Where are they now? "The Magic TimeWaster."

Remember in that last post about The View from the Porch shutting down, when I mentioned that we've all been in this game for a long time, and burnout is normal? Well, there's good news and bad news.

Good news:
The View from the Porch is back up as an archive. Comments are closed for crazy-person-related reasons, but you can go back and read VFTP again now.

Bad news:
I checked, and that first website of mine, The Magic Timewaster, also still exists.

That's actually an image of the "Idiots of the Web" page. Some of them have gone on to greater fame, such as the Westboro Baptist Church. Others, like the Creator's Rights Party, sort of disappeared. Still others, like the "World Church of the Creator," still appear to be humming along (despite the WCOTC having suffered a small setback in their mission to spread love and truth when their dear Pontifex Maximus, Matt Hale, went to federal prison for soliciting the murder of a judge.)

Ah, to be young again. Oh, look! A page entitled "Bad Poetry!" That's a bold gambit.

Yesterday was a dark day.

Yesterday, Tamara's readers checked in at The View From the Porch and found this:

It's not an error. Tamara is finally fed up, and at the moment there's no guarantee she's ever coming back. I don't like it, but I've personally quit blogging several times, deeply annoying both my readers, and so I don't have a stone handy to throw at her house. Besides, if you've been paying attention for the last few years, you've watched Tamara's personal baseline of frustration mount ever higher, with no end in sight. Derpes is constantly breaking out all over the internet, and it seems to be the only reliably viral thing on the networks, flashing from computer to phone to tablet.  It's easy to forget that Tamara's been doing this--fighting a desperate rear guard against people saying dumb things electronically--since the last century. 1996 feels like yesterday to me, but it was 16 goddamned years ago. Tam might go back further than that; that was the year I created my first Geocities website, "The Magic TimeWaster," and it quickly evolved into a naming-and-shaming site featuring neo-nazis, a guy who wanted to become Governor of Georgia so he could undo Roe v. Wade by seizing nuclear weapons to hold D.C. hostage. Even then, some of us just couldn't look at this giant communications network without finding ourselves transfixed by The Dumb-Dumbs. It can be exhausting.

I used to get death threats with that dumb little Geocities vanity site, but I've never had to spend years--literally, years--dealing with obsessive misfits who thought we would be best friends (or maybe more!) if only I would wake up and realize that we were meant to be. Tamara gets that kind of a lot.
Of course, there's one thing we can all hold for certain and true: that difference has nothing to do with any silly liberal-arts-major notions of "privilege" or any other made-up goofiness such as that. Right?

Anyway, that's the bad news. The good news is that Tamara is not going away. If you've been paying attention for the last few years, you've seen her evolving into more of a "gun writer" and less of a social commentator. I look for that to continue in better-paying venues even if the blog doesn't return, starting with her cool new "Good Guys Win" column in SWAT Magazine and a whole mess of articles on this gun or that ammunition--the kind of work with deadlines, editors, and paychecks. Eventually, I expect to see the Tamara Keel byline on one of those "back page" columns that gun magazines reserve for the people you just know you want to hear from in every issue. It may not be in a paper magazine by that time, but as long as the implanted hyper-node uplink can handle advertising, there should be a way to work it out.

SUMMER CAMP! Camp Quest Kansas City 2.0 is GO!

I am not here. I am at Camp Quest Kansas City at Knob Noster State Park in Missouri, helping run a summer camp. This particular summer camp is the one you go to if you don't want to pray over every meal or learn how your body is like an unwrapped candy bar, but you also don't want to pledge that you are a social justice atheist-humanist warrior for truth.

We're just gonna swim in the pool, do science in the woods, talk about big ideas, play soccer in the field and sing songs around the fire. It's not entirely my usual idea of camping, but there's no internet or air conditioning.

I'll be back at the end of June. Try not to let any of my friends throttle any of my other friends while I'm gone. I promise I'll write stuff about whatever the internet is upset about when I get back.

