Genuine Gimp

Some Karen gets what she deserves.

I tend to not be directly confrontational about the handicapped spots, even though I do have the mirror-hanger.

There's an online, and tedious to fill out on the phone, form to report people in Florida.  I use that one a lot.

There's a gym next door to a brewery we frequent often where the gym-rats park in the striped area that's supposed to provide room for a van ramp.

You'd think that someone going to a fucking gym would be healthy enough to walk a bit, wouldn't you?

The most fun is 6 out of 10 times it's been a really expensive car too.

I take pics.

Normally I hear nothing back.

What happens is, the DMV mails a violation to the owner of the car.  They can either pay the fine, show they have handicapped credentials or fight it.

Twice I have gotten a phone call from DMV asking me to confirm what I saw, I ask for an email to send the picture to.  They've provided one and I've sent the pic I took.

I've note heard anything more.

In two other cases, I've heard one of them bitching that his other car got busted for parking there... just after I had reported the current car in the same place.

Jocks be stupid, no?

I've also been confronted by people who seem to think that just because I drive a Corvette I can't possibly be handicapped.  Unlike the man in the story, I have both legs.  They're in bad shape, but still present.  Normally the cane gets them to clam up.

If they persist, I make them aware of the web page and remind them to get a good pic of my license plate and the parking space.

Shocking

I see they've arrested a big-wig of Oath-Keepers.

From what they've released so for, it seems very contrived.

But, that's how Socialist Totalitarian governments roll.

I despair that we're going to get out of this.

But then, Socialism is something you vote your way into and have to shoot your way out of; thus the fresh press for gun control from the desiccated zombies in the Senate.

Packtacular

The very first gun I conceal carried was an FIE Titan .25.

Because Story County, Iowa didn't issue carry permits to unwashed poors, I carried it illegally.  I sold it for a pittance when I started carrying a Glock 21 illegally in the flight-helmet bag I toted my gaming stuff in.

Considering how rare this grip and finish proved to be, I occasionally wonder if this is actually the same pistol I used to own.  Even the little discoloration on the stocks are the same.

.25's are handy because they are tiny.

Much later, when I could carry legally I still packed a .25 because the summer setting in Florida is "melt lead".

You could practically carry it in a watch pocket.

I don't tote these light guns any more.

9mm's are much larger, but lately they've shrunk down to where they're comfortable, even in the Hellish summer heat of The Gunshine State.

When I can't use the back yard to smelt lead, I prefer a shoulder holster under an Hawaiian shirt.  You can carry anything that way.  It also works better in a car, especially one with a tight interior like The Precious!

A World Of Hard Liquor And Cigarettes

I'm binge watching Mad Men.

How did I miss this when it was on TV?

Holy snot, they drink a lot.

And chain smoke.

But it's an enjoyable show.

I tell you, though, if I had the women running after me that run after some of the men on this show, I don't think I would have seen the need to bother getting married.

And once my philandering caused a divorce... I think I'd just bask in the endless stream of super-hotties while I careen from heart attack to heart attack as my lung cancer competes with cirrhosis of the liver to put me in a pre-50 grave.

Contemporary

The Colt 1903/1908 and the Savage 1907/1917 are contemporaries.

They both came in .32 ACP and .380 ACP.

Both were popular.

The Colt has better lines and feels more "modern", but the Savage is more advanced in a couple of ways.

It's nifty that the both of them survived to today to pose in my photo.

On The Recommendation Of Technomad

 Technomad recommended this book and thanks to someone not noticing that it should be by William Foster-Harris instead of just Foster-Harris it wasn't even expensive.

Adding his first name to the search gets a paperback for the same price, not a vintage hardcover.

I am a bit saddened to find that it's got stamping and embossing from a public library in it.

That means that it won't be available to someone to check-out.

While it works in my favor for owning it, I am bothered at how many of the specialty books I've bought are from defunct libraries.

Gotta Write The Local Creatures Too

Congress is in session and everyone's rights are on the line, again.

It seems we do this every year.

I would like you to throw your support behind the following bills.

HB 123

HB 213

HB 1205

HB 6001

HB 6005

and

HB 6083

I would like you to oppose:

HB 25

HB 27

HB 167

SB 294

SB 330

SB 370

SB 372

SB 428

HB 555

SB 560

SB 672

SB 1052

HB 6033

and

HB 6035

You Should Never Have Trusted Them Too Far In The First Place

Trust in the military is dropping?

