The second sexiest pistol Beretta's ever made...

...after the 93R is the 92 Compact Type M. Marko recently picked up a primo "slickslide" example from the shop, and reviewed it here.

Wow, now I'm an arbiter of fashion!

I.M. Confused, a student in Ontario, Canada, asked Google "how to wear womens jeans with a belt, tucked in top or not", and Google referred her to me.

Well, Confused, I'd have to say that that depends on quite a few things. Is it a baggy, man's tee shirt with a smart-ass saying, liquor company logo, or pro-gun witticism on it? I'd go with "tucked-in" under those circumstances. The untucked top is for when you are wearing a fitted women's tee that probably isn't long enough to tuck in anyway, or if you are running into the grocery store on the way home from work and need to cover up your holstered pistol so as not to spook the straights.

Thank you for your fashion inquiry with Ask Auntie Gun Nut! :)

Boomsticks: East Tennessee Spring Blogger Shoot

SayUncle has the straight dope.

Buy A Gun Day is looming on the horizon this Saturday...

...and neatly coincides with payday, to boot, and I haven't got a clue what to get. We've got some milsurps in at work, No.4 MkI's rescued from Pakistan and some pretty clean 91/30's, and that'd make a good fallback option.

Hmmm. Believe it or not, I don't own an Enfield No.4 Mk.I; I have a No.4, but it's an unissued postwar Fazakerly Mk.II.

Well, that kinda makes my decision simpler, now that I think about it, doesn't it?

(Of course, the optimal situation would be for my supplier to come through on some promised Mk.III* SMLE's...)

A Night at the Flicks: Dark Blue World.

Oleg had been pestering me to watch this movie for a few years now, and then Dr. Strangegun pressed his copy into my hands, so when Bob came over last night, we had a movie night. (I forgot the popcorn.)

Short plot synopsis: Czech pilots flee the occupation of their country by insufferable Nazi prigs. Heroics, male bonding, romance, and tragedy all ensue. Impressions follow:

1: I hate watching subtitled flicks for the most part; I loved this movie.

2: If I had a time machine, I would go back in time, beat the holy hell out of Jerry Bruckheimer, and take every penny of budget and every CGI artist he had for Pearl Harbor, and give them to the obviously more deserving Jan Sverák.

3: Only as big a nitpicker as I am would notice (or care) that the part of the Geman Bf. 109 Emils and Gustavs (the bad guy fighter planes, for you non-aviation buffs) was being played by Spanish Merlin-engined Hispano HA-1112's, and that the picture of the ship the missing David (a Royal Navy ossifer) was supposedly serving on looked suspiciously like an Iowa-class battlewagon, a class conspicuously absent from the RN and conspicuously present in the USN. (Thus my desire to deport Bruckheimer's CGI boys to Praha...)

4. Holy crap! Character development! Subtle foreshadowing! Careful plot development! Wow! Are they still teaching these things in some film school someplace in Europe? When is Jan going to come to Hollywood to spread The Word?

And now for the secret Number Five. Highlight below only if you want spoilers:

5) No wonder Oleg liked this flick; it is so... so... Slavic! Look, I'm not as addicted to happy endings as your average Suzy Sofaspud, but still... Does such a likeable lead character need to take it in the slats every five minutes? I mean, okay, he cheats on his schmoopie back home with his best friend's girlfriend, thus damaging the friendship with his best friend. Then he loses the best friend. Then the crippled husband of the girlfriend returns from the dead, so our hero loses her, and she gets to live out a life of guilt and misery. Then the hero goes back to his homeland, finds out his long-lost schmoopie has gotten hitched, had a kid, and stolen the affections of his beloved pet dog. Then he gets thrown into a fricken communist gulag where they beat another of his wartime buddies to death. Why they didn't have a midget run out of nowhere and kick him in the nuts for no reason at all right before the credits rolled is beyond me, because that would have just been the cherry on the icing of the cake of his life. For heaven's sake, the ending made 1984 look like the Feel-Good Family Hit Of The Summer! I mean, damn, you folks east of the Elbe need to lighten the hell up every now and again, okay? Let the good guy win once in a while; it won't kill you.


