Britannia waives the rules

I'm for Women's Lib and equal pay for equal incompetence and all that. But, jayzuss, Ladies, do you leave us Chappies nothing of our grand Nelsonian tradition?

Out: "Here's to our wives and sweethearts."

In: "Here's to our families."

I suppose the jocular Mess Night addendum, "May they never meet," could still be appropriate, but by Jove, Man, it just doesn't sing.

So many revolutions, so few Marines

We all anxiously await the Obama solution to Brazilian riots.  Our vital national  security interests pivot on free bus rides in Rio and Sao Paulo, so minding our own business is not an option.

Speaking of His Ineptness, it's hard to dispute this reaction  "...pure mush..." to his Brandenburg Gate gig. (The writer is a Thatcherite Brit, so make whatever allowances you care to.)

Obama made it to the White House in large part because of his powerful tent-preacher oratory. His skill seems to be fading.

Personally, I think the only shot he has at burnishing  his image is to hire Peggy Noonan.

.

MegaThoughts

Oh my! So much going on in the world. It's more than a fellow can examine in detail, so he is impelled to take the easier path of pronouncing cosmic truths:

1. Stockholm and London are under attack by revolutionary forces. The lesson is that an advanced society does not benefit from providing free candy to lure in tribes not all that far from the Stone Age. Excluding the Irish, of course.

2 Of course we've all wondered, "Why does the Inner Party kill its citizens by remote control and use the tax authority of the state to browbeat and destroy those whose speech appears to be Crimethink?"  Why, because it can, and because it makes governing ever so much more convenient if every bipedal drone in the country knows it. And fears it.

Hold me bitter and watch this, Cyril

I had a $20 rifle. I spent about ten hours and $50 to turn it into a $65 rifle.  If nothing else it proved that a Brit relic from the Days of Empire could be made less ugly. Grind off protuberances. Polish. Blue. Finish up a semi-inletted stock set  from Herter's final going--out-of-business sale.

The SMLE actually looked nice and sporty, and I fear I was guilty of the sin of pride.

Then comes my friend K over dinner one Friday night and says something like, "Yeah. Looks okay. Too bad it's such a weak action."  (He had been reading one expert gun writer. I had been reading another.)

"Weak action?! I'll show you, you SOB."

Yours Truly to the loading bench in a paleo-Mythbusters mood.














After concocting one round of this load I dug out a spare SMLE and a hank  of cordage. I carried the whole works to the K acreage for the annual sweet corn fest, a great party; folks came from miles around. Some shooting was always a featured attraction before we tapped the kegs.

With much advice (and damned little actual assistance), I lashed the rifle to a tractor tire lying in the shootin' pasture and hitched the pull cord to the trigger. After all, the cartridge about to be chambered was getting awful close to IED territory.

Final bets were placed as the crowd ambled toward whatever shelter was available.   I don't know the details of every wager, but the gist of all was whether  "He'll blow the sh*t out of it."   We didn't burden ourselves with precise definitions of terms. My position was, roughly, that the improbable bomblet would probably stretch the action and create visible but minor damage without "blowing up."

Boom.

The extractor left for parts unknown. A big hammer was needed to open the bolt and a dowel to pound out the brass. That's not a blowup. I claimed victory. My adversaries said "Well, yeah, but...," and I don't recall ever collecting my winnings.

Then we drank a beer or two and argued about something else.

I think the Turks on the other side of the island are giggling

In the Pearl of the Middle Sea banks have reopened at last. For what  little good that does you if you're out of oats and your donkey is hungry. The Cypriot politicians get to decide how much of your money you can reclaim from their Russian Mafia Laundromat.

But the Cypriot man on the street is less than panicked, and leave it to England's Fleet Street to live-blog the stiff upper lip:

Cypriots are not only taking their money out of the banks, they are also depositing it.

Kyriakos Vourghouri, owner of a minimarket, waved a deposit slip showing an amount of €678 euros as he emerged from the bank.