This is my shocked face.

What was exceptional is the trust we placed in them in the first place.  It was downright shocking that they were mostly worthy of that trust.

We should always have been rationally mistrusting of any part of the government with any ability to apply force.

Why?

Because there are zero exceptions to the police and military, as organizations, obeying tyrannical orders.

Zero.

Remember what I said about that worthiness?

We're watching the military being used in a way that undermines that trust and watching them obey the order.

HR 8 and HR 1446 Have Passed The House

I'm written to my squishy senators, Rubio and Scott.

As a law abiding citizen of Florida I am, once again, being confronted with bills which seek to punish me for actions I have not taken.

Bills which will punish me but not hinder any criminal in any way.

That alone should be enough to secure your vote against these bills passed by The House.

I also ask you to consider what other enumerated right is subjected to the same level of legal obstruction as firearms.

Does one need to pass a background check to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects?

Does one need to obtain a permit to worship as they wish or are some religions banned for being too influential?

Does a felony conviction deny the right to a speedy trial?

Yet owning a gun is already encumbered with all of those things.

Would you support a law which required all Catholics (for example) to pass a background check before being allowed to attend mass?  Would you be assured that the record of this check would not be retained by the government and later used to find Catholics?  Especially when the people who wrote the bill under consideration have a stated goal of banning Catholics?

Do you understand the analogy?  You can change Catholic for any other religion, or ethnicity, or group.

I should not even have to write to you and explain it.  The right to own a firearm was supposed to have been guaranteed by The Bill of Rights in the same way that all of my other rights are secure.  Yet only violations of this one right continually get consideration from Congress.

Stand up for the rights of the citizens of Florida!

I Don't Think That's What They Meant

An old adage is you should spend as much (or more) on your scope as you did on your rifle.

I have $50 scopes that adhere to this principle.

I think I'm doing this wrong.

Paper > Internet Again

Something that's come up before, and came up again, is that paper reference sources are designed to be easy to use and if you're close to what you want, you can usually skim forward or back to what you were looking for.

The paper dictionary got me to dentition when all I knew was it being dent... something.

The intertubes did not get me what I was thinking of, but a 1959 printing of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary steered me right to it.

Nice Teeth

I declined Willard's offer to let me take pictures of a purchase on the grounds that The Lovely Harvey was giving me crap about the clutter around here.

Now I'm sitting here, without much blog fodder, thinking, "taking pics would fill that role nicely."

I'm my own worst enemy.

I have gazed the gratis equine in the dentition despite the prohibition thereupon.

So After He Bought The Kilts...

Willard reports that Gunbroker is the plaything of The Devil.

He also reports that he needed what he bought and had always wanted it.

So much, in fact, that he bid on three of them.  And won!

Cornered the market, he did.

Marv has reported making a similar purchase on Ebay, he was watching several of the item he was interested in and watching them sell for FAR more than the bid he placed just to see where the reserve was sitting.

And of course, the bid he placed exceeded the reserve and was the winning bid.

Dur Moment

My microwave is a 1,000 watt.

I noticed, today, that my White Castle cheeseburgers specify a 1,200 watt unit for the minute cook time.

I'd noticed that they didn't come out right rather often and this explains it.

It turns out that compensating for the difference is easy.  You just multiply the cook time by the relative power.

1,200 is 20% more than 1,000 so you add 20% more time to the cooking.

Thus the minute becomes 72 seconds and the cheese melts properly!

Thag lurn!

Too Much Or Too Little

David Cole at Black Man With A Gun asks where the Goldilocks zone for mandatory firearms training is.

Read that link first.

He even mentions the most important word about the law requiring training, "arbitrary."

I thought of a solution years ago.

Teach firearms safety in middle-school as part of gym.

They already have archery at many schools and they waste an entire week on things like square-dancing in the midwest.

By making it a mandatory class for everyone you get people taught young when they're still able to learn the important stuff easily.

This also dodges the objection that people seeking the classes end up on a list.  If everyone takes the class, then nobody stands out for having taken the class.

Bonus round!

It pisses off the liberal teacher's unions to have to allow firearms training at school.

No school will want to pad the hours dedicated to the task.

Personally, I think a week of classes taught by someone like Project Appleseed would be just dandy.  Farming it out to them would be better than forcing the teachers as well.

