From elsewhere...

...on the web:

Everybody knows that it’s not terrorism unless the perp in question had an Al Qaeda membership card in their wallet, left a copy of their orders signed by Osama Bin Ladin on their dresser, were dressed in a “Jihadworld” tee shirt, and had the melted remains of an official Little Martyr’s Club decoder ring found on their charred finger.

Unless each and every one of those criteria is met, you can scream “Allahu akhbar!” ’til you’re blue in the face while mowing down infidels at the mall food court, and it ain’t terrorism, Achmed.

Shooter malf.

If the biggest things I took away from my Todd Jarrett class were related to grip, the biggest things I took away from my Louis Awerbuck class were related to trigger control. I have really improved my follow-through and it's helped my accuracy a lot. Today, though, was the first time I'd shot the Para Gun Blog 9 with gloves on since last spring; I'd forgotten how much feeling they take out of the trigger.

I was banging away fairly rapidly when the gun suddenly did not go *bang*, despite me having the trigger good and bottomed out. As my support hand came over the top of the slide, my eyes noticed that the hammer was still to the rear. My eyes reported this fact to my brain, but it just sat there confused as my hand, absent any countermanding orders, ran the slide and returned to the grip. Yup, that was an unfired round that flew out of the ejection port...

Apparently I hadn't let the trigger reset. I've had that issue with the junky trigger on my 22/45, which has a reset way out in another zip code, but that's the first time I'd ever done that with a 1911. The Para itself continued to run fine, despite being absolutely filthy; mad props to that Strike-Hold dry lube.

One other thing I'd noticed is that in the last couple months of concentrating on my trigger press, I'd gotten pretty sloppy about leaning into the gun and gripping it firmly, so I made a real effort to get back to that towards the end of today's range session, and I'll be sure to work on it more tomorrow.

It never got above freezing in the shade this morning, and I didn't wear my warm boots, so I punked out after about an hour and half, when I couldn't feel my toes any more and my hands were getting too sore to load mags without fumbling. It's supposed to be a balmy 40 degrees tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be able to shoot longer.

I salute him, too...

...and I will always try to be like him when I screw up.

ToddG at Pistol-Training.com salutes Mr. Behaves Like an Adult When He Makes a Mistake Guy.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundane.

Sickened by all the eBay typewriter auctions that state "Will cut off the keys". That's like killing an elephant for the tusks. -Marko Kloos on Twitter

My friend Marko really likes him some typewriters. The process of using a manual typewriter resonates with the particular strain of creativity he possesses: The letters imprinting mechanically onto the paper, with finality, all in one pass; the writer feeling connected to an intricate, well-crafted machine that, further, might be significantly older than he is.

Of course, the very things he most enjoys about typewriters are the reasons they have been pretty much entirely supplanted for day-to-day use by computers and word processing programs. People generally don't give a rodent's hindquarters about the gestalt of the creative process when they want to knock out a business letter, a brownie recipe, or an email to grandma, and we'll usually gladly give up that feel of a well-oiled mechanical interface for the ability to back the cursor up and change "rat's ass" to "rodent's hindquarters" so as not to shock said grandma.

Myself, I love old military rifles, and I most love them in their original condition. I know that every day they get re-finished or cut down into ungainly hunting rifles, are left to rust in neglect, or are even broken up for spare parts on GunBroker. I know that if I want to ensure that one is preserved in its original condition, the only way I can do so with any assurance is to buy it myself and leave it alone. I have to live with the fact that other people may not see things my way, and that they are free to do as they want with their rifles.

It's the nature of the beast; for every old treadle sewing machine or wooden spinning wheel lovingly preserved, dozens have been turned into planters and thousands upon thousands have been thrown away. The comparatively few all-original '32 Fords and '57 Chevies are valuable because so many were turned into "hot rods" and so many more were turned into scrap metal. What were the everyday appliances of yesteryear are the treasured artifacts of today precisely because so many were altered or destroyed.

With old manual typewriters, the fad of the moment is to turn the key caps into costume jewelry, and throw the rest of the typewriter away. This understandably annoys Marko, although it's perhaps more respectful of the typewriter than what would otherwise happen, which is the machine getting pitched into the dumpster or recycling bin, key caps and all. It was seeing this typewriter butchery mentioned on eBay that set my roommate off on her latest round of acquisitions.

