Purse. Full. Of kittens.

If I see you kids running around with broomsticks on my front lawn, I'm coming out there with the Garand.

The fact that the headline reads "Olympic Quidditch Match Not Just For Nerds" is enough to get me to complain to one of those Accuracy In Media watchdog sites. Seriously, the idea that "quidditch" is allowed to be played in the same city in which the Olympics are taking place is as ridiculous as... as... using hobby horses at an equestrian event.

Oh, wait.

I think I'm in the wrong leg of the Trousers of Time. I wanted the cool Firefly future, and it looks like I'm heading for the appallingly fluffy and bland one that Gene Roddenberry envisioned.


(H/T to Joel at TUAK.)

And what kind of lesson is that?

People have funny ideas about manners these days.

For instance, yesterday I went with Shootin' Buddy to see Iron Man 3 again at the local cineplex. In the row ahead of me, two seats to my right, was a woman who spent the entire movie using her smartphone to post Facebook status updates, apparently along the lines of "zomg totally at the movie pissin off everybody around me luv u l8r"

Because I have manners, I resisted the temptation to wash out her little screen with 80 lumens of Fountain Valley's finest and then when she turned around, say "Annoying, isn't it?" I didn't do it mostly because it would be rude, and partially because it could have had unforeseen consequences, like her boyfriend getting all physical and then where do things go from there?

In a similar vein comes a thread at the Indiana Gun Owner's forum where, with name and location omitted to protect the innocent, a poster relates a tale that has such a great possibility for going pear-shaped that the more I think about it, the more mind-boggling it gets.

Allegedly, the way it went down is like this: Some young guy is standing there in his local gun shop, minding his own business, with his hands full of prospective purchases and a pistol openly carried on his hip. The store was apparently moderately crowded with patrons, one of them being an older guy who apparently felt it was his duty to teach this young guy a lesson in the perils of open carry or situational awareness or something.

Anyhow, supposedly the old guy yanks the kid's gun out of his holster, drops the mag, clears the piece, tucks it under his arm and thumbs the rounds out of the mag while delivering some rambling lecture to the stunned kid about "Suppose I wanted to kill you now? Huh? What then?" Then he sets the kid's piece on the counter and stomps out of the shop leaving everybody standing there slack-jawed.

It is at this point that some in the audience are applauding the old guy for teaching the kid a lesson.

I'm thinking it's just a matter of luck that the old guy didn't learn one himself. Suppose the holster had been a retention holster whose appearance he was unfamiliar with, and his little grab turned into a wrestling match on the floor? Suppose the kid had felt the hand on his gun and arm-barred him while pulling out the little fixed-blade knife on his off-side that the old guy didn't see? Suppose the kid carried a pistol openly on his right hip... and another one not so openly in his left pocket?

Suppose... ohmygod ...that an employee had watched the gun snatch happen and, fearing some psycho was about to try and shoot the place up, blew the would-be-teacher out of his shoes with the shotgun behind the counter? Suppose the kid had done what he had every right to do, and called 911 and had the old guy charged with assault? A lot of lessons could have been learned in this incident; fortunately only the cheapest one was.

You know, as fun as it would have been to shine my Surefire flashlight right on that cell phone, I'm feeling really glad that I didn't now. I'll leave the rude teaching to someone else.

Tab Clearing...

• How can they spin like that without getting dizzy?


• Hahahahahahahaha! The guy on the TV just asked "Are we headed for another recession?" Hahahahahahahaha! Oh, "another"... That's rich. That's funny right there.


• Since elections have devolved to the point where they come down to which rich guy with good hair reads BS off a teleprompter more convincingly while looking sharp in a suit, why keep up the pretense? Here's a chance for us to show how seriously we take our politics these days. All he'd need to do is either say good things about unions and bad things about rich people, or come out against the gays and the 'bortion, and either party would take him.

Flashlights were a recurring theme.

A couple nights ago I had this extremely vivid dream, parts of which have stuck with me to this day.

There was this really neat pub. Its interior was all divided into cozy nooks and booths and it overlooked water on two sides, with a deck. And the cool thing was that there were radio-controlled boats in the water you could play with.

Anyway, at this pub, I was meeting with someone who, at least according to the dream narrative, was an old friend of mine, but I'm pretty sure I didn't go to high school with Uma Thurman's character from Pulp Fiction. Anyway, her parents were there, and they were both, like, CIA undercover agents or something. And I was showing my friend how to detail strip a 1911. Right there in a booth at the pub, so I guess it was someplace with a pretty casual attitude about firearms. Also, other stuff happened.

Last night, I dreamed that Bobbi and I had moved to New Hampshire, and were living in a townhouse whose neighborhood layout looked suspiciously like the Twin Lakes community in Sanford, FL. Anyhow, it was night, and I woke up in my bedroom and looked out the window, and there was a grizzly bear. What a grizzly was doing in New Hamster, I have no idea.

Anyhow, this wasn't a very big grizzly, and he had that "wearing baggy trousers" look they have when they're fresh out of hibernation. I closed my window, which I could reach from the bed, and he heard and came walking over and started pawing gently at the screen.