Important Safety Tip

If you don't MIX your mixed drink... you end up with layers of each ingredient.

Lesson learned.

Go Go White Privledge!

Apparently Wal Mart is racist.

"Black" beauty products are locked up while "white" products aren't.

The KKK Grandjester (or whatever they're called) didn't call up Wal Mart and say, "You know how we can keep them CENSORED from getting uppity?  Lock up their hair care products and cosmetics and treat 'em like you don't trust 'em by making them pay for their stuff right there!"

I feel your pain Rachel.  That's exactly how I have to buy men's razors at Winn Dixie and ammo and electronics at Wal Mart.

It's not racism.

It's loss prevention.

The locked cases and special registers don't go in until extra control is needed because stock is leaving the store but money isn't staying.

So, in the case of hair care and cosmetics, maybe if someone wasn't stealing these things, they wouldn't be locked up.

And since you've identified the products as only being useful to black people, you've also identified the race of the thieves.  That makes you the racist, Rachel.

I know, you can't be because you're black, blah blah blah.

But, apparently, white people aren't stealing their hair care products, so they don't get treated like thieves.

Don't get me wrong, I've been treated like a thief at Wal Mart too, Rachel, every time the incompetent cashier failed to disable the security thing and the alarm went off at the door I had to prove I'd paid for the item.  I lost count of how many times that happened.

But notice something about this.  Did I blame systematic sexism, racism, ageism?

No.

I blamed the person at fault.  The cashier for failing to disable that anti-theft device.

You might try it sometimes.

Manful Restraint

I've owned a S&W model 59 for a few weeks now.

I have barely even glanced at Marlin Camp Carbines, which take the same magazines.

I like the idea of a pistol caliber carbine, but never enough to spend any money.

Of course, there was a time when I didn't even want a 9mm handgun... now look at how many!

The thing that surprised me most about the Camp Carbine is just how recent it is.

That, of course, ties into how recent the pistol whose magazines it takes is.

There's a part of me that keeps thinking that both are from the early 1960's and it's just not so.

Knowing it intellectually doesn't seem to get me to accept it viscerally.

One Fewer Now

Alec Baldwin is quitting Twitter because it's full of assholes?

While it's true, it's got one fewer without him.

He probably doesn't recognize it.

Rolling In Their Graves

Every person who fought for independence from England back two hundred and some years ago would be horrified at the attention being given to the shenanigans of the British royal family today.

We fought two wars to underscore the point that what those fools do doesn't matter to us.

Alas.

Ugh Ick

There was once a time when Kraft Real Mayonnaise was the gold standard for bog-standard mayo.

Duke's and Hellman's were nearly identical and made up the big three of mayo that tasted like mayo.

Note: Miracle Whip is not and has never been mayonnaise.  It is a sugar sweetened atrocity which exists to identify those who have no soul.

Well... That was then, this is now.

Kraft went water based on both their mayo and Miracle Whip.  The consistency and mouth feel are bad enough, but the mayo has come to more resemble the despicable salad dressing than savory mayonnaise.

In the first place, why would you add sweetener to it?  Never mind high-fructose corn syrup.

Hellman's has joined Kraft with the HFCS.

Dukes is still made correctly.  The lone hold-out.

The good thing is that mayo isn't really that hard to make, should it come to that.

Not For Me

It's almost as if nobody has ever sat down and explained it to them.

If you don't make a product I want to buy, you're not going to be selling it to me.

I realized, not that long ago, that Hollywood is no longer making films for me.

They're making films for someone else for the most part.

Even worse, for their long term prospects, while making these films for other-markets-than-mine they appear to be Hell bent on alienating me with them.

I'm OK without them.

Will they be OK without me?

I increasingly don't care.

I've also realized I have a pile of unwatched stuff here that will take years to wade through.  Those films and shows are competing with a pile of unread books for my time.

I might even have enough to keep me entertained until I croak.

On average that's 20 more years in my family.

Once Again

I will act like it's a crisis when you act like it's a crisis.

Despite the calls to lock everything down and wear a mask, we're apparently letting anyone who can physically make there cross the border without checking them for anything.

Not for ID, not for COVID.

This tells me that it's not a disease to be concerned with, otherwise our Dear Leaders™ would be all over themselves to prevent these people from bringing the infection closer to them.

Occam's Razor slices their behavior into totalitarianism for its own sake and not for any of the reasons they claim.