BTW, for those of you following Thing One and Thing Two, Thing One did get moved out this week and made it to his biological mom's house. His Facebook status this morning was:

"theres nothing like a shit to sober you up in da morning lolol"

So that's apparently going well so far.

Thing Two got his driver's license and registered as an organ donor and a voter, and he seems like he's doing pretty well at the moment.

Overheard at the gym . . .

Ladies at the gym are excitedly picking out their free HIPE t-shirts as Donnie walks out . . .

Lady: "Here's white over here!"
Other Lady: "I know, but I want a large. I've got . . . uh . . .
Lady: "I know you've got those big boobs!"
Other Lady: "Aw, man, look what you did to poor Donnie! He's horrified at us!"
Donnie: "Oh, no, I know all about living with big boobs. That's how I got into this mess."

It's not a very nice thing to say . . . but it's so true. :)

Memorial Day 2014 Is a Good Day to Be Alive.

This is not going to be a long piece. I had not planned on writing anything in particular for Memorial Day; I was just going to do my thing and let the blogging sit. But I went to the gym today, since I had the chance to go to the more-intense Level 2 class in the morning. And it was intense; Wayne of HIPE only did one class today, and he made it count. I soaked through everything I wore, I hurt and I faltered a couple of times, and I snarled and panted and made "WHOOO!" noises, because I am that guy.

Yeah, that guy.

And as I'm struggling and grunting and there's sweat and snot and whatnot, Wayne is calling people out, correcting form, encouraging, calling for people to motivate. And I pass through that point where it feels like it's too hard and you're not going to be able to do it. I reach that point where it feels good to fight it. The fatigue starts to feel good. The fight feels like it's right, like this is where I should be and what I should be doing. It doesn't matter that it hurts. Hurting is part of this thing that I'm doing to myself for myself, and hurting belongs to this time as much as I do. Hurting is OK. Discomfort is OK. It's OK to be panting, to be snorting, to stumble a little bit. It's OK.

Everything is OK, because I'm alive. It's a great day to be alive. Everything about being alive feels good, including this pain in this moment. The pain won't last forever, it's just one more piece of a day.

Memorial Day.

The day when I acknowledge how good it is to be alive. When I examine what I love about life. When I think about people who gave their lives or had them taken because my nation asked them to risk their lives to enforce the decisions of a government we elected. Memorial Day is the day when people who have another day of life to live spare some time to think about people who don't, and acknowledge that, no matter how small an individual citizen's share may be, each of us owes that debt.

So, here we are on Memorial Day. I'll make the most of it.

A Note On PapaDeltaBravo's "A Note On Privilege."

I get where PDB is coming from with this, I really do, but I couldn't resist leaving him this note:

PDB: you linked to an example of someone doing what you said you’d never seen done. ;)

Remember, kids, "the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being." One of the characters in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure said that, and after 25 years it has stood the test of time.

"That movie is an underrated treasure!"

Ambulance Driver Class on the Care and Feeding of Medical Emergencies for Shooters, or: How I Learned to Quit Worrying and Love the Tourniquet

“Air goes in and out, blood goes round and round. Any variation on the theme is a problem.”

About a month before NRA Annual Meetings kicked off in Indianapolis this year, Ambulance Driver put out a call for students. In real life, AD is Kelly Grayson, emergency medicine subject matter expert and gadfly extraordinaire, and when he’s not running critical care transfers for the voracious and merciless EMS collective known as “The Borg” or writing books, he does a lot of teaching. This time, Kelly and friends had decided to create a class for the average gun owner on what to do about a medical emergency at the range or in the field (including, but not limited to, first aid for gunshot wounds.)  Why’s that matter to you? Well, it might not, but this is my blog, and you’ve got some nerve coming in firing questions. Besides, I think there’s a good chance that this class could be added to Kelly’s offerings, and that means it might come to your town one of these days.

Bro, do you even tourniquet?

