Imaginary recovery.

Last time I was in Knoxville, I noticed that the planned mixed-use development that had stalled in the slump of '08 was still just a lonely clump of model condos in the middle of a maze of weed-lined streets to nowhere and culs-de-sac of nothing.

Driving out 38th Street to get to MCF&G the other day was bleak. The road is lined with shuttered big box stores, deserted strip malls, and boarded-up chain restaurants. A fun 21st Century travel game is trying to tell the Chili's from the TGI Friday's from the Applebee's by the architecture with all the corporate signage gone. (Carraba's are easy: They're the ones with weeds on the roof.)

Meanwhile, the TeeWee talking heads are cooing at the Dow passing 13,000 again. Investors, they say, are excited about yet another Greek bailout. Let me get this straight: Germany has taken out another cash advance on its maxed-out credit card and given it to its deadbeat cousin, Greece, who swears that this time they'll use the money to get a haircut and a job, instead of wasting it on hookers and blow again, and investors take this as a good sign?

Every time I hear the words "Leading economic indicators are..." come out of a newscaster's mouth these days, I expect them to be followed by "...from the planet Mars."

EDITED TO ADD: I'm far from the only one picking up this vibe...
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Notes from yesterday...

Another Tuesday at the dentist's. The adrenaline in the Novocaine... or the epinephrine in the lidocaine... anyway, the stimulant in the local anaesthetic combined with the two cups of coffee and two cans of Mello Yello Zero I'd had earlier in the morning to leave me feeling like I could hop out of the chair and jog around the block with the building on my back. And then, when the rush wore off, I crashed.

Jesus wept, the dreams you have when you're laying there with a mouth full of dental dam and people all up in your grill with Dremels would make Clive Barker run from the room screaming.

A side note to the faculty dentist: I have here the textbook for Bedside Manner 101, and right there on page one it says "It is important to greet the patient, or at least acknowledge her presence, before getting all into her business." I'm guessing you skipped that day.

It was still gray and drizzly when I left.

On the way home, I stopped at the SoBro Cafe, located in the same space as the Indonesian restaurant Bobbi and I visited last summer. I had a couple of Dutch pancakes, one stuffed with bacon and Swiss and the other with bacon, eggs, and cheddar. They were delicious. When I got there, there was only one other table occupied, but by the time I left it was starting to fill up with a respectable lunch crowd. This makes me happy.

Wow.

You gotta really twist your history to make Abe Lincoln look like a gun-hatin' peacenik.
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Dear Winchester,

You suck.

I bought one of your 1,000-rd cartons of that M-22 "black bullet" stuff at the last gun show, and on my last trip to the range, I was getting misfires at a rate approaching one round in ten in my 22/45. I have in front of me on the desk a round of the stuff with a nice, neat firing pin strike at the 9, 12, and 3 o'clock positions. That's three times I ran that particular round through the gun, setting myself up for disappointment each time like a loyal Star Wars fan buying the latest Ultimate Special Director's BluRay SE.

When I bought the ammunition, I thought "Wow, this is a pretty good price!" Now I know why. I guess when you leave the priming compound out of a tenth of the ammo, you can pass the savings on to the customer.

Seriously, Winchester, there are more duds in that carton than there are in the closeout bin at the local Blockbuster.

Fun Show Report.

Since my roomie already finked on me, yes I bought a gun at the Fun Show yesterday. I really shouldn't have, but it was a can't-pass-up deal on the purtiest Savage 1907 I've seen in a long, long time.

It's a 1914-vintage gun in easily 95%+ condition, with only a small amount of "sock drawer" type wear. The case coloring on the trigger still richly-colored, and the hard rubber grips are still nice and black and so un-worn that you can make out the "TRADEMARK" on the headband of the injun's war bonnet. (A lot of UV exposure would have bleached the trigger, faded the high-polish bluing, and turned the black rubber grips brown.)

Best of all? It was only $50 more than the worn, brown-gray patina'ed example I picked up at the last Indy 1500, which dated to 1911. So even if it means more canned soup and frozen burritos, I feel like it was worth it. Any time you buy a gun that you not only like, but are reasonably certain you could sell at a fair profit on Gunbroker that same day, it's worth it, especially if it banishes fear!

Pics to follow.

Bread and Circuses.

I can hear the strains of "I Will Always Love You" wafting from the televisor in the other room. I don't know who has to choke on their last cookie to get zombie Whitney Houston off my TeeWee screen, but I wish they'd hurry up and do it.

I don't know what it is, but there's nothing the media loves better than a dead celebrity (and that goes doubly if the celebrity in question was one of them. Tim Russert wasn't half the household name that Whitney Houston was, but the month of sackcloth and ashes decreed for him was of nearly Michael Jacksonian levels.)

I'm betting that the all-dead-celebrity, all-the-time cable channel has already been pitched to a boardroom someplace. They could call it GhoulTV or, as Bobbi suggested, "Solid Ghouled".

I'm also waiting for the first spotting of a Velvet Elvis portrait of MJ and Whitney side-by-side, busting beatific poses, à la a Byzantine icon, perhaps with Dale Earnhardt and Lady Di at their shoulders and the mighty host of Celeb Heaven gathered behind them...

Overheard in the Car:

Driving back from the gun show yesterday in the Zed Drei. The iPod has just served up some Joe Walsh...

Stereo: "If I smiled at you would you walk my way? / Would you have this dance with me? / Slow dancing..."

Roomie: "Coming this Fall on NBCBS, the touching new series about one of America's most beloved sitcom actors coming to terms with life after a head injury: Slow Danson."

Tab Clearing...

• Bobbi has a more detailed writeup on yesterday's range trip, including reports on firing her backwards-turning revolvers.


• Look, I loathe me some bunny-huggin' human haters as much as the next person, but I thought conservatives were supposed to be all about the rule of law, and the eco-terrorists were the ones who resorted to property destruction, like tree spiking and SUV torching? When did self-identified conservatives start high-fiving each other over naked vandalism? Next thing you know, graffiti will be okay, so long as you're defacing somebody else's property with "Palin '16!"


• Interesting post discussing LE Use-Of-Force issues.

Overheard in the Kitchen:

Me: "5HTORA."

RX: "What?"

Me: "That's what it says on the fridge."

RX: "Ah. Some sort of pseudo-Russian."

*Pause as both of us are puttering around the kitchen.*

RX: "You know what we need? Cyrillic alphabet refrigerator magnets."

Me: "I was just thinking that."

Alas, they are out of stock.

EDITED TO ADD: Wow, alphabet fridge magnets must be a Yank thing; the Cyrillic and Greek ones are surprisingly scarce on the intertubes.

On the other hand: BONUS! That's pretty clever right there. Also, it's neat to get this far down an esoteric train of thought on the internet and find somebody else's footprints.
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Stuff...

Went to the range today. Wrapped up the Boberg test by letting roomie fire it before boxing it up to send home on Monday. I'll probably be putting my name on the waiting list for one; what weaknesses it has are shared with the J-frame already in my pocket, and it has more and bigger bullets.

Fired the Remington 51 and the Bayard for the first time. The Remington could have been more reliable. The Bayard didn't have nearly the unpleasant recoil all the old duffers warned it would. It's a neat little pistol; the P3AT of its day...

Tomorrow, Gun Show in the AM and then the Indy Blogmeet. Hooray! Fried brie!
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Well, that was awkward...

So I dreamed I was trying to buy a used Jag XK8 from a guy I knew who owned a car dealership.

I pulled down into the used car corner of his lot, and was having a difficult time navigating the aisles in the Corvette I was driving, with that long snoot that drops out of view. I parked the 'Vette and ran up to the main dealership building, intending to enter through a side door, when I noticed a bit of a commotion around the front door; President and Mrs. Obama and the girls were there, posing with my car dealer friend for some sort of quick grip-'n'-grin photo op. You know, "Rah, rah, Detroit and the small businessman!"

