only us uppity wimminz had been confined to kinder, küche, und kirche, and let the menfolk handle politics, we’d still have a Tsar in Russia, by Allah!

(...and I never liked Pride And Prejudice, or Sex In The City, either. *shrug*)

Oh, cowboy up!

A working rancher has a few things to say to us city-slickers regarding weather and whining...




(H/T to The Travis McGee Reader.)

Spam-a-lam-a-ding-dong...

Marko wrote a post on organ sales once upon a time. As you can imagine, it has received an impressive amount of spam comments in the almost two years since it first went up. I finally couldn't resist leaving one of my own:

WM, 48, no booze, no cigs, no drugs, willing to sell one (1) kidney for $1,400,000,000,000 to clear up debt.

Contact tgeithner@ustreas.gov.