Overheard at the Gun Show:

Me: "Wow, it's even got the original factory box and instructions!"

RX: *beaming happily* "Yep!"

Me: "They're just going to go crazy over that at this month's meeting of the Star Collector's Association."

RX: *glare*

Teasing, of course. Stars are perfect for inexpensive collecting: There are a bajillion different variants and sub-models and they're reasonably priced. You know, like S&W Hand Ejectors were up until fifteen or so years ago when someone noticed that they were perfect for inexpensive collecting. Speaking of which, priced a Finnish Mosin lately?

Life on the Streets.

Check this video, where a couple of young women are walking down a sidewalk late at night in what appears to be an entertainment district. They pass a staggering drunk who spits on one of them. They walk off screen, but then come back and one gets all up in his face, gesturing animatedly and obviously yelling. He flattens her because, yes, boys do hit girls.

Some staggering drunk gobs a lunger on me, I'm probably calling the heat. I'll stick around at a respectable distance and watch and see if he wants to spit on Johnny Law, too, because that's usually pretty entertaining. "Tase him again! Tase him again! Hit him with your OC!"

I'm not tangling with him though, because not even in Texas is "He spit on me, so I shot him full of holes" going to look good in court.

Protip: Nothing good happens after ten PM. Well, actually, lots of fun stuff does, but that's also when a lot of bad stuff does, too. I had my time as a club kid, out 'til oh-dark-thirty having a good time, but if your hobby is being out past the witching hour, when the drunks and the criminals are all clocked in and working, don't be surprised to encounter them. Two of the three times I've had to pull a gun were after 0300 in the city, coming home after picking friends up or dropping them off at a club.

Nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em!

Via Popehat, I encountered this fantastical piece of Luddism from the publisher of Harper's, one John R. MacArthur, who is... well, it's hard to say just what he's on about, actually, other than the internet and filthy lucre* and kids these days. It opens with a bit of industry insider "Hail-fellow-well-met" and reminiscing, then moves through some snide insinuations that this whole internet thing won't last because it's just an artless fad, like talkies at the cinema.

He then rambles through a maudlin complaint that those money-grubbing ad men have ruined everything by making it all about money, because nobody should be making money off this but writers! (And editors! And publishers! Or at least one presumes.)

He then closes with a shudder, describing an horrific scene from a sidewalk cafe where everyone is reading words off of cold, impersonal, glossy Macbook screens instead of warm, soulful, glossy Harper's paper. And they're probably reading the internet, where any lowborn jackanape with a keyboard can post their yawpings! Why, in my day...

Seriously, it's a couple pages, but it's fun, because this dude is in a bubble hanging in a vacuum chamber with acoustic tile walls. I feel a little bad chuckling behind my hand at the unhinged, but this train left the station years ago, and he's still standing on the platform and railing at the conductor.

_______________________________
*Filthy lucre, by the way, is not "lots of money." It's "lots of money in the hands of people you think are icky or shallow or otherwise undeserving."

Collecting, stage two...

So, looking at the situation with my old American autos, the Smith, H&R, the 1905-vintage Colt Pocket Hammerless and the 1915-vintage Savage are all in really outstanding shape. The Remington 51, the 1911-vintage Savage, and the 1904-vintage Colt are all pretty rough.

At the next show, it will be time to see if I can find a way to maneuver out of the homely Remington .380 and into a pretty Remington 51 in .32 that this one guy had on his table, using one or the other of the other two guns and as little cash boot as possible. While the Colt is worth more than the Savage, I'd prefer to hang on to is, because it's such a good little shooter. This is the fun part!

Fun Show AAR:

A pretty good crowd inside the show at the 1500, although there wasn't much of a line when we got there and none when we left.

It wasn't just tire-kickers, either. I rarely linger at the tables of the larger dealers that sell new guns; I don't have much interest in the stuff there ("Oh look. A new XD/SIG/M&P/Glock/AR/Mossberg. Just like the fifty thousand other ones I've seen,") and generally just crane my neck to scan their used stuff and see if there are any interesting-looking old Smiths or pocket pistols or military surplus guns. All of these bigger dealers usually have a little area set aside for folks filling out 4473s, and all of those areas were full of customers scribbling away.

There was a definite air of folks turning depreciating pieces of paper into appreciating chunks of metal.

I got caught up in the spirit myself. At the last show at the Armory, the one where I acquired the Savage, a dealer with whom I'd done some business before had a darn nice S&W .35 pistol. That's the last one I needed to complete my early American autopistol set, and the price was good, but still too rich for my blood. I'd been chewing it over since then, and when I saw it again at this show, I asked to look it over; it was in really good shape, and the price was actually pretty good, but still steep. The Smiths aren't common, and I'd only seen three others at shows over the last several years: A primo one for something over eight bills, a re-nickeled shooter for four-hundred and change, and a parts gun that looked like it came up off a u-boat wreck for just under two bills...

I thought and pondered and wandered the show and Bobbi bought a Star and we said hi to friends and acquaintances and that Smith was gnawing at me even if it would mean Ramen for a while and... there's a new Sunday Smith up.
.

A very SoBro St. Paddy's...

If you can't quite make it out, the neighborhood gargoyle is wearing a green plastic bowler affixed to what appears to be a green tiara.

Myself, I prefer to celebrate St. Seamus's Day. He's the guy who put the snakes in Ireland in the first place. Nobody's quite sure why, but some drinking may have been involved.

Meanwhile: Fun Show Today! Hooray!

I've got a strange hankering for a Colt .25 that still has some bluing left on it. (Both mine are actually in the white.) A Webley .32 or .25 Auto would be swoopy, too. I've seen a few examples of these at the show before, so you never know. For a consolation prize, I'd settle for a wartime Sauer or CZ in .32ACP. We'll see what we will see; the hunting's as fun as the finding, so let's all sing the fun show song and go shopping!

Flintlocks and Flop-tops
And Number Three Russians
Black-powder Mausers
From jackbooted Prussians,
Shiny Smith PC's from limited runs
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Socketed bay'nets
On Zulu War rifles,
Engraved, iv'ried Lugers
That make quite an eyefull
Mosin tomato stakes sold by the ton
These are a few of my favorite guns.

Rusty top-breaks!
Smallbore Schuetzens!
And all of Browning's spawn
I just keep on browsing my favorite guns
Until all my money's gone.

Spring sproinged early.

With the distinctive mating call of the Ice Cream Truck wafting down Broad Ripple streets the last few evenings, it's clear that Punxsutawney Phil was all wet and Spring has come early. The wool socks have started their annual migration to the far reaches of the drawer and mated pairs of white cotton ones once again gambol in the well-lit nearer areas.

The neighbors' trees are blooming, the day lilies and hostas are sprouting, and it's time to take the bicycle for the annual tuneup, and perhaps the fitting of a front basket. I plan to use it for more grocery hauling this year.

I walked to Good Morning Mama's for a late breakfast this morning. I had the Swiss Bliss omelet: pancetta, 'shrooms, spinach, and Swiss cheese, with the whole thing drizzled in parsley butter. Yum! (Side of bacon, too. Because bacon.)

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

There will be a, for lack of a better term, Blogmeet at 3PM at the quasi-traditional Broad Ripple Brew Pub location. If you're in town for the Indy 1500, you should drop by!
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They have a different definition of 'reasonable', too

In the discussion about the ADA and handicapable pool access over at Bobbi's, El Capitan points out that the pool lifts will only be mandatory on new pools and existing pools could try to skate on grounds of "undue hardship".

Mr. B replies that the .gov has a different idea of what constitutes "undue hardship" than you or I. This has certainly been my experience. Anybody who will tell a farmer that they can't plant crops for fear of endangering some subspecies of beetle obviously has pretty skewed notions of undue hardship.