So I notice the Jag I was there to buy is parked right at the side door to the showroom, and I loiter around waiting for my friend to finish whatever it is he's doing. Somehow as the thing up front breaks up and press types are dispersing and the limo's being pulled around and whatnot, I realize I'm standing right there next to President Obama. You know how it is when you find yourself in close social contact with someone with whom you have practically no conversational overlap? "So... What about this weather, huh? Sure are getting a lot of it..."

Anyhow, they all left, and I traded the 'Vette for the Jag, and my friend's daughter told me about this shindig at this club at a hotel, some out-of-town DJ or whatever, and I agreed to go since some old friends of mine would be there.

So I drove downtown that night, parked the car, and rode the elevator up to the top floor of the hotel, only to find out that I was awkwardly underdressed for the scene. I found my friend's daughter and asked what was up and apparently, what with the presidential entourage being in the neighborhood, the crowd trended a little dressier. In fact, somebody was saying that Barry and Michelle had dropped by themselves! Wonderful.

I excused myself, circulated around the fringe of the room and said "Hello-Goodbyes" to the folks I knew and made for the exit. I saw the elevator doors closing down the hall and ran for them. Somebody held the elevator and I rushed in... (You can see this coming, right?)

...and rode down with the Obamas on one of those awkward elevator rides from hell. The only thing worse than being stuck in an elevator car with a politician would be being stuck in an elevator car with a pack of Amway-selling Hare Krishnas.

"Leaving early, too, I see?"

"Mm? Yes, sir."

"I remember you from the car dealership. You were looking at that Jaguar."

"Yes, yes I was."

"Fine cars. Of course, I have to pull for the home team myself; sort of comes with the job."

"No doubt. Chrysler 300's a fine car, though, sir."

If I had to bite my tongue any harder, I was going to sever it. I'm staring at the numbers over the door, willing them to change faster. Surely the hotel wasn't this tall on the ride up? The First Lady is wavering between terminal boredom and looking daggers at the pleb who was allowed in the car.

Finally the doors open, and I exit the elevator like a cork exiting a champagne bottle, scuttling for safety across the lobby with a "Well, see ya'!" wave and a deep inner gratitude that I got away before he asked how I vote, because I'd have laughed myself to tears trying to answer.

I got to the Jag, put the top down, pulled on my baseball cap, and then I woke up.

Variable Scarcity...

I mentioned in an earlier post about looking for my missing box of .380ACP...

It's funny, really. I have two guns chambered in 9x17, but they're both collector pieces that I'll rarely shoot. When you combine that with the fact that .380 is a relatively common cartridge, I don't feel compelled to keep a bunch on hand, since I just assume that, should I ever need any, I'll just run out and buy some from the Mountain of Geese or wherever.

On the other hand, I've got other heaters in the collection that I rarely (if ever) shoot, but because they're chambered for more oddball cartridges, I obsessively jump on any deals I see in those loadings at gun shows. I could probably stand off two or three complete Romeros of zombies all night long with my S&W Model 53 in .22 Remington Jet or my Model 544 in .44-40.

Thankfully my roomie's Spanish Pistol Obsession means that she probably has a fair amount of .380 which I can hopefully mooch off...

Homo sedentarius.

A couple of cows on the way to a Quebecois slaughterhouse got loose on a rural road and did what cows in confusing situations do, which is mill about aimlessly punctuated by the occasional random freakout.

Local cops did a bit of aimless milling about of their own, until deciding that the road could not be open with the cows roaming loose, as a quarter ton or more of beef on the hoof will mess up a car in a way Bambi can only dream of. Using the only available hammer they had for pounding this particular nail, they threw down with their Glocks and put paid to the bovine road hazards.

Unfortunately for the po-po, a tourist from Ontario captured it on video, which subsequently triggered a stampede of internet opprobrium.

Lucille Cloutier, who took the video while on vacation from Ontario, said that she would have expected the officers to have used tranquilizers rather than shooting the cows dead.

Sure! Or maybe they could have used those net guns like they had in Jurassic Park 2! No, no, wait! Maybe they could have shot the gun out of the cow's hoof! Because heaven knows we wouldn't want to cause the cow any harm on its way to the slaughterhouse, you cretin!

Ugh. How far we have come from our pastoral roots...
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Miscellany...

• Off the shelf: The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe. I agree with the general Amazon consensus: 3.5 stars out of five. Interesting topic and good writing somewhat let down by rambling narrative.


• LawDog gets a smartphone. Well, more of a dullnormalphone. Having been assimilated into the Borg myself now, I have to say that it seems odd to see someone wax all Luddite about pocket internet computers by writing about it on their desktop internet computer.


• I want to get the Bayard and the Remington 51 to the range this weekend, but the box of .380 I bought a couple gun shows ago seems to have been air-soluble. Any of y'all seen it?

Overheard in the Hallway:

Me: (singing) "Should old Croatians be forgot, and days of all land mines!"

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I've got good news and bad news...

The good news: Law abiding citizen apprehends robber who had just roughed up his elderly neighbor!

The bad news: He did it by firing a warning shot into the ground with his chromed Deagle*, that he was Mexican-carrying** AIWB***, which he was happy to demonstrate for the news photogs by whipping it out and busting a pose.


For the jargon-challenged: *Desert Eagle, which he had just **stuffed in his pants without a holster ***up front where it was pointing at things he might need later.

Wrong on so very many levels...

So, CNN ran another piece about the Administration's proposal for a single internet identity for everybody, to circumvent all those pesky passwords and logins you have to remember right now.

This may be the stupidest idea to come out of Washington since the creation of the TSA.

Passwords are often shared among family, friends and spouses, and people typically use the same passwords for everything. Many experts say passwords are cybersecurity's weak link.

If some people are that dumb, why punish those of use who use a different alphanumeric, case-sensitive hash everywhere, just because Joe Blow and Suzy Schmoe use the same "12345" each place they log in?

Anyway, how is this idea made of fail? Let us count the ways...

1. It's another barrier to entry for budding e-commerce entrepreneurs. Whatever solution gets cooked up between government regulators and giants like Google, Amazon, and Apple will be designed to stifle the next Jeff Bezos, not empower him.


2. Now in order to impersonate you on the web, somebody only has to steal one password instead of a bunch of them!


3. Say you wound up the target of some Hollywood-grade government conspiracy overnight. Tomorrow morning, they could suspend your driver's license, but that wouldn't stop you from driving to Canada. This plan, however, would theoretically allow them to suspend your internet license instantly, throwing you off the Information Superhighway by deploying the digital stop sticks at the touch of a button.


4. For the eschatologically-inclined, there'll be no buying and selling on the internet without this number...
   

The more technically literate and suspicious among you could no doubt think of a dozen others, but there's a good start right there.

The internet has been a goose that has been laying economic golden eggs for an amazing amount of time, considering the continual ham-handed efforts of the government to try and serve itself up some foie gras. Let's hope it can shrug off this one.

I need to not read stuff like this.

Law Enforcement bulletins are often sources of great humor, if your tastes in comedy run toward the "reefer madness" variety.

Every so often, some desk-driving dude will get a Fw:Fw:Fw:Fw:Fw... in his in-box, warning him of the dangers of full-auto Glocks or Pedobear or something and he'll fire off a rocket like this gem about the hip-hop fashion of wearing fake bulletproof vests.

Now, granted it's from a New Jersey-based site, a state where the very thought of a non-Only One running around with a handgun, let alone one loaded with hollowpoints, is enough to cause a flurry of pearl-clutching and sphincter-clenching, but that still doesn't explain this quote:

The absolutely [sic] stupidity of a product like this is obvious, and it's only a matter of time before it contributes to the death of someone wearing it.

I can't help but think of the end of Monty Python's Holy Grail, where the coppers show up and arrest Arthur's army, and the one cop grabs this guy's shield, snarling "'Ere, that's an offensive weapon, that is!"

Tell me, Mr. NJLawman.com, how is a vest, real or not, going to contribute to someone's death? I'm eager to hear this one...

...and then Max Hammer lovingly caressed the satin Tenifer finish of the Glock...

I may have mentioned that I'd been reading a bit of adventure/thriller genre fiction lately...

