A nice handgun is better, but

Fellow named Fred was misbehaving in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, the other day. Armed robbery, carjacking, hit-run,  and some other stuff you might expect from a 30-year-old  guy on probation and with a rap sheet going back first Clinton Administration.

Finally he sought to acquire  a fresh car in a Harris-Teeter parking lot with no down payment or annoying paper work.  Someone objected by whapping him up longside his haid with a frozen turkey. Fred's hospitalization ensued. Local cops called the citizen's method unusual but seemed to approve.

Thinking about this:

--I do not  object to law-abiding citizens going armed with a frozen Butterball, but I think I'll  cling to the old SW59; fits inside the jeans better; warmer, too.

--Try saying "Fuqua-Varina, North Carolina" with a beat a few times. Then, dammit,  P------, try  to quit saying it.

(On the strength of this newsbeat, P------ is hereby appointed  The McGee Reader official correspondent for Appalachia, but, please, Dear, no more syncopated locales.) 

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/4020689/

Travis McGee, historian

"With every passing year it will become more quaint. The little tin airplanes bombing the sleepy giants."

---

11-24-08

Sixty-seven years ago today Secretary of State Cordell Hull called diplomats from England, China, Australia, and Holland into his office for a chat about those annoying Japanese. Hirohito's lads  wanted a lot of American  oil, scrap metal, and  respect. Hull explained to his guests the Roosevelt-Hull scheme to give them a little of the first two and to pretend to give them a lot of the third; save their little oriental faces if we have to, just keep them quiet until MacArthur is ready (hah!).

Meanwhile,  aboard "Akagi," anchored in the bay of Etorofu,  a thousand miles north of Tokyo, swab jockies turned to and made the pilots' area shine.  Party time tomorrow, Baby-san!

(tbc)

 

We see by the news today...

Financial  experts say people are beginning to use more cash. Real cash, paper with pictures of dead presidents. Good enough.

The market -- any market -- is a system for telling us how much things cost and whether we can afford them. If we use cash, a glance in our wallets tells us how much we can buy --   loud and clear. 

With plastic you get an ambiguous answer for a long time,  but eventually the Plastic Lawyers come around and take your stuff. Then you know. 

It was McGee's buddy Meyer who said: "Everything is easier when you face reality."

I say, Old Chap

The Mother Country has erased guns (and working hard on pen knives), so there is no crime. Smoking in pubs is a criminal act, so London lungs are pretty pink.  But they face a new terror, AP reports today.

One  Imogen Shillito, shrieksperson for a Brit  do-good health organization,  is horrified that young masters and  their birds can  buy Guinness "with their pocket money" ...

(Imogen, My Dear, that is the desiderata, from Liverpool to Smugistan and beyond.  You would ask the thirsty to consult a mortgage brokre to finance a pint?)

...The result, she fears, is more rapidly deteriorating Albionic livers.

No. 10 Downing is listening, and throughout the realm serfs and yeomanry ponder dreary demise of the culprit -- happy-hour twofers or threefers or whateverthehell passes for a popskull bargain if  you can find a pub  in the fog.

Now, science and personal experience agree that the way to take booze  is "damned carefully." 

But surely somewhere in our common heritage, Imogen, we've concluded that Royal Authority ends short of man's own personal liver.  Haven't we?

Does the  new nobility of the  Sceptred Isle lust for a  land where nobody dies? Even if everyone wants to?