Hmmmmmm Beeeeeeeef

Reading this review of the World Without Cows documentary, I am reminded of something I witnessed.

The Iowa Cattlemen's Association dinner in Des Moines was being protested by PETA or some similar organization.

An attendee and his wife were walking past the protesters on their way inside when one of the protesters threw some kind of bright red liquid all over her fur coat.

The police were swift to get between the man and the protesters and he fumed for a moment, made sure no real harm was done to his wife and proceeded inside.

This is where I spotted something the cops missed.

The reason I was there was waiting in line to get into the gun show that was at the upper floor of the same venue as the dinner.

Mr Cattleman did not continue to the downstairs entrance, he went up the escalator to the gun show.

I leaned over the rope at the PETA folks and mentioned, "he's prolly buying something to shoot y'all."

They laughed, but the police overheard me and two of them detached to head upstairs.

THAT made the PETA folks stop laughing.

The cops taking it seriously, to them, meant what I said could be true.

Soon after the PETA people were moved to the other side of the street from the venue. 

Warts And All

Forgotten Weapons covering the French version of the Beretta 92 reminded me of a conscious decision.

There's guns I collect because I want to experience that gun.

I have decided that those guns will remain unaltered.

Well, mostly.  The Hi-Power got new stocks while retaining the magazine safety because the plastic stocks were ghastly and mismatched.

But my Beretta M9 keeps the safety-decocker of the FS rather than the just decocker of the G because my issue gun wasn't a G.

The decocker only is objectively better than the safety in that if I accidentally pull it down while racking the slide, I have not just disabled my pistol by putting it on safe unintentionally.

I've never done it, but I've seen it at matches.

This holds true of any pistol with a slide mounted safety.  S&W, I am looking at you.

Magazine safeties used to be something I scrupulously removed.

Now I keep them.

I remind myself that I bought the gun to experience it and the experience includes the magazine safety.

I also, for the most part, don't carry the nostalgia guns or intend to use them for anything serious.

The retro M16 clones stay locked up when we're hunkered down for hurricanes, for example, while the more modern versions of the AR are loaded. 

It Occurs

It hit me today, after The Boy's doctor's office called at 0800 that the main reason us night people resent morning people is not that they call at 0800.

It's that morning people are spent by the time us night people are functioning.

We call after lunch and they're just done for the day.

The resentment comes from the expectation that everyone be ready to respond when THEY are ready, but they don't have to respond when WE'RE ready.

When you combine this with the realization that Government hires morning people almost exclusively... 

But Did It Happen

I am certain there are racists out there doing racist things.

Some of them try to comment on my blog, that helps with the certainty.

Despite this, I still get a record scratch moment when a black person mentions experiencing racism.

I think I might have figured out why.

I didn't do racism.

I lived someplace where nobody around me did racism.

So I never saw racism directly.

I did get to see and experience the hate that is reflected from the racists doing racist things.

It was quite an epiphany to realize that hate was racism too and that I was experiencing it as a victim.

So I spend my entire life after that crippled by the knowledge that someone out there hated me because I was white and dedicated all of my waking moments to forcing the government to punish them and enrich me!

Actually not.

I tried to understand why they hated me.  I have not, and likely never will, succeeded in understanding hate based on skin color.

Having internalized that whole individual responsibility thing, I can hate individuals for their crimes but can't really transfer that hate for superficial similarities between people.

There's a whole raft of dissonance and hypocrisy when I think about invasive cultures amidst my own culture.  I'm still working through it. 

Strange

Facebook is far more likely to suggest someone I know in meatspace from long ago under my blog name than it is under my real name.

That's very odd.

Also interesting is a search for those suggested "friends" from my realname account often gives no results.  That means those folks have blocked me under my real name.

I didn't think they remembered me, but it seems that they regarded me poorly enough to preemptively make sure I wouldn't find them.

I guess I should feel bad about that, but it wasn't until Facebook recommended them to my blogname account that I even remembered them. 

Like Um Wow Man

Today is pot culture day.  Toke 'em if you got 'em.

Hitler's brain, in a jar in the Nazi moonbase on the far side of the Moon, is 137.

Wednesday will be Urf Dae.  I would burn some waste oil, but we're under a burn ban from our near-record drought. 

That's Not Big Enough For That

For some reason Lennar is spamming my Facebook with ads for their wares.

The house they keep showing me has a "3-Car Garage."

It's 30' wide and 20' deep.  Laundry is in a separate room inside the house.

That's not right.