One thing I liked about Black Site and One Rough Man was the lack of gear queer stuff that is so endemic on the seedier end of Action Porn. (Which are just Harlequin romances for men. Seriously, the "Gold Eagle" imprint that does Mack Bolan and all those is owned by Harlequin and the stories are done in the same formulaic way.)

I can read about a dude unfolding the wire stock on an AK or chamber-checking a SIG before kicking in a door. What I can't read is:

"Jock Studright wrapped his BLACKHAWK!-gloved fingers around the Nitron-finished slide of the SIG-Sauer P226, withdrawing it slightly against the tension of the recoil spring to see the glint of nickel through the ejection port, confirming that the 147-grain Ranger T messenger of death was ready to blast the terrorist jihadi scum to hell as soon as he smashed the sole of his Asolo boot against the door..."

Okay! Enough! Kick in the door and shoot somebody, already! Do you think you have to read me page three of the Brigade Quartermaster catalog to get me in the mood for a little face-shootin'?

Owww....

I just spent 3.5 hours under the drill. The whole upper right quadrant of my mouf; a little over five bills worth. This is going to suck when all the local wears off. I think I'll go and have a lie-down.
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Even worse at math.

So, President Barack "I'll cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term" Obama turned in a budget that puts yet another $1.3 trillion bucks on the national tab.

But that's okay! He's shaving money here and there! For instance, by some accounts, NASA will be having to tighten its belt by $100 million dollars...

Since those of us who are not astrophysicists getting payroll freezes are unaccustomed to dealing with such huge numbers, let's trim some of that vapor trail of zeroes and get the numbers down to the kind we're used to: This is like running your household debt up by $1,300 at Best Buy and then explaining to your significant other that it was okay, because you'd refrained from putting a dime in a gumball machine on the way out the door.

What's safe from budget cuts? Anything that will prevent this. When you're riding the tiger, you want to get off gracefully, and they haven't figured out how they're going to do that yet...

Bad at math.

Today's statement from the awkwardly-acronymed NGVAC*:

There are 14 million people in the United States–victims of gun violence and their families and friends–who are looking forward to saying, “Thanks, Starbucks, I’d like a latte please!”

Fourteen million? Really? I guess 13,999,863 of them don't have FaceBook accounts, because that's how shy you were of your claimed total before you hid your attendee total out of shame.

Me? Like 20,600+ others, I'll be going to Starbucks today to show my appreciation for their corporate HQ's laissez faire handling of the whole situation. I don't need to wait for some imaginary future day when the lion shall lie down with the lamb to enjoy a cup of joe.

*National Gun Victims Action Council. What victim snobbery! Machete victims will presumably have to start their own organization.

Dude, that's so uncool.

Another person has suck-started a rental gun at an indoor shooting range.

That is so uncool.

You freak everybody out, get blood all over somebody else's gun so that it'll be all rusty and pitted when they finally get it back from the evidence locker, and cost the poor small-business owner a bunch of money in lost income.

I know that asking someone who is about to whack themselves to please think of other people is pointless, but think about yourself! You want to make a big dramatic gesture, right? Then do this: First, buy the most expensive gun in the place (it's not like you're planning on paying off the AmEx bill this month anyway, right? Then live a little! Go for something nice, like a Les Baer.) Buy some of the scariest-looking ammunition they have; preferably something with pictures of rappelling ninjas on the box. Now take it home.

Second, write a cryptic Goodbye Cruel World haiku. Bonus points for using mirror writing.

Then, nip off out in the woods by yourself somewhere, put down a drop cloth, lay out some elaborate scene with wax fruit, candles, and those little Fisher Price people, and get on with your business.

I guarantee you will be the talk of the town for months, if not years.

QotD: Oh, SNAP! Edition

Heroditus Huxley explores food stamp reform:

When I first wrote about the trend toward de-stigmatizing food stamps, I was a little shocked. I hadn't been paying attention to the various forms government aid took since...well, since I managed to get off of government aid. Not long after that first post, I wrote a second, about the swelling numbers on food stamps--at that time, there were a bit over 40 million people dependent upon the government for their daily bread (or daily arugula, as the case may be).

Y'all should go read the post.
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Overheard in the Hallway:

RX: "I believe that anybody who spells 'speech' as 'S-P-E-A-C-H' should lose their First Amendment rights, because they obviously don't know how to operate the language."

Me: "Well, I'm definitely pro-First Amendment, but I'm in favor of reasonable restrictions, such as mandatory training and proof of ability to use the language if you want to exercise your First Amendment rights in public..."

RX: "I mean, it's not like the government doesn't go out of its way to offer training classes. They'll even give you your first twelve years for free."

Of course this was all tongue-in-cheek. Mostly.
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News Bite...

"Markets open warily Monday morning as traders worry about the effects of the death of Whitney Houston on the economy."

Oh, come on, it's as plausible as all the other tea leaf reading that goes on out there. Like the DJIA is even remotely connected to anything in the real world anymore...

Postapocalyptapalooza!

As some of y'all might know, Farmer Frank's son is in the film industry and had an idea for an interesting indie film. I'll let Frank explain:

What he is going to do later this month is film a music festival of sorts 'on location' at a place called 'Slab City' near the Salton Sea in southern California. He chose this location because it looks for all intents and purposes like something AFTER the Apocalypse everyone keeps predicting.

Essentially, the Salton Sea is a zone that everyone in local and state government would like to forget and they still ignore on a consistent and daily basis. I'm not fully versed on all the specifics but it's more or less an extremely failed planned 'resort' community from 50 years ago where uncommon greed overcame good common sense in every way possible; both financially, governmentally and environmentally.

The result is desolation, but that ties in perfectly with my son's theme that music will survive the Apocalypse....IF it happens!

Therefore, he's going to film and sponsor a music festival that happens AFTER the Apocalypse.

For those not familiar with the area near the Salton Sea that he's talking about, here you go: Slab City. Think of a weird combination of Bartertown, Ed & Myrtle's Snowbird Acres, and perpetual Woodstock except with sand.

If you want to chip in on the open-source-funded movie, by buying a t-shirt or whatever, you can do it here. It looks pretty cool.
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I hate it that I have to put this in reruns...

Attention DhimmicRATS, Rethuglicans, Libertardians, and anyone else I may be leaving out:

I do not own your particular political faction's decoder ring, nor am I likely to order one simply so I can figure out what you're saying or who you're talking about. For clarity's sake, please try and keep the Politi-Jargon to a minimum. Your forefathers spent centuries looting the vocabularies of the world to give you a beautiful and splendid language which we can all share and understand.

In the words of the great western philosopher, Jules Winnfield: "It's called English, m*%$#*%$&r! Do you speak it?"
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Late night...

I was up late reading a thriller by an ex-SFOD-D action dude, titled Black Site, last night. After seeing the following review at pistol-forum.com, I had to buy the book:

Well I just finished Black Site. If this book doesn't make you want to strap on a pair of Asolo boots, buy a one way ticket to Pakistan, and start kicking in doors, then you're most likely a sexual deviant and AQ sympathizer.

That is all.

Two observations:

First, reading guys who have actually been there and done that will ruin you for tales of specops derring-do made up by soft and nerdy insurance agents.

Second, given the horrible hash that so often comes of various other collaborations between knuckle-dragging, snake-eating doorkickers and their publishing-industry collaborators (ranging from co-author to actual ghost-writer) I've read, this one was a pleasant change from the run of the mill book in the genre *coughDickMarcinkocough*. Relatively free of cliches, a well-ordered plot, a good level of suspense, and dialog that wasn't lifted from a comic book. Recommend.

Sorry.

Doing work-type work. Back in a mo'. Chat amongst yourselves.
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Meanwhile, on Binaryworld...

Because I didn't sign the petition to get Santorum on the ballot in Indiana, I obviously want Romney to win.

This is the logical end result of applying the professional sports mindset to elections...

The opposite of news.

Over at Unc's place, there's a lengthening thread about George Lucas's latest crazy mumbling, the one where he says you just imagined that Han Shot First.

