The hoi polloi has a regrettable habit of confusing "libertarian" with "liberal' and assuming we aquire our wisdom from MSNBC. Most of those who avoid that error figure we're a bunch of Michelle Bachman conservatives who spend our days and nights with Fox News. This pisses me off. Tam, too.
"...As bad as Hardball is at parsing reality, at least Chris uses polysyllabic words in his lies. If you switch the channel over to Fox & Friends, running at the same time, 50 points of IQ gets sucked from the room every time one of those vacuous bubbleheads opens their cakehole to coo over some pointless human interest story..."
.
Mar 6, 2011
Pornographic magazines
Like most of you, I keep an eye open for spare magazines. This one holds 20 rounds, and I hear two or three of my cousins in hoplopobic panic: "You don't NEED those clips that kill lots of people." *
Maybe not. Only future events will determine that. But when I find good ones, lonesome on a hobby dealer's table, begging for $5, I buy them anyway. Report me to the Brady bunch.
This one is marked S/W, but since I can find no record of a factory 20-rounder for the 59, I assume it's aftermarket by a maker with the courtesy to give the buyer a verbal hint about which pistol it is intended for. Many of them don't.
I got it home and stuck it in the grip. It wouldn't fit. It lacked about 3/4 inch of seating as it should, and I wasted a frustrating10 minutes looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places. Mangled lips? Misplaced catch slot? Another disabling burr on the alloy frame? None of the above. Then, more by accident than careful examination, I noticed two stamping-machine dimples on the front, and obviously the upper one was engaging the toe of the frame, preventing seating.
A few seconds on the old Baldor grinder erased the offender, and the magazine now fits and feeds. Aha. The maker also intended the magazine for Smith's CC version, the 469. The upper bump's purpose was to prevent overseating.
Nothing wrong with that. I suppose the instruction sheet warned of "minor gunsmithing required" for use in the large original model.
Maybe not. Only future events will determine that. But when I find good ones, lonesome on a hobby dealer's table, begging for $5, I buy them anyway. Report me to the Brady bunch.
This one is marked S/W, but since I can find no record of a factory 20-rounder for the 59, I assume it's aftermarket by a maker with the courtesy to give the buyer a verbal hint about which pistol it is intended for. Many of them don't.
I got it home and stuck it in the grip. It wouldn't fit. It lacked about 3/4 inch of seating as it should, and I wasted a frustrating10 minutes looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places. Mangled lips? Misplaced catch slot? Another disabling burr on the alloy frame? None of the above. Then, more by accident than careful examination, I noticed two stamping-machine dimples on the front, and obviously the upper one was engaging the toe of the frame, preventing seating.
A few seconds on the old Baldor grinder erased the offender, and the magazine now fits and feeds. Aha. The maker also intended the magazine for Smith's CC version, the 469. The upper bump's purpose was to prevent overseating.
Nothing wrong with that. I suppose the instruction sheet warned of "minor gunsmithing required" for use in the large original model.
---
*These ladies have a mystical bent, attributing malign self-will to all shooty mechanical objects.
Mar 4, 2011
I wrote a letter and here it is.
Dear President Obama,
I am sorry to bother you, but I was just wondering if you feel my pain like your secretary of state's husband used to do. So I thought I would write.
What's kind of hurting me this morning is that I need to buy some gasoline. Both of the F150s are way low, and the van I use most of the time is down to about a half or maybe a little lower. Plus, it's time to fill the gas cans for the little John Deere, the Dixon mower, the trim mower, and the weed whacker, and both chain saws. Near as I can figure it, that comes to about 80 gallons if I don't spill too much. In money that's maybe 280 dollars, give or take a little.
Now, Sir, I hope y'all understand that I'm not asking for a bailout like General Motors and the banks or insurance companies and like that. I hear those fellows were really hurting.
It's just that a guy has to save up so much to pay that much for gas. It's like, you know, I did all the stuff the government and the banks and other guys who are experts in the telling us what to do told me to do. I mean I quit smoking and didn't buy a bigger boat and even sold off a couple-three of my guns and put all the money plus some more away so there would be a little extra income for my future. Now that I am in my future, it isn't working out so okey-dokey.
Y'see, out of that money I saved up I put quite a little bit in the banks and the savings places and like that because they used to have a thing called "interest." It was sort of like them paying rent for using my money. Oh, it went up and down a little, sometimes about six bucks every year for every hundred I Ioaned them, sometimes only four or even three. But it was always something, you know.
But now they don't hardly pay me or my friends anything at all, maybe about fifty cents every year for every hundred dollars, even if I sign a paper saying they can have it for a long time.
I still get along pretty good with the girls who work for my bankers, so I was okay with asking one of them the other afternoon if they were ever going to pay me more interest, or rent, on my money. One of them (Molly, who is really cute) sort of grinned and said, "Not hardly. Y'see, when ever we need more money now we just call up the government and they give us some for about free and, besides, if we don't want to pay it back when we said we would, they are really nice about it."
Well, back to my gas, here, Mr.Obama. How this works out is it means that if I want to use the rent on money I saved up to buy the gas I got to buy this week, I got to have about 55 thousand dollars in the bank. If I do the rent on that will pay for it and I could use my other checks then to buy groceries and give the kids a little present once in a while and pay my property taxes and car licenses and like that. And buy minnows when the crappies start biting pretty soon now.
