Which Twin Has the Sanctimony?*

I don't know why an excellent science site is running the story this week. There's no news peg I can see, and the space launch doesn't happen until next spring.

But it is still interesting that identical astronautical twin brothers are teaming up to let scientists compare human bodies in space to those on the ground.

Scott Kelly will fly to the ISS for a year. Brother Mark will stay down here with Gabby. Each will be poked and prodded and tapped to observe and compare  physiological changes.

It sounds like a reasonable experiment to me, but I note a flaw. Let's reverse the roles and send Mark up there, sparing Earthlings a full year of his pestering us about new gun laws.

---

*I told you early exposure to electric teevee sets makes you weird.

---

H/T to brilliant No. 2 grandson (to brilliant No. 1 grandson on Facebook)

Nothing Runs Like a Deere and Murdering Endangered Turtles

The two-tractor fleet has raised steam and stands ready to sortie at the command of Higher.

It is an annual event, a spring tuneup and oil change combined with this-and-that small rehabs and upgrades. The process brought no real trouble. Both 318s popped off quickly with a battery boost. The  mower version did choose shortly thereafter to reject its ancient battery. Down-home fixes to flush out the sulfate no longer worked. A trip to Arnold Motor Supply and $80.37 solved the problem.

The baby bulldozer -- same model with a blade instead of a  mower deck --  was more tractable and wanted only a few body bolts tightened. I was grateful enough to do a polish job on the plastic hood. That looked so nice Ms. Mower got a similar beauty treatment with Turtle Wax that has hidden in the shed since an  auction during, probably, the Clinton Administration.

Leaving only the trim mower still untouched, a $99.97 WalMart special which has run an amazing number of years for an obvious throwaway machine. It will get its share of attention, but no polish. When a guy gets fussy about pretty push mowers -- in  fact, about much "trimming" at all -- he enters the danger zone for Spandex, cross Nike trainers,  and a cute cement skunk under one of the river birches.

it all took some time, so I wasn't able to write my essay on the Bundy Ranch travesty and the federal government decision to murder the desert tortoises it has been using as an excuse to steal Mr. Bundy's cattle.  Never mind. Joel did it.

Place holder complete with lame excuses

I'm in debt, in the hole, owing my blog quite a lot. A promised report on the local loophole two weeks ago, the end of the maple syrup saga, further ruminations on the Coltoid Commander project, an embarrassingly self-congratulatory report of progress in bringing Camp Jiggleview, of which I am Commandant, up to at least Pa Kettle standards. Lord knows what else.

I haven't even vented my spleen on the increasingly mournful assault on the American dollar by those hired to protect it.  (Sorry, for "dollar" read "Federal Reserve Cartoon.")

Honest, Pa, I'll do 'er but I cain't find my round tuit yet.

For the moment, however, non-journalistic demands are in command. New Dog Libby, for instance, is being an incredible nuisance in the spring sun, bitching constantly -- if articulately only in lab language (nose on lap; drool on shoes)  -- that we haven't played fetch for, why, it must be twenty  minutes now.

Also, I come to you as of an hour ago from the official Base Administrative Center rather than the Great Room of the CO quarters. It's nice to be nestled again in the big library. The books don't make me any smarter, but they make me feel smarter, and, damn it, that has to count for something.

A once and future life

Three days ago, in the deary morning:

A little later that day;



















A few minutes ago:














j







In a few hours, supper. Eggs over, buckwheats, maple syrup which never saw a truck,  a supermarket, or a fossil-fuel fire

Augusta

CBS teevee reminds me this morning that  a golf tournament happens later this week. This excites me because it could easily produce news of sufficient drama and significance to push the hide-and-seek for a Malaya airplane off Page One.

It would help this national media  rebalance if professional feminists, strangely silent this Master's season, would tune up their shriek cords and track down some network news crews.  It could be they are still sedated by recent pro-diversity decisions in Augusta, but certainly there's something still bitchworthy, maybe a lack of unisex locker rooms or something like that, Anyway,  without socio-cultural drama, all that really happens down there is a golf game with muted baritone announcers saying, "Let's go to 17."

One other possibility exists, though I may have to orchestrate the national outrage all by myself. CBS chose to hustle the tournament today with a darling feature on some  pre-pubes playing the course, including a lovely 11-year-old Chinese -American lass who "drives 163 yards ... you will hear more of her."

That's sad in and of itself, but another factoid adds to it. This youngster was handed her first mashie at age six and ordered, or encouraged, to practice golf, and if that doesn't constitute actionable child abuse, I don't know what does.

Second Prelude to a Loophole AAR

Not meaning to over tease, but the loophole isn't actually over yet. The afterglow continues tonight with a rendezvous in the Great Room of the Commandant's Quarters here at Camp Jiggleview of which I am Commandant. Please stay tuned.

Meanwhile, my existential crisis is over, thanks to four astute readers. She stays:

She remains out in the cold:

(Sister Ship)


I sort of hate to pass a dolled-up JMB adaptation in moderately convenient carry size,  but my commenters made their case on romantic and theological grounds. (JAGSC: Savage more huggable. and GMA John warned, Lose the Savage, lose your soul. Both Stephen and Stretch endorsed them in one way or another.) I am grateful for the counsel and will be until I see some friend -- or, worse, a jerk I dislike -- wearing one at a barbecue.

My gratitude, Gentlemen, moves me to award you each a Dr. Lucy:

---


All is not lost in my mild urge to downsize my main carriable from the big SW 645. The Sig is offered at $800, and I suppose I could resolve to live on Kraft macaroni and cheese for several weeks and just buy the danged thing.

Or I could get off my butt, turn off the computer, quit blogging for a while, and finish the half-done Commander project. The big hangup is lack of a slide for the short AMT frame. If any of you happen to have a spare one for a 4 1/4 barrel, I'll give you a Lucy, too. And some money if you insist.

Prelude to a loophole report; serious gun question

For astute readers with Sig experience. Or even without:

Should a fellow acquire an as-NIB Sig 11 Carry (in .45 ACP, of course) at a net cost to himself of $671? Even if it requires parting with a very nice Savage 99 for whom his affection keeps growing?

Would it help to add that the Sig comes (a) with three magazines and (b) from a dealer whom the would-be buyer likes, one who has given him more than one good deal over the years? (It does not, however, have a Picaninnnineeheehee Rail, nor a laser pointer, nor, for that matter, even a USB port.)

I'm a little embarrassed to post a personal quandary for all the world to see because I am ordinarily quite capable of making my own decisons about the proper relationships among myself,  my Federal Reserve Cartoons,  and my blue steel.

But, gee, this has become a series of existential moments, and I've never been too good at resolving conflicts via the philosophy of gay French navel gazers.