I Think I'm Going To Go Back Into Reinacting

I hear that there's reinacting of battles like Isandwana and Roarke's Drift in South Africa.

There's a real shortage of people wanting to play the Zulu.

I'd volunteer, but I don't think they're ready for Chalk-A Zulu.

The Day The Unbearable Light Went Out

It's hard to believe it's just been nine years.

I wish we could have him back.

For courage!  For strength!

We miss you Lex!

As long as we don't forget you, you're not completely gone.

It's A Family Matter

There's things that military folks do and talk about that are beyond the ken of outsiders.

It's a running joke about how the other services suck (or don't suck enough oddly...) and friendly rivalry ensues.

I was once giving an AF bro shit about his never serving in the military and his (non-veteran) buddies pounced on me for my disrespect.

That just encouraged me to dodecuple down on it.

Eventually he showed up, sighed, and said to them, "This is a family matter and you two never served."

I thought that was really well put.

There's a lot of shit talk, but it's among brothers not actual rivals.

There's a thread I'm in now where the common assertion is that Cav-Scouts are "teh ghey".

That joke was collecting a Civil War era pension when I was a no-stripe private.

You can tell the vets from the never served.

The never served people aren't catching that none of us are actually serious.

Neither the Dumb Ass Tankers Armor nor the crunchies Infantry really think Cav Scouts are gay.

Besides, I am sure they have a reason to disappear for hours in pairs like that.

Just like they are certain we're just having tea with the hatches closed.

Wrong Think

Watch this vid:

Then try to take the survey he links to in the description.

I think that Johns Hopkins/Bloomberg wasn't getting the responses they wanted so they memory holed it.

Reasoned discourse AGAIN?  That trick never works.

The Real Problem

I'll say it.  This might get the blog nuked.

The problem with illegal immigration and refugees isn't that they're coming here.

The problem is they're not coming here to be or become Americans.

They're coming here to remain whatever culture or nationality they were back home.

They're forcing us to adapt to their ways rather than adapting and adopting ours.

There's a word for moving, en masse, to another place and forcing the current residents to conform to your nationality and culture.

Colonization.

Minneapolis is currently the biggest city in Somalia.

Miami is the largest city in Cuba.

Los Angeles is vying for the largest city of Mexico.

New Jersey, based on the license plates, appears to be the northernmost province of Puerto Rico.

It's not racist to want them to assimilate, it's nationalist.  Another dirty word, according to The Left.

The thing that pisses me off most about it is there's surely people lumped in these enclaves who desperately want to be Americans.

The situation as it stands has them being prevented from assimilating by both their fellow residents of the enclave and by the surrounding native community.

Did you know we've done this before?

New York used to be the largest city in both Ireland and Italy.

Minneapolis used to be the largest city in Sweden.

The process of assimilation is rough.  It means not letting the immigrant use their native ways to do much of anything except where those ways already coincide with the natives.

It makes the enclaves insufferable ghettos.  Places you don't want to live.  Shitty enough to learn how the natives do things.  Crummy enough to change your name so the racists among the natives don't pick up on your filthy WOP heritage.

However, if we're going to be playing the victim card.

Mom's side is Italian, Dad's side is Scots/English/Norwegian.  All four of these immigrant cultures suffered under the established Anglo-Germanic culture of the early 20th Century midwest.

I deserve substantial cash reparations and I want them now!

I Don't Think Kiwi Goes Bad

The dye on the New Service bronzed, as the instructions warned it might.

Happily, I still have black shoe polish from when I was in the Army.

I don't think I will ever run out.

The flap is now black without any bronzing now that it's got a layer of Kiwi black shoe polish on it.

I still need to make me an embossing tool.

Auto Loader Animation

This is definitely nifty.

Periodic Check

Every once and a while I go checking to see if a vast new supply of Finnish Mosin bayonets has been uncovered and imported and driven prices through the ice and to the bottom of the lake.

Nope.

There's a single example on ebay for $300.

Ugh!

Maybe if Nancy and Joe ram through a $1,400 check for me, or you dear readers go bugnuts and donate in a most foolish way.

TL Project Redux

I am thinking of revisiting my TL project and making characters from places with magic instead of strictly historical.

One of the fun things of the "make anything you want for a fixed set of points" nexus worlds was doing an index card size write-up version of world creation.

For one world FuzzyGeff and I didn't actually collaborate about where our characters were from, we simply didn't contradict each other when we made declarations about details.

