A graphic illustration of the Death of Newspapers:

From my roomie:

It's official: the dwindling Indianapolis Star no longer keeps pace with the urinary output of my smallest cat...

This is God's Honest Truth.

When I refer to the Indy Red Star as "Our Local Cat Box Liner", I am speaking literally. Other than Bobbi sometimes reading the comics and me occasionally using a Dan Carpenter column to pressure-test my cerebral arteries for weak spots, the paper is not used for anything at Roseholme Cottage other than lining Slinky's litter box. Some months back, it was severely downsized in page count. Now rather than accumulating an excess of newsprint in the house that must be recycled every now and again, the paper doesn't have enough pages to stay ahead of the kidneys of a 3-lb geriatric house cat.

Are you listening Gannett? The only reason we are still subscribing to your local rag is to give the cat a place to pee, and you can't even do that job right. You don't deserve a bailout; you deserve to freeze in the dark.

Making a statement...

Just so people realize that he really means it.

Some very simple ethics...

There is one basic physical crime against another's person: Assault.

This can be further subdivided into two specific charges: Physical assault that causes the other person's death, which we give the high-falutin' Latin name "homicide", and physical assault that doesn't do so.

A subcategory of the second kind is assault of the type, involving the sexual organs, which we call "rape".

Now, generally speaking, we recognize some possible rationales for these kinds of physical assault. For instance, there is the "self-defense" claim, in which it is claimed that the final victim was trying to do That Thing to the perpetrator first. To wit: "He tried to kill me, so I killed him before he could do so," or "She punched me in the nose, so I punched her back."

Then there is the defense of "It was an accident." For instance, "I was driving along in my car when she ran out in front of me," and "I was going for the slam-dunk and I didn't mean to hit him in the throat with my elbow there under the net."

Lastly, there is the claim of "I was just frickin' crazy and didn't know Right from Wrong," where the perp's excuse is "I was just frickin' crazy and didn't know Right from Wrong."

In the first and second incidences, we realize that there were mitigating circumstances. In the third, we realize (or used to) that the perpetrator is as crazy as a rabid dog and warehouse them away from normal people or dispose of them dispassionately.

Rape is an unusual type of physical assault in that it is hard to claim either of the first two mitigating circumstances: Both self-defense ("The altar boy was coming right for me!") and accident ("I tripped and fell on top of her and my you-know-what accidentally landed you-know-where") ring pretty hollow as defenses, and that leaves only the third excuse, the one where we realize that the perpetrator is as crazy as a rabid dog and warehouse them away from normal people or dispose of them dispassionately.

Watching people who should damned well know better reach for one of these excuses to cover one of their own is positively sick-making.

Range notes...

• Between vacation in Tennessee, blogmeets, and other obligations, I'd missed two range weekends. Other than function-firing my little FN 1910 at Coal Creek and my regular dry-firing, I hadn't pulled a trigger in three weeks, so in addition to playing with the .32's, I had plenty of make-up work to do yesterday. I left the Marlin Papoose at home, and did nothing but pistol shooting: 9mm and .45 from the 1911's and lots and lots of double-action .22 revolver shooting.
• You know, I used to think that Smith getting rid of that knob on the end of the ejector rod on wartime & later revolvers made sense; that it was just a cosmetic frippery. Not when your .22 is starting to dirty up and extraction is getting sticky, it's not. C'mon, S&W, how much would it cost to put that thing back? $5/gun? Make it a Performance Center feature.
• Anybody who complains about the sights on a Colt Pocket Hammerless should be sentenced to an FN 1910. In fact, other than being cheaper to make, the striker-fired 1910 seems completely inferior in every way to the 1903.

It's like instant karma.

According to the media organs that pay attention to such things, Michael Moore's movie about the evils of making profits is... well... not very evil, at least if you're using profits as a gauge of malevolence.

Shop 'til they drop?

Not looking like a good year for retail... (H/T to SurvivalBlog.)

Also in fiscal news: Former Japanese finance minister found dead; German bank official makes retro comments about Turks, without actually using phrase "useless eaters".

Raccoon City, circa 1912.

Hot on the trail of papers stolen from Georges Sagnac, Inspector Pierre Mondieu of the Sûreté arrived in Raccoon City, where experiments were ongoing at the laboratories of Umbrella Patent Nostrums, Ltd., consisting of exposing germs to the emanations from purified radium while in a chamber emptied of everything but luminiferous aether.

Of course when these germs got out, they turned the first scientist they touched into a brain-eating zombie. (Like you couldn't see that coming.) Assisted by Detective Dirk Manly of the Raccoon City P.D., Pierre cornered the glow-in-the-dark shambler in the file storage room. As zombies (even slightly radioactive ones,) are wont to do, it came right for him. Aiming at the lower tip of the walking dead's sternum with his Fabrique Nationale Model 1910, the intrepid agent let fly...


