Gratuitous Gun Pr0n #77...

Colt M1878 "Frontier" (or at least most of one), made in 1879.

That Colt? It was for sale.
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Wet firecracker...

Mother Nature made another half-hearted attempt at snow here in Knoxville. They had diligently brined every square inch of blacktop in the city and, since it didn't get below freezing 'til after midnight, not much stuck.

 Still, the Subie had a good ice crust that needed scraping, and the 33 Fahrenheit degrees we had at midnight are all the degrees we'll be getting here. They'll be removing them in onesies and twosies all day until we only have three left at midnight tonight.

It's a good day to be indoors.

Hey, is that old Colt for sale?

I feel bad now...

...because I have managed to arrange to be out of town for Snowpocalypse, which Bobbi is liveblogging.

They're supposed to get a dusting here in K-town, but I haven't heard if they're expecting any accumulation or not.
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Up late, slept late, slow start...

So, until I can get my thinkbox fully on line with caffeine infusions, let's go with potty humor!

$#!+ Gunsmith Bob Says...

Me: "Team Conservative didn't exactly cover themselves in glory in the historical knowledge department regarding Mandela..."

Gunsmith Bob: "I didn't accuse him of [necklacing people]; I just said he was a communist!"

Me: "Yeah, but the other night you accused Krauthammer and George Will of being communists."

GB: "If the shoe fits! ...'designated hitter', my ass..."

*long pause*

GB: "No, wait, I take that back. I've read George Will's baseball books, but I can't recall if he supports the Designated Hitter Rule or not, so we don't want to go too far with accusations. But he's still a communist."

Overheard in Gunsmithing...

No $#!+, there I was...

I'm sitting there in gunsmithing yesterday, eating a slice of pizza, when in strolls one of those people who have graduated from customer to professional hanger-on. Every gun store has them; they're not employees, so you can't just tell them to leave, and there's always the chance they might start spending money and become a customer again*, so...

Anyway, I'm given to understand that this particular dude introduced himself as "The best AR builder."

"'The best AR builder in...'?"  I asked.

"No qualifiers; just 'The best AR builder.'"

"That's a pretty bold claim."

Anyway, this guy was dragging a .308 AR of some sort and asking what kind of modifications he needed so it would shoot with his buddies at a thousand yards. "You know," he says "Groups like this," gesturing with his hands. "It's all in the setup on the gun."

I looked up. "Wait... Groups like how?"

"Like this," he says, making a ~4"-5" circle with his hands.

"Dude, that's like, less than half MOA. At a thousand yards..."

"Yeah?"

"Your buddies should get together and put David Tubb out of business!" pipes up Gunsmith Bob.

"Who's David Tubb?"

Gotta love this stuff. Or you'll pull your hair out.
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*Heck, I technically fall into that category myself, these days...

School today, I guess.

It looked like it was trying to snow in Knoxville last night, but I guess not enough little kids wore their pyjamas inside out to make it stick.

Quote of the Year (So Far)

Farmgirl in comments in the previous post hits one out over the center field fence and deep into the cheap seats:

"Welcome to the twenty first century, where working animals in the way they've been bred to work by our ancestors is inhumane, but sticking a camera up a guy's butt because a working animal thought he smelled drugs is fine"

I would give up a digit to have typed that.
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Countdown.

What would you say is one of the most pressing problems facing the city government of New York? Wrong. Apparently it's the suffering of the horsies.

Mayor de Blasio, who ran on a platform partially based on a lack of decent jobs for working class schmoes in Manhattan, is making elimination of a bunch of those jobs one of his first priorities in office:

"We are going to quickly and aggressively move to make horse carriages no longer a part of the landscape in New York City," de Blasio said, according to NBC New York. "They are not humane. ... It's over."

No doubt the knackers will be very humane in converting Mr. Ed into kibble.

Things I Thought I Would Never Type In All My Born Days #712,863: How long before you see the first pictures of a smiley-faced Bloomberg waving over the caption "Miss me yet?"

Devolution continues apace.
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(Via email.)

Satire gets harder by the day...

Someone needs to call and get emergency services to run a welfare check at the offices of The Onion, because they may have left the gas on before taking office naps today.