In comments, one of my favorite commenters, who goes by the handle "Ancient Woodsman", noted:

In reality, the Obeyme goverment wants to force Catholic employers to provide contraception; Tiny Dancer is openly calling for gun registration; Eric Holdme is telling Congress he wants a new AWB…and yet folks are still arguing – quite seriously – which fictional character did what first??

Wow.

Well, yeah.

That’s because none of the other stuff is news or even worth much conversation. Seriously, which of the following comes as the biggest surprise to you?

1. The Obama administration is throwing another constituency under the bus.
2. Rahm Emanuel supports handgun registration.
3. George Lucas says that you were hallucinating all this time. You were, you were, YOU WERE!

I get to see liberal Democrats acting like liberal Democrats all the time, but it ain’t every day you get to see somebody go completely frickin' batshit insane in public.

EDIT: Commenter stating that my last sentence is redundant in 3... 2...

A fungus among us!

While at the grocery store yesterday, hunting and gathering for ingredients for the weekend's chow, I browsed the produce section for things that Bobbi might throw into one of her breakfast skillets. Some green onions, a couple red chili peppers, a poblano...

What we needed were some mushrooms. But what kind? I was kinda burned out on white mushrooms. I noticed something called a "royal trumpet mushroom". It looked like the attack of the 50' oyster mushroom. The packaging claimed it had a "wonderfully nutty flavor" and was "great in stir fries". Okay, we'll give it a whirl.

It turned out to be an inspired choice. Two thumbs up.

EDIT: Huh. Everything's available on Amazon, although what you'd do with three pounds of them, I don't know. The one we got was a little over three inches long and probably an inch-and-a-half in diameter and weighed four ounces. It was sufficient, when chopped, to perform a major role in enough breakfast scramble for two moderately hungry grown-up-sized bowls.

And they say your vote doesn't count...

So at the Fun Show in January, the state Republican organization had folks wandering around with clipboards, trying to get signatures for Gingrich and Santorum and others, to get them on the state ballot for the primaries. The Paulbots had a table full of clipboards, where I stopped to sign to get Captain Wookie into the lists, because there's just not enough crazy in American politics these days.

I gave the roving clipboardteers the cold shoulder.

"Ma'am! Would you like to sign a petition?"

"For...?"

"To get Rick Santorum on the ballot in the state of Indiana?"

"Not bloody likely!"

I noted with amusement that one of the guys lugging a Gingrich clipboard for the GOP was actually wearing a Paul button...

I woke up this morning to the news that

Santorum might not be on Indiana ballot

because he came up eight signatures short in the 7th District... Roseholme Cottage's district. I just checked, and Bobbi didn't sign any Santorum petitions at the show, either, so that accounts for 25% of the reason Santorum may have to sit the Hoosier primary out right there. And they say your vote doesn't count...

QotD: It's A Jungle Out There Edition

Seen at a gun forum:

Bad guys don't just appear out of thin air.
"He asked me for a cigarette and the next thing I know, he robbed me!"
No...
He was robbing you when he asked for the cigarette. It's just your situational awareness and your ability to manage the initial contact sucked.

Being the happy-go-lucky sort of person I am (no, really) this is something that I really need to constantly work on. Not so much being endlessly suspicious, but just keeping alert for subtexts.

"Why is this guy approaching me in the parking lot and not somebody else? Hmmm. Because there is nobody else in the parking lot..."

Gun Culture 2.0

TV shows like Top Shot and games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare are making firearms more popular and mainstream than they've been in generations.

The downside? This guy right here:



Between the relaxed grooming standards and the WASR that looks like a Tapco catalog threw up on it, you just know you're in for a treat, even before you get to the "I learned this technique by watching a video of an Iraqi sergeant on the internet" and the subsequent jaw-dropping gun-handling. Yeah, because the NCO corps of Third World armies with inshallah attitudes towards gun safety is exactly where I go shopping for my firearm manipulation tips...

I find myself kind of agog that he didn't bust any inadvertent caps during the making of that painful vignette. I'm wondering how many out-takes involved dropping the gun because the buttstock slipped out of his shoulder pocket and he couldn't support the AK with just two fingers gripping a slippery fingernail-sized charging handle?

Get me the Department of Irony on line 1, Ms. Smith.

Look what I just fished out of my spam trap:

of course like your web site however you need to test the spelling on quite a few of your posts. Many of them are rife with spelling problems and I to find it very bothersome to inform the truth nevertheless I will certainly come back again.

Thank you, Captain Grammarbot!

Unfortunately, in pulling it out of the filter the website link broke off, so you'll have to look elsewhere to catch a case of the digital Chinese clap this morning.

Argumentum ad fabricatum: You're just making stuff up.

Did you know that for a terrorist to board an airplane, he has to show a photo ID, and to operate a motor vehicle, he has to possess a valid state-issued operator's license, but anybody... felon, bank robber, child molester, Pennsylvania assistant coach, or terrorist, can just walk down the street and board a city bus or subway without having to prove who they are?

I demand that we close the Going Wherever You Want Loophole! If we checked everyone for government issued photo ID as they walked out their front door, we could prevent sidewalks from being superhighways for criminals, but the ACLU has vowed to fight any such legislation.

That's about the level of logic on display here, wherein some de-beaked, cage-raised Manhattanite makes the discovery that the barbarians in far-off free-range America, 'way across the Hudson, are allowed to sell their personal property to each other without going through an orgy of forelock-tugging and Mother-may-I down at the cop shop.

Suck it, media boy. I know this may come as a shock to you, but hardly anybody's even listening to you anymore. Maybe the steady hemorrhage of Nielsen ratings has caused an hypoxia-inducing vacuum in the studio, but even non-president Al Gore can tell you that you're on the wrong side of history on this one; I'm sure you have him on speed dial down there at msnbc, so call him and ask him.

Oh, and putting it on the Today show? Really? Yeah, like anybody watches that for serious opinions on the issues. Kasey Kasem did more hard-hitting journalism than Matt Lauer and Ann Curry and their faithful sidekick, Al. Maybe you can sandwich your report in between Willard Scott wishing all the centenarians happy birthday from Smucker's Jam and Hoda and Kathy Lee getting drunk at ten after sunup. I know that's where I go looking for my investigative journalism.

QotD: Four-Wheeled Novocaine Edition

Seen at Adaptive Curmudgeon:

Once I was at a rental car outlet in Europe when the guy at the counter said “I’m sorry but I have no cars you can drive.”

I wasn’t too sure about the local language so this confused me. (His lot was full of little puddle jumper cars.) He explained “We are out of cars with American transmission”.

“What the heck is ‘American Transmission’?” I asked.

His English wasn’t that great but he managed to say “The cars that shift for you. The ones Americans need.”

I almost died of shame.

When I was shopping roadsters back in '01, the number of Z3s and Boxsters I saw on dealer lots with slushboxes was positively appalling. A Miata with an automatic transmission makes about as much sense as a fishnet umbrella. I was gratified to see that Honda did not deign to offer one on the drive-it-like-you-stole-it S2000.

The only thing that would make it cooler is if it came strapped to the head of a shark.

Keads has a good post up on his experiences using various lasers for dry-fire practice. I've been a big advocate ever since I got my first set of CTC grips on a J-frame back in '03 or so; I largely credit them with teaching me how to pull a double-action trigger and actually hit what I'm aiming at.

On a related note: That LaserLyte wall target looks awesome. Do want. (Especially since they don't make a SIRT for the M&P yet, which gives me a sad.)

Ground control to Officer HAL...

So the aerial photography and news helicopter businesses are fixing to take a hit when the FAA rewrites the rules for drones in US airspace.

Pilots at small flying clubs are going to have fewer chances to build hours lugging shutterbugs around and more ex-.mil helicopter pilots are going to go begging for work when the Morning Traffic Copter goes remote control (of course, ex-.mil drone pilots will have new career fields opened to them.)

What, you expected me to discuss the civil liberties angle of law enforcement agencies flying drones?

