Slow start...

Happy Independence Day to all of you people inside my computer!

Just got back from Locally Grown Gardens with a couple of bottles of Fentiman's Dandelion & Burdock soda, one of which I am sipping now. I also purchased a dozen eggs laid by local free-range chickens that get weekly aromatherapy sessions and shiatsu massage treatments. I feel very Broad Riparian.

We're going to fry some up along with a bunch of bacon, which will make me feel very American, perhaps American enough to head over to the local fireworks stand and see what they've got in stock...

EDIT: I have no idea what they feed those chickens, but these eggs are delicious!
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Overheard in the Office:

Me: "'Hey, yutz! Guns aren't toys! They're for self-protection, killing dangerous or tasty animals, and keeping the King of England out of your face!'"

RX: "And you wouldn't want the King of England up in your face!"

Me: "Especially not King Charles."

RX: "Eeww! With that dangly thing!"

Me: "That's his chin, Bobbi."

Summertime in SoBro, Part IV...

If this street scene doesn't give you that proper SoBro flavor, nothing will:


From left to right across the street is an aromatherapy joint, Salon Rue 52, and Indie Bike (purveyors of naught but cycling apparel.) To the right, out of the picture, is LUNA music, an independent record shop ("Proudly Serving Indy's Hipster Community Since 1994!") On this side of the street is Garuda Indonesian restaurant, which was yesterday's lunchtime goal.

It's a fairly new joint, and Bobbi had heard good things about it from a coworker, so we went to check it out. I had a tofu spring roll appetizer and the beef rendang, and left stuffed, without even finishing my noodles. You are not shortchanged on the portions, and the food is delicious. The service is prompt and courteous. You should eat there.

After lunch, we ran an errand to $big_box_home_improvement_store, where Bobbi was picking up some stuff to patch missing mortar in the basement's block walls. She was grabbing a trowel and tubes and bags of this'n'that. "Should we get a grout bag?" I asked.

"I don't know, I think the trowel would do..."

"Hey, I've no clue; I've never repaired masonry." I replied, "Maybe we could ask one of the dudes that works here about grout bags."

She looked doubtful, and said "I'd rather ask the internet."

At which point I whipped the ever-handier Portable Magic Elf Box out of my pocket and spoke into it: "repairing masonry using a grout bag." Shazam! We went ahead and bought one, since it was only five bucks.

Walking down another aisle, Bobbi's... er, t-shirt drew the intense concentration of one of the employees, who then noticed "Hey, there's a rifle on your shirt! And a knife in your pocket! And one on your belt!"

"Actually, that's a Leatherman tool on my belt," replied Bobbi, momentarily nonplussed.

"Did you hear what they just did in Ohio? You can carry guns into sporting events there now. And bars!"

"Uh, you can carry guns in bars in Indiana, too."

He looked like he didn't think that was a very good idea. "Really? When did..." It was at that point that I had to bite my lip to keep from saying "You know where else you can carry guns in Indiana? $big_box_home_improvement_store." But I didn't want to have to title this post "We Was Banished From The Woolworths". Besides, I thought it was pretty funny that I was having this conversation while wearing an INGO hat.

And then we finished our shopping and went home, and everybody lived happily ever after. So far.

The e-Reader Luddite Manifesto:

Brian J. Noggle enumerates reasons why he's in no hurry to buy a Kindle. Among them is one near and dear to those concerned about the Zombocalypse:

If the lights go out, you have nothing to read.
I’m not just talking about TEOTWAWKI. In very recent memory, parts of Missouri have lost power for weeks. If that happens, will your electronic device have enough battery to keep you in books and to help you with that reference material you need? You’d like to think so, but you won’t know so. Also, in the actual event of TEOTWAWKI, your device will only briefly heat your hovel and will release toxic chemicals to do so. Meanwhile, I can burn old Dungeons and Dragons novels for hours.

It's a fun read, so you should. Read it, that is.
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Because I can't fit a cop in my bike basket...

With the news in a tizzy about 2.5 attacks in 8 days along the Monon Trail in the fifty block stretch between Fall Creek and 86th Street, Indianapolis Police Chief Paul Ciesielski grandstanded up and down the trail on Thursday on a bicycle with a posse of other officers, acting surprised when the media showed up to interview him. (Gosh, how did they all know he'd be there?)

Meanwhile, the state legislature had already taken a step to improve my safety on the Monon. As of yesterday, I no longer forfeit my Second Amendment rights by using its smooth asphalt instead of bomb-cratered side streets to run errands around Broad Ripple.

Since Chief Ciesielski and his Flying Squad aren't going to show up at my doorstep to escort me wherever I go, I reckon I'll just escort myself.
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What is this I don't even

A controversial program by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that tried to track illegal weapons sales shows the need for tougher gun laws, according to a report issued Thursday by a House Democrat.

