My Lazarus experience

It isn't fraught with spirituality or human drama. It is downright bestial in fact.

     The polar vortex exhausted my supply of ready firewood behind the burner. A warm and cuddly 30-degree day moved me to replenish from a ragged pile of cottonwood and oak out back, frozen through for  months. The chore almost done, I placed one billet on top of the burner to dry the surface moisture.

      A few minutes later I happened to glance at it, and my wondering eyes spied a happy little black bug. I named him Lazarus. Then I squished him.

      It's too early for bugs in the house.

Clear overkill

No more back packs at St. Johns. They are the terrorist book bag of choice, also favored by kids who require a clandestine comic book against the chance of an especially boring geography lecture.

Seems to me school bosses are stopping too far short of absolute security. Why not transparent pockets in the kiddies' jeans and pinafores? And mandatory Lucite wallets, particularly useful in nabbing randy (and probably futiley hopeful)  sixth-graders who carry a pack of those elastic things you get at the drug store.

An old-time school prank was floating a firecracker in a toilet bowl and lighting it off. Guys who got caught earned a paddle session and maybe a three-day suspension, but no one thought it a great reason to make Flossie Fine, the curve-breaking hall monitor, carry a see-through purse.

What happened at St. John's, you wonder? Nothing, actually, unless you quake at a couple of notes found in a rest room.

H/T Tam

Bunny Porn, Gun Porn

Yesterday was a savage bitch. In a fit of compassion at minus-17,  I fed Peter Rabbit a little of New Dog Libby's chow. The ingrate still refused to pose while I was outside. So this. The window was clean for a change, but double pane glass still fools the focusing fairies in my 3-volt cockroach.

Today, at last dark of morning, I awoke to rising temperatures, all the way up to three below.  Time to celebrate with Savage pleasure and with gratitude to that fine company for its findy sickle answer to Winchester levers -- especially the 1895.

She's been hanging on pegs since joining the family a few weeks ago, casually wiped down a time or two but still begrimed of long storage.  (Well-oiled storage, however; thank you, Mr. Previous Owner.)  Since there was nothing good on the internet, I decided to run her through my exterior detail shop.

Takedown was limited to pulling the Weaver K2, Redfield mount, and forearm. A little elbow grease with fine steel wool and brass brush left her shiny everywhere I could reach. The stock got a facial with Johnson paste wax, still my favorite cosmetic for oil-finished walnut.

She's from the 1950s in .300 Savage.

My never-sell-a-gun pledge remains in force, but I suppose I'll carry her to my next loophole table to explore trading opportunities. She ought to be even-up for a not-too-bad Garand or M1 Carbine. Maybe even a snazzy AR15 clone with a Pickiepickie rail, but I'd turn that offer down. I respect others' rights to own plastic, but, personally, I have my pride.

Poor Rahm

Hizzoner Emmanuel may appeal, but if he doesn't -- or if he tangles with appellate judges who have read the Constitution -- citizens will be able to purchase a gun in Chicago.

Well done, Judge Chang.  Well said, too.

"...a fundamental duty of government is to protect its citizens. However ... it's also obligated to protect fundamental rights named in the Constitution, including the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.

There's a happy little side note here. His Ineptness appointed  Judge Chang to the bench at a time when Duh Mare was still Obama's chief of staff and thus in tactical charge of advancing all Obama dreams.

I like schadenfreude so much that I'm hoping Rahm tosses and turns all night, yammering "wudda, cudda, shudda." The president, too.

Bwa-ha-ha.

Tit for Tat

President Obama got off the airplane without his spouse and faces a few lonely nights in a bachelor bed. Who knows if it is the First Lady's residual rage over his Mandela-funeral selfie with

If it is, an opportunity exists for those of us who love symmetrical justice. All it takes is an alert news photographer on hand when Michelle, on the loose in Hawaii, shoots a selfie with, for instance,

Do it Michelle. We don't care if he does throw one of his inept tantrums. At least your subjects will get a grin in return for the added cost of your few happy days on "separate vacation."

That should be the end of this post, but my fingers have been taken over by an evil muse of history who wonders if FDR personally footed the bill for Lucy Mercer's room just down the hall in Hot Springs. Probably not.

Applied science

My high-speed internet has become low-speed internet. Fortunately I understand and can explain the process. As temperatures approach absolute zero on the Gore/Kelvin scale, internet molecules slow way down and lose interest in feeling one another up.

You CAN TOO plan for everything

It's just that you may miss a spot or two.

Firewood: check. Propane for backup: check.  Electric heaters near vulnerable plumbing points: check. Neat piles of super-cold-emergency clothing and bedding: check.

Some other things too, because I'm not anxious for a Sam McGee outcome of  this outbreak.

---

...And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar; 
    And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and said: "Please close that door. 
    It's fine in here, but I greatly fear, you'll let in the cold and storm — 
    Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."*

---

Not to over-dramatize, but people die when consecutive daytime highs peak at a windy 15 or 20 below. Poor planners suffer disproportionately to better ones, and I hope I'm in the latter group, especially since the Commandant's residence here at Camp Jiggleview is, at heart, a summer cabin. Years of rebuilding, insulating, window upgading and so forth have made her snug, but she doesn't often face a challenge like this. 

'course, I could be missing an opportunity for another 15 minutes. Maybe I should just find a shelter,  kick back, wait for the television truck to come around, and tell the camera that the government didn't even offer me no help no how.

---

*Robert Service, of course. "The Cremation of Sam McGee."

What gun for cougar?

Our informant is utterly reliable. It's a cougar on my friends'  old family farm southwest of here, not too far from the pretty little Maple River and on the fringe of the semi-wild Loess Hills.

