Bikes: The Rainy Season.

I haven't had the occasion to do much riding of late, seeing as it seems to be raining more often than not, and Ma Nature cleverly schedules her dry days for those times when I need a trunk to transport stuff home from work or the grocery store.

I have, however, had the occasion to drop the top on the Beemer on a couple of drives home. It's really neat driving home on curvy roads past farm and through forest, through a wet night, just after it's stopped raining, with the redolent honeysuckle aroma of a Southern Spring filling your nose and just the right music filling your ears. Sometimes it can take a long time to make that short drive under those conditions, what with all the wrong turns and all... :)

Blog Stuff: Today's winning Google searcher is...

...the cat from Yemen who hit me while searching for "Gratuitous Architectural Prosecuted Contours".

Whatever that means.

Boomsticks: Light rifles...

Josh at South Park Pundit wants to build himself a Scout Rifle. The urge is understandable: A light, fast-handling rifle in a do-it-all caliber is a wonderful thing to have.

Alston has a scout rifle that Bob the gunsmith built. It's a slim little wand of a .308, built on a Remington 600 action, and it handles and points more like a .22 than a bolt-action medium bore centerfire.

Myself, I've fallen in love with early Mauser cavalry and engineer carbines. I have a little Chilean DWM M95 carbine in 7mm Mauser that, despite being a bit on the chunky side for a Scout at 7.5 pounds, is a well-balanced little rifle whose barely three-foot length belies its weight. I think if I was going to make a personal Scout, I'd go for an older small-ring Mauser action and chamber it in .275 Rigby, because I love Mausers. I'd also probably cheat on the weight requirement by going with a Mannlicher stock, because life is too short to own ugly guns. :)

I'm too sexy for my boots...

My friend Kaylee was down to visit this weekend. We went out to eat after I got off work Saturday, and then had a good time sitting and chatting on the porch 'til the wee hours.

Sunday morning I got all dressed for work and was headed out the door with my M4gery, when she commented on my attire: Ponytail under the black CCA ball cap, black tee, khaki SigTac pants bloused over 5.11 boots, and nylon instructor belt. "Jeez! If you had some swoopy shades on, you'd look like a 'civilian contractor'." I reached in my purse and pulled out my Romer II's. "That's it!" she said, "Blackwater chic!"

Blackwater chic, kids: It's the new look for Summer. ;)

61 Years Ago Today:

Victory in Europe.


Happy VE Day! :)

Boomsticks: It's real contagious.

As SayUncle notes, all the cool kids are getting 9 sillimeter AR's... :)

My male readership may want to go make a sandwich...

Okay, we're waiting...


Go on, now...


Alright, the guys are gone; I think it's just us chicks now. Anyhow, being someone who loves hiking and camping and hunting and other things that involve the Great Outdoors, but who doesn't necessarily love the, um, logistics problems one can run into out there, I have to say that I found this article fascinating. Talk about your women's lib!

I'm now on a mission. Wish me luck.

Blog Stuff: Safari on the cheap.

I'm getting a barrel for my Encore chambered in .405 Winchester so I can have lion-hunting fantasies. Not, of course, that I will ever have the money or leisure time to go on safari for the King of the Beasts, but one can daydream. Or maybe organize a cheap substitute here in town...

"Dear Diary: Day three of the safari. After a quick breakfast of Tabasco Slim Jims and Diet Mountain Dew my native guide, Fred, has maneuvered me into an excellent position for the culmination of my trip, the confrontation with Simba. Careful not to spook the skittish herds of preschoolers, which would alert the lion to my presence, I ease around the concession stand. The cloying stench of cotton candy fills my nostrils..."

Like I said, one can daydream... :)

Blog Stuff: Death to the English...

...language.

The overall decline of literacy poked me in the eye again this morning. I swung by Oleg's LiveJournal, and clicked on a link to a movie he was excited about seeing. I read the blurb with interest until I got to this sentence:

Observing all is The Writer (Bill Murray) an ex-patriot American who sees Fico being drawn into events as the revolution changes everything.

...which totally put me off my feed.