Things I thought I'd never say:

Poor George Kelgren.

There is an entire segment of the gun industry that consists of nothing but small shops turning out fairly blatant copies of the P-11 and the P-32/P3AT (to say nothing of Ruger using KelTec as their pocket gun R&D lab these last few years.)

I'm pretty sure he doesn’t have any patents on the design, but surely he could lawyer up and go after all these companies on “trade dress” grounds?

We are on beyond zebra now.

Because nobody's ever been sucked into a black hole and come back to tell us about it, we have no idea what the experience would be like. The steep gravity gradient would probably stretch and pull you like silly putty and kill you instantly, but given how spacetime itself is pretty warped there, who knows? There might be all kinds of strange stuff to see in places where causality has no meaning.

It's a useful metaphor for the situation current in American politics right now. We crossed the bureaucratic event horizon some time back and are obviously in a twisted region where regulatory effects need be preceded by no constitutional cause or, in any case, the cause is dreamed up after the effect is a fait accompli. In a land where faceless bureaucrats can dictate your light bulb choices and toilet tank size, is it any surprise that they can mandate handicapped elevator access to swimming pools?

That's right: If the wheelchair-bound can't go swimming in the hotel pool this spring break, ain't nobody going swimming. Fair's fair, and here in America, we're all about "fair". It's one of the founding principles laid out in the Monroe Doctrine by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. I remember that from school.

Here's the thing about event horizons: Once you've crossed them, there's no going back. The only way out, if there is an "out", is through. We're not voting our way out of this; voting is how we got here in the first place.

There is no virtue inherent in voluntary helplessness.

Marko writes an excellent rebuttal to the idea

That intentionally making yourself weaker in the face of danger and aggression is somehow more civilized, moral, intelligent, or enlightened

It's well worth a read. If you don't read it now, it will wash ashore in your email inbox someday, encrusted with the barnacles of three years of Fw:Fw:Fw: and attributed to "Maj. Caudill, USMC". Guaranteed.

Tab Clearing...

• Oh please, don't let it suck.


• To see the reaction, you'd think that Marlon Perkins shot them with a tranquilizer gun and then Jim wrestled their groggy hobo asses to the ground and locked the 4G Mobile Hot Spots around their necks. Instead of it being, you know, a paying temp job.


• What gun for robot cheetah?

...and with that, I'm off to run errands. With the top down on the Zed Drei because it's unbelievably nice out today.

QotD: Honor et Virtus Edition

Here is a very serious concern, to me: if all of American politics were sorted-out to my liking, instantly, I am not at all certain that there would actually be enough Americans who could live it. That once required a certain and historically unique grasp of values, which is quite -- quite -- beyond the competence of whole multitudes in my daily observation, now.

-Billy Beck

Sadly, a self-governing society requires people capable of self-government, and the values required for that are largely untaught today.

It's like they're trying to distract me...

So, the stock market is back up, which means stocks are more expensive. Everybody with a vehicle has also noticed that gas is way more expensive, too. Coincidentally, I've noticed that prices on Roseholme grocery staples like milk, eggs, and bacon have darn near doubled over the last couple years.

I say "coincidentally" because my government assures me that there's no inflatin' goin' on here. (Incidentally, it worries me that the guy with his hand on the money throttle thinks that higher oil prices might cause inflation, which is like saying that tides cause the moon. It's like being wheeled into surgery and seeing your cutter waving a chicken-foot-and-feather fetish around or seeing the bus driver throw his hands up and yell "Wheee!")

Meanwhile, look! Solar flare!
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I can't decide if it's like Fat Elvis or Wrinkly Jagger.

Everything I know about writing funny stuff, I know from reading P.J. O'Rourke, (well, except for the parts I know from reading Florence King,) so writing this pains me more than I can say:

P.J. is just not as funny anymore. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy reading his writing; I'm not sorry I bought the hardback and I'll try and get it autographed, and it's still funny, but he's lost a half-step.

Compare "Ship of Fools", his tale of a cruise down the Brezhnev-era Volga on a tour boat full of American peaceniks, to the newer "Republicans Evolving", a record of a cruise through the Galapagos on a ship crammed to the gunwales with Texas Republicans. The latter is funny in a way that elicits an occasional snort or an involuntary smile. The former was funny in a way that elicited gasping shrieks of neighbor-waking laughter and running into the next room to read passages to your housemate.

The decline was first noticeable at Peace Kills, which lacked the hilarity of Give War a Chance, and was readily apparent in Don't Vote..., which suffered from the inevitable comparison to his masterwork, Parliament of Whores.

Maybe it's just the green-eyed demon of a fangirl talking here, but marriage and fatherhood have not been good for the razor edge of the O'Rourke wit; these are the writings of a contented man. Perhaps there's at least a grain of truth to the old aphorism that people raising kids are too busy to raise hell.

A Compact Flash for Liebowitz.

Heedless of the damage done to the plot of every post-apocalyptic scifi story ever written, Encyclopedia Britannica has announced that they will be ceasing production of the print run of their encyclopedia after 244 years because, hey, it's all available online now.

So, if you're outfitting your bunker with all the stuff you'll need to rebuild civilization in a glowing radioactive wasteland, don't forget a wireless router!

270 Grains of Justice!

What would make a perfect backup gun to that whimsical piece of kinetic sculpture shaped like a pair of conjoined 1911s that's been making the rounds of the 'net recently?

The P333AT from Kel-Tec! When questioned, our inside source at Ruger's R&D department in Cocoa, Florida said that joining three Kel-Tecs at the hip didn't seem to make them noticeably less reliable. Using modern manufacturing techniques and judicious application of polymer, MIM, and castings, the P333AT will also ensure that people who are not obscenely wealthy sheiks in Dubai are able to get hands-on experience with clearing a Type I malfunction and a Type II malfunction at the same time!

Pre-order yours today!

The Weekly Whine...

Sorry for the paucity of postings today. Three-and-a-half hours in the dentist's chair this AM made me less than loquacious.

Further, on the way home I had cheese enchiladas for lunch at La Piedad and then strolled past Big Hat Books while I was in the neighborhood. I had no idea that P.J. O'Rourke had a a new book out.

I am curled up on the porch with fresh reading material. This will be interesting: In Holidays In Hell, which may be my favorite book from P.J., he traveled around the world to communist hellholes, third-world cesspits, and a Jesus theme park. I'm anxious to see what the sequel's like, now that you don't have to leave the comfort of home to see any of the three...

Looking on the bright side.

Even if you think that modern Western civilization as we know it is fated to collapse into a howling wilderness of savages with colanders strapped to their faces in the near future, there's no denying that there are plenty of upsides to enjoy and be thankful for before it does.

If you find yourself on the Titanic, you might as well sample the champagne, and I hear the prime rib is good, too.

When your spider-sense tingles...

Kit has a great post that's like a primer on How To Not Have To Shoot Somebody:

1. Be aware of your surroundings. Don't have your face down in your Smartphone or your book. Observe what's going on around you and look for things that are out of place.


2. When something makes you nervous, it's probably for a reason. If the little monkey in the back of your head starts gibbering and wants to run up a tree, be smart enough to at least look closely at whatever it is that's spooking it.


3. You do not have to make strangers happy. It is okay to be brusque, even rude if necessary, if someone is making you uncomfortable. It is okay to say "No, I am not going to get into your windowless van because you give me the creeps and don't you take one step closer."

It's only bad when those other guys do it.

Apparently Kirk Cameron said he though gay folks were unnatural and were responsible for the collapse of civilization and the heartbreak of psoriasis. Understandably peeved at being called unnatural, gay folks got together and... er, arranged a boycott of DVD boxed sets of Growing Pains, or something.