The cat report his morning touched off a small Facebook gigglefest about a trick one of the guys played on my No. 2 grandson a few years ago on the hunt where he came of age. He had just been promoted to armed hunter from his previous condition of servitude -- barehanded, bipedal, auxillary bird dog. The party was walking a wooded draw on the farm when the wag warned him, "Watch out for the cougars." -- sending the lad into a full tactical crouch for the second it took him to realize the chain jerk.

The boy, now man, is, of course, being reminded today that as an experienced lion  hunter, it is his job to venture forth and slay the beast. The old people are advising him on weaponry. The female (who, sigh, routinely outshoots all of us) suggested a mag tube extension for his shotgun. I countered that he had a new .30-06. It's only a matter of time before he's told that nothing less than .50BMG will do.

---

I've seen only a couple of cougars (far west of here a long time ago)  and never encountered one up close. So I know Jack Schidtt about it. From my reading, though, I don't think the gun bore makes much difference. Br'er Puma apparently likes to jump you from above and behind. He shakes you by the neck a few times, snaps off an appetizer, takes a minute to pee on the gun you never got into play, and hauls you off to a nice picnic spot.

---

Cougar sightings are becoming almost, but not quite, routine here. They're rare enough to be interesting. They're common enough to make a guy smile when he thinks of the Iowa DNR  experts who for years said there ain't no such critter round these parts; then that, if there were, they were just pets that grew up and got dumped. Or escaped from the circus.  It's only about now that the game cops are admitting that the big cat, like many wild things, can be highly adaptable. Unlike your basic game cop.

Happy New Year. (or) The Maelstrom Cometh. Again.

Ogden Nash told us about it:


“Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it's midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!”

I never ask my house sitter to tidy up the mess I leave her because

I just thank her, stroke her Alsatian (hoping he's not in one of his moods) and carry on. Day One is ordinarily dedicated to sloth. On Day Two, which would be today, a period known as "remedial housekeeping" begins.

Having eaten and drunk perishables down to near-zero levels before leaving,  I clean the refrigerator.  While I'm at it I scrub down cupboards and commodes, freeing my further attention for picking crap up and putting it where it belongs, or where it might logically belong in a home routinely titivated by, say, Donna Reed.

Ordinarily I would continue with the finer touches -- moistening Q-tips in disinfectant in order to clean those nasty floor corners, and perhaps repolishing  the silver eating utensils.

Unfortunately, I face an emergency. My portion of the northern plains is the X-ring for another gift from Alberta, so Martha Stewartage must wait until my ashes are hauled and the ready magazine near the fireplace is fully stocked with wood.

How cold will it be? I prefer not to say because some vulgarians among my dear readers might be moved to impure comments about rolling monkey balls and witches' equippage.

I prefer to keep it classy.

Just in case you missed it

To ABC's credit, it wasn't this morning's lede story, but it was sufficiently vital to be the pre-commercial Big Teaser at  xx:41:30 on the electric Good Morning America.

Patrick Swayze's widow has a "new love in her life."

But first...

The duck dork allows as how "they may have fired me but God didn't fire me." Voiced plus 80 per cent-screen text. The producer apparently presumes enough viewers who give a dynastic s--t  can read.

Merry Christmas, Friends

Waiting for the house sitter ...

.. and looking at the pile.

Even discounting gaudy packages, it is disheartening.

A brief case of reading and writing stuff. Another for a laptop and assorted electronics. Spare body parts, mainly reading glasses which are always eloping with my Bics. A suitcase of respectable clothes and a kit to make me presentable. A small satchel of tools. A bag of cold-weather clothes in case of stranding in a drifted ditch. Emergency food for the same scenario. Dog food. Dog water. Dog treats. Other stuff. All told maybe a hundred pounds for a very brief trip.

Once, I packed for a day in three minutes after breakfast. An Army surplus musette  bag with a can of Campbells chicken noodle soup, big enamel cup for cooking, canteen, handful of waxed kitchen matches, a few slices of Wonder bread, some just buttered, some with jam. If Mom wasn't too distracted by the little sisters, she would add cookies. A Western "hunting" knife rode on the belt, and the four-blade scout knife lived in the jeans picket.

Richie Lazear and Ron Jordison were equipped about the same, and I can't recall any of our all-day hikes down the river failing due to logistics. (Usually to Wildcat Den or Woodman Hollow, long before politicians decided they should become official wild places with a list of rules posted.)

For a while we carried a hatchet. Then we decided two rocks were fine for fine for cracking the hickory nuts. Another complication eliminated.

I know. This trip is entirely different. So are the times. So am I. But it still recalls the banal observation that we become slaves to our things.

Monk it. Move to Innisfree. Find a pleasant  cave.  Plait some nice clothes out of nettles. Say wise things to the pilgrims who come to sit at my feet.

The world is too far gone for irony.

A man on C-Span is named Cesar Purisma. He is telling us how to end goverrnment corruption.  He is minister of finance for the Philippines.

Sunday Symphony

1. I have been forced to speak sharply to Tam for negativity about weapons favored by patriotic old Luddites everywhere. A sad duty here in this season of charity and love, but some offenses must not go unchallenged.

2. I have created a war zone in my back yard. When I cook, I cook too much and freeze leftovers.  I accumulate too much nearly stale bread. From time to time, including last evening, space limitations make me bag it all up for the wild bunch. I generally spread it out atop the propane tank, a place which, despite valiant efforts, New Dog Libby can not reach. This morning I was entertained by a pair of quarrelome blue jays fighting for the orts as, below, a red squirrel smugly fattened himself on the stuff they scattered. Both jays and squirrel suffered a strategic reverse when my current feral cat, a big long-haired grey, arrived to take charge.