To the knuckle-walking troglodyte who has somehow got himself a job writing copy for the production company: Bill Murray's character may indeed be an "ex-patriot"; not having seen your flick, I don't know. I do know, however, that the word you were looking for was "expatriate", which is a noun meaning "One who has taken up residence in a foreign land."

My collection of split infinitives, dangling participles, run-on sentences, and excessive vernacular is hardly "writing", but compared to a lot of what I read today, I feel like a regular Hemingway. For gawd's sake, is there not a proofreader left alive in this country?

Politics: Sometimes the jokes write themselves...

Apparently driving talent runs in the family...

Kennedy, son of the Evel Knievel of Chappaquiddick Sen. Ted Kennedy, said Thursday he was apparently disoriented by medication when he crashed his car into a barricade on Capitol Hill.

A Kennedy? Wasted? You have got to be kidding me! The very idea is hard to comprehend. I mean, who has ever seen a member of the Kennedy clan sober publically under the influence?

Police reported seeing Kennedy's car swerve before the crash.

Wouldn't want to hit that pink elephant in the middle of the road, now, would we?

Asked if he thought he got preferential treatment, Kennedy said, "That's up for the police to decide..."

No, Congressman, you got treated just like any other schlub who gets 'faced, slams his car into a barricade, and comes staggering out of the wreckage with bloodshot eyes and slurred speech. Hell, whenever I do that, the police always decline to do a roadside sobriety test and give me a courtesy ride home, too.

Moron.

Note to the .gov:

This is what investigator-types would call "A Clue".

Overheard At Work...

Dry-humored Salesguy (talking to friend at the counter): "You have to understand how the whole 'black clothes' thing is with Goths. Nothing is really all black. You have your 'red blacks' and your 'blue blacks' and you really don't want to mix those two, or you'll look like a twink. Then, (of course,) you have your really 'black blacks' you save for special occasions. If any white lint from the dryer gets on those, a dedicated Goth kid has to burn them. Goths even have their own special laundry detergent now..."

Alston (voice wafting out from office): "What's it called? Dark Tide® Of The Soul?"

Boomsticks: The Weekly Check on the Bias...

...is up over at Alphecca.

My favorite knucklehead cited is Cathy Sorvo who entitled her OpEd for the Seattle Pravda "It's Time To Infringe On The Second Amendment."

See, she's an expert on the whole guns'n'violence issue because she went to high school. Or because she lived in an icky neighborhood once. Or because she's a comedian. Or because... well... frankly I can't quite figure out why she feels qualified to offer an opinion on the topic. But did she let a little thing like that stop her? Oh, heck, no... She put that word processor in four-wheel low and drove it right into the middle of the swamp.

Anyhow, go visit Jeff's site, read the weekly check, and leave him a thank you in the comments for his hard work. :)

Politics: Rejoice, Comrades!

The People's Soviet is contemplating further regulation of the means of production! Your relief is at hand!

I find it telling that the Congresscritters all stand up to denounce "price gouging". All solemnly agree it's a Real Bad Thing for the Little People under their care. They'll help out by proposing a law. A law that, in part, asks the Federal Trade Commission to, um, please come up with a definition of "price gouging".

Good luck with that.

Of course, in a nation of whiners who've been successfully manipulated into viewing "profit" as a dirty word and told since they were toddlers that they deserve their "fair share", "price gouging" will be defined as "anything more than I want to pay. Waaah! Mommy! They won't share!"

Morons.

Overheard At Work...

Bob: "Are you down from your clock tower now?"

Me: "What, was it that obvious?"

Bob: "Oh, yeah, you were up there all morning: 'Grumble, cuss *BANG!* Dammit, mutter *BANG!*'"

Me: "I can't help it, Bob. It's my Happy Place."

Notes From The 4/23/06 Blogger Shoot:

Both SayUncle and I brought our 9mm AR carbines. Pretty much everyone else there decided that they needed one, too. Big, dirty fun to shoot. Cambi loader works swell with Colt mags, not so much with ProMags.