I know well the feeling of "People are destroying these things I love so much..." The trick is in not appending the second half of the thought: "...somebody oughtta DO something about it!" because that way lies madness. At best you wind up trying to adopt every puppy in the pound; at worst, you start some annoying organization like People for the Ethical Treatment of Antiques.

This is some strange new definition of "most customizable".

I noticed that Ford's banner ads for the new 2010 Mustangs on the intarw3bz are calling it "The most customizable Mustang ever," apparently because you can get all different kinds of tape & decal packages on it.

In 1968, however, you could choose between four different transmissions, six different engines, nine final drive ratios, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Of course the former is a lot more economical from a business standpoint, but the latter sure does feel a lot more like "customizing".

Dial 1-800-RAT-FINK...

Via email, I was alerted to the fact that Sprint/Nextel's Electronic Surveillance Department has been playing Fido every time the po-po said "Fetch!", at least 8 million times over the last sever...

Wait, what?!?

Sprint/Nextel has an Electronic Surveillance Department??!

Maybe these shenanigans would have gone unreported longer if they'd taken a page from the Orwell School Of Marketing and called it the "Department of Customer Love". And by "Customer Love", I mean "Customer Loooove"; the kind you normally have to unwrap a plain brown package and draw the blinds to see on your DVD and is still illegal in some locales.

UPDATE(ISH): Joe Huffman goes into much greater detail, and did it first.

Overheard in the Office:

RX: "I didn't mean to bother you with my old people music."

Me: "'Old people music'? You were playing Led Zep."

RX: "Yes. Nowadays that's..."

Me: "...Cadillac commercial soundtracks. Yeah. And it ain't Cadillac's demographic that's changed. Jesus, the kids that were rioting at Kent State are going to be rioting for Medicare now, throwing their orthopedic Reeboks at Obama."

Even though they're old enough to be my parents, Led Zep isn't "old people's music" to me because I grew up in the demographic shadow of the Baby Boom. Who did I go see in concert in the '80s?

That's right.

Who?

That's right.

Get it?

We used to joke that ads for K-Tel compilation records (ask your parents, kids) in our golden years would start with the voice-over saying "Hey! Remember remembering the Sixties in the Eighties?"

It's bad enough what they did to me in the record store; I'm really worried about what they're going to do to me at the voting booth.


EDIT:
In comments, reader Samsam notes:

"Walking down the halls of our local high school, I see a lot of Led Zep and Pink Floyd t-shirts. On the kids, not the staff."

Which is actually a little weird when you think about it. That would be like strolling around at Berkeley in '68 and finding all the kids dressed like flappers and humming ragtime tunes.

These crazy kids and their music today, with all the hipping and the hopping! Why can't they listen to decent music, like Blue Öyster Cult or ZZ Top? The fact that some of them are listening to what is, in effect, their grandparents' music should tell you something about cultural pervasiveness.

A million here, a million there...

...pretty soon SayUncle is celebrating his four millionth hit.

Okay, that was surreal.

So I dreamed last night that a temporary agency had sent me to a temp job as the starting quarterback for one of those imaginary NFL teams that show up in dreams and Disney movies, the Anytown Meerkats or the Smallville Ocelots or whatever.

Further, in dreams there's apparently no spring training or whatever it is they do in football, you just show up on the day of the big game, with serious trepidations, and tell the coach "Uh, I think there's been a big, big mistake here. They sent you a forty year-old chick. I could write what I know about football on the back of a postage stamp. Longhand. With a Sharpie. I'm going to get killed out there on the first snap."

Except they were all like "No, no, go on. It'll be fine. You'll do great."

Thankfully I woke up before any serious televised humiliation or grievous bodily harm occurred.

This is possibly the weirdest variation on the "Public Speaking In Your Underwear" dream I have ever experienced.

Pulling up stakes for the sticks.

The WSJ has an article about the Nouveau Ranch set.

Tit for tat.

Caleb offers up an address database of his own.

Cross-threaded with the feds.

Apparently the folks at Tennessee Guns, Inc. got cross-threaded with the federales over a bunch of soon-to-be parts kits.

TGI is a big importer located in the Knoxville area; I've done a lot of work with them over the years and know quite a few of the folks that work or have worked there.

Back when I worked at Randy's Guns & Knives, I spent the entire summer of 2003 helping Shannon carry out modifications to literally thousands and thousands of CZ-52s that TGI had imported, in order to prevent the decocker from functioning as a second trigger. Field-stripping, grinding, milling, cold-bluing, reassembling, safety checking... Hundreds of CZ-52s all day, five days a week, for months.