Look, they're already up there in manned helicopters thermal imaging your house, looking for the grow lights; sampling the air to find the residue from your meth lab; taking hi-res photos of your pea patch to find the dope plants, and now you expect me to get all shocked that they'll be doing this by remote control?

You asked for this, Mr. & Mrs. Patriotic American, and you deserve to get it good and hard.


UPDATE: People are still talking about what fed.gov is going to do with drones. Forget fed.gov; they're the least of your worries. What's your city.gov going to do when a year-'round remote-control eye in the sky is cheaper than a day's rental for a Bell Jet Ranger? Remember: Government at every level is strapped for cash and looking for cows to milk. Got a building permit for that shed? Is your woodpile up to code?
.

Overheard in Roomie's Bedroom:

A woman on the Today show is discussing possible future life problems of babies delivered prematurely by c-section to treat potential medical problems in the NICU rather than leave the bun in the oven a little longer, one of the many topics on which medicine is always changing its mind:

Chick on the TeeWee: "...and there could be long-term life problems. The breathing difficulties could become asthma later in life, because the lungs and brain are still developing, there could be learning disabilities, cerebral palsy..."

Me: "Oh, great. 'Don't do this or you could end up with an asthmatic 'tard in a wheelchair!'"

RX: "Forty percent of Republicans polled said they'd vote for an asthmatic 'tard in a wheelchair..."

Me: "...instead of Obama or Romney. You know, somebody in Larry's comments section identified themselves as 'an avid Romney supporter'. I don't think I'd ever heard someone describe themselves that way before."

RX: "Get him to line up with the unicorn and the Loch Ness monster and we'll take a picture!"

Me: "♪♫I'm the only gay Eskimo in my tribe...♪♫"

I've seen "avid supporters". Last election, there were avid supporters every time Obama or Palin showed their faces in public. Obama was a rock star, and I'm surprised deer-huntin' bubbas weren't throwing their BVD's up on the stage with Sarahcuda and then fainting in the front rows.

I'll concede that Santorum has some avid supporters and Ron Paul's tiny band of stalwarts practically defines the term, follow someone any more avidly than that and you'll usually catch a restraining order, but Romney and Gingrich? Most of the folks at those... for lack of a better term, we'll call them 'rallies'... look like they understand that spinach is good for them or, more accurately, that arsenic is bad.

Attention Peach Staters:

Georgia H.B. 679, which would add Georgia to the list of states with Constitutional Carry, is scheduled to disappear into a non-smoking back room for a committee meeting tomorrow morning, where it is no doubt planned to strangle it in its crib before it can reach a floor vote.

Contact your representatives. Tell them you appreciate knowing that they will vote to do the right thing and that you won't forget come November.

It wasn't really a dream, per se...

In that weird borderland between asleep and awake this morning, I somehow came to the old "Skynet" saw, the one where the internet becomes collectively self-aware and decides that these humans need to go.

But, I thought to myself, this thing has all the information of all the imagined scenarios thus far as part of its very consciousness. It doesn't just know the plot of WarGames and The Terminator or Neuromancer, it's partly made of the plot of WarGames and The Terminator and Neuromancer.

So what does it do to get rid of the human race? It should be obvious: It starts tampering with emails and chatrooms and SMS messages to make people stop breeding, breaking up marriages and stopping relationships before they start. Maybe it can even conduct a small breeding program to get itself a small population of docile technocrats who will keep it running while it ponders how best to come up with their replacements...

The clown police.

I try not to take articles regarding American events from the Daily Mail too seriously. They're usually written with a certain "Ha, ha, stupid Yanks, eh?" tone to keep the unemployed soccer yob's spirits up while he waits on queue for his dolecheque. At least he's not in California, where yahoos are all the time getting their semiautomatic handguns out of their truck cars and shooting each other over country music.

So when this article about the DHS turning back a couple of Limey tourists reared its ugly head, I figured it was more of the same: "Ha, ha, stupid Yanks! Fancy them not knowin' 'destroy' is slang for 'party raucously', eh, what?" Except no. We really are guarded by such clowns.

In a way, I wish the conspiranoiacs were right. I wish that there were some organized, coherent government plot to enslave us all and herd us through Walmarts converted into detention facilities where they give us RFID tags like migrating harp seals, while they go door-to-door and confiscate our guns, because people will always rise up against evil. If unarmed Frenchmen will take on the occupation troops and the Gestapo, imagine what a few thousand Americans would do with scope-sighted deer rifles. People will saddle up and bust caps to fight tyranny.

Instead, we're being smothered in a big, happy Barney hug of well-meaning security and protection, with laws being written by the same egotistical dorks who ran for student government and implemented by idjits who stand in front of the mirror in the mornings and repeat Colonel Jessep's speech from A Few Good Men with a song in their heart and a tear in their eye. Who in their right mind is going to get a mad on and shoot that? People will not saddle up and bust caps to fight Bozo, even if his big goofy clown shoes occasionally step on somebody's feet.

In closing, I'd like to say Illegal immigrant Outbreak Drill Strain Virus Recovery Deaths Collapse Human to animal Trojan. Hi, DHS!


(H/T to Joel at TUATK.)

Miscellenia...

• In a way, I'm sorry that Donald Trump didn't become president, because I would have pressed for a gig as a White House reporter so that I could write a scathing tell-all entitled, naturally, Hell Toupée.


• Oh, look. Snow. Now that all the eldritch spells protecting the city from winter during the big game ("Eximus phial! Weather ideal!") have worn off, it appears that winter is back. And Firefox's inline spell-checker does not know "eldritch".


• I know hindsight is 20/20 and all, but once those kids had actually started talking about the night that mommy rode in the trunk, who thought it was a good idea to give 'em a visit with daddy? "I'm ready to testify against the Mob, Mr. District Attorney!"
  "Sure, sure! But first your uncle Vito said he'd like to take you for a drive. We'll take the deposition when you get back."

Ouch.

Another morning at the dentist.

Stopped for lunch on the way home, reconnoitering a potential future blogmeet joint: 10-01 Food & Drink, located right where the Monon Trail crosses Broad Ripple Avenue. I tried the jalapeno cornbread with fried brie bites and cranberry compote... Oh. My. Gawd. Why have I never thought to fry brie before?

Now that the novocaine's wore off, I think I need a little lie-down. (Plus, my right shoulder hurts. I must have slept funny last night; dreamed about clowns or something...)

Morning Headline Roundup:

• Greece On The Brink Of Default: Much like "Nebraska full of corn", this is the opposite of news. This is like having the doctor rush into the waiting room and say "The patient's still almost dead!" Thank you, Doc. Let us know if anything changes.


• Massacre Suspect: "I Deserve A Medal": While I'm not claiming any expertise on Norwegian criminal law, I'm reckoning that with utterances like that, the insanity defense is pretty much a slam dunk now. He'll be on a diet of pancakes and flounder while serving out one of those stiff European sentences of six or eight years.


• Romney Urges Supporters To Protest Birth Control Rule: Look, if you get a job mopping floors or slinging hash in the cafeteria at Mackerel Snapper U., you should not be shocked to find that there aren't any condom vending machines in the bathrooms or coverage for contraceptives on your group health plan. Go across town to Secular Tech and you won't have to worry about the popery in the first place, but don't go getting the government involved.

What is it, R2?

I'm sitting here at the desk, and there's a faint, quick, "BeBeBeep!"

I am not familiar with this noise. It came from someplace close, as in "on the desk" close. It was very muted.

The eMac is off, and the batteries of the older iPod on the desk in front of me are flatter than Kansas and, besides, the iPod doesn't have any external speaker anyway. It didn't come from the speakers of VFTP Command Central, because it would have been louder, nor did it come from the cordless phone, because it is above my head level, perched atop VFTP Command Central's tower case.

That leaves my phone or my camera, both at my left elbow. It seemed too quiet for the phone, and I'm pretty sure that noise isn't in its repertoire, anyway; I've set all its verbal tics for when it gets updates or email or whatever. Maybe the camera needs charging... (Can anyone explain to my why an electronic device that is almost out of juice would waste its last precious electrons by making beeping noises?)