The Corps of REMFs Speaks Out

Congress is about to give His Ineptness a billion dollars. The president is to forward it to the Ukraine. Where the money goes from there God only knows, but a fair bet is Putin's left hand out for a hefty share, maybe the whole pie. A Makarov will occupy his right. After all, the Ukraine owes him money.

It is absolutely cynical of you to reason that (a) Russia grabbed a hunk of the Ukraine (b) putting the Ukraine further into a pickle and (c)  therefore  it is your job to pay Russia.

But what really caught my attention is

"We must target those guilty of aggression against Ukraine and stand by our allies and friends to ensure peace and security in Europe," the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, Rep. Ed Royce said."

Congressman Royce happens to be  a serious war hawk, sometimes called the most pro-military legislator in the U.S. House. So far, not much of a problem.

(Somebody has to finance those sweetheart deals between the nation's admirals and a Malaysian thug. Not to mention the the three-star gambler caught with fake casino chips. (Couple of generals, too, on the hook for hosing babes in their commands, I hear, but I'm Navy. Let the damned land lubbers sort out their own messes.)


More important, the militaristic Mr. Royce seems to have achieved his warrior-hood at a most convenient time -- after he passed beyond combat age and found himself in power. When you get there you can be as macho as you please without that nagging fear that someone might hand you a gun and order you to sit in a hole while people shoot at you.

He was about about 22 when the Sand Box began overheating, prime age for a dedicated patriot to leap to his nation's defense. He found it more amiable to stay in California, hustle tax breaks for a living, then get elected to something.

Obama in a Vacuum

This is one result of a general desktop clearing, a real desk top with dust, odd pieces of paper, bent paper clips, and a somewhat dry sandwich segment.

"No matter what congress does, I am the President the United States and they expect me to do something about it."

It is an accurate quotation because I wrote it carefully in script which is readable even after weeks or months. Unfortunately, I can't recall the issue. Therefore I don't know exactly what the president was talking about. Of course, he probably didn't either so I don't feel too bad. 

It does make me wonder what he taught about the Constitution when he was a Professor of Constitutional Law to supplement his income from organizing street corners in Chicago.

Thirty Seconds More than Tokyo

Headline: AP Stylebook Takes a Dive; Facebook Furor Ensues

The Stylebook, one of America's traditional bulwarks against flabby couch-potato language, is no longer eating its peas. It decrees that "over" and "more than" may be used synonymously when reporting numerical values.

For this travesty it mounts a Twinkie defense: "We  can't fight a trend." It is but a matter of time before AP sanctions "over" and "more than" as all-purpose synonyms.

Somwhere, More Than the Rainbow, starring Li'l Debbie Garland.

More than my dead body.

What's the frequency, Kenneth? (More bizarre than...)

This does not bode well. A trigger-lock company trying to buy Remington?

Aside from writing like a bunch of long-winded nerds...

("This model, which takes advantage of market trends, technological advances (Most of you will want to stop reading the red print here; I just wanted to give serious language students enough jargon and cant to convey the full buzz-word flavor) and industry consolidations to fuel profitable growth, presents a value proposition that is perfectly suited to the military armament industry, an industry that is heavily fragmented and evolving rapidly toward a RFID/WiFi-enabled technology platform. In this dynamic environment, we see enormous opportunity to consolidate this market with a program of targeted acquisitions, including the proposed Freedom transaction. Technological convergence is the future in the cyber/smart arms arena and we're eager to leverage our proven history of success by helping Freedom and others navigate the transition from analog to digital.")

.. .the predator company says things which make a guy scratch his head. Among its other bragadocci we find:

Global Digital Solutions is positioning itself as a leader in providing cyber arms manufacturing, complementary security and technology solutions and knowledge-based, cyber-related, culturally attuned social consulting in unsettled areas.

 "culturally attuned social consulting in unsettled areas?"  If there is any actual meaning  there, it escapes me. So I'll make something up.

GDS buys Remington. After a short R and D period, it sells you a  a G5 or 6 or 7 cell phone with an accessory clip for a Model 700. When in an unsettled area you can either shoot at stuff if you can remember the code to tell your phone to unlock the trigger. or you can just settle yourself on a lonely stump and text.

UPDATE: I think we can rest easy.  GDS doesn't have enough money to buy the rusted Remington 742 I picked up for parts last week. The release wasn't satire, but it was the CEO's way of crying out for help. "Oh look at me. Please. I am so pretty."  'course, if you want to take a chance, you can buy a share of the company stock for 86 cents.

Beer for the warriors; no REMFs need apply

By late October, 1944, all was foretold on the great battlefields of Europe. The death of the Nazi was a matter of when, not if.

But Winston Churchill was still a busy man, overseeing Montgomery on the left  and Alexander down in the Mediterranean. Not to mention fighting the opening skirmishes of World War III,  telling Stalin, "No. You may not have Greece and Poland and Istria, (etc.)."

So an old grunt develops a certain affection for the guy facing all that who still finds time for:

Prime Minister to Secretary of State for War         23 Oct. 44 

A serious appeal was made to me by General Alexander for more beer for the troops in Italy. The Americans are said to get four bottles a week, and the British rarely get one. You should make an immediate effort and come to me for support in case other departments are involved. Let me have a plan, with time schedule, for this beer. ...  The priority issue is to go to the fighting troops at the front..."


Properly exercised power can be a wonderful thing.


 Prime Minister to Secretary of State for War    20 Nov. 44

Good. Press on. Make sure that the beer -- four pints a week --  goes to the troops under fire of the enemy before any of the parties to the rear get a drop.

Nine months later the voters sent him packing.  No wonder we call it the place where Great Britain used to be.

---

Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, H/M BCE, 1953, pp. 705, 709.

The Belgian Countess

She could have worn white to the ceremony, and the snickering old gossips in the back pews would have been wrong.





















Fulfillment ensued.

Replacing the lanky older model .

---

The original 6-incher had been abused by excessive dry-firing and possibly too many shorts without careful chamber cleaning. Some finicky work put her back in shooting shape, but she never had my full trust. I ran the internet for replacement barrels and found none.

But Saturday, at the Wells (Minnesota) school-house loophole, there she reposed at a price about one-third what I would have expected. I haven't stopped grinning since.

The demigods among us

On May 27, 1944, just ten days before Overlord, he found time for:

Prime Minister to Minister of Fuel and Power

"I hope you will put a stop to nonsense like this. (Reports in the Yorkshire Post that that a householder was fined one pound, with two guineas cost, for having borrowed coal from a neighbor.) Nothing makes departments so unpopular as these acts of petty bureaucratic folly which come to light from time to time and are, I fear, only typical of of a vast amount of silly wrongdoing by small officials or   committees. You should make an example of  of the people concerned with this."

Winston Churchill in Closing the Ring, H/M 1951 BCE, p. 714

On second thought, this is of merely historical interest here in 21st Century America where we have entirely disposed of petty satrapy.