LOLWUT?

So we need to crack down on the flow of guns being illegally smuggled into Mexico by increasing the power and funding of the federal agency that was, as it turns out, aiding and abetting most of the actual illegal smuggling in the first place.

I guess you need a law degree from the University of Maryland for that to make even the slightest shred of sense, because from here it sounds like the opposite of a solution, if not outright crazy talk.

Given the revelations on Operation Fast & Furious, this is like finding a guy climbing through a broken window in your living room wearing a ski mask and an ADT uniform, and when you shine the flashlight in his face, having him pull his mask off and try to sell you a burglar alarm system because of the rash of break-ins in the neighborhood. Seriously, this is the Justice Department equivalent of the proverbial fireman that moonlights as an arsonist so he can heroically put out fires.
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When is a war not a war?

When it's our guy in charge. Coyoteblog notes:

As an outsider to the political process, it has been absolutely hilarious watching a White House full of children of the 1960′s retroactively justifying Nixon’s Christmas bombings of Cambodia. It’s not a war, they claim, as long as our soldiers are safe and we are mostly just killing citizens of other nations from the air. Of course, by this definition, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was not an act of war.

Yamamoto was just enforcing a No-Fly Zone over Honolulu.
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Burger flippers flip burgers, firefighters fight fires...

...so what do you expect when you call someone a "lawmaker"?

Every year, the shelves of America creak louder under ever-thickening volumes of federal, state and local laws and regulations, codes and ordinances. I'm telling you, while all the worrywarts are handwringing about the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, it's gonna be some law library in New Jersey that collapses into a singularity and destroys the planet...


(H/T to Unc.)

Overheard in the Kitchen:

RX: "...and the other thing most people don't know about Al Roker is that he killed a man..."

Me: "...just to watch him die."

RX: "I think David Letterman started that."

Me: "What, killing people just to watch them die?"

RX: "No, just dropping in the middle of a conversation that...."

Me: "Hang on, this is going on the internet."

I wish they'd run away from home instead.

The Minnesota government is doing what governments do when the parties can't agree on how deeply into debt they want to go:

A budget stalemate forced a virtual full shut down of the Minnesota government on Friday and left only a limited array of state services in operation over the busy holiday weekend.

Visitors won't be able to go to the state parks or the zoo, and travelers will find the highway rest stops shuttered. Road construction projects will cease, as will licensing for teachers and businesses.

In other words, they're holding their breath until they turn blue. Maybe if that doesn't work, they'll run away from home. Our legislators did, after all*.

And notice how unbiased the CNNMoney report is? It's all "Oh, noes! They're closing the orphanages and they can't afford to feed the baby giraffles at the zoo!" No mention is made of all the kickback checks that can't be cashed, or how the governor's LearJet is sitting idle for lack of fuel (but of course those are probably 'necessary expenses') or of all the crackheads that aren't getting their stipends that go to subsidize the state's aftershave industry...


*Unfortunately, they came back.

Urk.

Off to a slow start this morning, plus it was trash day, plus I had to get all the little plantses watered before the yellow face came out in the sky and burned them all up, so content shortly.

(Sitemeter says a bunch of y'all are on vacation this week, anyway, so maybe you won't notice...)

Summertime in SoBro, Part III...

Only actually this wasn't SoBro, but rather Broad Ripple Proper...

I had a mojo working for cheese enchiladas, and so I headed for La Piedad in Broad Ripple. When I got there, there was a line out the door like they were giving dollar bills away, so I said "screw it" and, after a stop at Big Hat Books, moseyed down to the Monon Food Company, site of the Feb. 2011 Blogmeet.

Photo looking from Rusted Moon Outfitters back north towards The Monon Food Company.

After lunch I wandered over to Rusted Moon Outfitters and then headed back towards the car, stopping at Bike Line to buy a water bottle cage for the Broad Ripple SUV before traveling on to the grocery store to do the twice-weekly grocery shopping chore....


(Dear FTC: See all those links? I didn't get a thing for any one of them; I just like giving free props to local businesses I like, so suck it.)

They will come for your bulbs like a thief in the night.

I don't know how I missed Brian J. Noggle's awesome (and wittily-titled) post on the effects of legislative delay and the incandescent bulb situation:

And when the year-end arrives, the 100-watt bulbs will just be gone without fanfare or explanation. In coming years, the same will happen to the remainder of incandescent bulbs. Consumers not engaged in the political process will not know why; they just will not have the chance to buy them and will have to spend a couple bucks on a nice expensive toxic-waste-to-be glass corkscrew instead.

You should read the whole thing if you haven't already.

