Holly is a Browncoat? Neat. Let's hear a song!

Right, so it turns out Holly is a Browncoat. (Link is work safe, follow any of the links out from there and you're on your own!)

And that makes me want to hear a song. A song for Browncoats.

BONUS: You can see the cake that Melissa's birthday cake was based on at the beginning. People around us were puzzled into silence when I lit the giant dinner candles, but we had fun. Mine tasted better than Simon's would have, too.

Actually, this one is my favorite. Like Wash.

Grandpa got . . . .

A semi-auto Thompson in .45. Kane ratted him out this morning.

Dad's wanted a Thompson for as long as I can remember--he's got an Airsoft and a .22, but I guess he couldn't stand not to have the .45.

Now I really have to get the loading bench back together.

So somebody threatened to kill Caleb on Saturday . . . .

Alternate title: "What's the color of the boathouse at Hereford?"


Caleb was threatened with death by stabbing on Saturday . . . . . but he turned the tables. Go read it if you want to know the details, but suffice it to say that once again, if you're aware of your surroundings, you're armed, and you've put in the time to develop the skills to get your weapon into the fight in a useful way, there are some other benefits besides being able to shoot someone who is threatening you:

1. If you can get a sufficiently superior weapon into the fight, you may be able to convince your opponent to flee before you actually have to hurt him. This only works if you're not counting on it to work and thus have the resolve and skills to shoot him if necessary--otherwise there's no good reason for him to flee.

2. If you're aware and prepared, you give yourself the option of improvising. Caleb was able to improvise his response, not because he's brilliant and doesn't need skills, but because his level of skill and awareness got him past the "THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING" stage and put him in a position to think and improvise fast.

Schwarzenegger Delivers Gun Violence Prevention Advocates Victory In California

Congratulations . . . . you've managed to reinstate a dumber version of the ammunition sales laws that were repealed nationwide in 1986 because they were simultaneously onerous and useless. Savor your victory while you can.

Try not to think about McDonald v. Chicago and whether California will be subject to the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution by next summer.

Try not to think about whether, once that happens, Calguns and the SAF will be waiting on the courthouse steps to file immediate lawsuits against California on 2nd Amendment grounds.

And I wouldn't lose any sleep over whether the requirement to be fingerprinted in order to buy one box of .22 plinking ammunition can be construed as "reasonable" by a judge with a pulse. Or whether you can pass strict scrutiny with a state law that requires an expensive federal license to buy or sell lawful ammunition in a lawful way.

I'm sure it'll all work out for you.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

OH! Why didn't you say so?

“Sure, the right to bear arms is an individual choice,” White said. “But that’s not a choice I’m willing to agree with.”

Well, now, that's a horse of a different color!
In that case, piss off, you nosy little shrew. Your agreement, like you, is irrelevant.

(That's just a very tiny part of a much larger brouhaha over women and guns, so read the whole thing at Aunt B's and SayUncle for the real outrages.)

Progress!

Well . . . . kind of. This is what my living room looks like . . . pardon the phone photo, but I have to get back to work. I'm on a quick bathroom/caffeine break at midnight. Then that header on the right is getting finished (that's where I stopped, since I need to go grab a clamp) and then the center post is getting cut out. See, both those center openings are about 1/8" too small, give or take, for my windows, so I'm cutting those out from the header to the footer and replacing the two 2x4s with two modern "2x4s" which are actually only about 1.5" thick. That will have the effect of making each opening about 1/4" larger, which should make the windows fit perfectly. It's slower going since I'm trying to use quieter hand tools, but I'm just sick of not getting this done. You can see one of the 6' windows roughed into the left-hand opening . . . and the original wood 94" window in the right-hand opening. The old windows were huge, and it's nice, but I want a window seat in this spot and 6" windows are the longest reasonably inexpensive windows that are common sizes.

The old windows are about 100 years old, and the sashes were literally built with wooden pegs rather than nails or screws. They're masterpieces of hand craftwork, and I feel a little guilty about tearing them out. Unfortunately, nobody has made any effort to maintain them. They weren't really designed to be airtight when they were built, but they were solid windows with heavy, solid storm windows, but they were simply painted shut and left to rot. Now they have to go. I'm looking for a good place to use the unbroken panes in a decorative way, but we'll see what that might be. For now, I just want my family to be warm this winter without spending hundreds of dollars on gas.