I also brought along a 3" Smith & Wesson Performance Center 627 V-Comp, circa 2002, and a 3.25" Smith & Wesson .38 Safety Hammerless, circa 1899. The double action trigger pull was, um, slightly worse on the older gun, but it still ran just fine. We'll do a retrospective on the PC627 in 2109 AD. ;)

One of the shooters was a guy who started shooting at our range about a year or so ago, renting .22's. He brought along a stack of his own pistols he'd bought since those days, and even shot the Notorious Deagle. That was cool to see. It's neat to watch someone go from novice to enthusiastic shooter over time.

Kirk did not get a hat that said "I drove all the way from Maryland, got beaned in the noggin with flying brass, and all I got was this stupid hat." (But he would have, if I'd had one to give him. ;) )

At Ruby Tuesdays afterwards (which was a sobering experience, what with me having forgotten my papieren at home. "Sobering"? Get it? Anyway...) I found myself seated between SayUncle and Les Jones, both of whom I'm pretty much of an age with, as they passed cell phone pics of their cute little girls back and forth and waxed all parental. I resisted the urge to mumble "Well, I have cats." I took consolation in the fact that the Beemer has no accommodations for a child seat. (The canvas of the top wouldn't be enough to prevent Mommy's Little Bundle of Joy from achieving low Earth orbit when the air bag deployed if I tried to put one in there.)

Anyhow, a grand time was had by all. We'll need to do that again sometime.

Politics: Is your sock drawer not the way you left it?

Stalinist conduct by the government up 18 percent last year, says a Justice Department report.

No wonder I can never find anything. Look, when pawing through my sock drawer looking for Bin Laden's phone number, can y'all please just put stuff back where you found it? Is that too much to ask?

Blog Stuff: This should be interesting.

I just picked up a 12 pack of Diet Berries & Cream Dr. Pepper. My intuition tells me that this is unlikely to be a beverage that leaves one indifferent towards its taste. I'll either be saying "Hey, wow! Why didn't they do this sooner?" or "My gawd! It tastes like somebody used an old sweatsock for a teabag!"

We'll see...

Politics: Here's a genius law...

I wake up every morning, do my little morning rituals, then settle down in front of the massive banks of raw computing power at VFTP Command Central and scan the Errornet to see if anybody's done anything stupid recently for me to make fun of.

I'm rarely disappointed.

Salazar's legislation would make it illegal to make a false public claim to be a recipient of any military valor award, such as the Medal of Honor, a Silver Star or Purple Heart.

Now, I'm sure that Rep. Salazar's heart is in the right place with his Stolen Valor Act, and I definitely think that pathological liars who make phony claims to great deeds of heroism are complete twinks, and should be mocked, laughed at, and scorned for the pathetic Walter Mittys they are at every available opportunity. But making it a federal crime for Walter to tell his disbelieving audience at the Dixie Barr & Grill that he won three Medals of Honor in the Navy during Desert Storm? Really?

Think about that: A F E D E R A L C R I M E. Right up there with Treason and Counterfeiting and Transporting Girls Across A State Line For Immoral Purposes. Isn't this attaching a bit too much meaning to these BS claims? Isn't this giving them, in a back-handed way, the kind of attention they seek?

Further, are our federal law enforcement officers so bored, are things so quiet on the terrorism front, that we can waste time and my freaking tax dollars prosecuting a whole gun show's worth of fake SquEALs every time they open their mouth? Has anybody figured out the potential logistics of this? Folks, a meaningless, unenforceable law is worse than no law at all, but we pressure our congresscritters to "do something", and the only something they can do is pass federal laws. Think about that the next time you decide to write to your representative to complain about your neighbor's crabgrass, lest your representative propose the Aesthetically Pleasing Lawns Act of '07.

Meanwhile, come on, Mr. Salazar, don't you have anything important you could be repealing doing?

Blog Stuff: The Five Stages of Waking Up.

1. Denial: "That's not really the alarm clock going off."
2. Anger: "Oh, holy crap it is! And I didn't get a wink of sleep with that psychotic cat licking my nose all night!"
3. Bargaining: "I'm just going to hit the snooze button one more time."
4. Depression: "If I hit the snooze button again, I'll be late. I just can't face this anymore."
5. Acceptance: "I may as well wake up, because the bathroom's on the other side of the house."