3. In days gone by, Christmas was time for intense creative energy trying to find just  the right gift. Time passes. Patience fades. I now judge the appropriateness of a present by how easy it is to wrap. If my family cares to consider this a warning, so be it.

4. You don't know much about the history of the Russian River, do you? Me either, so I was glad to pick up the paperback The Russian River (ISBN 0-553-28844 x)  and get the general drift painlessly, along with what might have been a few entertaiing and credible tales from the far western branch of the 1820s fur trade.  I muddled through,  although an early reference to a six-foot diameter Indian tent being comfortable for six or seven people pretty well destroyed its credibility.  (Sketch it out.) This is part of a "Rivers of America" series which is supposed to be a set of novels with a useful background of geographic and cultural truth. The other one I read, about the Powder River, wasn't much better. Too bad, a great idea poorly executed, I would guess because adequate writers were forced to work hastily.

5. The monkey balls are rolling loose. It's been tens of degrees below average for a long time, but I'm getting weary of Gore jibes. So Happy Holidays, Al, and I hope you can find a way to live with all that cheap natural gas coming out of North Dakota. If not, do us a favor and freeze in the dark.

Annoying Seasonal Lies

"Every kiss begins with a Kay."

Bullshit. A kiss begins with her sudden realization that he can build serviceable shelves.

Woof! Speaking of great ideas...

As previously reported in these pages, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke is retiring soon. Traditionally, we present gifts to fellows and gals who hang up their Armanis.

It is a fine tradition, and I think we should take up a collection and buy Ben a Weimariner.
.

When I was rich

For a glimmering moment around mid-morning I was a stock market mogul. My net worth soared by $7.53 as traders speculated that Ben and the Feds would keep on printing $85 billion* brand new Federal Reserve Cartoons  a month.

Then speculators of contrary opinion took over, and erased every cent of the gain on my eye-dropper full of a little ETF, a leveraged bond fund which is "interest sensitive." It pays a humongus dividend, but the price of the stock itself  goes up and down as often as Bill Clinton's shorts. Up when the market thinks Ben will keep printing free FRCs, down when it worries that he may cut back a little.

Fortunately, this doesn't signal complete financial disaster here at Camp Jiggleview, because The Commandant, yours truly, has just received a bonanza from the federal government led by President Obama.

He informed me that I have done such a wonderful job of retiring -- that is, becoming a lazy tax-sucking parisitical slob -- that I am to be awarded a raise in my monthly salary. It comes to $19 net, after allowing for deducts to Medicare. You've probably heard of Medicare. It's a gift from cuddly ol' Lyndon Johnson allowing me to be sick for free.  "Y'all just go ahead and stay in that hospital a while longer, Jim. We gone send the bill to your kids."

We had no money then --1965 -- either. We were financing a lot bullets to kill wogs -- mostly, but not exclusively, Vietnamese --  and on wonderful urban utopias such as Cabrini Green in President Obama's neighborhood.

Someone asked how we would pay for all that plus Jim's doctor bills. Lyndon said, "Why Hell, boy, we ain't actually gonna pay with real money or nothin'. We gone find a bunch of smart (ethnic slur deleted) boys who went to Harvard and Yale and them places and learned how to make make up money just by saying so. Y'all quit frettin'." 

---

Hey! You in the back. Stop singing whle I'm talking, dammit! Besides, you got it wrong. The song goes "Marching to Pretoria. Not Weimaria."

---

*More, actually. The 85 billion is just what they admit to.

Then there's the guy with the shovel and the wheelbarrow

The political class and journaloids can't seem to get over the Ryan-Murray "budget agreement."  It not only "reduces the deficit," but also ushers in a new era of "bipartisanship."

I think we plebians are supposed to see a nice little Jewish girl,. She and her husband  worry an ass to Bethlehem where she gives birth in a barn.  And they called the baby Bipartisan. Kneel and praise.

My faith is weak, so I reviewed what I know of our Constitution and  Amercan political history. No where can I find biprtisanship listed as a stated national ideal -- or even a very good idea.

It is not even very well defined.The closest you can figure it, the word means "We got caught doing something stupid as Hell, but  they helped so it's their fault, too."

---

Jimmy Durante raises his eyebrows in mock amazement and asks the cop, "What Elephant?"


















The pachyderm of the moment is Ben Bernanke, soon to be replaced by one Janet Yellen.  For six long years, Ben has taught Janet the art of plopping flops along the parade route, then decreeing  them to be "money" or even  "weath."

She thinks she has the knack now, even finds the thought of being the head flopper and decree-er  rather exalting.  She campaigned to be ringmaster of the printing press, and His Ineptness bought it, as will his Senate, probably in a more or less bipartisan way.

Bringing us back to the Ryan-Murray deal which saves a few bucks here, spends a few more bucks there and, in the end, promises (fingers crossed) to reduce the federal deficit by $23 billion over two years, or ten, or something. 

Every little bit helps, but there's that damned elephant again. Jumbo Ben has been creating Federal Reserve Cartoons at the rate of 85 billion a month.   This arithmetic for avoiding bankruptcy does not appear promising to this obsrever.

And just how does Ben go about creating the money to pay Barack for those IOUs (to which, conveniently, the president is permitted to sign your name, and mine)?

Easy as pie, as I earlier suggested.

"Plop."

My Underpants

Getting ready to go visiting, I changed into fresh clothes a few minutes ago. It's cold, so I decided on long johns and grabbed the set on top, a high-tech, micro-fibered, odor-destroying, item. Probably thirty or forty bucks worth of  redneck lingerie which came my way, unnoticed,  in an inventory buyout.

They're camo.

Camoflage underwear?