How are you supposed to write satire in a world where this is a real issue?

Also, the Colorado State Marijuana Inspectors- are they subject to Colorado's pre employmentdrug screening?

And if they test negative after they are hired, is that grounds for termination?

Because how could they be inspecting if they aren't around it?

One wonders, is there a badge that comes with the job? I want to see a photochop of Jack Webb flashing "Marijuana Inspection Officer #714", y'all, because this is comedy gold.

One of the chores the inspectors will be tasked with is making sure the "legal registered pot" and "illegal black market pot" streams don't cross, which... you know, do they realize it's called "weed" for a reason? How many new marijuana-related offenses did legalization create, anyway?

I swear, there anything government sets out to fix that it doesn't just wind up breaking worse?

Overheard in the Car...

Driving the Subie to Hardee's. The orchestral opening of "Left To My Own Devices" is coming up on the iThingy...

Gunsmith Bob: "Disney music?"

Me (bopping as the beat starts): "Pet Shop Boys."

Gunsmith Bob: "Poofters before breakfast, Tam?"

Me: "That's going on the internet. Ooh! You're gonna lose your TV show!"

Overheard in front of the Rose Bowl...

TV Golf Commercial: "The days get warmer, the azaleas bloom..." 

Me: "...but if Tiger Woods sees his shadow, we'll have six more weeks of football!"

...okay, and then what?

Any three college kids with a bong can fix the system between midnight-thirty and sunrise on any given Saturday. Just ask 'em.

In that spirit...

Pointing out the problem is easy. Heck, if you want to get down to brass tacks, any neolithic goatherd can fling a Molotov and burn something down.

Then what?
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Yeah, yeah, yeah...

Happy New Year already.

The way these people are going on about it, you'd think they never had to buy a new calendar before.

Get 'em started young...

Also from the design exhibit at the IMA, here's a great dresser for the kid's room...

...at least if you want your kid to grow up to be Hunter S. Thompson. (And who wouldn't, really?)
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I can't decide whether it's cool or creepy.

From the design exhibit at the IMA:

Oddly sculpted wingback chair looks like it might be a pleasant place for reading a good book...

Ow.

Aspirated toast crumbs.

Spent most of the first hour-and-a-half I was upright today hacking and coughing and retching and making Bobbi wonder if she remembered the Heinlein maneuver. I'm sure the stream of Diet Mountain Dew Code Red-colored spit into the trash can was momentarily alarming for observers; pink frothy stuff coming out of people's mouths is usually a Very Bad Sign.

Today's VFTP ProTip: Bread may be the staff of life, but you can't breathe it. Your lungs should be gluten free,

They say the definition of insanity...

...is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Time and again, gun registration schemes lead to massive non-compliance, are ignored by criminals, and eventually turn into a handy checklist for confiscating authorities to come by and pick up the guns.

Every time a registration scheme is proposed, gun owners point this out and get derided as tin-foil-beanie-wearing yayhoos, and every time it keeps happening just like it did before.

It is an easily demonstrable fact that gun registration does nothing... indeed can do nothing... to prevent crimes: I will write my name and address and the serial number of a gun on this sheet of paper and hand it to you. Then I will leave the room. Using that piece of paper and nothing but that piece of paper, stop me from shooting something with the gun. I'll bet you twenty bucks you can't.

The only way you can use that sheet of paper to stop me from shooting something is to hand it to another person with a gun and tell them to come get mine.

And maybe that's what you wanted all along, right?
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Creepy-Ass Crackers.

Well, it looks like them kooky Chechens are up to their old antics in Tsaritsyn Stalingrad Volgagrad. I think I can safely point the finger at Chechens without being accused of racial profiling because I don't reckon it's possible for me to racially profile somebody from the, you know, Caucasus.

Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel are in the next room, anchoring the Today show for old time's sake. It'd be interesting to go back to 1980s me and see the reaction when I was informed that in thirty years' time, the people blowing up Russians would be the bad guys.

Ell. Oh. Ell.

I hate open carry so much that I did it all over New Mexico in October.

How one can go through life with such a huge persecution complex?

Get down off the cross, Marty; these other kids here need the wood to build a treehouse.
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