Kirk got all butthurt and claimed he wasn't being allowed to express his views. Which isn't true! He's perfectly free to express his views, but other people are then allowed to express their own opinions about those views. People saying "That was a dick move" is not censorship.

Maybe Kirk and Rush can go on a double date with a couple of the Dixie Chicks.
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Exploiting the breakthrough...

New Jovian Thunderbolt has a post up with the breakdown on how to apply for a Maryland toter's permit. I'd imagine they are going to be inundated with applications in the wake of last week's momentous court ruling, so don't wait!

You know they're going to kick and scream, but a few tens of thousands of voters people leaving permit applications in the inbox might help them reevaluate the political wisdom of too much resistance.

Mr. The Situation, I presume?

Les Jones dabbles in cultural anthropology in the darkest jungles of the middle of your cable channel listings, spends thirty minutes of his life which he will never get back watching Jersey Shore, sees things that can't be unseen, and winds up underwhelmed:

Somehow I thought it would be more contrived. Like there would be gladiatorial combat or spelling bees. All they do is follow them around with cameras and film their mating rituals – “Guidos in the Mist of Axe Body Spray.”

I do not completely get the whole "reality show" phenomenon either. Sunday morning, feeling the pull of gravity more than normal, I watched a couple episodes of some show called True Grime: Crime Scene Cleanup, which could have been a mildly interesting waste of an hour if it hadn't been full of all the drama queenery and office politics and irrelevant crap. Then again, I suppose you can only get so much airtime out of scrubbing wino blood off sidewalks.

Tab Clearing...

• What Russia's WTO membership might mean for shooters.


• Is Jessie's Taurus going to be a Taurus the same way Kyle's Camry is a Camry?


• Dirtcrashr has a thumbnail Blogger tutorial for those bloggers who were ambushed by the new interface. (I think the last time I voluntarily clicked on a Blogger upgrade was 2007. I haven't even changed the layout or template or whatever you call it since I started, because I hate messing around with that stuff.)

"...nor shalt thou wear the jeans that are skinny."

[T]he Interior Ministry released a statement on the so-called emo phenomenon, blasting it as Satanic.

It said the movement, which it described as young people wearing "strange and tight clothes with graphics such as skulls," is being monitored by authorities with the goal of eliminating it.

To that end, community or "moral police" will be allowed to enter schools in the capital, the statement read.

What the hell? It's like Footloose but with Kalashnikovs and beheadings. I'd like someone to point out to me the surah (or the verse in Deuteronomy, for that matter,) that explicitly condemns black nail polish and Peter Murphy albums.

Speaking of spectacles...

"Parisians marvel at spectacle of U.S. election race" reads the headline, but getting into the body of the article, what I'm mostly marveling at is the gushings of the writer, a left-coast SWPL by the name of Pamela Poole, so smitten with the City of Lights and Curbside Pissoirs and its oh-so-chic denizens that she's practically humping its leg.

Watching a Californian desperate to ingratiate herself with Parisians is a bizarre spectacle in its own right, akin to seeing a tanned and blonde varsity cheerleader standing by the table full of pimply, bespectacled D&D nerds and nervously asking "Is this seat taken?"

Threatening to make the water wetter.

So, while I was busy yesterday, I kept the browser closed and seem to have missed a news cycle. Apparently there are allegations that a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan failed his sanity check and went off the reservation and shot up a bunch of sleeping Afghanis?

The media seem ghoulishly ecstatic, since the guy lived up to every J-school grad Manhattanite's mental image of your typical member of the armed forces, but it's the reaction of the Taliban that is puzzling me most. They are vowing revenge!

I'm not quite sure how that works out. Are they going to set off suicide bombs and conduct some rocket and mortar attacks? Is that what they're going to do? Because I thought that's what they were doing already.

I guess they could, like, do like a radio DJ and dedicate the next hit or something but, also like the radio DJ, they were going to play a tune anyway, although I suppose it's the thought that counts.

As an aside, calls for the alleged perpetrator's head on a plate (and right now!) demonstrate the underlying utter futility of the attempt to unleash the inner voter's-registration-card-havin', HOA-dues-payin', Best-Buy-shoppin' American that Washington seems to think lurks in the heart of every Afghani hilljack: Ten years we've been bombing democracy into 'em and you might as well try and explain "Due Process of Law" to a tree stump as to your average Pashtun-in-the-street.

Sorry 'bout that...

Real Life™, of the kind signed by that "Pay To The Order Of" guy, intervened today. That, combined with a late start, served to clog the nozzle of the Free Ice Cream machine.

Sorry 'bout that. I'll make it up to y'all tomorrow.

John Barleycorn Soybean

So, I'm watching The Rachel Maddow Show just a little bit ago because throwing things at the television helps get my heart started in the morning, and in the closing segment she covered some "crime-related" odds and sods: The mysterious rash of looted reliquaries on the Emerald Isle, the solving of the of the Nine Foot Mystery in British Columbia and, finally, the three inmates mistakenly released from the LaPorte County, IN jail over the last month and a half.

During the last bit, while Rachel was talking, the picture cut away from local affiliate footage of the LaPort jail to a still shot of a smiling and waving Mitch Daniels. "Pretty bad news from your state if you're hoping to win your party's vice presidential nomination," intoned Rachel in voiceover.

LOLWUT?

I'm failing to see the connection; sequiturs don't come much nonner. Then again, our current national Priest Kings are held responsible for everything from the weather to the behavior of foreign peasants, so maybe it's only fair.

Once upon a time, back when we wore bones in our noses and used oak groves as churches, we revered the king until the harvest went bad, and then we killed the dude, because everything that happened to the tribe, good and bad, was his fault. At the rate we're going, we may as well just ditch the whole primaries and elections thing and go back to baking a bean into a sacred cake. At least then we'd have an easy return policy when we got a lemon.

Tone-deaf to the Song of the South:

Meanwhile, south of the Mason-Dixon, Mitt has gotten his patronizing on:

Campaigning in Pascagoula, Miss., Romney said he is turning into an "unofficial Southerner."

"I'm learning to say 'y'all' and I like grits. Strange things are happening to me," he said jokingly.

Wow. "Why won't you stupid, cousin-humping rednecks vote for me?" indeed.

Listen, you cretinous Yankee dimwit, I'm not sure how to break this to you, but My Cousin Vinnie was not a documentary. Having your speechwriters refer to it for thematic inspiration makes you look thicker than Rush's midsection.

I know that the term "carpetbagger" is just a generic political term to you, but you might want to research its etymological origins.

None Of The Above

At BabyTrollBlog, Mark writes:

So I question the truism that "We get the government we deserve" and its corollary that, because we prefer to vote by not voting -- selecting, as it were, "None of the above", we are thereby somehow derelict in our civic duty.

A cogent case was put to me by my roommate a few years back that turning in a blank ballot is voting "none of the above".

Not actually showing up at all is saying "I don't care; do as you will."

I'm not entirely decided on the matter, but it was enough for me to dabble in recreational voting again after a long hiatus, if only to vote wookie where I can and "None Of The Above Is Acceptable" where I can't. Oh, and for whoever is running against Dick Lugar. Just because.

Stadtluft macht korrupt.

Is anybody surprised that the congresscritters from corrupt urban districts are themselves corrupt?

Well, derp. When America's burgeoning inner cities were full of Irish and Italians and Jews, they elected crooked white politicians. Machine politicians from urban slums have been crooked since Pericles was legislating free theater tickets for the poor and Caesar was buying votes on the Aventine.

The Wheel of Justice needs some axle grease.