A guy can only assume someone has identified a niche market of perv hunters who like to flash Bambi before they shoot her mommy.

I don't think I could get this one by the TSA metal detector.

It's in fair condition, speaking generously, because someone was more in love with his six-inch 3400  rpm coarse grinding wheel than he was with this old veteran. You can't quite call it "poor" because it still has the skinny saw blade. True, Barney ground the teeth off when he finished worrying the big blade,  but judging from the ones for sale online, a fair number of them are missing the saw blade entirely.

I'm not always too fussy about the condition of my World War Two relics, and for the $6 bid which earned this one, I'm not fussy at all. That cheap, it could pay for itself as a spare canoe anchor. Big fella, sometimes called the "giant jack knife" by the pilots who carried it. It must weigh better than a pound and measures six inches closed and 15 1/2 with both blades open.

It was one of the solutions to the survival knife problem late in the war. Colonial developed it . This one was made by United Tool Co. in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

A fellow over on the knife forum seems to have all the other information you're likely to want.

Excuse me. I must retire to my dressing room and pare my nails.

Duelling news

I keep trying to save my friend's soul. He +tries+ to be a good anti-statist, but always get hung up on guns, and I think in his heart of hearts he's believes they  should be confiscated and converted to manhole covers. My latest effort, below,  is  generated by the Exeter, Rhode Island, gun squabble, and the congressional spat over what to do about plastic guns.

Personally, I trace part of the problem to the ready availability of The New York Times in his region. A copy can be purchased every day in undetectable cash deals, no permit required, no cooling-off period, no age limit, no restrictions on concealed -carry or  even brandishing. 

---

I suppose your  "Exeter Swamp Yankees" and my Iowa Hog Lot Wranglers share a passion other than oiling and stroking our barrels as we contemplate the the pleasure of our next mass murder.

I refer, of course, to our well-known study of epistemology and our curiosity about why, to certain groups, knowledge becomes valid by virtue of publication in the New York Times.

Why, just the other day my epistemology advisor, Melvin "Pigs" Dykstra, blew his nose on his sleeve and announced that he had been reading BusinessWeek lately and found (in his own quaint words), "By golly, guys, blamed if I ain't startin' to think that there's some other stuff to read and a lot of it ain't wrote by pointy headed interlecturals who genufuct or however you call it to that picture of Ol' Abe Rosenthal on their desks."

Here's what I think he was referring to:


A sample about "undetectable" guns: We’ve been down this road before. In the late 1980s, gun-control advocates tried to ban an Austrian-made Glock that was fabricated mostly from industrial-strength plastic and demonized as a weapon that would defy airport security. Congress held hearings and then passed the original undetectable gun ban. Strangely, though, the Federal Aviation Administration concluded that the Glock wasn’t really a threat at all. If screening personnel paid attention, they could detect the gun-shaped piece of plastic, not to mention the bullets needed to make the Glock lethal, the FAA said. “That was a big ‘oops’ moment,” Richard Aborn, a former president of Handgun Control, now known as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, once told me. “We made the classic mistake of failing to do our homework.”

And about self-willed guns killing  people: 

Apart from politics, dispassionate observers must question the simplistic liberal slogan that more guns equals more crime. The U.S. has seen a two-decade period during which private gun ownership has continued to soar (some 300 million firearms are now in civilian hands), while crime has diminished.

---

Mel's opinion got back to the Democrat who lives in his county. He flicked the dust off his Hillary button and yelled that Business Week is just another one of those right-wing tea-party rags owned by Rush Limbaugh and edited by the National Rifle Association.

That made Mel maddern a wet hen, but he calmed himself and quietly corrected the button man. He allowed as how he thought the magazine belongs to (former) Mayor Whatzizname Bloomberg who started up Mayor's Against Illegal Guns.  And who, he might have added, openly and blatantly reads (and even approvingly quotes)  The New York Times.

As an aside, I need to note that Bloomie usually doesn't quote the Times about free-for-all Terry Stops of New York City citizens guilty of EWBBB, that is, Existing While Being Black or Brown.

Housekeeping

That latter-day Willa Cather I mentioned a while ago has moved her blog to Word Press. The change is reflected on the blog list. She's filed as Doris in Nebraska in honor of an old private joke.
.

 About 1943. Ten flinches? Perhaps he wanted to be sent off to cooks and bakers school.

No special reason

Nelson Mandela: A short quiz

True or False: Nelson Mandela was born, lived, and became famous in order to have an extended funeral for the photo-op benefit of every politician, has-been politician, and superannuated journalist who can elbow his way to a teevee camera.

I'm pretty sure the right answer is "False," but  you can surely be forgiven for thinking otherwise.  In other words:

 "Dear Television: 

Enough. We get it. Now shut up and permit Mr. Mandela be laid to rest with some shred of dignity.   

Sincerely. 

Us.







 "

Elsewhere at the gun auction...

I semi-promised a price log, but it just wasn't interesting enough to bother with.  It was a consignment sale  apparently built around  a couple of small dealers who were reducing inventory or getting out of the business. Most of the offerings were junkish old shotguns and ho-hum NIB stuff, heavy on the Glockenpoppers and Fry Points.  In general, these WalMart--ish pieces brought less money than we've come to expect. Several NIB Glockers went for pre-Obama prices --$400-$500.

The Garand, a little better than the average example, brought $1,000. The Rockola carbine brought $750, one bid better than my top; very, very nice but with a Blue Sky import stamp.

Yours truly still spent too damned much money.  Foolishly. Why the heck does he want a Nagent? He has no sentimental ties to Tula. 'cuz it was cheap, that's why, and pretty as a Russian Lady Tractor Driver.