That's where a staple of our out-world creations "The Octagon" came from.

It's where the Pentagon is in DC, but this world has eight branches instead of five.  We never even detailed what those branches were.  Instead of, "five walls and a spare," it's "twice as much for just twice the money!"

Ich Bin Ein Neanderthal

Unlike some people I've actually been researching Neanderthals.

They are far more like us than different, to be honest.

Perhaps they did think differently from Cromags.

They aren't around any more.

Or are they?

Thanks to The Human Genome Project, finding recoverable DNA in Neanderthal dig sites and places like 23 and Me; we know that a significant portion of their genes are still with us.

Similar enough for nookie apparently.

Even more fun, we're learning that people carrying Neanderthal genes inherited some decent survival advantages too.

Probably not a good plan to be going around insulting people because of whom their ancestors were.

I'm old enough to remember when that was racist.

Remorseless

Apparently the title and character names from the Tom Clancy book "Without Remorse" have been surgically removed and grafted to an action movie starring Michael B Jordon.

It's obvious from the trailer that it has nothing to do with the book.

Why, Hollywood, why?

If you're going to go to the effort of writing something completely new, give it an original title.

If you're going to spend the money to get the rights to something, you should get more than the title and a couple of character's names.

Using the book's title and touting Tom Clancy, then not making a film that resembles the book, you are not drawing in fans of the book.  You are alienating them.

But if you'd adapted the original story you couldn't cast Mr Jordon.  Kelly/Clark did undercover shit where being a black dude would have gotten his ass spotted and killed in the books that Without Remorse was a prequel to.

Kelly/Clark is Irish in the books and needed to be white to pass as Russian.  His background as a SEAL in Vietnam also makes it unlikely to be black.

The movie might prove to be enjoyable and entertaining.  Mr Jordan is a fine action star.

But this isn't Without Remorse.

I'd pay to see Without Remorse.  They should even keep it set in the '70's.

Wokeism Could Be White Supremacy?

He's repetitious in making his points and he rambles, but it's a different perspective on what the left is doing.

If he's right, it redefines "useful idiot" for any minority supporting this thinking they are advancing their rights.

Pitchurs

The more I play with my Canon M50, the more impressed I am with the advances technology makes.

I cannot seem to take a picture with it that I hate.

There's a few that I don't like the composition, but that's me and not the camera.

For the pictures I bought a camera for in the first place: the M50 is more than sufficient.

This keeps proving true.

The S5IS did everything I asked of it, except survive a three foot fall to concrete.

The SX20 did everything but extreme macro better than the S5.

The M50...  I mourn the imminent death of the EF-M series as the R supplants it.

The M50 is just so damn good, I salivate at what a full frame RF-series will get me.

The problem is the sales just don't support a dedicated camera between a cell phone and a full-on full-frame professional camera.

I intend to save up and get me a full frame RF before the next eclipse!

Common Sticking

There's a debate about which bayonet you should get for your AR.

Of course the answer is all of them.

The M7 served until replaced by the M9, sometime in the mid to late 80's.  The M9 soldiers on with the Army.

The Marines made due with the M7 until the late 90's and replaced it with the OKC 3S.

But if you have 3 AR's you need three bayonets.  If you have three bayonets, you need three AR's!

Even if it's a useless combat item, it scares the gun grabbers.  Make sure you have a bayonet lug on all your scary black rifles.

Stuck

I'd almost file this under deliberately concealed dirty little secrets.

I'd come up with a series of traits for the Neanderthals in Maka Tanka to make them horrifying and clear bad guys.

The more research I do on the American Indian... the less distinct these traits become.

The Indians have some excellent public relations since they lost the war, that's clear.

The information is out there.  It's not even hard to find.

It's in a obscure format called "history book".

Anthropology books appear to actually be anthropology texts.

There's anthropological and sociological stuff out there that matches the history texts, but it's not recent.

Colleges have been woke a long time.

Woo Hoo!

The Boy returns to a regularly scheduled school setting today!

To say he is stoked is to put it mildly.

He was very nervous to admit he wanted to go back to school because he'd had such a massively negative experience with the previous school.

To put it mildly, they're not real good with people like The Boy and really bad with parents like me.

Engineering types ask why.  Then my business admin degree lets me understand that their answer for why is bullshit.

But that is the past and The Boy is moving forward!

Who Gets It?

 

Comment if you get it.