It would work out okay except that I think I will have to buy more gas again before I would get next year's rent on my money.
Now I don't know if you can do anything about this or not. Probably you are too busy advising Mr. Godhalfi and the generals in Egypt and so forth. But I hear you have a pal named Ben who is pretty much in charge of all the money in the country. I wonder if maybe you could take a second to ask Ben if he could fix things a little so that while gas is so high the banks can't have any more free money so maybe they would want to pay me a little more rent. Tim, too. Molly told me he helps Ben be in charge of the money.
Also I was going to tell you about how much money bacon costs,. Some other stuff at the Fareway store too and wonder why we re still giving all that money to farmers to grow funny gas and such, but this letter is pretty long already and, like I said, I know you are really busy with important things. So I'll just sign off for now.
Very truly yours,
Jim
I am sorry to bother you, but I was just wondering if you feel my pain like your secretary of state's husband used to do. So I thought I would write.
What's kind of hurting me this morning is that I need to buy some gasoline. Both of the F150s are way low, and the van I use most of the time is down to about a half or maybe a little lower. Plus, it's time to fill the gas cans for the little John Deere, the Dixon mower, the trim mower, and the weed whacker, and both chain saws. Near as I can figure it, that comes to about 80 gallons if I don't spill too much. In money that's maybe 280 dollars, give or take a little.
Now, Sir, I hope y'all understand that I'm not asking for a bailout like General Motors and the banks or insurance companies and like that. I hear those fellows were really hurting.
It's just that a guy has to save up so much to pay that much for gas. It's like, you know, I did all the stuff the government and the banks and other guys who are experts in the telling us what to do told me to do. I mean I quit smoking and didn't buy a bigger boat and even sold off a couple-three of my guns and put all the money plus some more away so there would be a little extra income for my future. Now that I am in my future, it isn't working out so okey-dokey.
Y'see, out of that money I saved up I put quite a little bit in the banks and the savings places and like that because they used to have a thing called "interest." It was sort of like them paying rent for using my money. Oh, it went up and down a little, sometimes about six bucks every year for every hundred I Ioaned them, sometimes only four or even three. But it was always something, you know.
But now they don't hardly pay me or my friends anything at all, maybe about fifty cents every year for every hundred dollars, even if I sign a paper saying they can have it for a long time.
I still get along pretty good with the girls who work for my bankers, so I was okay with asking one of them the other afternoon if they were ever going to pay me more interest, or rent, on my money. One of them (Molly, who is really cute) sort of grinned and said, "Not hardly. Y'see, when ever we need more money now we just call up the government and they give us some for about free and, besides, if we don't want to pay it back when we said we would, they are really nice about it."
Well, back to my gas, here, Mr.Obama. How this works out is it means that if I want to use the rent on money I saved up to buy the gas I got to buy this week, I got to have about 55 thousand dollars in the bank. If I do the rent on that will pay for it and I could use my other checks then to buy groceries and give the kids a little present once in a while and pay my property taxes and car licenses and like that. And buy minnows when the crappies start biting pretty soon now.
It would work out okay except that I think I will have to buy more gas again before I would get next year's rent on my money.
Now I don't know if you can do anything about this or not. Probably you are too busy advising Mr. Godhalfi and the generals in Egypt and so forth. But I hear you have a pal named Ben who is pretty much in charge of all the money in the country. I wonder if maybe you could take a second to ask Ben if he could fix things a little so that while gas is so high the banks can't have any more free money so maybe they would want to pay me a little more rent. Tim, too. Molly told me he helps Ben be in charge of the money.
Also I was going to tell you about how much money bacon costs,. Some other stuff at the Fareway store too and wonder why we re still giving all that money to farmers to grow funny gas and such, but this letter is pretty long already and, like I said, I know you are really busy with important things. So I'll just sign off for now.
Very truly yours,
Jim
Mar 3, 2011
Getting a lot of use out of Jane this week.
John of the GMA reports a Jane Russell Mountain in Sasebo Bay, another one of those things I should remember but don't. Anyway, here she is as background to USS Ozbourn, DD846 and another Gearing class destroyer tied to her port side. The picture could have been taken anytime from 50s through 1960/61 when the admirals frammed her. I mean the ship.
(Esoteric nautical knowledge you will never use: Many of the Gearing class tin cans underwent FRAM --Fleet Rehabilitation and Maintainence -- in the early 60s. Mount 52 -- the 5"- 38 twin gun mount you see just forward of the bridge -- was replaced with anti-submarine rockets. The powers also jacked around with the torpedo tubes and the 40mm mounts to make room for an ASW helicopter near the stern.)
EDIT -- The image comes and goes. If you get the stupid blue question mark, try this.
(Esoteric nautical knowledge you will never use: Many of the Gearing class tin cans underwent FRAM --Fleet Rehabilitation and Maintainence -- in the early 60s. Mount 52 -- the 5"- 38 twin gun mount you see just forward of the bridge -- was replaced with anti-submarine rockets. The powers also jacked around with the torpedo tubes and the 40mm mounts to make room for an ASW helicopter near the stern.)
EDIT -- The image comes and goes. If you get the stupid blue question mark, try this.
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