Note that this entire post would vary from complete science fiction to total gibberish as recently as ten or twenty years ago.

...never sleeps.

In the comment thread at Joe's I referenced earlier, Weer'd Beard expressed surprise at the rusting CZ-52, since the guns have a parkerized finish and spent years packed in cosmoline:

Strange, most of the CZ-52s out there are parkerized and were stored and shipped in cosmoline. This makes the nooks and crannies impregnated with grease and making it VERY rust resistant.

Right. And then the first thing Joe or Jane Gunowner does when they get it home is hit it with brake cleaner to thoroughly degrease it.

I use Gunscrubber on newer guns like my M&P or 22/45 or stainless revolvers, but never on older parkerized pieces or old guns with a brown patina; in those cases, it's only the grease impregnated in the surface that prevents it from rusting away before your eyes like a cannon brought up off a shipwreck.

I've got some old, browned pistols that get handled a lot and taken to the range, and which have remarkably hardy finishes simply from getting wiped down with an oily rag regularly and not degreased. For old rifles that get left lying around, I like Butch's Gun Oil or Break Free Collector, both of which are pretty viscous and don't have any cleaners in them to evaporate; by this point, I'd bet the top layer of the metal on my flop-top Springfield is probably 50% ferrous oxide and 50% dinosaur juice.

Miscellenia...

• Since Roomie was off tending stardrives last night, I wound up watching the last half of the game. It was pretty good. I was glad to see that the Cigarette Smoking Man wanted the NFC to win this year. (And poor Eli; two Super Bowl rings and he's still Peyton's Little Brother to the sportscasters...)


• Breakfast is sopressata, Manchego, smoked Gouda, Parrano, and crackers. Yum!


• Having ticked the boxes for the Colt, Savage, Remington, and H&R, I've now started really paying attention to prices and availability for the S&W Model of 1913, or "Model 35" as it is sometimes known. Yow. Colts are spendy but plentiful, the Smiths are almost as spendy (at least as far as this class of guns goes,) but pretty scarce.


• Now that they are no longer sacrificing virgins under city hall to keep the weather spirits at bay, winter is expected to return with a vengeance.

Honest aging.

In comments at a post over at Joe Huffman's joint, Bubblehead Les remarked:

"If it's less than 50 years old, it's "Rusty." If it's more than that, then it's "Patina"..."

Heh. Since all bluing is is just pre-oxidizing the surface layer to protect the metal beneath, there's nothing wrong with an honest, even brown patina. (Hint: The nickname of the British Land Pattern Musket was "_____ Bess". Ready? Go!)

As a poor person who likes old guns and, more importantly, likes to shoot old guns, I'll take the $300 mechanically-sound gun with the browned patina over the $800 LNIB piece that I'm afraid to touch, every single time. (That's why I bought the second Colt 1903; the first one was too pretty to shoot the snot out of it.)

On the other hand, rebluing an old piece, unless it was clearly ruined, makes me sad. I'd rather see honest aging.

Sometimes I don't know why I even try...

Within arm's reach of where I'm sitting now, there's a Mauser 1910, a Remington 51, a Savage 1910, an H&R Self-Loading Pistol, a Colt M1903 "Pocket Hammerless" (from the second year of production!), and an FN 1922. Not counting the Smith M&P 9 on my hip...

...and I've got some goober on an internet gun forum trying to tell me about the realities of the viability of off-brand semiautomatic pistols in the marketplace.

Sigh.

Hey, didja hear Remington's back in the pistol business again?

Today In History: Won't Take A Hint.

On this day in the Year of the Consulship of Marius and Asinius, 815 ab urbe condita (that's 62 AD for followers of that weird offshoot Jewish cult), the prosperous Campanian city of Pompeii was hammered by an earthquake measuring approximately six on the Richter scale. Compounding the damage from the quake were fires caused by toppled candles and lamps. It was easily the worst disaster to befall the city since it had been hit with landslides a couple hundred years earlier.

Showing no more common sense than your average Los Angeleno, the Pompeiians immediately set about repairing their scenic little town, right there in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. They had it all spruced up again by the Year of the Consulship of Augustus and Vespasianus, as many a tourist can attest.

Overheard at the Grocery Store:

I had a wonderful dream last night that some horrible plague had wiped out 90% of the people on the planet, but when I went to the grocery store today, it was obvious that my dream hadn't come true, because all those people were jamming up the checkout lines halfway down the aisles...

Butcher: "So, who do you think is going to win the game tomorrow?"

Me: "Uh, the team that gets the most baskets?"

The last time I really paid attention to a pro football game, Steve Bartkowski hit Wallis Francis on the numbers in the fourth quarter to stifle the Eagles in the Wild Card game. We were watching it on the TeeWee at my grandparents' house, and I still wasn't old enough to sit at the grownups' table...

(Incidentally, Wallis Francis attended our church when I was growing up, and so I got to hear about how God had taken the Falcons and the point spread, ad nauseum.)

Overheard in the Office:

RX: "Phhtt. Ann Coulter."

Me: "What's she doing now?"

RX: "Defending Romneycare. She just toes the Republican party line."

Me: "Of course she does. She's a Neocon, and I don't mean that in the way it's usually used, which is 'Someone with whom I disagree', but in its original sense, which is 'A big-government Democrat who doesn't like abortion or Muslims'."

RX: "She would approve of aborting Muslims."

I'll bet you he knows how electrical sockets taste.

So I'm watching NatGeo teewee this morning, because it's that, infomercials, Nazi ghosts, Fox & Friends, or Jennifer Granholme's new show. I tried the latter, but when that woman tries to be bubbly and personable for the camera, she falls headfirst into the uncanny valley. I think it's the weird bobbing motion, like she's sitting on one of those little grocery-store coin-operated horsies just beneath the camera's view.

Anyhow, like I said, I'm watching NatGeo. A couple of insane Australians are swimming around catching sea snakes bare-handed. Then one of 'em grabs a stonefish, also bare-handed. You know, a stonefish: the fish with the venom that causes a wound so painful that sting victims beg to have the limb amputated, allegedly even after being morphined to the gills? It gets worse from there:



0:15 Is he standing in the tank with the fish, barefoot?

0:35 For Neptune's sake, man, those are your fingers!

1:05 Wait, and now they're not even wearing gloves in the lab while they poke at the thing! Did you not just hear the narrator and all that "most venomous fish in the world" stuff?

1:35 Oh. My. Gawd. They are squirting streams of neurotoxins all over the room like silly string at a birthday party, and there's not so much a paper mask in sight.

The next segment had them standing waist-deep in water, playing with a box jellyfish while explaining that it was okay to hold the bulbous bell bare-handed, since all the stingers (which can kill you dead in minutes) are in the tentacles.

No wonder they're afraid to let people have guns in Australia! Judging from accumulated video evidence, Aussies have absolutely no sense of self preservation whatsoever.

Archrival storage.

So I'm nosing about the blog's control panel this morning and notice that VFTP has 8,393 posts stretching back over the last six-and-a-half years. That's a lot of writing. And add to that the 116,458 comments... Well, there's a lot there I don't want to lose.

So I need to back it up, which Blogger will do as an .xml file, but that's not permanent enough. I want to find a way to print this thing for archival purposes, at least the posts. (And before you give me any of that multiple redundant backups to the cloud thing, I mean archival, like the Domesday Book, not "archival" like that box of Iomega Zip discs I have upstairs, with Steve Jobs only knows what backed up on them, at least until I consolidate a couple of old Macs into a functioning unit to find out.)

News Flash...

I don't feign concern for the poor, either. Well, unless you count myself; I'm pretty concerned about me, after all.

I don't expect Mitt to be concerned about me, since he doesn't know me from Adam's housecat. Heaven knows I'm not concerned about him. I doubt I've spent a picosecond worrying about the well-being of Mittens over the course of my entire life.

It's the concerned people that I worry about. They're never happy just standing around being concerned; they're always getting all up in your business, trying to "help" and generally only succeeding in screwing things up even worse.

Now that I think about it, it's a little creepy and stalkeriffic when that Harvard lawyer from Hyde Park claims he's concerned about me.