The nice 1953 Savage 99 was a little more defensible. Ever since his buddy in the GMA lucked into one, he' been beside himself with envy. (Fun fact: The .300 Savage round  was built to match original .30-06  military ballistics.)

The other two were junkers, one Stevens Little Krag, complete and  $20  and one non-shooting  Mossberg, bought for the price of the magazine which was needed here for the 152 -- the Mossy .22 with the flip-down fore end to make a kid feel like John Wayne with a Thompson.

(If I don't watch myself I'm going to get seriously and expensively interested in collecting boys' rifle.)

Some other stuff, too, but not worth mentioning except as they affected the total day's tab, the size of which made me grateful for friends who fed me last night.

Song of the South

There's a generation of reloaders who think the finest bullet -- serious target and hunting stuff --should cost a nickel or less.  They cringe at the Obama-era tab of two bits and up for one bullet, even when paid for in Bernanke's Federal Reserve Cartoons.

So this pleased me yesterday:

A fresh thousand of them (.224 and 55 grains)  grace the reloading shack. They set me back more than a nickel per, but way less than a piece of zinc with a hokey picture of George Washington carelessly stamped on it.

Veterans might recognize it, but it's been off the market for a long time, and youngsters might not identify it as a vintage Nosler, one of the first commercial solid base designs, meant to expand but hold together.

I included the picture to show the oddly wide machined cannulure. It was supposed to a lot of good -- reduce pressure slightly, grip the case mouth tightly, improve accuracy, reduce the national debt, and prevent the UN from admitting Red China.

Mr. Nosler called it his "Zipedo."  Love it. Zipedo doo dah, zipedo day...

Ho Ho Ho and maybe Bang Bang Bang

A good little boy around here is thinking hard about buying himself a Christmas present when Tom Eberle auctions off bunch of lethal weapons (pdf) later this morning.

Who wouldn't want chance to augment his fantasy command to a full squad, just in case the captain orders him to take the MG42 nest from the Nazis, somewhere in France, 1944.

His current in-place TOE arms and equips only a scant fire team -- webbing and weapons for a private, a senior corporal. And himself, of course, a young but grizzled staff who left his carbine back in the foxhole to permit greater mobility as  -- and we're talking Audie Murphy here -- he leads the charge with his 1911A.

Of course we'd wipe them out and earn two silver stars and The Medal, but a squad would be better, even if scant -- my vets plus a couple of peach fuzz draftees from the repple depple. I'd arm them myself with the Springfield Garand and Rockola  carbine which lead off the rifle section in the sale bill.

N.B. -- Yeah, it's possible that I could expand my team to seven or eight with captured German, Frog, and Norwegian stuff, but that is not part of the fantasy which compels me to blow them away with Made in America.

---

We'll see what the disbursing officer thinks.

---

I'll try to log and post the prices, at least for the more interesting stuff.  Beats working.

Winter havoc

Twelve below this night. And me with only one dog.

I know some of you guys don't believe us when we talk about bigass continental highs, huge, cold, sluggish ones. Almost Jack London cold;  Vilhjalmur Stefansson cold.

Take a look at the weather map, dammit. See the triangle with its point down in the Texas malarial zones? Even there around Houston shivering white guys are hiring mules named Pedro to sneak them across the border and on down to Coatzacoalcos.

Anyway, the cold high spreads up and out. By the time it hits my  sorry latitude it  spans Flyover from the Cascades to the Soo Locks and plops its butt down for a nice, long visit.

Oh sure, it goes up into Canada too, but screw those guys. Buncha foreigners.  Let 'em freeze from their heads right down to their long-gun registry. What's Canada ever done for us?

Huh?

Okay. I meant to say what's Canada done for us lately?

As if hi-cap magazines aren't evil enough...

... now we face the threat of hi-cap -- multiple warhead? --  cartridges.

Down in Des Moines a thugnut went out in his yard and started blazing away at this and that with something that looked to Des Moines Register reporters like an assault rifle.

No one got hurt until cops arrived and shot the perp down.

Later, a police spokesman and the six -- repeat six -- Register reporters combined to produce this explanation:


Police found a semi-automatic rifle similar to an AR-15 and a handgun with the suspect in the backyard. Several gun cartridges were found in the backyard, police said. (Police Sgt. and spokesman) Halifax said cartridges for the rifle used often contain 10 or 15 rounds.

It is simply mind-numbing that a mirvel like this was developed without any of us gun freeks having heard about it.

A little educashun Muzak if you please, Maestro

Randi Weingarten is not all that's wrong with the United States, but if you happen to be looking for a poster girl for the fubarity of our schools,  she might be on your short list.

Randi is president of the American Federation of Teachers. She appeared on C-Span today to explain away why her 1.5 million union educators can't educate kids. As you might expect, it's because they don't get paid enough and don't get enough respect.

There's nothing unusual about that sort of nonsense from AFT or the other teacher unions.  The striking thing is this woman's analytical and rhetorical approach. In essence, she rilly rilly rilly cares, and her wise and sincere concerns are products of her autobiography.

A reporter asked a how schools might reduce bullying. Ms. Randi responded that she is gay and that makes her an extra-caring expert on bullying.

Another reporter asked about the impact of city bankruptcies on teacher pensions.  She revealed that her father was an engineer and didn't get a very good pension.

Near the end, a crusty old guy tried to cut through the crap with a question about "zero tolerance" for most everything public school drones find politically incorrect. (Jack gives Jill a little hug at the bottom of the hill and is expelled for sexual harassment.)  Ms. Randi explains she understands the issue because she can remember being a high school teacher. And because "...I sometimes close my eyes and think." ( About half right there, Ms. Randi, if you ask me.)