---

I'm somewhat embarassed about linking Overlord to Wiki, but who knows when a dedicated member of the National Education Association might stumble across the post?

Radio Shack

Radio Shack is going broke, closing about 1,000 stores in a drive to streamline itself back into some sort of shaky solvency. I should feel worse about this than I do, but in my view the company died about 1980.

Earlier, about the time I left the Navy, the fad among young college bucks was to build a hi-fi set with the innards showing, lined up on a shelf unit with our most intellectual-appearing paperbacks. It was supposed to impress chicks, the glowing vacuum tubes an avant garde space-age substitute for romantic candles as Sinatra crooned.

You had two basic supply choices. One was the excellent Allied Radio catalog.

Radio shack was almost as cheap and more fun because you could get your stuff right there on Main Street. Besides, the salesman (and it would be a man)  knew more about audio electronics than you did, and you usually did well to take his advice.

So I spent some money at Radio Shack, 6n6s, can capacitors, tube sockets, and pref-steel chassis. This went on for a decade or so, including a period when I kept a decrepit five-channel mobile CB on the air with over-the-counter RS parts.

Than along came those damned transistors and binary and the furshlugginer Japanese.

Radio Shack and I began an amicable severance of our relationship. It  became fractious the  first time I wandered in asking for a "common" tube I needed to put an ancient and discarded Associated Press Wirephoto telephone amplifier in order. The little creep behind the counter sighed and picked his nose and told me nobody used tubes anymore but maybe he could order it  or maybe not and could he interest me in a bubble packed transistorized solid state radio controlled Corvette instead? All the cats were doing it.

Our local RS went broke three or four years ago. There's one about 15 miles away -- a good place to sign up for overpriced cell-phone "plans," but if you happen to want a 100-ohm +/- 5 per cent resistor, you are SOL, buddy.

So my sadness is muted at seeing Mr. Tandy's dream on extended death watch.


---

Tandy? The hide peddler? Yes indeed. Once, I can't remember where, I was in a large store, half devoted to pre-digital Radio Shack electronics, half to piles of cowhide and leather-tooling supplies. Bliss.


Stephan's Gunslinger was right. The world has moved on.

Follow the ruble

In the great counting house of Moscow, the accountants are breaking out the vodka. Boss Putin's economic enhancement plan is working.

--Russia announced it would charge Ukraine more for natural gas.

--Secretary of State Kerry immediately went to Kiev with a billion dollars in hand to help the peasants pay Russia for higher priced gas. (He added a promise of "technical assistance," price tag unspecified.) So if you want to think of the Ukraine as a big pipeline for whooshing your money to Russia, I will not argue with you.

--The European Union then announced it would add $15 billion to the Ukraine kitty if the IMF also kicks in, which it will. It is useful to recall from time to time that the United States provides at least 17 per cent of  IMF money.

--President Obama is not to be outdone in personally saving Ukraine. He is moving heaven and earth to ramp up exports of  America's new natural gas. It is better, he decides, that the U.S energy bonanza be directed to the benefit of central European peasant hovels. Cold hovels in Minnesota are of less concern. For one thing, he believes, warm American homes are largely responsible for global warming and the concomitant damage to snail darters and spotted owls.

Short the greenback. Go long rubles. Get yourself a wood burner.

---


--The citations are here and here and here.

Be careful what you point, kids

Nathan is 10, goes to Devonshire (Ohio) Alternative Elementary School.

He just drew a three-day suspension for pointing his finger, or, as the school czars call it, a "level 2 lookalike firearm."

I salute the school authorities with a stiffly raised adjacent finger. Call it a level 2 lookalike one-tine pitch fork if you want.

And, just horsing around here, what happens to a sixth-grade guy who becomes suddenly and, shall we say, pointedly aroused when the short-skirted little knockout in the next chair crosses her legs? Maybe an NFA violation?

H/T Joel

Jim's Beauty Secrets

And here you thought I was going to advise you to irritate an authoritarian statist every day, didn't you?  You should, of course, because that makes you smile, and a smile is about the sexiest thing going.

But I'm really talking about skin beauty. This time of year my hands get all crinkly. When I pick up my 1943-issue 1911 A1 in order to irritate an authoritarian statist it sounds like a class of junior high kids wadding up their D-minus English essays. You  don't want  that. For one thing, it might alert the statist and give him time to hide.

My usual beauty aid is Corona, sometimes known as horse liniment. It works pretty well, and if you use it while drinking Mexican beer you might break into a syncopated Corona Corona improvisation. That would be sexy too, especially if your date is named Juanita or something like that.

Last night, however, I found something better. I went to an auction and came home with a professionally done 1903 Remington sporter. It needs a spa day too, but that's okay because dirt cheap. One problem was the sling, high quality leather but drier than high-noon Yuma.

Dry leather requires mink oil, and I used my fingers to smear great gobs of it all over the strap. It's still soaking in, but, ooh lah lah!  My silken hands. I dare not go to the WalMart today lest droves of lady associates swoon.

Geopolitical grabass?

Grinning Russians in the Crimea. Smug Havana political thugs showing Russian sailors around town. It could be serious.

Or it could be like the locker-room games in 6th Period PE. Big jocks identify the chess club nerds and snap their butts with wet towels. The weakest  and most excitable get the worst of it.

The  idea is more to humiliate than to hurt.

So. Who has Putin identified as the easiest mark in his campaign to restore Russian respectability after his own nation's humiliation in our Reagan years? Could it be a ward heeler who lucked out and opened his hope-and-change reign with a world apology tour?

Settled Science - Quote of the Day

Commenter Mr. Galt at Joel's place:

If Mr. Newton’s Law of Gravity is still up for debate, by God so is “global warming”.

----

Recommend RTWT.

There's a wuss in my mirror

I've made some stupid and imprudent trips in my life,  by land, sea, and air. Once in a while minor drama occurred, but nothing threw me or mine into a serious "survival" situation. Propose a journey and my default answer is, "Let's go."

Maybe some parts in my middle are shrinking.

The best the weather guessers can do for me tomorrow is big wind, maybe a little snow and a high of four below.  So I'm reluctant to load up the dog and the check book for the 80-mile run down to Humboldt, meaning I'll miss what could be the gun auction of the decade for any blue-steel tinker.