Let me cut to the chase: if you aren’t at least an experienced first responder  with experience with gunshot wounds, I think you’ll benefit from this class. Kelly brought three friends in as instructors, including the author of Too Old toWork, Too Young to Retire and two other experienced medics, one with extensive experience in Detroit. Any one of the four have probably treated more GSW than I have car accident injuries, and their experience showed.  Bringing help also meant that the instructors had the manpower to break the class into four sections for small-group hands-on instruction in CPR, use of AED’s, and application of bandages and tourniquets. That time was valuable, and it looked to me like the instructors were consistent and efficient in running their individual groups. I was not expecting OldNFO to stand up deliver a history of hemostatic bandaging (products like Quik-Clot) but it was fascinating.

Aw, snap. Knowledge is about to drop on you like the other shoe, son.

The agenda was intelligently basic and can be summarized as three big questions:

·      What can we do about acute cardiac or respiratory problems at the range? (What if Joe has a heart attack at a remote range?)

·      What can we do about gunshot wounds to the extremities?
(What if Joe shoots himself in the leg at a remote range?)

·      What can we do about thoracic gunshot wounds?
(What if Joe gets shot in the belly or the chest at a remote range?)

What if there's inappropriate touching?

Negatives? Well, obviously, a four-hour course is not going to turn anyone into a medical superhero, so if anyone was hoping to learn to repair wounds surgically in the field with a fishhook and line, they would have gone home disappointed. The course could go longer easily; I believe Kelly mentioned that it may be extended in future versions, and I think that makes sense.

Positives? Brisk pacing, not a lot of superfluous discussion or information, good balance of lecture and participation, well-considered agenda of basic information, and a good job of addressing varying skill levels from medical laymen who’ve never really thought about medical emergencies at the range before to practicing nurses and doctors.

Now you're cookin' with gas, ya big lug! But seriously, you should probably take that thing off at some point.

In the end, I walked out with knowledge and confidence I hadn’t brought in with me, and that’s a win. In particular, I picked up new knowledge and much firmer confidence in my knowledge of thoracic wounds, especially sucking chest wounds, and I no longer fear the tourniquet. I also walked away with a compact emergency kit stocked with a good field tourniquet and appropriate bandages, gloves and cleaning supplies, plus an occlusive chest seal for sucking chest wounds (which has helpfully been covered in notes with a Sharpie™ because I walked in late without a pencil or paper on my person.)

Be prepared! But if you can't manage to be prepared, at least be prepared to be weird. 

It must be noted that the use of St. Francis Hospital’s excellent conference room and the food and drink supplied by Brownells out of the goodness of their hearts added to the experience for most of the attendees.  Personally, I haughtily refused to partake of the delicious breakfast pastries or drink the soda and juice provided, because I am an arrogant monster. But if you’re into that sort of thing, you can see how having one of the giants of the industry step up to support a small class like this one—a class with, it must be admitted, zero application to either Crossfit™ or shooting terrorists in their faces—makes a difference.

My thanks to Brownells, to St. Francis Hospitals in Indianapolis, to Kelly Grayson and TOTW and their fellow instructors. Going forward, I’m going to be sharing a version of what I’ve learned out to members of the Sangamon County Rifle Association. The SCRA met two nights ago, and between my account and the praise delivered by Snooze Button Ronin, I think we have some interest in hosting Kelly for a similar class in the future. I’ll be watching with interest to see if it becomes available!

Imma post something today: Zombie-killing music.

Don't look so shocked; I still know the password to this place.

Anyway, Tam wants to know what song would come up on my iPod when I loose lead into zombie heads. In case anyone else is wondering, this is what an atheist listens to when he fantasizes about splattering zed-brains across chain-link:



Well, one atheist anyway . . . what can I say? Somebody's gonna cut you down, you filthy undead shamblers, and it might just be me. As my dad used to say, one of us is going to get hurt, and it might not be me.

Tam actually got it from Random Nuclear Strikes, who chose Ministry's Assimilate. And I really only decided to contribute mine after I listened to Breda's quirky, Icelandic death-pop selection.