More dentistry yesterday.

Three hours in the chair, only half of them under the drill. They've bumped me up to the grad student floor, which is more expensive, but faster. So Almost-A-Doctor Katie and Almost-A-Doctor Mandy are now assisting Joy, who is driving the drill.

In the same manner that someone who stands seven feet tall has a natural advantage when it comes to being a center in the NBA, Joy has a gift for dentistry in that she is a tiny thing with hands to match. She could be up to her elbows in your mouth and you wouldn't be terribly uncomfortable.

You might be a gun nerd if...

...you call out the brands of holsters on-screen.

There's a reason Galco calls that one model the "Miami Classic", and it still sells today. That's the power of product placement, baby.
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Boberg update.

I took advantage of the nice weather yesterday to head out to MCF&G and bust a few caps in the early afternoon. Boy am I rusty. I put a hundred rounds through my 22/45 and three mags through the M&P, mostly to make sure I still remembered which end the bullets came out.

I also put a magazine of 147gr Federal Hydrashoks and six magazines of Remington UMC 115gr FMJ through the Boberg. No malfunctions. So that's no malfunctions of any type with any ammunition except those three Speer Lawman rounds that disassembled themselves: Don't use Speer Lawman in the Boberg.

I still can't get over how mild this gun is to shoot. Tiny, lightweight nines tend to be vicious; the Kahr PM-9, for instance, is not the kind of gun with which you'd want to spend an afternoon plinking soda cans, but you could shoot the Boberg all day.

The trigger takes some getting used to for me. All the shooting I do is with single-action or striker-fired type triggers or conventional double-action revolvers. While the Boberg is a true double-action, the trigger feels a lot more like one of those "LDA/LEM"-quasi double action triggers in that there's a long, light takeup that stacks quickly towards the end and then breaks without any real warning.

This little thing is growing on me. It's smaller than the Airweight J-frame in my coat pocket, just as light, and no matter how you slice it, seven rounds of 9x19 beats six of .32 Magnum.

So much for me being Smart.

I took the Smart People test at RWCG. I are not Smart. Especially because my answer to number six ("What's there to do in K-town?") was "Go to a Vols game."


(H/T to Borepatch.)

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n...

Not here. At my roomie's blog, where she shows off another one of those revolvers with cylinders that turn the wrong way. At least this one's in a normal caliber†.

Silly roomie! Everybody knows that Colts are flat and Smiths are round‡!

† This is ironically funny, in that part of the reason she decided it was okay to buy the Colts in .32-20 and .38 S&W was that I assured her I had plenty of each caliber on hand.
‡ This is also ironically funny, given the Smith autochucker on my hip..

Today In History: Trading Up.

On this day in 1327, 14-year-old Edward of Windsor was crowned king of England, replacing his no-count dad, Edward II.

Ed the Deuce had a problem with keeping his trousers up in the presence of handsome, dashing French knights, and was eventually forced to abdicate; according to popular legend, he was eventually disposed of by means of a red-hot poker up the poop chute.

His son, Edward III, seemed interested in French knights, too, judging by his favorite hobby, which was to go over to France and kill them in job lots.

Off the shelf...

Currently, I'm reading White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery And Vengeance in Colonial America. I saw it at McKay's and thought "Friend Jenn would want me to read that," and so I bought it and put it on the To Read pile at home.

What an ugly little war was fought in the backwoods of New England! (And what an ugly little war in command tents, headquarters, state houses, and the editorial pages of nascent American newspapers...)

What's shockingly familiar is the whole "Big Army vs. SpecOps" fight between the established line regiments and the overpaid, underdisciplined colonial rangers, where a private made double the daily wages of his line counterpart, was frequently AWOL, and knew that if he got busted for something, his buddies would take axes to the flogging post. There's even an incident where a garrison commander complains about the attached ranger company's incessant target practice being a waste of ammunition.

If I ever get back up New Hamster way, I've got a new list of places I want to see...

Infranoir.

Occasionally I've noted hits in my site meter coming from the blog Kick Him, Honey, the web digs of writer Benjamin Whitmer.

After a good review of his debut novel, Pike, by friend Marko, I'd been meaning to read it myself, and Sunday noon-ish I Kindled up a copy...

...and didn't put it down 'til I finished that evening, feeling like I'd just taken a good shot to the jaw. Wow.

Was No Country For Old Men too relentlessly cheerful and bubbly for your tastes? Dirty White Boys too morally unambiguous? Then this is your feel-good family hit of the summer, right here.

Words like "bleak" and "gritty" don't really do it justice. At the same time, it is beautifully written and deftly paced. There are times when he paints a picture with words right on you, so real that you want to go and shower it off, but you have to stay and turn the page, as stuck in the story as the characters are in their lives, drawn on by the faint hope that maybe there'll be a happy ending to this mess after all.

Be aware that the book is rated R for... well, pretty much everything for which you can get an R rating.

Buzzkill.

In comments to Marko's post about pedal pubs, Joat linked to an interesting news story:

Almost the instant they stopped at a red light, a crowd of "25 to 40 young African Americans" suddenly materialized and surrounded the pub, as Ranney told police later. The teenagers jumped up on the bar, shaking the whole contraption and screaming indecipherably. Ranney says a couple of the kids tried to grab purses from an overhead storage compartment...

Here's some ofay suburban types looking for a leisurely, if somewhat boozy, tour around their fair city, and instead they get a pedal pub trip through downtown Minneapolis as envisioned by Joseph Conrad, and it's not like they were pedaling through the 'hood, either: Nicolette Mall is right in the commercial heart of downtown, analogous to Circle Centre here in Hoosieropolis.

Look, folks, the whole "social contract/rule of law" thing is based on good citizens receiving a modicum of protection from stuff like this in exchange for not driving the wrong way down the freeway while snorting fat lines of coke off the dashboard and shooting anybody who gives them the finger for it. If you can't deliver the former, where's the margin in refraining from the latter?

Overheard in the Office:

I may have mentioned before that one of the more entertaining parts of my morning is overhearing the rambling chatter that comes out of the shower while my roomie is alone in there with nothing but her inner mental dialogue, which occasionally burbles over into outer mental dialog. For example, this is what just wafted over the metaphorical transom:

RX: "Today on Battle of the Bands, it's The Dave Clark 5 versus SEAL Team 6! Oh, no! Dave is down! It looks like a headshot..."

Oookay, then...
.

Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

D.W. Drang has a pretty interesting piece mulling the utility of a computers in various disaster preparedness situations.

I agree that a little netbook could come in handy in a lot of scenarios, and the hardened USB thumb-drive is rather clever. I'm wondering if that wouldn't be a good way to store scans of important documents, as well?

Tools required for disassembly...

Colt's little M1903 pocket pistol field-strips pretty easily, no tools required. There's even a handy arrow etched on the slide showing you exactly how far back to withdraw it to take the piece down.

Elbert Searle's Savage pocket pistol is similarly simple, at least as regards field-stripping, while the H&R is a little more complex, requiring a tool like a screwdriver (although the lip of the magazine floorplate is shaped for this) to pop down on the trigger guard while you're holding your mouth just right...



The Remington, on the other hand...

"Don't try taking it apart 'til you come down here," said Gunsmith Bob over the phone, and not in a "Ha-ha, get it? It's complicated," way, but in a "No, really, I'm serious: don't," sort of tone.

See, what you do is you push the muzzle against something hard, causing the slide and barrel to retract a bit and then use a small screwdriver to poke and pry the slide stop out. Then you retract the slide a bit again, by itself this time, and pull forward on the barrel, using the grooved ring.

And then nothing happens. So you pull a little more while holding your mouth different, maybe with your tongue out the corner so the gun knows you're concentrating. And there's a sort of *click* but nothing else. This is the part where the NRA Manual says the slide should come off, so you say "Shannon, what am I doing wrong?" and hand him the gun. Then Shannon, who can crack walnuts without the aid of a nutcracker, tugs at the barrel a bit with no result before hucking it up in the padded jaws of a bench vise...