"The following guns have a little to a lot of rust and deterioration, most will need work or be for parts:

"Ruger Single 6 revolver, .22 * Remington 48, 12 ga. * Winchester 42, .410 * Browning light 20, 20 ga. * Savage 99, .284 * Remington 1100, 16 ga. * Stevens 94C, .410 * Remington Viper 522, .22 * Marlin 49DL, .22 * Ruger 1022, .22 * Browning BPS, 12ga. * Winchester 12, 12ga. * High Standard Sport King, 12 ga. * Mossberg 20, 20 ga. * Winchester 59, 12 ga. * Christoph Funk O/U, 16 ga. * Remington 1100, 12 ga. * Winchester 77, .22 * Christoph Funk, 28 ga. * Remington 700, 6mm * Winchester 12, 12 ga * Winchester 59, 12ga. * Marlin 39A, .22 * Remington 121, .22 * Remington 550, .22 * Winchester 69A, .22 * Remington 31, 16 ga. * Remington 552, .22 * Ithaca 37, 12 ga. * Smith + Wesson 1000, 20 ga. * Winchester 42, .410 * Remington 550, .22 * Wards Westernfield 560, 12 ga. * Winchester 1400, 16 ga. * Mossberg 540, .22 * Smith and Wesson 1000, 12 ga. * Winchester 12, 12ga. * Winchester 77, .22 * Winchester 69, .22 * Marlin 25, .22 * Squires Bingham 16, .22 * Ruger 1022, .22 * Remington 31, 12ga. * Ithaca 37, 20ga. * Ithaca 37, 12 ga.. * Remington 1100, 12 ga. * Remington 1148, 12ga. * Remington 1100, 20ga. * Ruger 77, .306 * Marlin 60, .22 * Winchester 12, 16 ga. * Winchester 12, 12ga. * Ruger 1022, .22 * Winchester 55, .22 * Winchester 67, .22 * Winchester 12, 16ga. * Ithaca 37, 16 ga. * Winchester 12, 20 ga. * Marlin 783, .22MWR * Winchester 12, 12 ga. * Winchester 77, .22 * Ithaca 37, 12 ga. * Marlin 883, .22 * Winchester 12, 20 ga. * Savage 24, .410 * Remington 582, .22 * Remington 742, 30-06 * JC Higgins 25, 22LR * Remington 514 .22 * Remington 4, .22 * Stevens 77D, 16 ga. * Marlin 883, .22mag * Remington 03, 30-06 * Ithaca 37, 20 ga. * Stevens 67, 12 ga. * Browning BPS, 12 ga. * Remington 878, 12 ga. * Winchester 12, 16ga. * Winchester 25, 12 ga. * Winchester 59, 12 ga. * Savage 357, 12 ga. * Newport WN, 16 ga. * Mossberg 46, .22 * Mossberg 342A, .22 * Stevens 94, .410 * Winchester 77, .22 * Remington 514, .22 * Mossberg 44, .22 * LC Smith 12 ga. * German 22, .22 * Mauser 98, .22 * Mossberg 152, .22 * Mossberg 64KA, .22 mag * Iver Johnson, 410 * "

Sure, a lot of crap not worth an hour of fixing time, but get a load of the Winchester 69s and 77s, the old Rugers, the 1950s Mossies. Given the weather -- and the general decline of gunners willing to dirty their hands at a work bench --  you would expect a light crowd and probably dirt-cheap prices.

In the non-junk listing lurk a couple of Garands, some Mausers ,and a "1936" Luger.

If you guys really loved me you would organize a fleet of St. Bernards with brandy flasks and station one every few miles along the way.

You would also provide me a house sitter. The life-support systems in the  Commandant's Quarter's here at Camp Jiggleview require a certain amount of babysitting when global warming becomes this severe.


---

ETA: I'd really like to inspect that "deteriorated" 6mm Remington 700. I badly want a 700 short action for the new take-off .222 barrel gathering dust in the shack.

Government finance in New Hamster

In  A.D. 2008,  "the hockey coach at the University of New Hampshire earned $382,000, making him the highest paid state employee."

Whack Puck or Die.

Singing to the dog

A man with a shelf of books and a curious mind is never bored. Except maybe sometimes, rarely, he might be something like bored.

I blame it on the re-vortexing of the polarity.  Zero, below zero, big wind, very big wind for the impending week.

SAD? No, I don't accept SAD except as an excuse for the drug companies to sell more happy pills.

Cabin fever? No. The vehicles are running fine. The lane  is clear enough. There's cash in the wallet and places where I would find a welcome.

No interest, So I'll just go ahead and use the dork word. Enervated. I may be enervated.

Possibly New Dog Libby is too. She always comes around for a comprehensive  ear-scratch every hour or so. Lately it's more like every ten minutes, and I actually caught her staring out at our stray cat without emitting her death-threat growl between 70-decibel barks.

Just now she waddled over to the computer chair, stuck her head firmly on my lap, and made intense eye contact. You either understand that lab-eyes look or you don't. I do, so I made a special fuss. The ears, of course, then back and belly, then a collar check while I wiped off that tiny dab of eye drool.

She's put on some winter bulk. I decided the strap could use a little more slack.

Fumble with the adjusting slide. Drop your hands in disgust because  you just heard yourself going,

"bah-dah bamba just a silly millimeter longer."

At least that led to enervation attenuation because it yielded a  Big Thought, a Universal Truth:  Exposure to television at a young age makes you weird forever. 

Loophole AAR

I don't get to this one often enough, especially considering it is my natal city, a couple of hours southeast. But it was time. I had my buddy's balls* in a can, and he wanted them. The show his club runs was a good excuse to make the delivery.

I didn't run across anything making me giddy enough to toss large denomination Federal Reserve Cartoons around, but it is tasteless to leave a loophole empty-handed, ergo:

For $25 it justifies itself as a high-class paperweight, and who knows when I'll stumble across a box of parts for five bucks at a garage sale.They would need to fit a High-Standard Model A or B from 1934, the year A. HItler flew to Essen for a gigglefest as he watched his former friends bleed out. And speaking of long knives:

Boy Scout, official, USA-made but otherwise unmarked so I can pretend it's a Marble. The condition isn't too bad, but Tenderfoot Teddy couldn't resist using his sharp edge to trim up the sheath. What a creep, but at least his old man didn't  own a three-horsepower Baldor running a 60-grit wheel at 3450 rpms.

This Remington RH 51 came from a Baldor-equipped home in a sheath style I've never seen before, stamped "Remington" and "DuPont." That dates it to 1933 or later and probably pre-1941.

I don't actually get upset at battered knives if they're cheap enough. The patinae, gouges, and grinds just loosen their metaphorical tongues so they can tell me how things were back then, or might have been.

---

*soft lead, .504

Terminal ballistics, hamburger heaven, and a load of bull

I learn from my friend that a 9 mm hardball round at point- blank range fom a big bovine forehead just "makes him mad."  It took another in the same area and a third a little higher to finish the job.  Still, it was quick due to flawless functioning of the Browning M1935 semi-automatic, another reason to praise John M. Browning, PBUH.

The old boy was down from rear-end mechanical failure due to high  milage ...

...and to being butted and tormented by younger bulls. That gives us guys approaching our mature years something to think about.