IMPD Officer David "Bottles" Bisard, who used the front bumper of his cruiser to bunt some stopped motorcyclists into the Great Beyond almost two years ago while allegedly under the influence of alcohol, will be back in a courtroom today.

Prosecutor Terry Curry made the Bisard case the centerpiece of his campaign in 2010, symbolic of taking a new broom to the IMPD, so none of this looks good for him.

Meanwhile, were I Officer Bisard, and I actually hadn't been awash to the gunwales in tonsil polish that morning, I would want to get the case into a real courtroom and out of the court of public opinion and clear my name, rather than being seen to have "skated on a technicality"*. I mean, good cops hate it when bad guys "skate on technicalities", right?


*"Skating on a technicality" is what overzealous Law'n'Order types call adhering to the Bill of Rights.

Meet the new boss...

Read the words of one Eric Holder, some few years ago:

To those in the Executive branch who say “just trust us” when it comes to secret and warrantless surveillance of domestic communications I say remember your history.

If you could remember your history, Eric, maybe you could also remember where all those Kalashnikovs went. Trust me.

How 'bout all those shiny new tools Eric & Co. found in the shed when they got the keys to 1600, eh? Good thing they were only for use against terrorists!

Overheard in the Kitchen:

Musical commentary on recent politics...

"Start spreadin' your legs,
They're coming your way,
They want to get all up into,
Your private parts!
If they can make laws there,
They'll make them anywhere!"

True Confessions.

They say that every criminal secretly wants to be caught, and notorious scofflaw Brian J. Noggle proves it by confessing to his heinous federal crime right there on his blog. What did he do? He used a product "in a manner inconsistent with its labeling."

Law-abiding citizen that I am, I have never held the can of Scrubbing Bubbles Bathtub Cleaner as little as 5.99" or as much as 8.01" from the surface to be cleaned. I am a patriotic American and I love Our Lord and I want to see these crimes punished. If federal prosecutors can indeed indict a ham sandwich, then going after Mr. Noggle should be a slam dunk.

QotD: Can Open, Worms Everywhere Edition

Ian Argent on the eyes in the sky:

To all y'all worried about various.gov pointing their peepers at your backyard shenanigans via Robby the Robot or David the Drone, quit depending on security by obscurity. That horse left the barn with the first bear in the air, and arguably after those bicycle salesmen floated down a North Carolina beach early last century.
What is worrisome is the increasing arrogant disregard for the 4th amendment, not the specifics of the manifestation of that disregard.

You really should RTWT.

Things I Don't Get, #350,175

I understand pistols that are engraved and inlayed and plated to the point that they are essentially un-shootable objets d'art, or at least I do when the guns in question are old Broomhandles or Lugers that probably wouldn't get much range time anyway. They're not my personal cup of tea, but I understand them.

What I don't get is heavy engraving and serious bling on modern MIM-'n'-plastic guns full of toaster parts. It's like seeing hand-stitched Connolly leather, lambswool Wilton carpets, and a hand-polished walnut burl dash in a Toyota Camry with stamped steel wheels and dog dish hubcaps.

(H/T to Rational Gun.)

Overheard in the Office:

I'm minding my own business in the office. Roomie is down the hall getting ready for work, apparently singing to herself. I inadvertently overhear the following...

"♪♫ Cheer up, creepy Jean
Eat some cold green beans ♫♪"

I think she's OD'ed on dead Monkees.

Herding cats.

Because I wanted to make a note of them, Sebastian on why Libertarians suck at politics and, in a tangentially-related post, the Tireless Agorist notes that anti-authoritarians rarely seek positions of authority.

(H/T for the latter to RX.)

The Point: You keep missing it.

In a comment at Sebastian's is repeated the hoary old meme "libertarians just want to get stoned." Rather than snap back with the easy cheap shot of "...and if they did, what business is it of yours, anyway? Who died and made you Commisar?" I will take the time to give a serious answer.

Personally, I don’t care about the dope. Hell, for all I care, you can leave the dope illegal as long you undo all the constitutional damage you’ve done to stamp it out in the last fifty years or so.

All the probulating, door-kicking, snooping and spying, asset forfeiting, and armored personnel carriering has done more damage to this country than a hundred Woodstocks worth of stoners, to say nothing of the obscene profits we have basically legislated into existence for vicious criminal scum south of our borders and in our own cities.

I’d rather my neighbors smoked a bong every day than run the risk of a dyslexic SWAT team taking a battering ram to my front door at oh-dark-thirty. We need to stop burning the village to save it.

It's like Whitney Houston on an exploding space shuttle in a tornado.

I understand that there was some kind of political thing that was going on yesterday, something about a whole bunch of states having their primaries all at once. I can't find out anything about it on the local news, however, because zomg Peyton Manning.

We have coverage from the airport last night. Coverage from the Colts complex. There are interviews with random Hoosiers in the street. The weather is being presented with a "Well, it should be a great day for a Peyton Manning press conference!" angle, and if he was smart, Jim Irsay would check his bushes for photogs and his sewer lines for fiber-optic cameras leading to surveillance vans out front.

So, can one of you people outside of Indianapolis's Blue Bubble tell me which guy is winning the GOP sacrificial lamb sweepstakes?

I feel like a piker.

Shootin' Buddy sent an email with a link to this TeeWee news report on a huge collection of antique firearms in LaPorte, Indiana.

If you watch carefully, you'll see a pinfire centerfire cartridge LeMat.

(Oh, and speaking of neat guns, Zercool links to a guy who makes sweet little custom double rifles on .410-sized actions that weigh in under six pounds and can be had in pistol calibers like .357 Magnum. Do want. It'd be just the thing if there was a problem with a pygmy Cape buff tearing up the herbaceous border...)

Milestones.

Tango Juliet celebrates the odometer turning over 20k, while Guffaw In AZ celebrates his first Blogiversary with a jump to Wordpress.

Congrats, y'all! :)

How I knew I was home:

Driving back from Way Out West last year, as I rounded one of the last corners before arriving at Roseholme Cottage, I saw unmistakeable evidence that I was no longer on the High Plains, but rather back in Broad Ripple:





Now, if those were powered by, say, the motor from a 600cc sportbike, they'd probably be pretty zippy. I'd kinda want one, even. No such luck, however...



Coal-powered. And apparently driving one causes you to want to rock out to old Boston tunes.

I can hear Apu singing "The Dream Police".

It is rare that someone relates a dream that makes me jealous, but the other night while I was having some dull running gunfight with zombie terrorists in a giant warehouse full of CNC mills, Unc was apparently having one of the coolest dreams ever.

Changes.

Something I read over at The Ultimate Answer To Kings triggered an epiphany for me:

M often brings cool things when he comes to visit. After our session, he thinks he just might mod this into his carry gun. Because M also likes cool carry guns that not everybody else carries.

I can relate to that. I'm pretty sure that was a large part of why I carried, at various times, a 10mm Glock and one of those funky Teutonic staple guns, and I know it was why I carried a TZ-75 in .41 Action Express. I mean, does that scream gun hipster, or what? "Do you know what caliber my CCW is? Well, it's really obscure; you've probably never heard of it anyway." I'd have carried my Mateba .357 if I could have found a holster.

And there's nothing more unique than a custom carry pistol that you had built from a bare frame.

So it was odd to realize that I'd done a 180 on carry guns. The only reason I'm carrying an M&P9 now is because I couldn't find a generic gun. Seriously, if I could have found a white gun that just said "GUN" on the side in black letters, came in 9mm, and didn't have a single line or curve on it for "styling" or "aesthetics" or "brand identity", I'd have been on that thing like white on rice.