"I didn't withdraw any money. I deposited money," he told AFP. "The problem is not in Cyprus, it is in Europe, which has become gangrenous."

I doubt I'd have used the word "gangrenous." I think "monetarily diarrheatic " might be closer.

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Can't happen here, of course, what with our commitment to free enterprise and sound money.

The gun news from Lunchtime O'Booze

Just in case you haven't had your fill of media ignorance on firearms technology, I offer this one. It's part of a live blog from The Guardian (of England) of Senator Feinstein's hearing on her bill to ban assaultish-looking weapons.

A Dr. Begg is testifying about his dismay as he tried to treat Newtown victims. Then:

Begg presents a horrible video in which a ballistics expert demonstrates what a bullet from an AR-15 can do. The expert in the video shoots a block of gelatin-like material – flesh-like material – with a .22 rifle. Then he shoots one with an AR-15. The .22 bullet passes cleanly through. The AR-15 bullet goes in and then explodes.

It's certainly possible to compact more ignorance into a short paragraph, but most writers would be hard-pressed.

It would probably do no good to set this reporter down and explain, slowly, in short words, that a video illustrating a point of physics with ballistics gel is neutral rather than "horrible." Now, if it used a Fleet Street reporter to demonstrate the same point, that would be "horrible." Wouldn't it? Well, uhhhh...

Never mind his conflation of bullet diameter with terminal ballistics. We could just send him a telegram stating "An AR-15  is  almost always  a .22 rifle." Maybe that would send him to a library where he would occupy himself in close study of Guns for Dummies -- and looking in vain for evidence that criminals typically use bullet which "explode."

But to end on a positive note, he appears to have done a thorough and professional job of informing his reading public about who cried and at what level of intensity.

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Title credit to Edwin Newman in Strictly Speaking

'tis the same old shellelagh...

...that my friend Bill picked up for me a few years ago. It looks neat and would make an effective backup weapon in some circumstances. Still, I don't use it much. It is primarily a decorative fashion accessory for which ever wall seems barren to me at any given time -- or sometimes as a place holder in one  gun rack or another.

Lately it's been living on its own dedicated nail in the spot handiest to the desk and used from time to achy time in the wake of an aviation accident.

The wheels-up landing from the second step of shop entry stairs scared me for longer than I like being frightened, about 60 seconds, crookedly prone on ice and frozen crushed lime pebbles. That's the time it took to inventory the parts and determine the extent to which the usual processes had been modified by percussion. Inventory complete, I hobbled to the quarters, in fact with part of the kindling I'd just cut cradled in the left arm. The right was busy steadying  this veteran carcass on whatever was handy along the way -- a tree, a vehicle, the big garbage can and, finally, the hand rail.

I built the fire, popped some ibuprofen and settled on the couch. To ER or not ER, that is the question. The answer was "not yet, anyway."

That was all a week ago tonight. The bruises have cleared up, the questionable knee again dependable and the elbow fit for lifting. What's left of the mishap is some sort of torn or pulled or otherwise disheveled muscle or tendon. If I were to describe it clinically, scientifically, I'd call it "like, y'know, a charlie horse." 

It yields to five count-em-five ibuprofen every morning and, when I'm walking a lot, a little assist from the Irish persuader.  I would carry it all the time in hopes of eliciting sincere sympathy. Unfortunately I don't travel in circles like that. ("Humph. Old fart ought to be more careful.")

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If the reader believes this post is primarily for the purpose of relating a personal mishap, he or she is somewhat mistaken. Like all TMR communications, it is intended to edify. In this case on the matter of Irish weaponry and Irish history.

My shillelagh is phony, pure Midwest Brand X, like a Pakistani pocket knife.  It is the stem of a scrub cedar whereas it should be  blackthorn or, even more traditional, oak.

In the glory days of Hibernia, no Irish gentlemen would have set out for the pub without his oaken stick. Then came the bloody British looking for women prettier than their own and lumber for their ships.  They found both, captured a few our women and all of our trees. This accounts for  the blackthorn, the occasional attractive English person,  and the fact that many of you have heard of a sailor named Nelson.