It's all accompanied by great body language of engaged emotion. Her head blurs from the motion. Her  neck stretchs and retracts beneath a visage well-practiced in broad, dramatic segues from smiley to frowny to amazement to just plain querulousness.

I blame public eduction for that, too. I'm all but certain her high school speech teacher told her class that the key element in exposition is enthusiasm (!).  "Say it like you mean it, kids, and everything else will fall into place." Yeah. everything except a useful contribution to an important discussion.

I repeat. This woman leads the American Federation of Teachers. It's as though we still have the student on one end of the log but sent Horace Mann off to sell insurance and replaced him with Phyllis Diller.



  

The Bank I Didn't Buy (More desktop clearing)

But it was a serious thought for about 15 minutes last spring in Terril, about a half-hour away, a declining little town. My ideas were (1)  it would be dirt cheap and (2)  I could  do a quick and dirty rehab and use it for storage and a private indoor range.

The first notion was correct, the second not. Even at the auction price of about $2,000, she was just too tired. No intact windows, no mechanics, electricity, or plumbing, needing a roof job and a new main floor, joists and all.

It was all just too much work and expense, even for the smirky pleasure of answering the   "What  do you do?"" question with, "I own a bank."

Home of the real Sand Pebbles

Just clearing my desktop here. For some reason or another I once thought some readers might be interested in what is said to have been McKenna's real-life inspiration for the San Pablo.

Oh, to have been a China sailor before the Japs, before Mao, before Chaing.

ETA: USS Villalobos PG42. (PG=patrol gunboat)

Dang you, Bubba.

Okay. I know it's just a Carcano you bought from Joe Bob for eight bucks one Saturday night in the 60s when he was hurtin' for cash to take Emma Lou to the drive-in picture show.

But still.














The "SA" stamp identifies it as one of the Italian goofs in 7.35x51 (or 52, sometimes) that Mussolini palmed off on the Finns for their Winter War. The SA ("Suomen Armeija" or "Finnish Army")  didn't much like it, but they were desperate and issued most of them to REMFs. Still, they're mildly scarce and a nice piece of World War 2 history. Too nice to run through your woodshed chop shop.

At least you didn't fool with the metal, meaning I need to find only a stock and furniture to have a "correct" if not fully authentic rack mate for the other iron from the 1939-45 horror.

Errrr. Forty bucks when the hammer fell Saturday, if you must know, and that's why I'm grinning, regardless.

Sea Hunt!

As I may have mentioned, occasional insomnia has its rewards. I conked out early, exhausted by  a harrowing 70 minutes of telephonic registration for a new health insurance policy. I woke up about 2 a.m. You know the feeling. "So much for this night's sleep. What the Hell do I do until sunrise.?"

So I turned on the teevee. Lo and behold, there is Lloyd Bridges jumping off a boat. I couldn't have been more pleased.

---

A long time ago I had just returned to San Diego from my second WestPac cruise.  Loafing round my girl's apartment I'd occasionally glance at her 11-inch black and white television receiver and happened to catch an image of Lloyd Bridges jumping off a boat.  I couldn't have been more pleased.

While I couldn't claim that my girl possessed the center-fold sightliness of  Jan Harrison, Lloyd and I did share something. We were divers, SCUBA experts in the wonderful years before every vacationing data entry clerk from  Exit 12, New Jersey, became a "certified(!) diver" after a three-hour session in a Nassau hotel pool.

Strictly speaking, "expert" somewhat exaggerates my skills in those days. I was as adept as a guy could get after maybe ten or twelve wet hours, not all of them with breathing gear.

Westbound destroyers called at Midway Island en route from Honolulu to Yokosuka for fueling and one short day of sightseeing. That was plenty. When you've seen one Laysan Albatross, you've see them all. The same goes for long, hot air strips hearkening back to the rotary piston era.  So, on the second trip I checked out mask, snorkel and fins from Special Services and went reef gliding. Hooked.

In the middle of the six-month cruise we generally spent a few days on Guam, the world's second most boring island (after Manhattan).  The morale station there had tanks and regulators available, and all you had to do was sign a chit certifying that you knew what you were doing. It was my first and only lie, but I managed to survive a couple of afternoons on the pretty reefs. Later, back on Civvy Street, I undertook to actually learn something about it and, eventually, wound up with an instructor's card from the YMCA and some other documents from PADI and NAUI.

All of which is to say I have never gotten over the miracle of artificial gills, of going down there where, when the fish blew bubbles at me, I could blow back.   Just like Mike Nelson of Sea Hunt, which you can see on THIS channel.

Oh. Jan Harrison, you ask?

I'm aware that among my readers lurk a few degenerates who prefer more revealing images. Shame. This is a family oriented blog. Couldn't find one anyway.

The National Grieving

It has already begun, the annual Niagara of tears for the loss of our Great Leader, a grieving this year made more significant by one of the magic-number anniversaries. It happened fifty years ago come Friday.

I am prepared, handkerchiefs laundered and stacked at the ready. My screen glows with multiple Windex treatments so I miss no detail of the video tributes to the man who illuminated the planet and would have saved it but for the mischance of death.

Already written and on the blog queue is a finely detailed account, some nine thousand words after the most brutal editing and condensation. It explains to a breathlessly awaiting world exactly where I was and what I was thinking on that tragic Day the Music Died.

It is most somber.

November 22, 1963, the death of Aldous Huxley.

C.S. Lewis, too.

O! Brave New World!

Tear-mongering television has about turned the Tacloban disaster into just another ho-hummer, something like a sudden rain storm which ruins Mrs. Abernathy's garden party.

To wit: The CBS teevee news correspondent this morning -- on the spot with disaster in the background -- announced in his lede that while food and water were being delivered to some 100,000 people, "The needs are still enormous. It can take five hours to charge your cell phone."