I don't want t-shirts or an owners club or a web forum for fans; I don't want keychains or a shooting league or an official brand historian; I just want the thing to shoot.

Things I Don't Get, #349,856

I have a Facebook account because I had to have one for work. I remember my Twitter account about every other week. I'm just not social enough for social media.

So this latest generation of social media that uses your phone to fink on you is a fad the appeal of which I just do not grok.

Perhaps Sonar, which analyzes your Foursquare, Facebook and Twitter networks to see if any friends -- or friends of friends -- are nearby. Or Glancee, which alerts you when people with similar interests are, say, in the bar next door.

Great. Do you want your position broadcast as a pulsing dot on a map to every ex-boyfriend and creepy internet stalker in the same zip code? There's an app for that!

That's just what I want. I want to be curled up peacefully with a pint in the corner of the pub, reading a book, and have some sweaty-palmed yayhoo sidle up and announce "My cell phone says you like Blade Runner. I like Blade Runner too!" I'd say things you people wouldn't believe.

I guess when you've grown up walking through metal detectors at school with your clear book bag over your shoulder, past the CCTV cameras, talking with your friends about how getting probulated at the airport for the Thanksgiving trip to grandma's went quickly this year because they installed the new Strip-O-Tron scanners, you are just more accustomed to our increasingly privacy-free Brave New World.

Here is another trend in which I will not be participating. I will not be purchasing these apps; I am so not their target demographic. If I want to use my cell phone to find out if any of my friends are nearby, I'll dial their damned number and ask.

QotfrickenMonth:

As some folks may have noticed, the Hoosier state legislature has moved to correct that stupid decision by the Indiana Supreme Court last year. The money quote comes from a cop at M4carbine.net:

I will not argue the law's right to enter the premises in each of the aforementioned cases. However, one common thread runs through all of them. In none of those cases did the need of the law to enter, outweigh the safety of the unarmed non-combatants who had broken no laws. The use of SWAT style raids in serving warrants is OUT OF CONTROL. Under the same circumstances, meaning criminals mixed with unarmed civilians, SWAT would NEVER storm a building with armed hold up men or armed and barricaded suspects, unless the lives of the innocent civilians were in immediate danger. I'm sorry, but the need to secure evidence in a criminal case should NEVER take precedence over human lives. It's cowboy police work at it's worst.

That, friends, is so full of win it hurts. Vote "No" on the retention of bully-boy justice Steven David this Fall.

(H/T to Rational Gun.)

QotD: Tell You What To Do Edition

Borepatch made me LOL.

Seems there's some new "scientific" study that says that people are too dumb to govern themselves.

You'll be shocked to find that the scientists are from an Ivy League university. Who would have seen that coming?

How cute! I must have missed the part where I agreed to give a damn about their opinions.
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Overheard in the Car:

RX: "I was just waiting for that little bulldog to get out of the way..."

Me: "Huh?"

RX: "Well, I don't know she's a bulldog; she just looked college-age."

Me: "Oh! Bulldog! Butler. For a minute there I thought 'bulldog' was some regional insult I had not yet encountered."

At this point, we make a somewhat abrupt turn onto Keystone Avenue...

Me: "Oh, I've got a free lunch coming up..."

RX: "What?!?"

Me: "...at Shalimar. I filled my little card up."

RX: "Oh, I thought that my driving was making you motion sick and I was thinking 'Well at least roll down the window and stick your head out!'"

Since then, "bulldogger" and "free lunch coming up" have joined "the anchorman isn't funny" in the Roseholme lexicon.

Things I Don't Get, #349,723

I am not a registered member of any political party. As a matter of fact, I find the whole notion of party politics, and even voting itself, a little distasteful. The idea that if enough of us raise our hands, we can take all the money away from that guy over there is a little repulsive to anyone of good moral character.

To the extent that I do participate in the political process, it's in a combination of protest and self-defense; at least I voted back at the people who want to run my life. I mean, they're going to vote at me no matter what, so I may as well use the provided form to register my disapproval, if nothing else.

Anyhow, there's a certain class of people who will read the paragraphs above and, like a knee tapped with a mallet, launch into a "Well, when you Libertarians can elect a dog catcher, then we'll take you seriously, until then..."

This always sounds to my ears as "Well, our guys may be despicable turd-burglars, but at least they win elections!" and therefore makes absolutely no sense to me.

Just really wing it.

With the tornadoes that wrecked southern Indiana and a surprise dusting of snow that iced up the city's interstates and surface streets, the local TeeWee station is stretched thin. They've got microphone holders scattered hither and yon this morning, blinking into the camera's glare and ad-libbing for all they're worth.

All this unscripted dialogue is reminding me that the two most common words in the English language are not "a" and "the" but "just" and "really".

A long way to go.

Julie in Australia has been chronicling her efforts at getting a new, empty pistol magazine from a gun store in one Australian city, Brisbane, back to her crib in another, Perth. These cities are in separate states, so it's like flying with one from Atlanta to Dallas, although reading the travails involved, from Boston to San Francisco would be a more appropriate analogy.

Some fellow bloggers wondered if they could send her one, to which Julie replied that the probable penalty for importing a sheet metal tube with a spring inside it, about as dangerous and mechanically complex as a Pez dispenser, without all the proper forms and baksheesh would be

The maximum penalty for importing these goods without import approval is a penalty not exceeding $275,000, imprisonment for 10 years, or both.

Which, you know, ha-ha, Australia, right? With their horrible gun laws?

Not so fast. The "U.S. Person" who shipped the magazines might well get a good look at the wrong end of an arrest warrant themselves. As a matter of fact, if Julie were to come on vacation over here and attend a shooting course, the instructor could theoretically run afoul of ITAR, because he would be "furnishing assistance (including training)" to a foreign national and possibly exporting "technical data" by putting it in Julie's Australian head.

We've been making progress on the firearms law front in the US, but we've got a long way to go.


(H/T to pdb.)

CNC'n'thee

Og's second post on the manufacturing behind the AR.

Interestingly, it's the sophisticated manufacturing processes that allow the rifle itself to be so simple. And it is mechanically simple, don't let anybody tell you otherwise. I've assembled a lower while sitting on the futon watching television with no tools other than a punch and using a TV tray and my lap as work surfaces, and the carbine built on that lower then went through a three-day Awerbuck class, an Appleseed, and several range sessions without a malfunction.

I'll say this for msnbc...

...the economy's doing much better there than practically anyplace else on your television dial. (Ask your parents what a television dial is, kids.) The Dear Leader has pulled us out of the evil Republican depression and happy days are here again! And just in time for the election, too!

It's like the Bizarro World version of 2007-'08, when Limbaugh was saying "It's a boom, not a recession!" Note To Self: Do not go to Rush for economic forecasting.
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Disappointing.

So, the other day my roommate did a post about the disturbing mindset behind that spittle-on-the-screen rant (and its cheering commenters) about how Republicans were the subhuman goat-raping source of all the evil on the planet, and how that "Two Minutes' Hate" mentality was an ill omen. It's no longer disagreeing with someone's positions, beliefs, or actions, but with their very existence; it's not a plan of attack, it's a scream of incoherent rage. It's the script of the fag-bashing, the lynch mob, the einsatzgruppen; the kind of othering that leads to the "group monkey dance".

Charles Hill at Dustbury linked to her post as his "Quote of the Day" and, perhaps unfortunately, opened it with a sentence containing the word "civility".

Bill Quick, proprietor of the blog Daily Pundit, apparently read the word "civility", bounced ahead to the word "pogrom" in the linked quote, threw his word processor into four-wheel-low, and mashed the gas on Standard Anti-Civility Rant #27. This despite the fact that nowhere in Bobbi's post are to be found the words "compromise", "civility" or... well, pretty much everything else that Bill was railing against.