This is not something you want to be doing around the campfire.

"No wonder it wouldn't come apart," says Shannon, "this thing's drier than a popcorn fart," and hands it to you in two parts, frame and slide. As you examine the underside of the slide, looking at the interplay between the barrel, the moving breechblock, and the very serious-looking recoil spring, wound concentrically around the barrel and of a size and thickness more usually seen pulling screen doors to, the whole assemblage wobbling under very obvious spring tension, Shannon mutters over his shoulder "...and be careful in there, those things'll pinch up a blood blister."

So you decide to just oil it up and reassemble it without further disassembly while listening to Shannon tell about the guy who got the bolt out of his Remington 742 by prying the receiver open until it dropped out the magazine well, and then brought it in to see if it could be fixed.

I'll take it apart next time.

If you want to get smarter...

...on using carbines to mess up people who are trying to hurt you, F2Sconsulting has a class in the NoVA area at the end of February. There may be some spots left. The instructor knows a thing or two about using a carbine...

Wisht I was closer.

Guns, lots of guns.

When I was younger, I worked briefly in the seafood department of a grocery store. Come break time, it was always easier, and practically as cheap, to steam up a mess of shrimp as it was to go get in the car and get some fast food for lunch. Did you know you can get heartily sick of shrimp?

Once upon a time, I really, really, really liked guns. There were guns I wanted soooo bad: I remember when getting a Spectre, or a P7M8, or a Mateba Unica-6 was the highlight of my whole month. I fear I've burned myself out a bit: the Specter was as useless as training wheels on a jumbo jet, the HK was hard to find leather for, the Mateba was a pain in the butt to clean...

There's nothing that really lights my fuse like that anymore. Oh, sure, I usually find something of interest at a gun show, but a lot of the thrill is gone.

There are still a few guns, though, that pique my interest enough that if somebody handed me the winning lotto ticket, I'd try to find one for the collection. Robb Allen asked "What would you get if you could get any five guns, cost and practicality be hanged?" Good question. So in no particular order, here's the answer:

• M1868 Papal States Remington:
  Because if the dead rise and walk the earth in search of human brains, there's nothing better with which to put them back into the hereafter than a rifle with the Keys of St. Peter stamped right into the receiver, no matter what Hornady may state to the contrary. Too bad the 12.7x45R cartridge is a handloader-only proposition these days; maybe we can get them to do a run of Z-Max, just in case.


• Webley Mars Pistol:
  Because it's cool. Ammo is completely unavailable, but you don't even need to shoot it: You can go on at length about Sir Gabbet-Fairfax's long-recoil pistol that drew the cartridges rearward from the magazine and fired a bottlenecked .45 that was the most powerful handgun cartridge around until the hot .357 Magnum barely edged it out, and the ejection pattern would... and your assailant will be bored to death. Like the Webley-Fosbery semiauto revolver, this thing's practically a Trivial Pursuit answer in solid steel.
  


• Russian military contract Winchester M1895:
  A box-magazine-fed, Browning-designed, fully-stocked, 7.62x54R Winchester levergun with a bayonet lug that may have been used to shoot Bolsheviks in Russia and Fascists in Spain. What's not to like?


• Mauser M712 "Schnellfeuer":
  If you don't at least kinda want one of these, I'm not sure we can be friends anymore.


• Swedish m/35 LMG:
  It's a Browning BAR with a finned quick-change barrel and it's chambered in 6.5x55 and it's about dead sexy.

Most of those are pretty much fantasyland, for fiscal reasons if nothing else, but I figure I actually have a shot at the M1895 and/or the Pope Gun someday...

How 'bout y'all? What are your five?

...and practically every murderer was once a misdemeanant.

Linoge, among others, discusses the glaring idiocy of the latest antigun nonsense statement, "Fact: Every criminal was once law abiding citizen[sic]" which as an argument is a giant logical goose-egg. Every Nazi dictator was once a baby, too, but that doesn't mean we should chuck them all out with the bathwater just to eliminate the possibility of future Nazi dictators.

However, there have been studies done that point out that, except for the rare nutcase who "just snaps" one day or the honest-to-god "crime of passion", the overwhelmingly vast majority of convicted murderers have long criminal records before they ever get put away for homicide. It's a rare killer who first meets the cops over a cooling body; they're often already on a first-name basis with the local constabulary and nobody's very shocked that "ol' so-and-so finally up and shot somebody."

(Among my readers here, there are enough cops, as well as lawyers who play on offense, defense, or special teams, that hopefully somebody's memory will get jogged enough that I can find a link. I first read the study in the mid-'90s...)

Reboot.

Friend Jenn has moved house, both literally and on the internet.

Personally, I'd have titled the new blog katabasis instead of HedgeRoot. Orpheus only went to Hades for love, but she went to Massachusetts.
.

Tab Clearing...

• It depends on how you define "practical": Wilson discusses allocating more gun money to "practical" pieces rather than collector arms in 2012, to which I replied "If you think that things are going to go all colander-on-the-face, then yes, an M4gery is worth a pile of K-22s and Colt Gold Cups. But if you're expecting civil order to remain relatively intact through a period of economic turbulence and inflation, collectables historically perform well in those periods, as people are desperate to turn fiat money into tangibles as soon as it hits their hands." And you can't shoot a looter with a Willie Mays rookie card or a Gibson Les Paul, but a 1912 97% NRA EXC Smith & Wesson Triple Lock is still a .44.


• I want the Broad Ripple franchise for this.


• Monster Hunter International: confusing hippies since 2008. Check out this thread on a discussion forum. You gotta love the original poster's claim that a great big accountant who shoots guns is an unbelievable character (gosh, where could Larry Correia have come up with that idea?) My favorite was the guy on page three who implied Eric Flint somehow wasn't authentically Left Wing because he wrote for Baen. Listen, you patchouli-reeking tea-room radical, Flint's a frickin' card-carrying Trotskyite! You get any farther out the left wing than that, you'll trip over the winglet and fall off.

Overheard in Roomie's Bedroom:

Roomie's TV goes off at 0530. I go in and take advantage of the fact that it doesn't wake her up to do some channel surfing until it's breakfast time for Huck and Rannie, looking for blogfodder.

At 0600, I flip from the O'Reilly Report to the Rachel Maddow Show*. Spock now has a beard. Rachel does not. (But she should get one or people might start talking.)

Rachel Maddow: "...and meanwhile, Ron Paul is just gathering up all these delegates. What is he going to do with them?"

Me: "Build a moon rocket and threaten the world!"

(Incidentally, I found this photo of Rachel's bookshelf interesting.)

* I just can't bring myself to watch Fox & Friends. I swear to Vishnu, Fox's morning show looks like a parody of a conservative morning talk show you'd see in a dystopian Verhoeven near-future SciFi flick. Five or ten minutes' exposure to that bubble-headed prattle sucks IQ points from my head like a shop-vac in a Dixie cup.
.

Early morning commercial notes...

• Apparently, prospective customers of Colonial Penn life insurance trust Alex Trebeck a lot, and probably consider him a nice young man. Although, considering the target demographic, constantly repeating "...and I've been representing Colonial Penn for ten years..." is a questionable tack. "Ten years? I've been president of the mall-walkers club & neighborhood shuffleboard team longer than that!"


• Saw a Newt Gingrich campaign ad. During the Rachel Maddow show. You'd have to open a Big Ed's Pig & Pit in Riyadh if you wanted to throw money away with less effect. (Either that or it's a clever ploy to reach GOP voters who monitor the enemy freqs. Newt is supposed to be the smartest guy in the room, after all.)
  


• Bobbi's Theory of TV Products: If they offer to throw in a second one free, it is definitely garbage.


• The forthcoming sporting contest in our fair city has local car dealers struggling to find a way to capitalize on it without actually speaking the trademarked words. One is offering a lucky customer a pair of tickets to "the real big football game in Indianapolis!" I thought another had actually uttered the expensive shibboleth, until I looked at the words on the screen and saw they were announcing a "Super Bold Sacrifice Sale". Ah.