Soylent Green, Variation on the Theme

You're sick and tired of being in government databases, so you die, just to avoid the aggravation and  to make your point in quite a sincere manner.

Sorry, Bunky. That doesn't work any more. Long after your ashes have been scattered to the howling statist winds, you continue to serve Big Brother via his new and enhanced death certificate.

"After a family member dies in the state of Iowa, survivors may hear some unexpected questions when they go to the funeral home to make arrangements: Did he smoke? Where was she employed? How much education did he have?

"Those questions and others are part of the information included on new death certificates ... (to) determine which health programs are needed."


Which is to say,  your eternal contribution to the government Domesday Book will be cited to justify forbidding your grandchildren and their children's children  the privilege of a bacon slice.


This leaves me little choice but to draft my own death certificate and have it officially recorded, and I'll pay any pre-mortem bribe necessary to make it happen.


"Decedent  was an advanced-degreed white male omnivore, disadvantaged by a strong interest  in minding his own business, complicated by pathological urge to track machinations of snooping government assholes, This led to the proximate cause of death, PDBE. (Plain Damn Bureaucratic Exasperation.)"

Gun auction AAR

The guns themselves:  Pfffbbtt. I left before they sold.

The "German medical kit"  turned out to be U.S. Don't ask me why.  It was a box containing a couple of incomplete field surgical kits, some interesting dry chemical pad heaters, and miscellaneous WW2/Korea accoutrements -- canteen assembly, mess kit, squad cook kit, etc. Bought the lot.

Rest of sale: ho-hum.  Glad to be home. About to kick New Dog Libby off the couch.

A better Hungarian

"I ama 

With me loophole on me shoulder

No one else in the  Smugleye Irregulars lusts to hit the Fort Dodge loophole  today, so I'm passing too. That's manageable if I can steel myself into cramming a full quota of weekend loafing into a single Saturday. That would leave me free to attend an auction-style loophole tomorrow .

The offerings are uninspiring and include a real-live Rohm RG10. I have done many reprehensible things, but owning one of those once upon a poverty-stricken time is among the most shameful.

Otherwise the handguns include a stainless Taurus revolver in .22 magnum on which my top bid would be in the $75 range, and that only on grounds that I might quickly find a Greater Fool.  I have never understood the caliber except as a marketing con -- a few hundred extra  FPS over the .22 LR at about three times the cost, and unreloadable.

A Hungarian called  PA63 -- which certainly lacks the pizzazz of a name like  Zsa Zsa --  is offered in .380 ACP. The internet peddlers suggest I could pay about $160 if it's nice, but I won't.  Don't like that caliber either.

Otherwise it is a barnyard pile of hardware-store shotguns, pump and singles. I pick those up if they're cheap and have been known to chop the barrels to 18 1/2 inches, remove the patina with a wire wheel, and paint them flat black. (Krylon. Always insist on quality!) Extra loopholes on me shoulders against a putative risin' o' the moon.

But I'm really going to try for the WW2 stuff -- GI dog tags and "German medical kit." We'll see.