My oversized one-car garage measures 22' deep and 14' wide.  27'x17' on the floor-plan.  There's shelves on the house side and a bathoom/laundry area at the back.

My inlaws house is the same builder as my house and their standard one-car is 24' deep and 14' wide on the floor plan; with laundry taking up the back.

Marv's "2-car" garage measures 22' deep and 20' wide (23x21 on the floor plan).  He can squeeze two cars in there with cabinets on one side and sink and laundry at the back.  You can just squeeze by the front of his Impala past the washer and dryer and he has to move one car to open the doors on the other.

New garages are widely optimistic about their capacity considering the two most popular vehicles in America are full sized pick-ups and those are larger than they've ever been!

Ewwww But...

So, you've found yourself face down and drowning in an unflushed toilet.

Whomever is drowning you, pulls the handle and flushes the toilet.

Well, at least you're going to drown in clean water after catching a breath...

Then you feel the hot sensation of piss on the back of your head.

Nope.  Today is NOT your day.

Zoon

The ratchet.

Though, as a mechanic, I know you CAN reverse a ratchet. 

This Is The End

My copy of Shooting Times tells me that this is my last issue.

Bummer.

I am allowed to change over to American Rifleman or American Hunter.

I chose American Rifleman in print and online editions.

Battery Back Up

If you have one of those clever secret shelves...

Make sure you can get at the emergency plug while it still works.

Because the builder might not have left you enough space to get access to the plug's end; or enough room to get it out to be plugged into the emergency battery pack.

Happily, it's a standard 3.5mm cord and readily replaceable when you tear off the end trying to fish it out the too-small gap in the front. 

I'm Shocked

As much of a frothing hot-head as I can be...

I am shocked that I've never called for the violent death of someone I disliked here.

I checked. 

I have wished a couple of organizations to die in a fire, but no people.

I'm actually kinda surprised.

I've celebrated a couple of deaths.

I find I don't regret it.

But I noticed I've never celebrated a murder.

The people I've celebrated dying lived long, unhappy, lives with me despising them the whole time. 

As close as I've come to celebrating the violent death of someone is when a criminal FAFO'd on their last victim.  That will never stop being funny for me and I will never apologize for it making me happy. 

"They" Are Just People Too

The Charlie Kirk shooter's roommate is one of the people who turned him in, and is cooperating with law enforcement.

Despite being a trans-woman furry.

When rushing to condemn the spate of trans shooters, it tends to be forgotten they're just people.

Some good, some bad, just like everyone else.

Mostly good, I reckon, because so few have gone stupid and murdery.

Shit I Didn't Notice Before

Tonight I made Harvey stop talking for a second so I could parse the tempo of the bangs to decide if it's gunfire or fireworks.

I realized I've been doing it for years, but this is the first time I was consciously aware I was doing it. 

I Finally Placed It

Something about listening to Thomas Sowell always messed with me.

For a long time I thought it was just the accent.

Then it hit me last night what was wrong.

He has the same accent as Rocky Balboa, but he says smart things.

Some part of my hindbrain was rejecting it because of the similarity in their voices. 

I Keep Getting Vids Along These Lines Suggested On YouTube

This would be really strange if it's true.

Setting Yourself Up

If you mention some things without giving context, you open yourself up to obvious replies.

If you mention your dishwasher died, expect people to ask if you're going to remarry.

If you mention your lawnmower died, expect people to say that you can always have more kids.

If you didn't expect it, and got those replies, how did you miss you had that kind of friends?

A Slighter Easier Job

I think the YouTube algorithm is offering it's opinion about the difficulty level of my HVAC job by suggesting this one:

Actually it was Marv that sent it to me.

The algorithm would send the Panama Canal if my theory was valid.

Contractual Obligation

There is, often, a deliberate disconnect between what marketing says and what the contract stipulates.

If you signed the contract based on the marketing and didn't read the contract, that's on you.

If you trusted someone with marketing and contracts that don't match, it's completely on you.

When the other party adheres to the contract rather than the marketing hype; you were not betrayed.  You were duped.

You are among the many born every minute.

But since the contract was available for you to read, submit to your lawyers, develop counter proposals, do your own marketing...  Fuck you.

If You Just Repeat What They Say Why Do I Need To Listen To YOU

I have three YouTube channels that I am subscribed to that are sponsored by Ground News.

They're basically paraphrasing what Ground News says about whatever world event they're talking about.

So I am sitting here wondering why I would need them to read me the news from Ground News when I can just read it there.

I think I can unsubscribe now.