The End of the World as She Knows It

This would be a routine weather-stranding story if it weren't for Holly (Whosis). I don't know Holly, but I'll bet she has great hair and is on the most intimate terms with mirrors everywhere.

Holly and Jeff were stranded on Interstate 29 between Omaha and Sioux City Sunday when foul weather and accidents closed the road for some 24 hours. They were lucky enough to find a hotel room and even a convenience store.

But Holly's life went downhill from there. As the Des Moines Register reports it:

"They ventured out of their motel room Monday afternoon to look for shampoo, conditioner, a deck of cards and some puzzles. 'We're at a convenience store,' Holly said. 'They're all out of shampoo and conditioner'."

And so I note for my whacko wookie-suited brother and sister survivalists: Relax a little. To the extent that Holly is representative of the population, the competition for post-SHTF resources isn't going to be all that severe.

Re-registering disgust

The wires are reporting that the woman accused of being the Huntsville shooter owned a gun which was not registered. Perhaps a future rehash will add that there's no reason on earth it should be. Alabama has overlooked the pressing humanitarian need to register rifles, pistols, or handguns.

Imagine the comfort that would come from knowing that the murder weapon was officially recognized.

The Last Kennedy in Congress

It seems the universal newspaper lede is that the departure of Patrick Kennedy next year leaves the Republic without a Kennedy in congress for the first time in 60 years. The fact is represented as having staggering import to our future as a nation.

Patrick of Rhode Island, son of Teddy, now has the nation's press straining to find language evocative enough to present him as the latest tragic victim of the Kennedy Curse. (You'll recall that curse was laid on by Barry Goldwater and is renewed annually around boiling cauldrons on the moors by covens of Nazis who, in everyday life, pass themselves off as citizens simply unpersuaded by the Kennedy brand of statism.

I won't beat up on Poor Patrick at length, but it does add balance to remind the Hyannisport groupies that the man was reported to be a drunk, a drug addict, mentally ill, and a bad congressman. Any similarly flawed politician who holds more libertarian or conservative views is pilloried, not wept over.

AP quotes Patrick as saying his decision to quit congress removes a heavy weight from his shoulders.

Ours too .

Two more "Bowie" knives

The left one you have seen before -- a quick and dirty rehab of a junk WW2 Navy KaBar blade. On the right is a 1981 example of the Camillus issued as an air crew survival knife. Each has been called a Bowie, despite being somewhat small for the mythical breed. The Camillus design is simply the KaBar* cut down to dimensions more practical for wear in cramped aircraft . The serrations on the dull side are for sawing through air frame skin.

For one more view of a clip point Bowie, see the early one here. You will note it is much longer and slimmer than most modern examples, catering to the tin horn with its slim handle and shiny bolsters fore and aft.

But our confidence that a Bowie is a clipper begins to fade as we look at another pretty-boy Bowie -- this one with a blade a planet away from what we've been seeing. (TBC)

* "KaBar" here is handy shorthand for all the makes of similar WW2 U.S. fighting knives.

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Question for real specialists in that air crew knife. What is the purpose of the two 1/4 - inch holes in the upper quillion? Lanyard tie-on comes to mind, but it seems to me a lanyard amidships there would be awfully awkward.