Since Mr. Quick had lectured my roommate about not being afraid of deeply-held disagreements, she promptly had one with him, which was, to my way of thinking, entirely understandable. I mean, if I got swung at from left field by a complete stranger for things I hadn't even said, I'd probably be a bit miffed too.

In closing, since Mr. Quick is an author of Speculative Fiction, I would like to drop an appropriate quote by another writer in the same field:

"Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind, it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate--and quickly."

-R.A. Heinlein

Overheard in the Office:

RX: "The FBI investigated the Monkees?"

Me: "Of course. They were said to be monkeying around."

RX: "The investigation concluded that they were too busy singing to, quote, 'put anybody down'."

.

Machine. Gun.

Og takes a look at one of the factors that helps make the AR such an accurate rifle. He says it's the first in a series of posts on how things are made, a topic on which Og is a certified SME. I'm looking forward to it.

After a showing a trailer of spring, winter returned.

Gray skies and a wintry mix predicted for tomorrow. Got the UV happy lamp going to keep me from climbing a clock tower with a sack lunch. Spring can get here any old time now and I wouldn't mind.

Meanwhile, in other weather news, a huge swathe of southern Indiana has been reduced to matchsticks and kindling, with whole towns virtually wiped off the map.

Where is the federal disaster response? Where is FEMA? I think we all know that this proves that George Bush hates black people.

Silly Season? Depressing season is more like it.

First off, I would like to congratulate the Machiavellian genius who wrote the Obamacare bill such that the whole insurance/birth control issue would be timed to kick in right in the middle of the Republican primary. That, sir, was a political masterstroke. If it was just a coincidence, then take your bow and tell everyone you meant it to happen that way.

There's nothing that'll make Republicans shut up about taxes and the economy quicker than queers or dead babies. It's as easy as distracting a puppy with a tennis ball. The GOP might as well adopt the campaign slogan "Four More Years!"

Meanwhile, with his post-Michigan petulant little snit fit captured on camera, Rick Santorum has managed to do the impossible: Become a Republican candidate that I'm even less likely to vote for than Mitt Romney. Way to show off that legendary grace under pressure there, sweater vest man. That's exactly the character trait I want to see in a man who could get the launch controls for America's thermonuclear arsenal confused with his garage door opener and can sic Predator drones on people with the stroke of a pen.

Sorry 'bout that...

More dentistry was committed Thursday morn and as a consequence, I wasn't feeling terribly bloggy yesterday afternoon.

I have been so appreciative of the spring-like weather these last couple days. By the end of three months of gray skies and brown grass, I'm usually about ready to open a vein just to see a bit of color in the world, so Wednesday's top-down spin in the Zed Drei in nearly 70 degree temps was just what the doctor ordered.

Well, that was prompt service.

Last week I wrote:

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.

Turns out the answer to my random musing is "Davy Jones". I'd be willing to part with Michael Nesmith, too, if it will keep the television from switching from "Daydream Believer" back to "I Will Always Love You".
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Tab Clearing...

• I See What She Did There. (And it's pretty funny. If you find yourself bowing up at it, just remember: It's the hit dog that yelps.)


• I've got to work more of these terms into my daily conversation.


• Sebastian expresses bafflement at Brady tweet "Yet today triggers are more sensitive", but he himself has noted the source. "Safety Hammerless" revolvers around the turn of the last century were marketed as being more 'child safe' due to their abysmally heavy double-action trigger pulls and lemon-squeezer grip safeties.

#EFAD

Do not forget that you can download the Kindle edition of Enemies Foreign And Domestic for free today. EFAD helps keep the pelt of your Wookie suit glossy and healthy.
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Seen in the gun store parking lot...

Someone please tell me this is not an official Chrysler offering...
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Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.

Over at Lagniappe's Lair are some beautiful photos of an early-war Steyr-manufactured Mauser 98k that was retained by the rebuilt Norwegian army after WWII and converted to .30-'06.

It is in remarkable shape and the nicely-done stock repair shows that the Norwegians were definitely not in the habit of throwing things away if they could be fixed.

I have an especial fondness for military 98's in .30-'06, but I have to say that this one makes my Brazilian 1908/34.30 look shabby by comparison...

A house divided...

I caught a bit of that msnbc weekend morning show on Sunday, the one hosted by that adorable, fluffy, harmless little herbivore, whatshisface, and the topic on the table was the possibility of Israel taking a punch at Iran. The panelists, as is usual for one of these round-table chats, spanned the entire msnbc political spectrum, from Trotskyite to Anarcho-Syndicalist.

This one chick seemed torn, in that while she of course deplored violence, she did understand that the Israelis might feel a little threatened by a nation whose Holocaust-denying president had publicly called for their destruction having nuclear weapons. While being a model of understatement, this did not seem too controversial to me, and yet this goateed Manhattanite Wobbly across the table from her nearly went apoplectic with denunciations, while I wondered "Is that actually a keffiyeh bunched around his neck under his tweed jacket?"

Unfortunately, the show cut to commercial before any civil political discourse could break out, leaving me feeling deeply unfulfilled. I was really hoping to hear that she was just a running dog lackey of the Jew lobbyists that control Washington, or something good like that, coming from the mouth of someone who probably makes a living writing OpEds denouncing Tea Partiers as racists.


(H/T to Kevin.)

Look out! She's got a gun!

As Instapundit would say, "Heh."
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Survival, eh?

In a scorn-quote-laden piece from the Toronto Star, I learned something I did not know:

Even Costco has jumped on the bandwagon, delivering survival kits in handy backpacks — enough food for two weeks, knives, a hatchet, duct tape, a tent and first-aid kit.

What I want to know is if zombies are mentioned anywhere in the marketing. Whichever, "prepping" is pretty mainstream now, if you can buy your pre-packed bugout bags on the next aisle over from the lawn chairs.

If we were still actually building new houses in this country, I wonder if backyard bomb shelters would be coming back into vogue? Oh, I'm sure they'd be called "survival safe rooms" or whatever, but the idea's the same.

When the herd gets this nervous, it doesn't take much to get 'em to stampede, is all I'm sayin'.

(H/T to SurvivalBlog.)

Went to see Act of Valor at a matinee...

Some thoughts:

• So none of the SEALs is Sir Anthony Hopkins. So what? I'll bet the Screen Actors Guild doesn't mail dues checks from Stallone and Schwarzenegger back un-cashed.


• The plot is not Hitchcockian: Some bad guys are going to try and do bad things to America. A bunch of SEALs are attempting to stop them, mostly by shooting them in the face. They don't sit around and anguish over the deep meaning of shooting terrorists in the face, either; they make like a Nike commercial and Just Do It.


• Wow.


• By the time the lights came up, you could hear a pin drop. It was a full five-Mississippi before anybody in the theater so much as moved to grab their coat.


• I am so used to watching gun handling in movies and thinking "You're Doing It Wrong!" that it was refreshing to see one that made me think "Huh. I'm Doing It Wrong."


• I will be going to see it again on the big screen. This is a big screen movie.

O, birdman, where art thou?

Overheard in the Office:

Me: "Huh. Jeb Corliss is banned for life from setting foot in the Empire State Building..."

RX: "Was it all of 'em, or just the one?"

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Book Recommendation:

In comments over at Bobbi's, reader Matthew noted, in reference to Vinge's Fire Upon The Deep:

Never visualized distance as time in a cosmic sense before.

You know, a lot of concepts surrounding relativity had been gently bouncing off my skull for years. I mean, I knew them because I had been told them, but didn't really grok them in their fullness until the other day when I read Why Does E=mc²?: (And Why Should We Care?), and found myself setting the book down once every twenty pages or so to say "Derp. Why hadn't I seen that? It's so obvious now."