I think it's reasonably sexy

Seeing our British cousins in a funk always saddens me, and it's worse when they seem ready to riot in Piccadilly over high matters of state. So I performed a research study in hopes of offering wise counsel from the Colonies.

That is, I carried a copy of the portrait around, all over the length and width of Camp J country. I enquired of every chap I know, "Would  you (a) kiss this woman and (b) willingly have her on your arm in the A-list haunts of local society such as the American Legion Club?"

To a man, nearly,  it was "Yep" or "Damned Straightt" or "You Bet."  The single exception was my very youngest interviewee who hesitated, shrugged, then brightly added, "But my dad sure the heck would."

It exactly the result I predicted and verifies my suspicion that the English aren't really all that upset about the picture. They are just in one of their periodic states of  national ennui when any excitement, any controversy at all, is embraced as a welcome relief from the boredom of being in Britain.

Personally, I don't think the Kate picture dustup has legs. There just isn't enough emo content in the "poortrait"  argument to excite even an East Ender for very long. What the Sceptred Isle really needs is a good old-fashion war crisis, what with muskets and cannon and brave leftenants waving swords as they lead their companies into into wog hordes.

To that end, and out of pure motives -- a shot of Red Bull injected directly into John Bull's national arteries -- I've dispatched a courier to Buenos Aires suggesting that now would be a compassionate time for a new move against the Falklands. The last one was was such sport, eh wot?

Newtown and Reuters

I get blue when learning of tyke death, whether singly or in wholesale lots. Under the influence of emotion I offer only poor analyses. So on Newtown, I want to restrict myself to nibbling around the edges for  while.

We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," Obama said in apparent reference to the influence of the National Rifle Association over members of Congress.

Let's parse that into two word-sets -- everything before "Obama said" and everything after.

The president is to be excused. His words are ritual. Both ends of the boat are sinking so we all must bail. We must end the manifestations of evil which are part of Mankind Stew. And we must be bipartisan. The Prominent Class is conditioned to so remark, not unlike the retail clerk's "Have a nice day."  So I leave him alone on that and recognize that he, too, undoubtedly was sad.

The rest of it quietly illustrates an ugliness of journalism. In what was presented as a workaday spot news report, the reporters assume the misty robe of the Oracle. They reveal to us a meaning which only they have the wisdom to discover.  The president used only three operative nouns in his sentence. Not one of them referred to the National Rifle Association, nor weapons of any kind. His sentence would have been perfectly appropriate and pertinent had the tragedy been a fire.

But two decided he meant the NRA and implied he was noble to do so. They wrote it.  Someone copy read it. And at least one senior editor cleared it for world wide distribution on wires of a once-great news service. It was, in fact, Reuters' opening salvo in the war to shift blame from the man who murdered to those who did not.

Gun porn, incomplete

Too late, after I locked them back up, it occurred to me that that I was one gun shy of hilarious vulgarity.  There's 38 on top, descending to 22. The shot needs another 38 below, but I don't feel like  re-opening the safe.

The Police Positive is sort of a B-cup  D-frame -- in .38 Colt New Police, equal to .38 S & W. There's no real difference, but originally there was an up-front variance. Colt got caught with its pants down in the revolver ammo wars of a century ago, so it stole the .38 Short Wimp. It gave up when no one was fooled by the cosmetic difference, a flat bullet rather than the sensuously curved Smith and Wesson nose. 

It's 1918 vintage. Someone  later dressed it in beautiful Colt OEM walnut bloomers. They would be lovely adorning any of six or eight other D-frame models, just not this one. Anyone with proper hard rubber care to swap?

There's a small stash of .38 SW here, but I'll probably want to shoot  more than that. I can reload with the .38 Special dies (albeit possibly with some crimping challenges). The .357* cast bullets will work well enough,  and in extremis for brass I can trim .38 Special cases to fit. (Probably, anyway.  I haven't looked into the rim-thickness question yet.)