My just-delivered allotment of el toro is 50 count 'em 50 pounds, nicely ground and wrapped by one of the few custom butchers still operating, and I want to tell you there's a world of difference between Safeway floor sweepings and a burger ground from the entire animal -- t-bone, rib-eye and all.

I feel a cookout coming on.

Scatter shots; Indian Country

Somebody loved those four shot-dead Paiutes up in the high desert of backwater California, 200 miles or more from the nearest Starbucks. The accused, a bully, probably also had her admirers, perhaps even as many friends as tattoos.

The universe of this chaos is small, 35 members of a federally recognized tribe in and around Alturas and Cedarville, California. Together they own a 26-acre reservation, a "rancheria" in local lingo.

Ms. Cherie Lash Rhoades was chief of the tribe until it fired her as the FBI investigated missing tribal funds, about $50,000.

Money. If it isn't sex, it is money, isn't it? Cherchez la femme or her man; that petering out, cherchez l'argent.

L'argent here is $1.1 million in one year, 2012. At its source, the figure is much higher, allowing for normal government overhead. First you -- and I mean you -- must earn it; the IRS must extract it from you; the money must be trundled from Treasury to the Department of the Interior to its Bureau of Indian Affairs and finally to whom ever handles the net tribal take --  the $1.1 million -- for 35 souls. All along the twisty route beady little eyes dart about as greedy little fingers dip and dip and dip.

Of course you just fingered your little calculator and said "wow!" That amounts to $31,428.57 per Paiute. Assuming they family-up at roughly the national all-races average, you multiply by 3-plus for something like $95,000-plus per family. They could afford a Starbucks and professional aromatherapists.

---

This is not totally fair. The AP reports that about half the money goes for roads.

Or maybe it is. The little tribe also gets a few dollars from the Indian-casino industry, a federally protected activity. There's income from cheap (because untaxed) smokes. One assumes that Jerry Brown's California also contributes, assuaging its guilt for what we did en route to our Manifest Destiny.

---

Guilt is justified to one degree or another, but as time passes it should moderate.*  We White Eyes murdered our last Redskins in job-lot quantities more than 124 years ago, on the banks of Wounded Knee Creek. We killed about 150, many or most with Hotchkiss guns, a weapon notorious for non-discrimination among braves, little old grandmas, and babes-in-arms.

But over that five or six generations, amends have been made, or attempted, however misguided and inept.  The results are mixed, at best, and on average probably well illustrated by the grief among the 31 surviving Paiutes of  Alturas, a grief rooted in the outcome of condeming a race to permanent wardship.

I wonder what would happen if we decided to end it over next two generations with what once was fashionably called "tough love."

"Here is the school. It's free. It is your gateway to the pride of self-sufficiency. Don't fuck it up."

---

Humility requires a qualification of everything above. Maybe the killer was just crazy as Hell and would have run amok in any society in which she found herself.

And finally, it might be suggested that she would have created less tragedy had she been confronted with counterforce the second she displayed one of her two pistols.  Unfortunately it happened in California where practical counterforce is reckoned to be calling the cleanup service, available through 911.


---

*If not, I am personally entitled to vast sums from Her Majesty's exchequer in recompense for my family's Annaly estates, stolen at gunpoint by English thugs  c. 1400-1700.

Ted Nugent

Good bye.

You have done for the Second Amendment what Jimmy Swaggert did for television preachers.

The right tool for the right job

Admit it. You, yourself, have felt the urge and even come >this<  close to action.

Bob put money in the machine and pulled the lever, No product.  No help from the return-money button. The boss's fork lift was handy.

Some jerk squealed. Polaris fired him. He applied for unemployment compensation.  


"State unemployment records say banging and rocking the machine didn't work, so M---------- allegedly commandeered a forklift, picked up the machine at least six times and dropped it on the floor at the Polaris Industries' warehouse in Milford. Three candy bars felll."


Denied. He must settle for the three gedunks.

My impulse control is a little better than that, though far from perfect, leading to a nice little fantasy.

Administrative law judge:  "Why on earth did you pulverize the candy machine with a fork lift, Jim?"


Me: "Because I didn't have a goddam Tommy Gun on me, dammit. That's why."

The spam cannoli

Blogger has improved its spam filter, but for the first time in months a message offering me riches and a more rewarding sex life made it through to my email, though not to the blog.  So I checked the  Blogger spam file and found some 70 come-ons from the past few days. Nothing unusual there except that every one of them was in Italian.  No problem. I just wopped them off to Deleto, but I found it mildly interesting.

Maybe the Nigerian e-thugs all moved to Sorrento because the internet runs on time there.

I can think of better reasons to go have gone to Italy.

Bullets in schools, the eeeeek level explained

Eeeek Level One.  Sammy might actually get away with this one because lead-headed teachers and administrators are probably unaware of the very useful "bullet" pencil.

Eeeek LevelTwo. This one will cause a lockdown and local editorials praising Superintendent  Z. T. Limply for taking no chances. After all.  if it saves just one life...

Eeeeeek Level Three:   If you feel like amusing yourself with a full SWAT, active-shooter routine, complete with horrified mothers on MSNBC  (and even more horrified interviewers), you could slip one of these into some rotten kid's back pack.

Jah, but some of them Fokkers is Messerschmidts

Here's a set of dandy  photos that will all but put you in the seat of  1939-1945 war birds.  Click on that Fokker and you can manipulate the picture through 360 degrees or thereabouts.

H/T Alan, via email

Vote Vet

I always miss Travis McGee but especially so when I want to sort out some newish thing.

Of course, to miss Trav is also to miss Meyer, the hairy economist down F pier a ways. Trav could deal with a Puss Killian all by himself but  needed Meyer for political and economic challenges. Even a womanizing free-lance detective can use a little logical positivism once in a while.

My friend L* alerts me to the Veterans Party of America which seems to be some sort of evolution of an earlier (c. 2003--20??)  "veterans" party which didn't make it.  It has recently published its platform. On first reading it looks more libertarian and anti-statist  than anything the majors would dare put on paper.  Better yet, some of the more important parts of it seem actually doable.

In my guise as pure political operative, I'm forced to tell the VPA, "rotsa ruck." Our America is the place where third parties go to be ignored, then die. The logic of their arguments has nothing to do with anything because they don't have and can not get the billions needed to create a nice image on the electric teevee.

Still, as a citizen, I'll be a happier if the VPA platform gets all possible exposure and discussion. Starting with you, Trav and Meyer. Whadaya think?

---

*Interesting person. Along with another pretty girl some years ago, she started a business more or less from scratch. It thrives and has created jobs without, I believe, ever having asked government for a dime in subsidies, tax holidays, special tax exemptions, guaranteed markets (c.f. ethanol mandate) or the like. While she would never state it so vulgarly, I think her message to federal, state, county, and local authorities was: "I intend to do right, so please get your big hairy bloated bureaucratic asses out of my way so I can get some work done."