Anyhow, if you're a movie buff, it's a must see. I'll be buying my own copy ASAP.

Your Government Inaction: Episode XXVII

Under Federal sentencing guidelines as of 1997, which was the most heinous of the following offenses?

A) Embezzling between $10,000,000 and $20,000,000 from a bank.
B) Using threats of violence to extort between $2,500,000 and $5,000,000 from someone.
C) Kidnapping someone and seriously injuring them in the process.
D) Possession of five grams of crack cocaine.







If you answered "E) None of the above, as all four acts carry a recommended minimum five-year sentence at Club Fed", you are absolutely correct!

(I've been reading James Bovard again, which is ever so good for the circulation. Does it show?)

Boomsticks: Gratuitous Gun Pr0n No. 26

Beretta 950BS "Jetfire" and Beretta 3032 "Tomcat", with Kershaw Chive and CRKT K.I.S.S.

For those times when you can't carry a gun, these are the next best things. ;)

As cool as I wanna be.

Wow.

Go to Kit's Livejournal and read this post. Now.

One day I said "I don't like who I am." I didn't like my lack of self-esteem, or how I looked, or how I behaved. And it wasn't because someone else didn't like it - I had never made any significant change in my life for another person, be it a parent, boyfriend, or friend, much less some invisible negative arch-enemy like "society." I am smart enough to know when I'm being manipulated by a covergirl at the checkout stand at the supermarket, thank you very much.

So I did something about it.

I can so identify with that. I spent the first part of my life internalizing other's judgements of me. I was shy, uncomfortable in social situations, and spent a lot of time feeling unworthy of much of anything. I can clearly remember, even though it was some seventeen years ago, my moment of epiphany; the instant I realized that adult life didn't have to be an ongoing remake of The Breakfast Club with me stuck in the Ally Sheedy role by chains of my own making. And so I set out on a deliberate course: I decided that I love me and, dammit, I'm going to act like it.

And the world became a different (and more fun) place.

Apologies to my fellow Knoxwegans.

I got the car waxed and bought some chain lube for the Zephyr yesterday, so, um...

...sorry 'bout the rain, y'all.

Gadget Lust.

Pocket multitools are cool. I really like my Leatherman Juice KF4 (especially its hip anodized banana yellow color) but I was dumb enough to pick the only Juice in the lineup that didn't have... (are you ready for this?) ...a bottle opener. This means I normally have a Leatherman Micra clattering around in the same pocket as the Juice, simply for bottle-opening chores.

Prowling through SiteMeter today, I stumbled across Parallax Adjustment, where Shooter was crowing about opening a box from Atwood Knives.

Gadget freak heaven, baby.

Tool?

Art?

Pocket jewelry?

Who knows. All I know is I want one.

"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that..."

Via Michael Silence, we learn that the Knoxville Police Department's newest officer, HAL 9000, has reported for duty. He won't be issued a ticket book, however, until his heuristic circuits have been tested and de-bugged.

It's so good to see such efforts being made in the quest for greater ticket revenues traffic safety.

Politics: Busted!

If you can't Secure the Department from pedophiles, how are you supposed to Secure the Homeland from tangos?

Debates for The Ages.

Butter or Parkay?

Tastes Great or Less Filling?

AK or SKS?

Here's where...

...I normally post my link to the Weekly Check On The Bias over at Alphecca.

No link today, though, because Jeff is feeling sick.

Go give the man a Get Well comment. :)

Ack! My eyes!

It's a peaceful morning here at VFTP Command Central. I'm padding about in my big fuzzy socks & Kalashnikitty tee, noshing on a toasted onion bagel with cream cheese, contemplatively sipping a room temperature Diet Dew, and trying to muster the energy to take the pictures for a post I want to do.

Searching for posting inspiration, I click my way through my blogroll, Pachelbel wafting from the speakers and birds chirping outside the window. I get to Kit's place...

...and learn things that I can't unlearn.

Strange things those rugged Western types do for fun.

Boomsticks: Blogger Shoot.

Those interested in a Blogger Shoot at CCA should go here. SayUncle is holding some sort of caucus re: good dates & times for everybody.