I weep for the poor victims forced to endure hours without the comfort of a ring tone, but I rejoice in the keen sense of proportionality displayed by the United States electric news industry.

Obama: Don't worry; be happy

I'm taking a break from hands-on life this morning to note the upcoming address by President Obama about a "fix" for the problem he promised would never occur. You'll recall it. "If you like your current health insurance, you can keep it." Period. No qualifications. Uttered as he touted his version of English health care for America.

(Leading to a side question: When is the last time you heard of an American flying to London for for treatment of a rare and complicated disease? But I digress.)

Of course any fix he proposes won't work, so I won't get very interested in its details. More interesting will be his stab at restoring his credibility. I suspect what ever he has to say will play well enough with mouth breathers and gum chewers still entranced by the visionary rhythm of his Hope and Change sermons.

For the skeptics among us,  I expect the actual revelation will be confirmation that this inept man reached the limits of his competence as a Chicago ward heeler, albeit one who went to the Ivy League to learn how to string the comforting  buzz words together.

So what does The Admiralty lose next -- rum, sodomy, or the lash?

As if my week hasn't been bad enough, my friend JAGSC has just invited my attention to the end of ship building for Her Majesty's Royal Navy in  Portsmouth. A very long era ends, from Henry VIII's fighting carrack Mary Rose to the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, due for sea trials year after next.

That's a lot of imperial scurvy and lime juice punctuated by routine entertainment with the cat-o-nine-tails and the occasional stiff-upper-lip extravaganza known as flogging around the fleet. Too, it is said that Portsmouth  developed the first  practical yard arm which could bear the weight of an insolent Jack Tar and half a stone of stout hempen line.

I mourn the end of most traditions, but as the direct descendant of an Irish-American who shot at Redcoats 1776-1783, I suppose I should feel smug about this one. Final victory of a sort and all that. Maybe.

The Royal Navy isn't what it used to be, but up through the middle decades of the 20th Century it helped serve a personal purpose for the likes of me.

The socialist goodthinks who, post-Churchill, captured British politics retained an urge to sail around and wag their (now empty) cannons at commies and wogs. That gave Yanks like me an excuse to put on bell bottoms and dixie cups and go to the Oriental seas, loaded to pull Albion's nuts out of the fires again.

It wasn't a terribly bad way to come of age. As Mr. Kipling explained, "...the things that you learn from the yellow and brown  ...".

---

I'm humming some Oscar Brand here, but already having offended about everyone I can think of, I won't compound my sins by typing out his lyrics.

---

JAGSC remarks that Lord Nelson may somewhere be mounting a "spirited" protest. :)

Cottonwood boles at 20 paces

Just a place holder here. I'm fully occupied reducing logs to firewood. The splitter works like a dream, even if it looks hardly at all like a product from The Sharper Image.

I'm pleased to have it, but I fear the wood will not burn so brightly. It will lack the seasoning sweat, the hand-splitter vulgarities hurled at knots and school marms, the indefinable charm of nature put to good use without the intervening stink of gas and oil. Still, as I say, it's a good thing to own for a man approaching the years of his maturity.

I'll be back before long, and among the first orders of business I intend to challenge Rand Paul to a duel.

A place to unload

I generally avoid posting my most sincere, deep-seated, passionate and personal  feelings on the Internet. In the first place, they're private. In the second, almost no one gives a crap.

I make an exception this morning beause I am powerless to hold it in. To wit:

I really hate installing a new toilet.

The Gore of the Season to ye, Mate

The Smugleye-on-Lake village zoning inspector dropped by to make sure I wasn't making wind without a permit or something.  New Dog Libby took exception to his manner. One thing led to another.

Another Willa Cather

Out on the Nebraska plains, not too far from me, an old friend is joining the blog world

Light NEAR the End of the Tunnel

(On the TMR blog roll)

She's  Doris of the life-time team of Doris and Gene (RIP). Together they battled the markets, the weather, and gummint in an effort to create your BBQ back ribs.

She probably wasn't personally as hands-on with the cattle as, say, Jinglebob is. But you can bet your Prius she knows which end of the cow makes a moo and which a splat.

In her spare time she became a rather well-published writer, not to mention acquiring a mother's interest in C-130 war birds.

Drop over and welcome her if you please.

Warm

The concrete picnic table on the Utulei beach was ugly and uncomfortable, so uncongenial that it simply had to be a relic of United States Navy rule over  American Samoa. Nevertheless, I began my working days there, in company with island society, Governor Coleman; his indispensable sidekick and my best island friend, Pete Fanene (RIP);  a few traditional chiefs; and assorted bureaucrats, hangers-on and suck-ups of high station and low.  The caste system notwithstanding, traditional Polynesia presents itself as a rather egalitarian community.

Gossip circulated. Hangovers were nursed with canned papaya juice and styrofoam cups of lukewarm Nescafe. The governor would hint at what he was thinking about today. His listeners often enough responded with what he should be thinking about when he eases himself into the executive chair behind his acre of desk.

Further description is unnecessary for the reader familiar with the regular morning coffee-shop klatch in every small town and city neighborhood in America. Only the local color differed, palm trees instead of utility poles, coral sand under foot rather than potholed tar, and nearly all the men wearing skirts.

---

The main island of Tutuila lies a little more than 14 degrees south of the Equator, firmly in the realm of the southeast trade winds. Which is to report that it is year-around mild on the skin of a palagi who grew up in the continental roaring 40s,  a thousand miles and more from any tempering ocean, where avoiding frostbite was a primary concern for months of every year.