The Hi-Standard Sentinel is one of those comfortable mid-grade guns that just "is" -- not special, no particular history or other distinction, but a kick to shoot. We pulled onto K's personal air strip on the way home and ran a few cylinders offhand just for the pleasure of listening to the noise and watching dirt fly around the only handy target, a corn husk 20 - 25 feet off. I nailed it a time or two double action and figure I scattered the rest over a dinner plate area. A big dinner plate.

But Jim, you damned fool, you already got enough guns and, besides, you ain't made of money.

Quite true, but let me explain it this way: "Bugger off."

Alternatively, take the $xxx Federal Reserve Cartoon  price and calculate how few zillionths of a nanosecond it will take Ben to create xxx new ones out of thin air.  He can't make Colts or even Hi Standards at all, even if we give him a 3D printer.

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*The .38 SW caliber spec is .361.  The Brits designated the round .38-200. It used a 200-grain bullet which gave Tommy's leftenant leisure for a spot of tea before it became time to see if his projectile had yet struck the Hun.

A little gun lust

Next Saturday morning is reserved for a lethal weapons bazaar out in the country, a backwash farm not from from the head waters of Stony Creek where Inkpadutah's band of Wahpekute Dakotas liked to hunt elk when they were not busy killing white people for stealing their land.

Nothing on the auction goes back as far as the ~ 1855 to 1865 period when old Inky was making a pest of himself in these parts. Only the Colt D.A. .38 comes within a long generation of being contemporary. It could be a model as early as 1892 or as late as 1905, the latter only as a USMC variant. It took Colt a long time to get this one right, especially to make the cylinder turn the right way. I owned one decades ago, flimsy lockwork, impossible trigger, and all.

The lineup, with the three that interest me in bold:


GUNS: Mossberg Model 185D-B 20 ga. bolt action, 2 3/4" chamber; Winchester 3030 Model 94, used very little; Marlin Model 19G, 12 ga. pump shot gun w/long barrel; Marlin Model #37 -22 pump rifle; Colt DA 32  (sic) w/case & US issue holster, was Jim's dad's WWI issue; Rohm 22 Magnum Model 66; Ruger 22 long, auto.; Colt Huntsman 22 long rifle, auto; WWI steel helmet; WWI gas mask; 1917 Camp Dodge pic.; 1917 Soldier's Handbook; lrg. military shell

World War 1 is a bit outside my interest, probably because I have never fully shaken the vague notion that Mrs. Wilson may have chosen the wrong side.  Kaiser Bill wasn't really an evil dude, and it might have been useful to have a bunch of snobbish Prussian junkers between us and Joe Stalin in the middle third of the 20th Century.  God knows the Frogs and the Brits weren't all that useful.

Still, the Colt is a bona fide U.S. Military relic, so maybe I'll bid even though it was a miserable design first built for a pipsqueak cartridge. Also, this example is rough.

So is the Colt Huntsman, but I'll try for it anyway. In the first place the one already resident in the local vault is lonely. In the second, it will make my friend K grit his teeth in jealousy again, and that's worth something. :)

The Marlin Model 37 would likewise make good company for the M-38 already in hand. They're fraternal if not identical twins,  and a sweeter little rabbit gun/plinker never existed.

So, we'll see, but I'll show up at Dick's auction prepared to be disappointed. Our agrarians are flush this fall with crop money, drought disaster money, ethanol mandate money and Lord knows what else from the generous hands of His Ineptness and master gardener Tom Vilsack.  This tends to make them excitable at auctions.

Ick. Never shake hands with a Brit

Over across the pond live the dirty-handed, and this isn't the claim of a Jingo Yank. Their own Royal Radio Station says so.

In a recent UK-wide study, 99% of people interviewed at motorway service stations toilets claimed they had washed their hands after going to the toilet. Electronic recording devices revealed only 32% of men and 64% of women actually did.

Huh? The Sceptred Isle rulers find time and money and motivation to digitally track their subjects' personal sanitary habits? What's next? An electronic usage recorder on English condoms? (A tickling concept, eh wot?)