A way with words:

LawDog on the U.N.:

Two 7-11's and a cathouse would do about three times as much good for the world in a week as the U.N. does in a year.

"Thank you for calling Fort Bragg. How may I direct your call?"

"I am an Ex-Special Forces Operator!" he bellowed, red-faced, leaning across the counter.

"I understand, sir, but rules are rules."

As he walked off, one of the customers that had witnessed the display murmured the quote I'm using for a title.

New employees at the shop are shocked to find out that the stories on the internet gun boards are true. They're out there, in all their myriad forms: Mall ninjas. Holster sniffers. Strange rangers. Armchair commandos. Not terribly common, no, but once every couple of days they get to meet someone whose tendency to, er, exaggerate is all too obvious. And once in a great while, they get to meet one who provides such a rich vein of comedic gold that they'll be able to dine out on it for weeks.

I was up on the stepladder, hauling down my 9mm AR carbine to show a friend, when a voice below and behind me declared loudly "That's exactly the one I wanted to see!" I shrugged apologetically to my friend, and handed the weapon to the newcomer. He grasped it in his fingerless gloves and, squinting one-eyed through the EOtech, started taking sightings on the AC vents in the ceiling, the doorknob to the storage room, and (for all I know) the north star.
"This is just like the ones we used in The Teams." He poked a digit at the gun's optic. "How do you turn this on?" After he'd handed it back and went to sign up to go out on the range, one of my sales guys was overheard doing a sotto voce Billy Idol impersonation (in regard to the fingerless gloves:)

Last night a little ranger
Came humping 'cross my floor...

Where this urge to exaggerate comes from, I don't know. It certainly seems to be untempered with a fear of discovery; after all, you never know who's listening when you wax hyperbolic. The "Operator" of the first paragraph launched his tirade in front of a customer and a sales clerk who were, respectively, veterans of a Bundeswehr light infantry reconnaissance company and the 75th Ranger Regiment. Rather than impressing anybody, he might as well have tattooed "Make Fun Of Me" on his forehead. Instead he was later found talking to our instructor, a career cop and SWAT team commander, about all the police officers he's saved by coming to their aid in roadside gunfights. As one coworker said to me "I'd only been out there five minutes and he'd already killed two bad guys and was working on his third."

"Have Gun, Will Travel" reads the blog of the man
A retired operator in a savage land.

The internet, of course, greatly expands the horizons for the fabrication of Heroic Life Stories. No longer limited to holding gun store clerks and random patrons hostage until their eyes glaze over, one can now log onto a BBS and talk the ears off thousands. Or maybe start a blog.

Did I tell you about the time I parachuted into Kandahar to save those Red Cross workers? Armed with nothing but a silenced .22 pistol, I...

Whoops.

Sunday mornings between 10AM and 11AM are my "Relax & Write Before Going In To Work Time."


Unfortunately, the International Communist Conspiracy To Sap & Impurify Our Precious Bodily Fluids seems to have stolen an hour of my morning today, and didn't bother to tell my alarm clock about it.


Further blogging will therefore have to be postponed 'til after work.


"Spring Forward", my butt... *grumble*

Blog Stuff: Notes from a Day Off.

Living in the woods is fun. It meant that my first priority yesterday was to get the Beemer to the Simoniz joint and have all 75 pounds of guano hosed off the exterior and the dead leaves vaccuumed from the carpets. Had to take a rain check, literally, on the waxing.

Have I mentioned how much I like the soft pretzels and hot beer cheese dip at Calhoun's? Yes? Okay, have I mentioned that I'm such a creature of habit that I always eat them the same way? That's right, I have a little routine down for which piece of the pretzel gets dipped in mustard and which gets dipped in cheese and in which order. It's only slightly more complex than a Japanese tea ceremony. The waitstaff probably thinks I'm nuts...

Read somewheres around three quarters of The Barbarian Princess. As a fan of Miss King, as well as a fan of historical novels that are factually correct, I love it. I probably bothered folks around me by cackling wildly every time Lydda screamed "Desiste!", though. (...and remember: "Desistite!" As Florence reminds us, gang rape takes the plural.)

Mash House Hoppy Hour IPA: If you like hoppy beers, tool over to Leaf & Ale and get you some. Yum.