So it took me a while to become accustomed to the occasional picnic-table observation, "cold this morning" as the Samoan man gathered his lava lava closer about his knees and buttoned his aloha shirt to the neck.  Lord yes, it must be down to 67 or 68 degrees. Mighty unusual weather for July in the other hemisphere. But near the end of that year-long contract I did get used to it and would agree in classic Heartland understatement, "Yep. A bit  nippy."


---

The pleasant recollections dropped full force on me this morning as I tempered the oak fire with a sprinkle of water and threw open some windows and doors to get the temperature of my quarters back down to something under 85.

(Friends complain that my place is often overheated, and perhaps it is. If I feel like defending myself I use the excuse that my blood was thinned by too many hundreds of  mornings breakfasting in jungle shade to music of mynah birds.)

But 85 degrees in here is excessive, and even New Dog Libby got grouchy, abandoning the foot of my bed for the cooler wood floor of the kitchen.

I blame a new-found feeling of wealth, untold riches. You see:

The jury-rigged log splitter functions as designed! (A writer is allowed one exclamation point per 10,000 words, and I make no apology for employing this month's quota here.)

It works better, in fact, and in the remaining 10 minutes of daylight after beta testing was completed yesterday, I laid in perhaps four days worth of old cured burr oak, perfectly sized for my small firebox.

By hand, that would be the labor of a couple of hours or more at the added expense of an ibuprofen or two and the occasional wound dressing. The mechanical ease of letting Archimedes'  thinking meet my fuel processing needs leads to the rich feeling that I have won a significant battle over the fossil-fuel thugs who enjoy impoverishing humans such as I, citizens who wish merely to retain an acceptable core body temperature even as the winter Alberta wind eyes our homes with evil intent.

---

And to think they laughed when I sat down to play the hydraulics.

Spot News

ABC News breathless headline which may be news to someone:

U.S. Spy Scandal Grows 

And the sub-head

   Obama Unaware for years.

Surprising exactly who about anything, please?

Packrattery to the rescue; interim report

Its engine died a few years go, and the  old home-made log splitter* has been a yard decoration ever since while I refined bulky cellulose into fuel with a six-pound maul.

Then, last week, my buddy from down the road, a man who owns an International Harvester M**, stopped by to wonder if we could jury-rig "my"*** splitter to his hydraulics. In theory, a lot of screwing around and head-scratching, but no conceptual problem, just run new hoses from the M's hydraulic pump to the splitter valve.

For one of the few times in my life, "in practice" seems to be hand-in glove with "in theory," better, in fact.  For less money than I expected and after only one trip to the farm supply store for hoses,  I have test-fitted all of the new  plumbing. Result:  we're just a few dabs of pipe-thread compound away from beta testing.

(Or, as the NASA Apollo 13 engineer said, "Looks okay to me, Percival. Let's give her a whirl.")

Packrattery? Yes, because it both dishonorable and a pain in the butt to keep running to town. A man is supposed to have the junk he needs..

There were sundry needful items in the box labeled "misc iron pipe stuff" that worked, topped by a lucky find elsewhere.  I absolutely had to have a 3/4 to 1/2 reducing ell. None in the aforementioned box, but in desperation I checked another one labeled "odd brass crap."  Eureka. (We don't intend to operate it submerged in salt water, so galvanic corrosion should be a minor annoyance at worst.)

If it works I'll post a picture of a big  new woodpile. If it doesn't, I'll deny having written this post.

---

*Built in the 60s or 70s by my pals K and B, based on a humongous I-beam salvaged from a road grader and allegedly including parts from a B-29.

**For my urban friends, that's a tractor, the cat's meow of high tech agriculture when introduced in 1939.

***Actually, title still rests with the builders, but I have hopes of negotiating a relatively long-term lease.

And mark it "urgent" please

I see that a fellow named Venter has published a new book explaining that we can do about whatever we want with biology these days. Specifically, he supposedly explains his procedure for remotely reading a genome, translating it to digitalese, and sending it via email. The idea seems extensible to actually duplicating the organism -- or at least its DNA --  on your 3D printer if you're tired of using it to make terrorist pistols.

Some where, some one must have a molecule of

Send it along, please.

Officer Friendly strikes again

Nothing looks neater than a big Harley with an assault rifle strapped on, unless it's the driver cop himself,  all decked out in leather, ballistic nylon, and a hi-cap .40 by Glock. The contrast of Officer Charlie McCoppy in tacticals with a peaceful school yard simply adds to his patriotic, law-and-order aura as he strolls around friendly-like, cautioning sternly against reefer madness.

It is a wet dream for some suburban clown who manages to get himself hired by a militarized police force taking its tactical and strategic cues from the same movie and television fantasies as the tyke who beat the "failsafes."  

You see, some little kid, probably raised by a flat-panel telescreen, fingers the unattended "AR-15" and makes it go bang. A bullet "disintegrates" and scatters itself or something hot and hard (pieces of the Hawg?) into the wee ones.

That no one was badly hurt signals more of divine grace than of a cop and his bosses possessing, among them, perhaps three functioning neurons.  The bracket was secure according to the company that sold it so why bother to unload while Officer Friendly does DARE business?  He feared the perceived threat that  some some third grader forgot to take his ADHD medicine and might throw an eraser?

Attribute whatever irony you like to the final AP graf:

The shooting occurred while police visited the school for Red Ribbon Week, an annual national event that features a series of activities designed to raise awareness about drug and alcohol abuse.

How about another-colored ribbon week designed to alert kids to the danger of Keystone Kops abuse? I suggest one event for the affair. Governor Brown and Mayor Bloomberg lead a panel re-explaining why the police are the only ones qualified to carry weapons.





 

The treacherous love nip

Rape is just around the corner.
.