Insert Emergency Blogmeet Content Title Here

Well, Tamara linked me after the Blogmeet in Indy yesterday, which forced me to look at the date of my last post here, so . . . here's some content. Not much, admittedly, but at least there's a picture! I mean, I didn't make it, but still . . . look how old-timey!

Truth be told, I sat at the other end of the table (late as usual) and spent most of my time trying to keep up with Roberta X's explanation of how she once discovered that flushing the toilets in a broadcasting station does, in fact, make it possible to stop the signal.

Yes, it was as cool as that sounds. Yes, you missed it. Unless you're Longhorn Jeff.

Just for Tamara: "Dick Durbin on snow"

Yo, dawg, I heard you like it when yankees get all unhinged about snow, so I got you a unhinged yankee Senator babblin' about snow.



Of course, Senator Durbin's not even from Chicago. I believe he's from East St. Louis, and nowadays he lives in Springfield. We get snow here, of course, but it's not like Chicago.

WANT--Makarov Edition

Every month, the Sangamon County Rifle Association gets together in the back room of the local buffet place. Somebody stands up and talks about the politicians, somebody else updates everyone on upcoming gun shows and demands volunteers, then someone stands up and talks about the damn politicians, followed by me standing up and droning on about McDonald this and Heller that and honestly, I'm not sure I could tell you everything I talk about.

But generally, someone brings in something to show around for "Tech Time." Tonight, Brent the Token Soldier brought in his Makarov. I'd never held on in my hand before, and now I want one. But I won't likely find a deal like the one Brent got; about ten years ago, he found this one at a household auction for $50. Fifty dollars. No kidding.

Brent's Makarov is an East German version of 1964 vintage, and it's a lovely little thing. The finish is a deep, nearly-black bluing on well-polished steel. The pistol is tight and solid, larger in the hand than I expected, and heavy for its size (well, by my standards, but remember that I was six years old when the first Glocks reached the U.S. People my age don't remember when guns could only be made of steel.) Throughout the gun (and on each of the magazines) most of the parts had been marked "48" with an electric pencil. In Corvette terms, this is a numbers-matching Communist oppression pistol.

Did I forget that part? Yes, under the grips of this elegantly simple little pistol are the markings of the East German Stasi--secret police.

I know there are people who can't stand to hold a Nazi-marked K98 or Luger, and would view this pistol the same way. But I can't hold a milsurp and keep from wondering what the original users would have thought of someone like me holding it. Tonight I had to wonder; could the Stasi agent who carried good old No. 48 have imagined that someday, maybe 30 years or so in the future, "his" issue pistol would be carried and plinked with by some American soldier on his own time?

Yet another reason We Can't Have Nice Things

Xavier is finally fed up with the dumbasses who want to pick fights with him every day. People sometimes forget that the entertainers they think are dependent on them really aren't, and people who are providing free entertainment because they enjoy it really have no stake in the game to keep them coming back for abuse. So Xavier's blog is ending for the rest of us, although he'll still have it around.

He should try obscurity. It's much more peaceful.

(That link won't be good forever.)

Fun Show!

I went to the gun show yesterday. That probably seems like no big deal to most of the people who may see this, but I don't get out to the shows very often. I don't have a lot of cash to spend and I do have a lot of work to do around here, not to mention two teenagers and a toddler who are competing to see who can throw the most red-faced stomping fits per day.

But this time, a friend called me up and asked me to man the Sangamon County Rifle Association table, so I had a good excuse. It would have been a good time to take the two oldest boys off my wife's hands for awhile, but they decided to melt down and try to kill each other shortly before I left, so they were stuck stewing on their beds as I snuck out the door before My Bride could stop me. I suggested that she use our movie theater gift cards to take the boys to the movies and sit in a separate theater, but I gather their behavior never recovered.