Between the minuscule sights and the atrocious trigger (and the fact that the bore mysteriously showed the wear of about eighty years, despite this being 1912...) the seven rounds impacted high and scattered all over about a handspan at seven yards, and everyone knows that won't stop a zombie. "Mon Dieu!" shouted the Inspector, certain that his forebrain was about to become an hors d'œuvre, leaving him hors de combat.

Fortunately, Dirk was backing him up with his trusty Colt's Pocket Hammerless: slightly better sights, a much better trigger, and Dirk knew to aim at the zombie between the running lights with his seven rounds:


...and thus was Mondieu saved from being zombie merde.

Moral of the story: If you have to chase zombies around with a Browning-designed pocket .32, use the Colt's and aim at the grape.

Good morning, world!

Off to breakfast and then the range. :)

Tempting...

I need a $200+ video game boat anchor cabled to my TeeWee about like I need a hole in my head, but I can't help but notice that used first-gen X-Boxes are running fifty bucks and less at most prawn shops and used video game stores these days.

Fifty bucks is darn near free, and there's a literal boatload of games out there for the system. At the moment, the state of the art in my Old Video Game Console Museum is a Playstation and a Game Cube...

It's awfully tempting. And I've never even played Halo...


(Incidentally, I picked up a used copy of Call Of Duty 4 for my Nintendo DS. I remember being flabbergasted playing Quake on my rock'n'roll custom-built gaming desktop, and it didn't look that good. What a fascinating modern age we live in ...)

It's a strange world...

...and it keeps getting stranger every time I check.

Can someone explain to me why the Maximum Leader of Guinea is wearing what appears to be a Jerry fallschirmjäger badge on his red beanie?

The final frontier...

Awesome photo of a Delta 4 Heavy liftoff at Cape Canaveral.

Some photos are worth getting a lens trashed...



(H/T to Nathan Brindle.)

Parenting Fail.

1. Keep your eleven-year-old out of the liquor cabinet.
2. If he does get drunk, don't let him have the keys to the family bus.
3. Should he get behind the wheel while blotto anyway, for Vishnu's sake, make him keep it under 100mph.

Is Envy venial or mortal?

'Cause whichever it is, I am doing it right now.

That is one schweet double rifle.

(I had an order in on one of those vaporware .45-70 Baikals that Og mentions as far back as Summer of '05, too. I even had a couple co-workers and customers wanting one. None ever showed up.)

Farmer in the desert.

Frank has a run-down of his experience with the S&W M&P-15 at Gunsite.

That's two thumbs-up so far.

I got all excited for a minute there...

...but then I realized they just meant "...from Olympic contention", and not "...by flying saucers."

Don't feel bad, Chicagoans: Speaking as an ex-Atlanta gal, you really didn't want it anyway. It's a lot more hassle than it's worth.

The economy's not quite dead yet...

...but the .gov has a few ideas to finish it off.

The economy is still flopping around on the floor and they're just trying to get it to hold still long enough to shoot it between the running lights.

If these people were doctors, they'd recommend amputation to cure brain tumors.

Samson's chin spinach.

It really is the beard.

I'm just on pins and needles...

...waiting to find out which city offered the most hookers and blow to the IOC.


BREAKING: Awww! Who's the sad clown, Dickie? :D

My line in the sand.

Can we veer from our usual topics here at VFTP and chat about toilet paper for a minute? Of course we can; this is my blog, and I say so.

Anyhow, I freely admit to being something of a toilet paper snob. I don't mean to be throwing brand names around, but my toilet paper dollar has been spent on Charmin and nothing but Charmin for about as long as I've been purchasing my own TP.

Specifically, I am a loyal devotee of the Cadillac of Bathroom Tissue: Charmin Plus, With Aloe. Once you have used this queen of bog papers, never again will you want to subject your delicate netherparts to the indignities of the 320-grit tracing paper foisted on the herd by public restrooms.

Now the Enemy is after my TP. Folks, you can take my light bulbs and I'll grumble, you can make me smoke outside and I'll sulk, but listen to me now and believe me later, little pencil-necked environmentalist man: You had damned well better take my guns before you take my Charmin.


(H/T to David.)

Uncommon sense.

Les Jones has been on a roll lately:

It’s amazing how many “survival” plans don’t make any arrangements for something as common as not having a job for six months. In this wildly unlikely apocalyptic scenario a mere mortal might be expected to somehow accomplish the heroic feats of not having the power cut off, reigning victorious against the forces of not having his car repossessed - not by shooting the repo man but by not getting behind on his car payment to begin with - and defending the sanctity of the family domicile by not having the mortgage company righteously and legally foreclose on his deadbeat ass.

RTWT.

A basement full of freeze-dried beans and .308 ammo is not the solution to every potential life crisis; as a matter of fact, it's a pretty narrow-spectrum answer to a specific set of circumstances.