And it's not just these big omnibus bills, which always seem to have debris clouds of riders trailing behind whatever was supposed to be the meat of the bill in the first place; it's this way with regulatory decisions, too.

It was even worse before the widespread adoption of the internets, because outside of a few people in the affected industry and a handful of politically-active types, there was no way for the general public to stay informed on this stuff. I saw a fair amount of it in my gun store days: One day there are wallet holsters for NAA Mini Revolvers or cases of steel-core Chinese 7.62x39 ammunition on the sales floor, and then *poof!* they're just so much balance-sheet ballast, gathering dust in the back room, and literally years later, people would still come in and ask "Hey, what happened to...?"

News from the Cradle & Grave of Liberty:

Dead body in a public pool in Boston... for three days. "Marco! ... Hey, I said 'Marco'...!" Ick.

Meanwhile, hooligans using minibikes have caused Boston to overreact and crack down on the scourge of <50cc scooters. I hope the Boston city fathers never notice that hooligans also use oxygen.

When we said 'Deep Throat', we didn't mean like that!

If the media had handled Watergate the way they're handling Gunwalker, Woodward and Bernstein would have helped with the coverup and Zombie Nixon would be president today.

Seriously, half the editorial coverage so far is the equivalent of editorializing that the Iran-Contra affair mostly underlined the need to have a more effective clandestine arms pipeline to prohibited nations.

That'll teach him to call the cops next time.

Apparently this guy had some armed goblins bust up into his house, actually bust caps at him, and he repelled boarders with his shotgun.

When the cops finally arrived at the scene, what did they do? Ticketed him for discharging a firearm inside city limits, since

"there is no self-defense exception in Garner’s gun ordinance. Only a law enforcement officer may fire a weapon within town limits according to the local code."

You have got to be kidding me.

Well, they don't call North Carolina "The California of the South" for nothing...

(H/T to Borepatch.)

Now what?

So it looks like "Regime Change From 30,000 Feet" didn't work out quite like it was planned...

Four months on, the rebels are not capable of supporting themselves, McGregor said. They are out of fuel, oil production has shut down, and they have few available resources. They will soon face even shortages of food and water, McGregor said.

President Barack Obama faces pressure at home to withdraw U.S. forces. There is debate, too, in Europe over the expensive air campaign.

The war may have been morally right, but NATO, said McGregor, is facing a conundrum.

Now what? Just say "Hey, Muammar, just kiddin'! Seriously, we were just funnin' ya. No hard feelings? We're going home now; our new ambassador will be there in the morning."?

Seriously, say what you will about the Neocons' adventures in Southwest Asia, they changed the heck out of some regimes*. To my knowledge, only once in the history of modern warfare has a country called it quits due to airstrikes without a single hostile boot on their soil, and that took a pair of atomic bombs, which is a level of escalation that Qa.. Kha... Gadhafi just doesn't really rate, actually.



*Personally, I don't think Iraq should have ever happened and Afghanistan should have been a punitive expedition where we toppled the Taliban, shot up the countryside, and tossed the keys to the country to whoever wanted them, along with a note that said "Don't make us come back here."

A request for gunwriters...

When you are reviewing a 1911-pattern pistol from a smaller custom house, will you please find out whose parts are actually in the gun?

I mean, when you're talking about a Wilson or an Ed Brown, it's a pretty safe bet that they're full of Wilson or Brown parts, but "Acme Custom Pistols" ordered the parts for that "Acme Custom Recon Ranger Tactical Model" from somewhere, and where they came from is one of the things the kind of people likely to drop a kilobuck-and-a-half or more on such a pistol in the first place would like to know.

Where'd the frame come from? Whose extractor are they using? How about the plunger tube? And is it properly staked?

I can generally figure out if it's 30- or 20-lpi checkering by looking at your pretty pictures, but I can't see inside the gun. I need you to do that part for me, chief, not prattle on about "acceptable combat accuracy".

Thanks!

Summertime in SoBro, Part II...

Continuing the series, I went for lunch at Moe & Johnny's today...

This is the view from the parking lot of the Fresh Market at 54th & College, looking south-by-southwest at Moe & Johnny's...

So, for lunch tomorrow, should I have Greek or Cajun?
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Clearing tabs...

• Old NFO's new rifle is causing me some pretty serious Tenth Commandment issues.


• If crackpot Nazi secret weapons are your thing, then you'll like Target: America: Hitler's Plan to Attack the United States. As an added bonus, various Italian schemes are covered, too, like the idea of transporting a few of the Tenth Flotilla's manned torpedoes to the entrance of New York harbor slung under CANT Z.511 fuselages. I did not know that.
  


• If you only read one blog post today...


• Commenga Easymag in A-stan. (Part 1 of a series.)