Stone zoned

The advisers to the governors of Smugleye-on-Lake have delivered  to said governors their plan for village governance. It is the brand new zoning code, the previous zoning code having been deemed insufficiently intrusive on Smugleyeites' assumed right to peaceable and reasonable uses of their property.

A full reading shatters my emotions. For all these years I believed i lived in a "house," or a "home." Alas, under the new regime I have been resettled to a "nonconformity." Now, I don't mind being a nonconformity, but being ordered to live in one is quite another matter.

Magnanimously, the governors will permit me to continue living in my nonconformity, and even to maintain it within narrow limits. I'm sure that is contingent on my continued good behavior, such as  promising never, ever, to complain or, especially,  to make fun of these fine public servants in any public forum.

---

For those interested, an update to the parasite/citizen ratio here in my village reveals 16 elected or appointed policy makers and three enforcers/technicians. this does not count cops and firemen and lawyers whose services we outsource. Nor does it count the various outside advisers we hire to advise our own advisers on on cool new laws. But lets just call it the 19, which amounts to one village regulator per 18 citizens.

---

As a matter of general interest and perspective, the new SOL land-use law governing a village of 341 souls, covers 101 pages. Densely.

The Securities Exchange Act of 1934, governing many trillions of dollars of commercial activity, contains 93 pages.

Sic transit cellulose, so you just lay in a lot of it

And while I had the 3-volt Nikon Cockroach in hand, I decided it would be pleasant to record the main stash of propane substitute here at Camp Jiggleview, of which I am commandant. For mid-February, it is nearly ideal, well-plundered but still sufficient to warm us for the remainder of this winter and, mayhap, early in the next.

Much evil and confusion exist in our world. The center may not hold. I understand my duty to explain it all, but sometimes it's better just to go outside with your dog.

Eeeek. A bullet!

I understand principals' need to change into Depends at the very thought of  anything more weapon-like than a blunt Crayola.  If "something happens" they're going to get sued, maybe fired and faced with the need to find real jobs.

So I suppose the lockdown at a nearby junior high is just one of the sillinesses of the times, odiously called the "new normal."

I preferred the old normal. A Terry Stop of any 10 guys in my 7th grade room at Pleasant Valley probably would have turned up at least a dozen loose rounds of .22, fuzzy from riding in denim pockets.  But the school rulers never bothered to look.  Only if you took them out for inspection could you get in trouble.

The saintly Mrs.Minor: "James, put that back in your pocket and open your Warriner's. Don't make me tell you again."  Yeah, I was a repeat offender.

---

Aside to our crack KUOO. You probably meant "cartridge" rather than "bullet." But what the Hell. It's only radio, and theyr'e both icky and fearsome, huh?

California handgun carry: My lawyer can kick the s..t out of your lawyer

It's a little early to plan the party welcoming California back into the federal union, but a happy sign appeared today.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit has ruled that California de facto handgun carry bans are unconstitutuonal.

The link takes you to the full text of the 2-1 decision.  I've read only a few pages so far.  Media commentary suggests the case will go before the full Ninth and to the Supreme Court. Because other federal courts have ruled otherwise, SCOTUS will probably agree to hear the case.

In the early pages I've read, the Ninth panel buys the notion that the Second Amendment creates no right. Rather, it guarantees a pre-existing (or "natural?") right. I think I remember some of us making that point a time or two.

---

EDIT TO ADD:  Recommended: David Kopel's Washington Post explanation of  the decision and its limits. This guy thinks like a lawyer but writes like a writer. Nice combination.

The gun salesman of the decade is getting tired

Things are rough at the Cabela's gun counter. About everyone who wanted a Glokkenpopper 'cuz he was afraid of Obama  has bought one, and the gun clerks are finding time to wander over to chat up the pretty girls hustling overpriced Chinese shirts with Cabelas's patches on them.

I doubt you need to disturb your long-term Cabela's (or Ruger or S/W)  position. About the time HIllary starts looking like a shoo-in, the market will recover.

Besides, Cabela's makes most of its money from those Chinese shirts. New Jersey file clerks like to wear them to TGIF's. Impresses the girls there, they tell me.

The media grinds it out

We need to make allowances for English commentary on firearms.  After all, they are well into the third generation of their official eeeekagun stance. Would you ask your great grandpa to analyze this week's Billboard Hot Rock Top 40?

Nevertheless. Reuters is competing for a most-errors-per-line award in story on slow sales of modified AR15-types in New York.

--The two main modifications to the AR 15 rifles are the lack of a muzzle brake, which controls the rapid fire of bullets,  Full fail, there, Fleet Street, and a silly one at that. It tends to help control felt recoil and muzzle jump. And you probably don't really mean "rapid fire of bullets"  anyway. You're groping for the term "rate of fire," I suppose.


--and a flash hider, or suppressor, which limits the flash of light coming out of the barrel, Kielbasa said. The suppressor allowed night-time shooters to obscure their location by masking the "flash" of light.  

A couple of problems there, Cyril. You get a little slack on the use of "suppressor" because in comman usage it is sometimes used to designate the flash hider. Just as often it is a synonym for "silencer."  The greater sin is reporting its purpose to be obscuring the location of the rifle. It hangs out there mostly to shield the shooter's eye from a bright flash which might, at night, disrupt his subsequent-shot aim.

By the way, the Mr. Kielbasa quoted is the gun shop owner in New York. He said new state laws regulating rifle cosmetics might force him to quit selling them altogether,  That would a vurst-case scenario.

World Leaders -- Armed and Ready

You read Churchill's epic -- all six volumes -- twice, once for a quick overview of how this guy and his country operated 1935-1945. Okay, a slow overview. Much later in life you read it again to flesh out your information from other sources.

Finally, you keep it handy on your shelf for who-knows-what reason, maybe a time-passer when it is 25 below zero* and you couldn't  be pried from your fireside chair with a crow bar. Just sort of leaf through looking for little nuggets among the old blowhard's Germanic thoroughness of detail, from the important to the trivial.

And speaking of guns, I found one.

Winston had just been made first lord of the Admiralty. He knew the Nazis wouldn't like that and that there were supposedly some 20,000 of them lurking about the Sceptred Isle.  He would really rawther not get shot.

"I had no official protection and I did not wish to ask for any; but I thought myself sufficiently prominent to take precautions. I had enough information to convince me Hitler recognized me as a foe. My former Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Thompson,  was in retirement. I told him to come long and bring his pistol with him. I got out my own weapons, which were good. While one slept, the other watched. Thus nobody would have had a walkover."**

He doesn't tell us about his guns at Chartwell, and that is too bad. If we knew we could have a lively internet debate about whether he was tactical enough. Nevertheless, there's plenty of evidence that Churchill was at least passingly familiar with small, lethal weapons.