Did you know that driving home in a car with a black leather interior on a ninety-degree Tennessee summer day with your clothes and skin drenched in cosmoline produces a smell exactly like month-old mildewed sweat socks? You never really forget it. It was another two years before I could bring myself to touch a CZ52...

Sweet Vishnu, do I hate the smell of cosmoline to this day.

Anyway, I hope everything works out for the folks at TGI.

Google v. The Won:

Where was the outrage for the last eight years?

And I just got used to vertical foregrips, too...

Shooters tend to be a conservative lot. Most shooters, by the time they reach my age, decide that they have discovered The One True Way and proclaim themselves silverbacks of the tribe. They've figured out what's right for them and their circumstances and, by extension, it's right for everybody else, too.

You'll see it in everything: caliber choice, shooting stance, revolver vs. auto, night sights and weapon lights, red dots and lasers, single-points and loop slings. There's never a middle ground, either: veering from The Way will not only get you killed, it will brand you as a Walter Mitty Wannabe SWAT Mall Ninja or a Crusty Old Has-Been, depending on the topic at hand.

It was with some distress then that my original impulse when I saw Magpul's new AFG was "Pphhttt! Silly gizmo," when I clapped eyes on it. That first impulse was the wrong impulse. Like almost any other thing in the firearms world, from speedloaders to night vision optics, the answer to "Is it any good?" is "It depends."

What are you going to use it for?

How are you going to use it?

Have you been trained in its use?

Does it integrate with the rest of your gear?

Does it offer you enough of a concrete improvement to make the expenditure in money and training time worthwhile?

Only one person knows the answer to that question.

I don't know if the potential benefits of this particular gizmo for me would offset the time and training it would take to put it in my toolbox; after all, I've already had to relearn my entire method of using a carbine once in the last decade, and how often am I going to need to use a carbine in real life? There's a reason that the vast majority of my training time gets spent with pistols and revolvers, after all. I'm sure plenty will sell to folks who just want to buy the newest thing to hang on their carbine, without giving a thought to the training or proper implementation aspects of it.

Is it any good? I dunno. It depends.

The infamy waltz.

The Freeholder critiques one of the ubiquitous bits of blood dancing clogging the intertubes this week.

I've personally been amused by these people who eagerly point out that, since owning a handgun doesn't make me bulletproof, I must be crazy (or criminal) to do so.

Situational awareness.

My cat, Random Numbers, is very attuned to her surroundings. One of her most interesting quirks is that she listens carefully for the sound of the latch's *click* whenever a door is swung shut. If she hears hinges squeak or the door hit the jamb and there's no sound of the latch engaging, she will be there within moments, reaching under the door with her paw and pulling it open to venture into The Place With The Old Cats And Soft Food or The Forbidden Basement Of Mysteries.

I had hypothesized that it was the sound of the latch that brought her over to investigate, and tested that hypothesis this morning while stepping through the "cat lock" into the dining room: I swung the door to, but left my hand on the knob and didn't engage the latch. As if on cue, she hopped off the futon in the living room and started strolling nonchalantly my way and then I pulled it 'til it clicked. Her ears twitched at the sound, and she immediately stopped in her tracks, looked over at me, and then ambled off in another direction.

Mm-hm. I'd wondered how she always seemed to sense when those doors weren't latched almost immediately. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle.

In other news...

...the editorial staff of the Bloomington Herald Times is still a pack of moral cripples with all the ethics of syphilitic weasels.

I'd suggest a boycott but, given the state of the dead-tree newspaper business in America today, that would almost be redundant.

In the latest press release from Bizarroland:

Hezbollah blames U.S. for all terrorism

You gotta hand 'em props for chutzpah, at least. Did he say it with a straight face? Could you even tell, behind that chin spinach?

Get on the phone...

Say Uncle has an NSSF press release on an obscure amendment to a current bill that could make ammunition even more scarce and expensive.

Keep those cards and letters coming, folks.

Burglar's buddies.

The criminal enablers at the Bloomington, IN Daily Puppy Trainer are now trying to claim that there's no possible harm that could come to innocent citizens from their online pistol permit database.

Riiiight.

Like they care. The kind of people who would lump carry permit holders, (who get into a database by passing a criminal background check,) with sex offenders, (who get into their database by, you know, committing crimes) just point up that the term "journalistic ethics" has become an oxymoron.