I was going to go get Bobbi to tell her, and I rolled over in the bed and she was right behind me with a Surefire M6, the kind SpecOps guys use to signal satellites, which she proceeded to shine out the window and right into my eyes and said "Hey! There's a bear out there!" while I rolled around on the bed yelling "I know! I was coming to tell you, and now I can't see!"

Later, I was at an Einstein Bros. Bagels to get a lox & cream cheese on a toasted onion bagel, and they were getting ready to close, and this guy who worked there was making sure there was nobody in the bathrooms by opening the doors and shining in a flashlight whose lens assembly was the size of an OD green anodized aluminum hubcap and practically blistered paint on the walls.

All other things aside...

Anybody who puts that silly Hornady "Zombie Max" ammo in their carry gun probably drank Billy Beer and orders sets of hand-painted Franklin Mint 50 state quarters to use in vending machines.

It's frivolous, a gag, novelty ammo. And while any situation requiring you to actually bust caps with your CCW gun will probably be novel, it will be about as far from frivolous as anything you ever do in your life.

I know everybody has their hypothetical self-defense scenario in their head: The bad guy jumping out of the van with no windows in the grocery store parking lot or the convicted felon with the neck tats and wife-beater, carrying a stolen handgun and climbing through your broken window in the dead of night.

Nobody's hypothetical scenario ever seems to include getting beat down by a moody, unarmed teenager who reacts belligerently to "Hey, do you live around here?" In a case like that, do you really want to be standing over a cooling corpse with a gun full of joke bullets?

Kindasortablogmeet Thingy

So, anybody who's going to the Indy 1500 Fun Show on Sunday, howzabout meeting at Plump's Last Shot, home of the famous deep-fried bacon-wrapped hot dog, at 3:00PM Sunday afternoon?

We'll be there. Because bacon.

Overheard in the Office:

RX: (Down the hall, reading aloud.) "'On the spot where Hollywood would someday grow, two vaqueros were crushing a priest to death with his own ώijήеряεςς.' How's that for the opening sentence of a novel?"

Me: "His own what?!?"

RX: "'Wine press'."

Me: "Oh, thank God. I thought you said 'his own wanker.'"

RX: "What did you think I was reading? Although, there'd probably be a market for that on the internet..."

You'll have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.

It occurs to me that Bloomberg has spent all this time harassing nickel and dime operations like gun manufacturers (the average gun maker probably doesn't have that many more employees than your local Super Wal-Mart) but now he's going after bigger fish. Much bigger. For example PepsiCo, a Fortune 50 corporation, has 195 times the annual revenues of Smith & Wesson.

Now, I know Bloomberg's no pauper himself, and not to mix up my comic book universes too much, but I'd like to see Coke and Pepsi's legal departments shout "Wonder Twin powers activate!" and then do to Bloomberg like Hulk did to Loki in that Avengers movie. 'Cause that'd be sweet.

...while Rome burns.

"Your guy said 'Amercia'!"

"Yeah? Well your guy said 'Polish death camps'!"

Yeah, and the seat cushion on this deck chair says RMS Titanci.
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♫ If you can take it there, you'll take it any-where! ♫

I'm all the time hearing what a tough town New York is and how tough New Yorkers are, and then I read stuff like this:

Big soda ban: Bloomberg administration proposes ban on sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces

If New Yorkers are so tough, how come one of y'all hasn't walked into this clown's office and pimp-slapped him the way he so richly deserves? Seriously, y'all are about to be reduced to trading pre-ban high-cap soda cups with each other until a thriving black market in smuggled New Jersey Big Gulps springs up.

“Obesity is a nationwide problem, and all over the United States, public health officials are wringing their hands saying, ‘Oh, this is terrible,’” Bloomberg told The New York Times. “New York City is not about wringing your hands; it’s about doing something.”

Apparently New York City is about "doing something", if by "something" you mean taking a lot of patronizing lip from nosy busybodies with Napoleon complexes.

Think about it: This is a man who thinks he can tell you what size container you may place sugar water into. That's nuts. That's completely, flat-out, Howard Hughes-meets-Kim Jong Il bugnuts crazy. Are you all going to just sit there and go "Derrr... hokay, boss!" while the rest of us snicker behind our hands at you and tell jokes about pre-ban soft drink cups, or are you going to toss this jackhole in the East River?

Nerf World.

In a ruling yesterday, federal administrative law judge The Honorable Missesthepoint pronounced that henceforth the killer whale shows at Sea World would require a physical barrier between the whales and their trainers. Sadly, the ruling did not touch on whether the killer whale pool would need hydraulic lifts for handicapped access.

Among previous rulings from the same judge:

• Motorcycles being jumped over a row of flaming buses can only be operated by remote control.
• All tightrope walkers must be clipped to the tightrope by a safety harness.
• Lion tamers can not get in the cage with the lions, but must get in a separate cage at least six feet away.
• Audience members at fireworks shows must be provided with Nomex hoodies.

It's things like this that make me want to go run with scissors, just out of spite.

As a side note...

