One shot

You begin with a  $30 junker, sound but showing the scud of a half-century living on spikes driven into the barn beams and rattling around in trunks.  Who knows what meals it put on a plank table? What thugs it deterred? It has earned its makeover.

Just a couple of hours later you have a nice, clean handigun with an ideal barrel -- just long enough to be legal, plenty short enough to annoy  Senator Harkin. The stock finish is Johnson's Paste Wax over the steel-wooled original. The metal  is tacticool, smoothed with  100 emery and coated with flat black Krylon. Okay, it is still a $30 gun, but it's a non-ugly $30 gun of greater usefulness than before. It will probably live semi-permanently in the F150, along with the Cattaraugus 2250, a handful of 00 buck, and a box of No. 4s.

Rust

We're amidst a summer that makes Papua New Guinea look arid, and it is trying to take its toll of  my knives, most of which live in a wood case in the loading shack.  I got tired of wiping them down daily and tried a coat of engine fogging oil from a spray can. It seems to be working excellently.

The stuff dries to a rather  stiff coat, so I would be reluctant to use it on the working parts of firearms unless I wanted to bench strip them when Autumn brings drier weather.

The Inevitabilites

I don't know anything about death except that it's claimed too many people I love.

About taxes I know a little more, starting with my forced study of economics as it was understood by Keynes speaking through Paul Samuelson as taught by an academic  drone too dense to know why you pour piss out of a boot and too lazy to do it if he did. My education continued as a taxpayer who also had the professional  fortune to rub elbows with politicians, high and low.   To a man and woman  they loved the power to tax. They differed only in the power groups they wished to buy off.

Until an unlikely libertarian utopia flourishes, they're necessary to a limited extent. Defend what borders are needed. Support a court system of final resort. Enforce laws prohibiting the  initiation of violence including the  intellectual equivalent of violence, which is fraud. (You'll note the steal from Ayn Rand on the last point. No apologies; it is a thought too little discussed)

If there is one economic point to be drilled into the still educable  souls we run across, it is this:  Somewhere between most and all of our troubles result from the decision of governments that their taxing powers should not be limited by actual utility, that they should use their extortion  power to create social justice.

Pass this along to some statist redistrbutionist you know. If he can identify the politicians qualified to define "social justice," I shall recant.

Quick Take on the Zombie Threat

I am not sure we do our libertarian selves a great favor in perpetuating and laboring the Zombie metaphor. If and when TSHTF,  the enemy will be healthy and well-dressed hordes (three regiments per horde) of  lively anti-Constitutionalists.

It was fun for a while, like knock-knock jokes.
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