(From left: Eisenhower, Churchill, Bradley busting M1 Carbine caps.)

Lucky England. And lucky us who, here in the colonies, some three generations later, also enjoy courageous personal leadership.

xxxxx

(Sotto voice)  Psssst. Mr. President.: Rule 3 violation, but nothing Photo-Shop can't fix. Alert Jay.

---

*And it was; coldest of the season, but things are looking up now.

**Churchill, The Gathering Storm, Houghten-Mifflin BCE, 1948, p. 401

Night thought

It is very cold, and I am warm.

Fire has been an obvious winter pallitive since long before the Clan of the Cave Bear. Houses are another matter.

Ayla the Intelligent left the rocky lands and crossed the frozen Eurasian plains, no cave in sight. She  gathered dry grass and branches and set them alight with  sparking rocks.  Extra branches were stacked high and the sleeping skins spread near the fire, in the lee of the fuel.

The wind shifted, Ayla awoke cold, drew the caribou robe closer around her shoulders, and thought.

On some subsequent night she perfected the idea. Her fuel reserve encircled the fire.  Let the wind blow as it will. It remained only to lay some poles and skins  across the woodpile. The roof was born, and the concept of a house as a human contrivance was complete. All else is detail.

Thank you, Ma'am.

If Vanita Nair proposes to me,

I'm afraid I shall have to decline. Too bad. She's a beautiful woman and makes a good buck.

Furthermore, if I should by chance feel an urge to ogle this South Asian knockout raised in Texas, I shall do so with the sound muted and captioning off.

On her CBS morning news gig today, she listened intently to a guy predicting the death of the American shopping mall and said:

"That breaks my heart. When I moved to Manhattan I really missed the "mall experience'."

Suggesting that any delights she might offer would be more than offset by conversational limitations.

The most wonderful Wednesday ever

Four days and a wakeup.

Then it's the Wednesday of the Three Blessings. Two of them are sure things, as sure as any temporal thing can be, anyway. The other is a well-hedged promise.

1. On that day, because I continue to be such a dedicated and competent retiree, President Obama will deliver my monthly stipend which he financed by extorting money from you. Sorry about that, Chief.

2. Simultaneously, my thimble full of that little leveraged-bond ETF I keep mentioning goes "x,"  adding one more piece of pittance to the money I'm trying to put aside for my old age. (I hope, even in that distant future, to be prepared to whip out cash for a clean GI issue 1911 some guy is tired of. Never mind that I might need to hire a kid to rack the slide when I want to shoot it.)

3.  Some time on that day of Woden the air temperature here at Camp Jiggleview, of which I am commandant, will at last exceed 20 degrees above zero. This is another Obama pledge. Of course it is channeled through his National Weather Service, but we know where the buck stops, don't we?

(Subsequently, His Ineptness promises no, repeat no, temperatures seriously below zero for weeks on end. Hope you're right, Buck-O.)

---

Returning to the present, the 12-below present, I awoke to a too-cool room, moving me to switch on the propane for about about 10 minutes. (Damn, another $138.22 shot to the devil.) 

The fireplace embers were glowing nicely, and plenty of firewood lay near the burner, but only the normally preferable big oak rounds, close to a foot in diameter and therefore not too good for quickly broiling my frostbitten backside.   So I dressed (before coffee {!}) and trudged to the outer pile  for a load of squaw wood, small and soft, which is now blazing. The aforementioned backside is acquiring a nice sear, and I am content.

    

I'm going home to Mother and I am taking the teevee!

Sanborn is an inoffensive little country town about 45 miles down the road. Folks get along. The economy is pretty good.  Hardly enough crime to shake a stick at, and the wives have pretty much stopped bringing shredded carrots in lime Jello to the church-basement potlucks.

It's just the kind of target bigger government looks for.  We'll teach those Neanderthal bastards!

Sanborn has a three-member public utilities board. All three were men. One's term expired, and a woman applied. So did the incumbent. The town council re-appointed him, making her mad and generating a complaint to Higher.

Iowa has a law vaguely requiring "gender balance" on city boards and commissions. Who ever got the Sanborn beef  lateraled it to our state ombudswoman.

Apparently a few reams of correspondence ensued, ending with her sheaf of "recommendations for corrective actions." The council promised to keep them on file and maybe get back to her. It seems the legislators (a) passed the law in order   to mollify gender-balance voters and (b) failed to prescribe any punishment  for violations in order to comfort male chauvinist pigs.

And this made her stomp her official ombudsfoot:

"According to a letter Ombudsman (sic) Ruth Cooperrider sent to the Sanborn mayor and city council members this week, the town did not take any of her suggested corrective actions. She expressed frustration, but said this would be her final communication."

---

Please stop throwing china at me. Gender balance is a good idea. And foot-stomping is not solely a female trait; see a rerun of any Obama press conference after congress declined to give him exactly what he wanted.

It doesn't make a Hell of a lot of difference whether an official chair is warmed by bureaucratic butt sheathed in silken step-ins or a hairy one sporting camo boxers. If the job is administrative all that's required is a competent administrator. If it is policy-making, it needs only a human with a sense of sane policy-making.

For instance, I fear nothing from Janet Yellen that I wouldn't have feared from Larry Summers. Toilet seat up or toilet seat down makes no never mind to the actual issue of how much funny money to print up so His Ineptness and the congress can keep right on buying your vote.

...And, By The Way and FWIW, The NRA Gives Him an "F"

I woke up a few minutes ago with that acute depression that overcomes a journalist when he suddenly realizes he missed the lede. Glance back at the previous post making fun of retiring congressslug Bob Andrews who went zero-for-646 over 23 years.

Now, 23 years is 8,395 days. Bob's proposed 646 new laws over that span represents an ambition to create one new federal law every 12.995 days. Cut the guy some slack, figure he took a Sunday or two off to get together with his homies to watch the ponies run at Meadowlands, and round that up to 14 days.

The meaning is that every other Monday morning you would need to check the Congressional Record carefully for a new Bob-dictate detailing what you must do, or not do, on pain of federal civil or criminal prosecution.

Suppose  he had been successful. Imagine how the Washington Post would have  praised him; the most "effective"  legislator in the nation's history.

And the other 534 would be green with envy, racing like Man-O-War to catch up.

Less is a helluva a lot; zero is sublime

I propose a massive private fund-raising drive to build a marble monument to Bob Andrews. A big one, right smack in the middle of the National Mall.

The liberal New Jersey congressthing is retiring after nearly a quarter century eating high on the federal hog. In all that time he proposed 646 new federal laws.

None passed. Not one.

And if that doesn't make him the most useful slug in American political history I'll kiss your arse in the Capitol Rotunda and lend you money to hire Rachel Maddow for live teevee commentary.