Oh well. I suppose it's easier than tracking down the thugs who manipulate the LIBOR.

Still, all in all, the next time The Queen extends her hand to me in a reception line, I think I'll just curtsy.

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H/T Tam

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Puts me in mind of the last time I visited my healer, two or three years back. Some kind of test was taken and the results said the guy's OK and has just  "normal bodily flora" in his juices.  I think that is quite an elegant way to report that I'm no germier than average.

Saturday vintage skin show

Inspired by TCM's wee-hours showing of the 1940 "Pride and Prejudice."

I suppose there are those who would question the macho quotient of a guy who thinks Jane Austen was a genius -- and a funny one at that. So be it. If it gets out of hand I'll post a self-portrait shooting an assault rifle or something.

Miss Garson played Elizabeth in the tale, which, on a sub-level, is a fine treatment of what happens in a society which deems it vulgar to earn money but quite refined to marry or inherit someone else's.

The photo is, of course, a promo for some other movie.

It come a-gusher!

In Merreye Olde, a big-time oil trader named Steve Perkins got smashed, went back to his office and bought about seven million barrels of oil -- price be damned. It happened in the wee hours and woke the snoozy overnight oil markets with a collective WTF?.  Reactive panic strained global order desks.  "Buy, dammit, buy!"

International  oil prices spiked. The market didn't calm until it became apparent that one of the Masters of the Universe screwed up while in a well-oiled state. Steve's company lost millions. He was fired, fined, and invited to seek another profession.

It happened about three years ago, and I didn't catch why it is again timely enough to rate a mention on CNBC this morning while I was trickling charging my nervous system with the first cuppa. But I'm glad it did because it reminded me to be pissed at the lunacy of rational markets when they come under control of irrational men.

It seems to me that there are about three ways to become irrational. One is to be born stupid. Another is become ignorant, generally through intellectual laziness. The third is to get drunk, either on a nice single malt or on daydreams of personal power and riches -- or both.

Now: Since TMR readers are men and women of lively minds who are quite comfortable making logical connections between seemingly disparate events,  it is to be expected that some of you will read about oil hustler Steve of perfidious Albion  and think about money hustler Ben of our own Federal Reserve System. One shrieks "Buy!" and the other howls "Print!" Each in his own way turns the economies of the world into a game of seven-card no-peek stud played by nincompoops with a deck of 51. Or 53. Everything wild except deuces, jokers, and one-eyed jacks.

I don't feel like typing a long rant on confluence of these lunatic notions, but if you care to, you have my full endorsement. Personally, I'm off to pursue more immediate challenges related to distorting world oil markets by splitting and stacking a fresh load of sustainable, renewable biomass.

I will, however, leave you with a reminder, courtesy of Mr. Grey:  "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."

G' morning, fellow anarchists

With all the world crises going on, a fellow really ought to get busy with a careful analysis.

But I don't feel like it. Not even a short take on Topless Kate, a crisis that could rekindle the ancient Anglo-Gallic wars. (Since I haven't watched the news  about our president this morning, I don't know whether the Frogs and Brits are currently our enemies or allies or what. But I'm pretty sure the last thing we need is the Coldstream Guards assaulting Brest.  What a bump in the geopolitical road that would be.)

So I'm just playing with toys, namely a new three-volt cockroach by Nikon. If I get it figured out I'll send y'all some pictures of stuff I didn't build, like the pile of sustainable, renewable biomass, or perhaps the new knife abuilding (by someone who isn't me, of course) for a beloved survivalist grandson.

Or maybe not. I just found a dozen nightcrawlers left over from the last fishing jaunt. Shame to let them go to waste, eh?

Gearing up

I've never even handled a Commie rifle. While there are tragedies in my life, this is not one of them. The freer markets of the world have produced all the firearms a guy could ever need or even want. On the other hand, Dunham's Sports down Spencer way is overstocked on 91/30s and peddling them at $99.99 (a $30 savings!)