I would like to point out to the people at the Chinese consulate criticizing the human rights situation in the US that when it comes to human rights, people vote with their feet, and it has been over two thousand years since you needed a wall to keep people from moving into your country.

The uplifters are at it again...

Unc did some investigative reporting on the handicapable pool lift at his vacation hotel:

• They were told by “the government” to install it or they’d have to shut the pool down. She didn’t specify who in government.

• It was expensive. She would not give me a number but finally conceded it was five figures.

• In the months since its installation, it has been used exactly zero times.

Wow. It's like a hydraulically-operated microcosm of government in general.

You have got to be kidding me.

The People's Republic of China, renowned for being the land of imprisoned dissidents, prison labor, and making the next of kin pay for the bullets at their stadium executions, actually has a critique of the United States' human rights record on their consulate's website, which is like having Genghis Khan critique your table manners.

The highlight for me is, of course, this part:

The United States prioritizes the right to keep and bear arms over the protection of citizens' lives and personal security and exercises lax firearm possession control, causing rampant gun ownership. The U.S. people hold between 35 percent and 50 percent of the world' s civilian-owned guns, with every 100 people having 90 guns...

...which means ten of y'all are slackers who need to get with the program.

Apparently, the Chinese think that it's a human rights violation to murder somebody with a firearm, unless they're on their knees with their hands tied behind their back and you shoot them behind the ear, preferably while wearing a snappy uniform.

With all the preachifying we do on human rights, all while incarcerating people at a near-record clip and with a Supreme Court that goes back and forth on the constitutionality of executing retarded kids (current thinking is "no" by a 5-4 squeaker,) it's only to be expected that we'll get some pushback, but China? Seriously? China?

Of all the people at this AA meeting, you're the last one needs to be pointing fingers, Hu. Don't you have some Tibetans you need to be off oppressing or something? Now get your butt back in the kitchen and make me an iPod.


(H/T to David Codrea.)

It's TEOTWAWKI...

Zombies to the left of me
Face-eating monkeys to the right
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you...

(Incidentally, the monkeys in the second story are proven bureaucrat killers. I have thus far been unsuccessful in my attempts to start a breeding colony in Indianapolis.)

Sometimes they're worth several thousand words.

Clicky.

She is woman, hear her bleat.

Sabra at Trailer Park Paradise is as confused as I am by a great big heaping bowl of WTF? that is apparently circulating through the glurge pipes on the internets at the moment.

It's a list of traits "I am this and I am that, I do this and I do that... because I am a woman!" and the list of traits in question is just... bizarre. I get that she was trying to be cutesy and self-deprecating (or, as it's spelled on the internet, "self-depreciating") with some of them, but some of the ones she appears to list as positive are ones that belong in the DSM IV, not a Mother's Day card.

I mean, "I cry a lot more than you think I do. I care about people who don't care about me," describes a bipolar codependent, not Woman of the Year. It's stuff like this that makes me cry a lot more than you think I do, but mostly just tears of frustrated rage that it's illegal to choke the living crap out of people like her.

Anyway, I'll just be over here in the corner with Marie Curie and Grace Hopper, counting on our fingers because math is hard.

They gave us .22's and sent us out to play in traffic!

There's a line of thunder storms rolling into Indy. Just some fairly generic ones; some lightning and a spot of hail here and there, nothing fancy, like tornadoes. The local news has gone wall-to-wall coverage anyway.

I just heard the announcer warn "...and remember, if you hear thunder, go inside!" in an ominous voice.

I don't remember there being quite this much drama over thunderstorms in the past. I certainly don't remember ever being told "if you hear thunder, go inside!" As a matter of fact, when I was little, the newscaster used to come on and say "Hey, kids! There's a storm coming! Why don't you all grab a big ol' bowl of bacon and paint chips and ride your bikes without helmets to the swimmin' hole down at the abandoned quarry and watch the lightning!"

It's gotta be tough being a kid in these hyper-safety conscious times. Why, it was downhill both ways to the swimmin' hole at the abandoned quarry back in those days, and nowadays they've got to walk uphill both ways to get to a lame playground with foam padding instead of dirt.

Memorial Day 2012

Remember.

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Eureka!

I figured out the ending for my Neptune Spear movie!

When last we left the lovable misfits of SEAL Team 6, freshly whipped into shape by their new leader, call sign "POTUS" (played by Denzel Washington), they had just assaulted Bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan. The Plucky Female SEAL (played by Demi Moore) proves her courage in the firefight, and then... and then...

I was stuck.

But wait! Hollywood has taught me well! You've got to have the plot twist, right?

The real villains will turn out to be some old corrupt white guys at [the Pentagon/Langley] who [pine for the good old days of the Cold War/are under the thumb of some generic evil US petrocorp] who just used Al Qaeda as cats-paws.

When POTUS and his team discover the evidence in UBL's hideout (discovered by the Troubled Rebel SEAL, played by Charlie Sheen, whose cynicism and acting-out is thus vindicated) they fly back to DC for the final [confrontation with the corrupt senator/assault on the star chamber meeting of the cabal of crooked generals in their secluded mansion on the Potomac]!