I cannot recommend this book highly enough if, like me, you loves you some physics but spent more time in math class writing short stories and doodling spaceships than taking notes.

I'm being serious, here...

There is a certain train of thought one encounters that posits that so-called "smartphones" are the tools of the Devil.

Now, a smartphone isn't even really a phone; it's a computer with an internet connection that you can also use to talk to people on the phone, sort of like your desktop computer is if you have it plugged into a DSL line and own a microphone. (I don't think I've used Roseholme cottage's land line for a business call directly in eons; everybody I need to talk to prefers Skype.)

In a nutshell, it goes like this: There's apparently no problem with using the internet from a desktop. And whipping out the laptop at the local wi-fi hotspot? That's groovy, too. But if you connect to the internet from a little computer without a keyboard? Well, then, you're just a big ol' dummy and a willing slave of your corporate oligarch masters, and probably couldn't even get the food out of the can if the power went out, to boot. (Also, this leaves tablet computers in a gray zone. If a smartphone is bad but an iPad is okay, I'm really confused.)

I have yet to have the logic behind this position explained to me in such a way that I can grok it. When I ask, everything I hear just feels like hand-waving, elbow nudges, and knowing winks. Help a sister out. If this is your viewpoint, lay it out in short sentences so I can get a handle on it.

Bad Ideas.

Just what society needed: the love child of a grocery buggy and R2D2.

My first thought was "You can't even put consistently reliable wheel bearings on the things, yet you think it would be awesome to give them more computing power than it took to get Alan Shepard to his tee time?"

My second thought was "Have these eggheads ever seen the damage a tantrum-throwing toddler can inflict on a shopping cart that doesn't have a touch screen?" Which, of course, led to the vision of a future mom putting her kid in the WALL-E grocery buggy which follows her into the produce section before being hijacked by kidnappers running the HACK-A-KART app on their Androids and carting off her precious bundle while she's absorbed in selecting tonight's arugula.

I'd further note that, in an economy where even plain old dumb shopping carts are increasingly tagged like migrating harp seals and fitted with The Club to keep them from being stolen by winos or sold as scrap, how about you just let me push the cart the old-fashioned way and read my own handwritten grocery list, and y'all can then use the savings to knock ten bucks off my grocery bill. How's that sound?

Customer Disservice.

UPS Live Chat log:

TK: Where is my pickup?

Raquel M.: Hi, this is Raquel M.. I'll be happy to assist you.

TK: It has been five hours since I requested a pickup. How do I find out when the driver will get here?

Raquel M.: I currently do not show a pick up has been scheduled.

TK: ???

Raquel M.: Are you referring to Boberg Arms Corporation?

TK: Yes. From Indy to Minneapolis.

Raquel M.: Did you receive a pickup request number?

TK: I'm trying to paste it in here...

TK: #tracking_number

Raquel M.: It states that request number is incorrect.

Raquel M.: To schedule a pickup on-line, please visit: Http://wesuck@cust.serv

TK: I did that. That's where I got that number. It told me my card has been billed for $9.19 and gave me the code #tracking_number

Raquel M.: Okay that number worked fine. It states your pick up will occur today by 5:00 pm

TK: It is currently 6:01.

Raquel M.: I need to forward your information to the local package center for resolution. Please provide me with the following information:

* Your last name

* The best telephone number to reach you

TK: K.

TK: ten.digit.number

TK: Add that I am absolutely underwhelmed.

Raquel M.: No problem, Thanks. It will take me just a few minutes to put this through. I will be right with you.

Raquel M.: Thanks for your patience. I have forwarded your information to the appropriate package center for further assistance. You can expect a call today within an hour. Do you have any other questions?

Raquel M.: I haven't heard from you in a while. Unless you have more questions I'll go ahead and end the chat.

TK: Hello?

Raquel M.: Yes i'm here.

TK: When is my pickup?

TK: I requested between 1220 and 1700 EST.

Raquel M.: Once the center gives you a call they will let you know.

TK: And when will they call me?

Raquel M.: You can expect a call today within an hour

TK: *sigh* Thank you.

Raquel M.: You're welcome. Have a great day.

Raquel M.: has disconnected.

POSTSCRIPT: It is 1850. First, they called me and said that their guy had already been by. I pointed out that I'd been sitting on the front porch since noon thirty and no dude had been anywhere near me. They tried to reschedule for tomorrow. I sulked. Dude JUST showed up.

Technical Difficulties: Please Stand By.

Blogging will resume shortly. Real life has intruded.
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Whoah.

The other night was one of those dreams where you wake up and are amazed that it's only eight hours later, because you've lived years in your dream...

• Bobbi bought a new house out in the Pacific Northwest someplace. It was in this small old town that overlooked a little city in a valley ringed by steeply rising forested mountains. Great view from the porch.


• John Shirley came for a visit. We were going to go to some shooting school or another, and we were going to have to fly there.


• The night before we left, the airline on which we were going to fly had a crash in the hills outside of town, bellying another 747 into the trees.


• The plane John and I were to fly on, another 747, was flown by some ex-fighter jock. He wanted to give us a real good look at the wrecked jumbo, so on climb-out, he pushed over and hugged the crest of the hill outside of town. As the plane crested the ridge, you could hear treetops scrape the belly of the plane. I can't remember why, but he'd invited us into the cockpit, (like they used to could, back when air travel was fun,) and there out the window on the upslope across the valley, was the broken fuselage and wings of a red 747 and I thought "Great, now there's going to be two," but miraculously, we didn't crash.


• Later, after returning home, I was going to visit a friend in a secure area of the airport, and I remembered, as I was pulling up to the security gate, that my range bag was in the trunk. Of course there was a whole line of cars waiting to get in behind me, and the dude behind me was really rude when I went to go ask him to back up a little so I could U-turn out of there.

True Confession...

The first time I saw the FedEx commercial with the singing frogs, I was gutted. Especially when the last happy little frog disappears...

Me: "Nooooo!"

RX: "The driver should have hit him with the clipboard."

Me: *feeling actual tears in my eyes* "How can you say that? The singing frog is so cute!"

The world would be a better place with little frogs that wore toadstool bonnets and sang "Lalalalalala!" is all I'm saying. Every time that last one disappears from the screen, I die a little inside, and I couldn't care less how many electric trucks FedUPS has.

PS: If you tell anybody that I teared up over cartoon frogs, I will be forced to Nancy Kerrigan your kneecaps.

Overheard in the Car:

Passing a small Baptist church with a large For Sale sign out front, roomie has a suggestion:

RX: "Look, a church for sale... Hey, you could buy it and set up your own! 'Tamara's First Church of Sit the %*&# Down'! You could write sermons on topics you think are important, like 'You Can Google That $#!t'."

Me: "That'd look awesome on the little sign out front. Wow, it's like you know me or something."

My half of Rashomon...

Riding in the car with Bobbi yesterday, she asked if her driving was making me nervous. I told her no, it's just that her control inputs were a little abrupt, and so all the vector changes were very sudden. She gave a response that only half made sense, so I pondered it for a second:

Me: "Wait, there's something I'm not getting here..."

RX: "My control inputs are digital, not analog, and the inc..."

Me: "Yeah, I get that, but I don't get the bit about '...the anchorman isn't funny'."

RX: *Gives me the look you give someone who has suddenly started spouting gibberish*

Me: *equally baffled, just sit there blinking back*

RX: *starts laughing hysterically*

I ran the word-sounds I had heard through my parser again and realized that what I had heard was "the increment isn't fine" and not "the anchorman isn't funny", and then started laughing too. However, "the anchorman isn't funny" became the all-purpose phrase at Roseholme for the rest of the day.