Welcome, Janet!

Janet Yellin has just been sworn in as the chief of of the American mimeograph machine.  To celebrate, the American equity markets crashed again. (DJ IA down a couple hundred points.) The heaviest investors seem confused about how much free money she'll be printing for the banks to loan them for purposes of speculation.

Only a despicable hard-money crank would suggest a causal relationship between Janet's ascendancy to Ben's old seat  and the roiled markets.*  After all, she she was against the tapir before she was for it.

So far, the  tapir  isn't working too well despite the public relations efforts of the country's best-oiled spin machines.
















It was supposed to push interest rates up a tad, not much, just enough to make  the  aforesaid cranks shut up about Wiemar. It is working the other way. Interest on government insecurities is still trickling down -- a few minutes ago the 10-year at 2.6 per cent and the 30 at a little over 3.5.

If you don't  follow numbers like that, no problem. Their meaning is simple.  Your bank will continue paying you effectively nothing on your CDs, large and small, for a while, anyway. In due course, though, we'll probably have to pull a Turkey where the Ankara version of  the Ben and Janet show has just been shoved into reverse and lending rates were tripled to 12 per cent for overnight loans.

(I won't be putting money into Turkish CDs, though, because one of the effects will be oh-crap price hikes. A respectable working stiff's hookah, no brass filigree, plain plastic tubing,  at 38 zillion lira?)

It's all confusing, but I suppose a guy should just think back to Ben Bernanke when he cut the Kwee from 85 billion to 75 billion thin-air FRCs per month. He was careful to promise the too-big-to-fails that it was all sort of a joke. Lend away, Boys and Girls.  Vee haf other vays of making all the marks -- wait, I mean dollars of course , ha-ha -- you'll ever need.

---

*When a writer is too chicken to predict whether the markets will go up or down,  he is permitted by long tradition to wimp out with "roiled."

Arctical Loopholing and Some Other Weekend Wrapup Reports

The Emmet County, Iowa, sportsman's club knows how to run a loophole, friendly, well organized, and well advertised. The guys even hang around the door offering to help you carry your stuff from vehicle to table.

It suffers only from the dominance of plastic fantastic, but that's a world wide issue, and there was still enough honest walnut and steel to keep a hard-core recalcitrant happy.

The Saturday crowd was large and oddly open-handed. I was forced to cancel my date with Miss Cougar (senior division)  last night due to exhaustion from counting Federal Reserve Cartoons,  not to mention palpating the newly adopted Mossberg  800A. (.308).

The overriding pleasure is the glow of having freed a few cubic feet of gun-room space via a massive conversion of  pure junk to FRCs.

---

While I was freezing, my daughter and her good man were on a ferry from Puerto Juarez to Isla Mujeres. It's her umpteenth trip. counting her first when she was a toddler and the island was our ultimate destination on a three-week roadie down the Mexican gulf coast. She posted a picture on arrival. Palms and white beach and cervasa and damned if I'm not going to invite myself along next time. Like all Irish-derived humans, she carries a load of guilt around, and I think I can exploit it for selfish purposes.

---

The winter of malice continues. The current 10 above and predicted 1 below are comparatively benign, but that worm hole through Canada is letting another freeze fart through, and the portent is a 1-below high on Wednesday, followed by minus- teens low.

Why the Hell doesn't the south side of the  jet stream stay up by Moose Jaw where it belongs? Kerry should stop horsing around in Iran and investigate. A strongly worded note to Toronto is the least we should demand.

Only a dork uses the term "enervating," but I'm tempted.

I'm placing my faith in the long range NWS guess that the pattern is changing and could bring actual above-freezing temperatures by a week from today. I used to draw to inside straights, too.

I'll go quietly officer

The drone from the Drug Enforcement Administration hovers outside my window.  It records my crime and transfers the evidence to a national drug-criminal database. With luck I can cop a plea.

The Ivory Tower is deciding that free-range coffee is an addictive drug. It demands discipline and suggests that everything ought to be labeled as to caffeine content.  Alert the FDA and, of course, copy the DEA.

Juliano (the expert)  says that in order to avoid any potentially serious withdrawal symptoms, people should limit their daily caffeine consumption to 400mg, two to three 8-ounce cups of coffee.

Can a law be far away?

A couple of things here:

--The "study" is 40 years late.  The noted academician James Michener reported the facts in 1974  in his doorstop Centennial. Most of you will recall his case study of the high-plains farm wife who went bugdoozy when the coffee ran out one wild and isolated winter.

--Personally, I could never befriend anyone who drinks from or serves in an 8-ounce cup.  Wimps and wusses have their place in the world,  but if I'm in a sewing mood and want a thimble, I won't ask you to fill it with Folgers first.

Oh, and before I pour my third (big) cup of the morning and take my leave, a suggestion. Call your broker. Dump Starbucks.

Cold Comfort

Some things are perfectly predictable. This weekend I'll be at the Estherville loophole. I will try to improve my collection. I will see a blue-steel candidate and, after due discourse with the owner, will make what I believe a realistic offer. He will respond: "I got more than that in it," as though that was (a) necessarily true and (b) my problem rather than his. As I say, completely predictable.

Just as are the scrambling apes we hire to represent us. The headline news in the  Midwest is still propane. It is either unobtainable or priced out of reach of poor people,and even some not so poor. ($4.99 per gallon  locally at last report.)

Our politicians are of course very concerned. They feel the pain as they lounge about the overheated Taj Mahals where they meet to dicker with your money. They flood the air waves and strain newsprint budgets with promises to "do something."

It's a tossup between my northern neighbor, Minnesota, and my home state about which looks more cynically ridiculous.

Minnesota state government is responding to the home-heat crisis with a hotline.

"Minnesota Hotline. How may I help you Sir or Madam?"

"Hello. Dis is Ole and it is 'bout 14 below and our tank it is empty and Lena and me are cold."

"We understand, Please press 13 to be connected with the the Minnesota Department of Interior Environmental Comfort."

"You tink dey help us?"

(Under breath: Beats the Hell out of Me.)  "I am sure you will find, Sir, that they understand your concern. Good bye."

We have a sort of hot line too, but our Des Moines politicians also want to throw a little money at Jack Frost, one million dollars. They are telling the media and hoping for praise -- the kind that can be turned into votes come November.

They would really prefer that you stop reaching for your $3 Chinese calculator, especially if you remember that Iowa already provides heating help for about 95,000 homes (under LIHEAP). Because then you might discover that their massive show  of compassion amounts to to ten and a half-bucks per home, or enough propane to heat your average house for maybe four hours.

----

There's no intent here to belittle the problem, and I'm on record as offering the comfort of the Camp Jiggleview  fire to anyone who won't steal the silver. I  doubt  if I could get any of the legislthings to tell me if they've offered to open their home.