OK, that's a new one.

I've seen a lot of . . . . interesting ways of writing out calibers from the "mainstream media." Reporters have no idea how firearm nomenclature works, and honestly, it really is a very complex topic if you don't grow up with it. Not only that, but most of these people don't even realize that there is a right way to write these things, so it doesn't occur to them that there is a wrong way, much less that they're doing things the wrong way.

But this one is new even to me. Maybe you've seen it before?

a fully-loaded 9 .mm semiautomatic handgun

I really don't think I have.

I think you've got that backward, pal.

Sorry for the lack of content . . . more is coming, both here and at the Chicago Gun Rights Examiner site, but too much is happening right now.

Still, I was brought up short yesterday, and I gotta tell somebody. First, I'll get the confession out of the way: I listen to NPR. A lot. I like their news programs--yes, I know there's a bias there, but there's also an in-depth approach that is just plain more interesting to me than the soundbites you get on other "news" radio or television. And I'm addicted to "This American Life," "Car Talk," "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me," and even "A Prairie Home Companion." Don't judge me.

Anyway, it's time for the pledge drives, and they're begging for money constantly. One of the things I hate the most about these drives is that even when I contribute (Damnit, I said no judging!) I still have to switch the channel for a few days, because I can't stop the begging by my contribution alone. But I didn't write this to complain about pledge drives. I wrote this to tell you about the different donation levels that come with different privileges. There are "Memberships," "Day Sponsors," etc. For instance, if you're a "Day Sponsor," they'll run mini-commercials six times on your special day telling everyone that it's your husband's birthday or the anniversary of your first sit-in or whatever. I can see the value in that.

What I don't understand is the "My Source" level of donation. A standard membership costs $50, but for $500, you can be a "My Source" donor. That entitles you to cut a recording of yourself telling everyone why you love WUIS so much, and why it's "Your Source" for NPR. Essentially, they want you to pay an extra 900% for your membership as payment for being allowed to act as unpaid voice talent in a commercial for their station.

I don't think I get it.

I guess it's a slow year for world peace.

I don't think the Nobel Committee knows that President Bush was limited to two terms. I think they thought that Obama deposed Bush much the same way that Von Stauffenberg tried to depose Hitler--ending his reign of terror for the good of humanity. They don't need to see evidence that President Obama has actually done anything to benefit world peace on his own watch, because toppling the Bushitler dictatorship was achievement enough for one lifetime.

The Nobel Peace Prize 2009

"for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples"

Photo: Pete Souza, Obama-Biden Transition Project, licensed by Attribution Share Alike 3.0
Barack Obama
USA
44th President of the United States of America
b. 1961

Ummmm . . . OK. Extraordinary, huh?

Bayou Renaissance Man for the win

. . . . to see how things turned out for Bayou Renaissance Man. He was scheduled for triple-bypass surgery today.

Peter has survived bullets, apartheid, the Louisiana prison system (well, as a chaplain, not an inmate, but he did have an epic battle with their bureaucracy in between inmates) war, and a whole lot of other bad things. He was a Catholic priest when people began to realize that the Catholic church in the U.S. had been systematically covering up child molestation for decades--it was not a good time, but his faith came through.
He was a missionary in South Africa at a time when people were literally putting tires full of gasoline around each others' necks and setting each other afire--and he was making enemies.
He was a gun-toting priest who ministered to the most lost souls he could find--men imprisoned for murder, rape and robbery in the Louisiana state penitentiary system.

He looks like a harmless, smiley little cherub, but he's not the cherub coronary disease should be fucking with. He's generous, kind, faithful and courteous, but he's anything but harmless.

Has anyone seen a 22 laying around lately?

Just kidding.

I didn't lose a .22, I lost 22. Pounds. In a little over a month.

And while I was smugly congratulating myself, JR from A Keyboard and a .45 was realizing that he's reached his weight-loss goal on his "Take Shape for Life" program. Check this out:I'm not ready to pay someone to help me lose weight (though I do use SlimFast shakes to fill in here and there.) At my current level of obesity, it's not hard to take the weight off. I eat 2000 calories or fewer per day and I walk or bike daily if I can. I also do pushups and bodyweight squats in the mornings. As I get lower on the scale, it'll get harder and harder, and if I really plateau at some point, I may decide to try the stuff JR used. It's hard to argue with his results.