That was all too bad for her, but I had a great time. The show was surprisingly well-attended for a Sunday afternoon with a wind chill below zero, and the people I talked to were all enthusiastic about gun rights. McDonald v. Chicago is creating a lot of excitement, and Illinois has primary battles for Governor and Senator going on right now. And I worked the table with Tom Shafer, a former city firefighter with a cable access show and a story for every occasion. Tom never disappoints; he'll make the time pass. Actually, I can admit now that Tom was the guy who used a Glock to stop a home invader back in November; his assailant pled guilty and has been dealt with by the law at this point, so everything is settled. Those of you who are familiar with Tom will realize how dumb it was to try to break in his door in the middle of the night.

Tom was the one who told me about the local news (WICS Newschannel 20) report on the gun show. Now, Channel 20 is the station that thought the most important thing to find out about the IGOLD event last March was whether the Capitol security had caught any of the 3-5,000 gun owners who marched "trying to sneak a gun into the Capitol." That was a step up from the year before, when 2500 marched and WICS declined to cover the event. We're used to this, of course, but we've always understood that we had no friends at Channel 20 and why.

But things are changing all over, and it looks like maybe the news room at TV 20 can feel a change in the wind. They put out this fluffy puff piece on this weekend's show, and I still don't know why. But I approve.

Gun Nuts Under Siege . . . .

Victim selection continues to be a glaring weakness for thugs in the midwest.

You have no doubt read repeatedly by now of the misunderstood youth with limited economic options who tried to self-realize and redistribute Ahab's wealth in a more equitable manner, only to be met with a face full of hot coffee and the wrong end of a Beretta.

Recently I learned that a good friend from central Illinois was the target of a home-invasion robbery. Details are scant because there's an investigation ongoing, but at least two thugs tried to break into his house in the middle of the night. When trickery failed (as trickery often fails the stupid) they tried to resort to force. He trumped their attempts with superior armament and good planning, and by the time the police arrived they were in disarray. One escaped, one captured, no one shot. It's assumed that he was targeted at random, because believe me, if they'd known who they were trying to rob, they'd have stayed home that night.

Sorry to be so sketchy with details, but when he's at liberty to talk about the case we'll know everything. He's not exactly the shy retiring type. What I notice most about these cases is the lack of gunshot wounds. What's up with that? The Brady Campaign would have you believe that anyone who practices shooting as much as Ahab does, or advocates for gun owners as strenuously as my friend does (Illinois Governor George Ryan used to have him arrested fairly regularly) has been waiting all his life for an excuse to shoot someone--an excuse as good as "he had a knife!" or "I told him to leave, and he tried to break the door in!" Legally, either man could have shot his assailant and gotten away with it. So why didn't they?
Because it's not about the fun and excitement of killing people. It's about the willingness to go through the ordeal of shooting someone if that's what it takes to keep yourself and other innocents safe.

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.

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.

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.

Cook 911 from CA69, we are 10-76 to City Hall at this time . . . .

. . . . for a report of a burst forehead vein in the Mayor's Office . . . . . (no, I've never run in Chicago, I have no idea whether they're dispatched by 911 or their hospitals or the CFD or what, nor do I know whether any of them have the call sign "CA69.")

So, Daley's had kind of a weird week. Despite Tamara's lack of confidence in Shortshanks' clout, he threw enough weight to get President Obama to fly to Denmark in an unprecedented Presidential lobbying campaign for the Chicago Olympics. Yay Shortshanks.

But now the Supreme Court is stepping in to decide whether the 2nd Amendment should be incorporated to apply against the states and local governments, such as Chicago and Illinois, and most legal experts predict that this is like having Michael Jordan offer to settle your bet that no one can dunk from the free-throw line. You're not just about to lose, you're about to become the sad part of a highlight reel.

Supreme Court will decide whether 2nd Amendment protects Chicago gun rights

The Chicago Gun Rights Examiner has weighed in, of course, and I'm working on talking to the plaintiffs in the case, though of course they have to take their lawyers' advice as regards public statements.

Congratulations David Hardy!

Big ups to David Hardy for winning the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Citizens' Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, announced here at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in St. Louis. Dave isn't here, but congratulations to him!