What an ugly rifle. Only the Brits (for sure) and the French (possibly )could have offended the eye so grotesquely. Still, it seemed to do its work adequately for all ranks and brilliantly in correct hands like those of White Death Simo  (who used a variant). It's hard to argue with the one-man-and-a-rifle combination which dispatched invading Communists at the rate of 5.05 per day that cold winter when the main contestants (Nazis vs. Brits and Frogs) mostly contented themselves by making  ominous honking noises at one another.

I have only a reading knowledge of the 7.62/54R, but I'm prepared to accept that it works like a .308 Winchester or, with finiken loadings, the .30-06. The accuracy reports are all over the place, and I suspect getting a natural tack driver involves a bit of luck.

So, if I can bestir myself to make the trip, I'll look down bores,  rattle actions, and try to get the Lady on my side. Then I would have to look hard at the possibilities of stripping away the ugly; a better stock for sure, and maybe it's possible to grind off that  magazine box to create an elegant single. Find proper cover, then go to work. One shot, one zombie, executed with great style.

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This is a mere velliety.  and the odds of adding Boris to my stock of atavistic bolt actions are less than 50-50. They would be lower yet except that there is a Goodwill store right close to Dunham's, and with the next equinox just a month away, it's time to round out my fall fashion ensemble.

The Guns of London

Roberta notes that the Olympic shooting events begin today. England quakes as homies, colonials, and foreign wogs alike take up arms. Why, those rifles and pistols are capable of penetrating objects out to at least 10 meters (about 33 feet in real money) .

Alert the authorities.

Bunch of old dead white guys

...happened to to tell King John:

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled . nor will we proceed with force against him . except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.


Most of us colonials would -- as a matter of courtesy -- not demand that rulers  now resident LondonTown pay more attention to this document.  None of our business.

But since we've been shedding blood off and on since 1775 in defense of its principles, (or at least so we claim),  we allowed to tell our own rulers that they're getting awfully damned John-like lately and, if necessary, we are capable of doing a little Runnymeading of our own.


Happy Magna Carta Day -- one day late.

Pistol-packin' Pippa

Lay that pistol down, Babe...

What is it about leggy but not very bright Brit royalites that gets them into so much trouble when they go to Paris?

To be fair, Pippa herself is not accused of waving a semi-auto around in Paris traffic. It was her pal, the guy driving, who is said to have "jokingly"  pointed the pistol at the paparazzi. Still, the Fleet Street tabs have pretty much convicted her of unseemliness while in the vicinity of a firearm. I think that's an actual crime in the Sceptred Isle, but it may be merely a social faux pas in La Belle France.

Thank God for the Surete. We will get to the bottom of this.

Britain. Bacon. World War 2

In  late 1940, the port of Liverpool in Merreye Olde was not a nice place to be. The noise of the ship yards.  Rowdy sailors on shore leave and their impure thoughts as they eyed our maidens.  And especially the shortages. There was little enough of anything to eat and almost nothing  *good* to eat.

U-boats sinking too many of the food ships from the colonies, don't you know?

By late November the war had shut down many of Britain's other ports. Liverpool became even more crowded with freighters which survived the North Atlantic run . It became a juicy target for Luftwaffe Heinkels. The concentrated bombing created a bit of a stir. But one night, perhaps, some of the calorie starved civilians might have had one small good word for the Nazi bombers:

"There were, Adams recalls, some bizarre scenes. 'I can remember the warehouse outside the docks being on fire. The bacon fat was running down the gutter, and several women were running out of the houses with their pots trying to save the fat'."*

Fast forward the the time of those ladies' grandchildren whose passion in life is avoiding bowel cancer by banning bacon. Along with the usual Albionic hand-wringing and pants-peeing, our cousins seem, somehow, to connect it with their clever "rear of the year" award.

Okay, sweetheart, even though it's a small picture, I can see you have a delectable rear. Still, all in all, forced to choose, I think I'd have preferred life with your grandma.


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*From Andrews Williams, "The Battle of the Atlantic." 2002.  P. 107. ISBN 0 563 53429 x.

My review: Excellent.