Poetry Corner.

Back in the day, my daily round-trip commute was 100 miles. On a motorcycle.

Stuck inside a helmet for that amount of time every day, you tend to invent ways to amuse yourself; mine was reciting Kipling poetry.

That's right, as that pink-and-blue Suzuki crotch rocket was peg-scraping down side roads or weaving through interstate traffic, inside my helmet there was a steady monologue of The Gods Of The Copybook Headings and The Young British Soldier...

...but I never thought to sing it!

Tab Clearing...

• Matt Bracken's novel Enemies Foreign And Domestic will be available for free Kindle download on Thursday, March 1st. Pass it on.


• Computing Then and Now: I remember having a BBS sigline in my off-line mail reader (ask your parents, kids) that read "...and this is not my one-gig drive!" a la the Talking Heads. How quaint that seems.


• One of those things that blogs do is give you glimpses into things you'd otherwise never see: I had no idea that some EMT's regard the term "ambulance driver" as pejorative. Huh.

Wrong future.

Uh, waiter? I ordered the cool Star Trek future and you seem to have brought me the dystopian one from Heinlein's Crazy Years instead...

Seriously, here's a random sampling of headlines for you to email to yourself in the past. Imagine reading any of this stuff on a monochrome monitor, circa 1987 or so:

• Verizon Drops Muslim TV Channel Whose Owner Beheaded His General Manager


• VA Governor Changes Position on Transvaginal Ultrasound Bill


• Robot Love, Sex, Even Marriage May Come, Relationship Scientists Say

If I'm remembering my Future History right, this is the part where we elect Nehemiah Scudder and then the colonies on Mars and Venus secede. Except that, while we seem to have created computers beyond the wildest dreams of any vintage science fiction author, we're lagging noticeably on the whole rocketships-and-extraplanetary-colonies front.

Happy Blogiversary to you!

Keads just celebrated his second blogiversary with a picture of an old Colt Police Positive in .32-20, which is a really cool caliber.

My .32 WCF revolver is nowhere near as pretty, but at least the cylinder turns the right way. ;)

This has got to be a joke, right?

Seriously, one of you guys is trolling NJ.com, right?

When the Second Amendment was created, we were a nation of far-flung farmers. There weren’t any police departments, sheriffs or National Guard. The head of the family was all of those. He had to have a gun.

But today, we have law enforcement. Hunters use rifles, not guns. Now, no one is safe.

I... really, I just don't know where to start with that. That is willful ignorance of long practice manning the walls of an iron fortress of native stupidity. You could bounce cannonballs of logic off that all day and not chip the paint. That is a sea of ignorance so dense it could float a black hole.

(H/T to Sebastian.)

Hoosier landlady?

The court found the Indiana Secretary of State guilty of using his ex-wife's address instead of his current fiancée's in a deliberately and feloniously bogus fashion, and sentenced him to go stand in the corner, which will sure discourage this kind of chicanery in the future, let me tell you!

Meanwhile, Dick Lugar (R-D.C.), is still okey-dokey because he slept in a Holiday Inn Express in Indiana sometime in the last forty years. Compared to Lugar, George Bush Sr. is an authentic Texan and the notoriously peripatetic Al Gore's toes are rooted deep in the soil of Rocky Top.

"Here, you stupid, worthless sheeple, have a gun."

How familiar are you with the goings-on in New Orleans after Katrina? If you haven't read The Great New Orleans Gun Grab, I highly recommend it.

The Algiers Point Militia story was especially interesting to me, because Broad Ripple is likewise very close to some unpleasant neighborhoods. Twenty blocks south of where I'm sitting and you are smack in the middle of a neighborhood known as War Zone D by the po-po.

The other day, I saw a post at III Percent Patriots entitled "Arming Thy Neighbors" and was intrigued at the line

Some of your neighbors may be useful to you, even if they are stupid, Useful Idiots today.

Think about that. Specifically, think about how that's phrased, and the mindset behind it.

The Algiers Point Militia worked because the neighbors knew each other. I know my neighbor. She may be a registered, politically active Democrat who I think is wrong on nearly every political issue, but we get along okay.

And because we get along okay, on the day when her votes pay off and the sky to the south of us turns red, I'll be handing a .38 revolver* to a friend who will help protect our neighborhood, not someone whose name I don't even know, whose only interaction with me has been dueling lawn signs every election season.

As a matter of fact, if your neighbor is somebody whose name for the past four years has been "Get your damn cat off my lawn you Prius-driving hippie!", you might want to think twice about handing them a loaded gun. There's a chance that their opinion of you might be just as low as yours is of them.

*I have even cleverly arranged a range trip as soon as the weather warms up. She wants to learn how to shoot a gun. I think some clay pigeons and some easy steel targets and a dialed-in dot-sighted M&P15-22 to make it stupid easy to hit them should be enough to get anybody hooked. My cunning plan is coming together...

Gentle reader,

Are you a reader of SF? Are you attending WorldCon this year? If so, Larry Correia has a request. In fact, he has a whole slate of candidates, although you are under no obligation to vote a straight Awesome Party ticket...

Captain, the sea level's rising!

More cheerful economic discussion over at Mr. B's place.

You know what'll make a $2.50 can of soup taste delicious at lunchtime? Knowing that you bought it on sale for 98¢ two years earlier. Works better than any seasoning I can think of.

The Truest Thing On The Internet.

Clicky.

I LOL'ed and LOL'ed and LOL'ed... and then I facepalmed and cried.


(H/T to TheJack.)

Right of weigh.

Broad Ripple Avenue expands to four lanes east of the Monon Trail, five lanes if you count the turn lane for most of the distance.

Or at least it used to. They repaved it with a nice fresh layer of stimulus over the last year or so but, possibly because there are usually bonus dollars involved for doing "green" things, they added bike lanes, reducing autos to one lane in each direction for most of the distance.

I don't know who in their right mind would bicycle down Broad Ripple Avenue, since that's just begging for a new career as a hood ornament, but there you go. I've never yet seen anybody making use of these lanes, at any rate.

Anyway, as a result of this, the intersections at a couple of smaller cross streets now feature little chicanes painted on the asphalt, as the auto and bicycle lanes jink left to leave room for right-turning cars (which are apparently intended to filter through the bike lane without collecting any Schwinn curb feelers).

So, Tuesday I'm driving down Broad Ripple Avenue, tail-end Charlie in a line of cars, and as our stream of cars hits each intersection, the whole conga line weaves through the chicane, with the exception of the vehicle two cars ahead of me, a navy-blue DeVille (or DTS, whatever Cadillac called them after the chrome fell off.) It is ploughing resolutely forward, not about to be herded off its intended path by anything as insignificant as paint stripes on the pavement.

Then we get to the part of Broad Ripple closer to Keystone, where the road used to widen out to five lanes with ample shoulders, and is now two travel lanes, a turn lane, and the two widest bike lanes in Christendom, and who should drift all the way to the right? The Caddy.

And suddenly I realize from behind that there's nobody driving it. Not the faintest bump of the peak of a blue-rinse chignon or tweed fedora is disturbing the horizontal line of the top of the headrest. I am seized with a vision of Clara Peller behind the wheel, peering over the dashboard and steering largely by the power lines overhead, impervious to the occasional spandex-muffled thump under her wheels as she mows down a whole Tour de France's worth of cyclists on the way to get her poodle's nails done at the doggie day spa. (Yes, Broad Ripple has a doggie day spa.)

I love my bicycle, but you won't catch me riding it down Broad Ripple Avenue.
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