My proletarian birds, mostly blackies and robins, have fled in panic. Perched in a high burr oak branch hanging over the guest cabin, watchful as a sober Secret Service agent, the predator lurks -- or did until I scared him off trying for a photo.
It's a sparrow hawk. They're not uncommon in the woods and fields around here, but this is the first time I've spotted one hunting the Camp J grounds.
I hope he hangs around. This is one of the years when I need to trim up the no-mow zone, and he'd be handy for helping control the creepie-crawlies displaced by the tidying -- the field mice, the occasional garter snake, and maybe even the village zoning czar whom I believe lurks there, fiddling hopefully with his video camera.
Apr 16, 2012
Apr 15, 2012
Tam strikes again
Pocketa, Pocketa, Pocketa, Mr. Mitty.
It's just you and a couple of girls heroically engaging the 82nd Airborne and at least one MEU, the ladies with their right-way Smiths and wrong-way Colts, you with whatever banger that most tickles your tactical gonads.
After many adventures you are victorious. America is restored to liberty and prosperity, and the Fred Waring Singers warble Over the Rainbow as the females vie for your heroic affections.
The reality might vary a smidgen from that.
What disturbs me is how many of the "I bought a Century Arms AK and a case of ammo; let's get iton!" crowd talk like they're looking forward to this because, I don't know, it means no more mortgage payments, or they won't have to go in to work on
Monday.
It is one thing to expect an Obama or Romney or successor to fiddle away America's last burning days. It is something else to hope for it, even with oodles of charged magazines, a basement full of canned tuna, and 50 MREs in the bugout bag.
The odds do not favor our run-of-the-mill Armageddon Arnie as the alpha warlord in a real world of total collapse, his daydreams to the contrary notwithstanding. I suspect about the best he could hope for is being the sergeant in charge of burning the civilian corpses. (Put the little kids in this pile, Corporal. Stack the rest over along the creek. Send a detail for kerosene. And detail a private bring me my gas mask.)
It could come to that, and to ignore the possibility is foolish. Preparation -- the equipment and supplies and attitudes to preserve the people you love -- is not foolish. But that is plan B or C or Z.
Plan A is to keep scrabbling, even if it means continuing to vote. To keep talking, even if it means discourse with statist idiots. We might even win. Meanwhile we can always side with that old poseur Winston Churchill. During the leadup to the Suez crisis he was chided for not being sufficiently belligerent and replied:
"To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war."
It's just you and a couple of girls heroically engaging the 82nd Airborne and at least one MEU, the ladies with their right-way Smiths and wrong-way Colts, you with whatever banger that most tickles your tactical gonads.
After many adventures you are victorious. America is restored to liberty and prosperity, and the Fred Waring Singers warble Over the Rainbow as the females vie for your heroic affections.
The reality might vary a smidgen from that.
What disturbs me is how many of the "I bought a Century Arms AK and a case of ammo; let's get iton!" crowd talk like they're looking forward to this because, I don't know, it means no more mortgage payments, or they won't have to go in to work on
Monday.
It is one thing to expect an Obama or Romney or successor to fiddle away America's last burning days. It is something else to hope for it, even with oodles of charged magazines, a basement full of canned tuna, and 50 MREs in the bugout bag.
The odds do not favor our run-of-the-mill Armageddon Arnie as the alpha warlord in a real world of total collapse, his daydreams to the contrary notwithstanding. I suspect about the best he could hope for is being the sergeant in charge of burning the civilian corpses. (Put the little kids in this pile, Corporal. Stack the rest over along the creek. Send a detail for kerosene. And detail a private bring me my gas mask.)
It could come to that, and to ignore the possibility is foolish. Preparation -- the equipment and supplies and attitudes to preserve the people you love -- is not foolish. But that is plan B or C or Z.
Plan A is to keep scrabbling, even if it means continuing to vote. To keep talking, even if it means discourse with statist idiots. We might even win. Meanwhile we can always side with that old poseur Winston Churchill. During the leadup to the Suez crisis he was chided for not being sufficiently belligerent and replied:
"To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war."
A little Sunday side trip into radio
You don't have to be a Hoosier to like Indiana Radio Watch. You just have to be an unreconstructed radio freak. Blaine Thompson probably knows as much as anyone about Indiana radio as it is now and as it was back in the 8-pot-Gates days.
The periodic email report always includes at least one thing I find interesting. This morning it notes that the little station WBZQ in Huntington, about 20 miles southwest of Fort Wayne, has been sold. So what? Little stations change hands like used Chevys.
Because the price was 75,000 Bernanke-inflated dollars.
So what if it was just one step up from a coffee-pot operation, putting out 500 watts until sunset, then 13 after dark -- yes, only about twice what your old Cobra CB exhaled before you wired in the illegal linear amplifier?
Only a generation ago a station like that would have grossed maybe $100,000 a year. (For perspective, that amount of 1970 money would have bought you about 20 new Corvettes, loaded. )
The rule of thumb held that an AM radio station was worth about two times its gross revenue. Real estate was extra.
So comes the end of my denial. AM radio IS dead. Bury it beside the Yankee dollar.
---
(Blaine would be glad to put you on his mailing list, but I don't care to publish his email address. He's on Facebook.)
The periodic email report always includes at least one thing I find interesting. This morning it notes that the little station WBZQ in Huntington, about 20 miles southwest of Fort Wayne, has been sold. So what? Little stations change hands like used Chevys.
Because the price was 75,000 Bernanke-inflated dollars.
So what if it was just one step up from a coffee-pot operation, putting out 500 watts until sunset, then 13 after dark -- yes, only about twice what your old Cobra CB exhaled before you wired in the illegal linear amplifier?
Only a generation ago a station like that would have grossed maybe $100,000 a year. (For perspective, that amount of 1970 money would have bought you about 20 new Corvettes, loaded. )
The rule of thumb held that an AM radio station was worth about two times its gross revenue. Real estate was extra.
So comes the end of my denial. AM radio IS dead. Bury it beside the Yankee dollar.
---
(Blaine would be glad to put you on his mailing list, but I don't care to publish his email address. He's on Facebook.)
Apr 14, 2012
Et voila!
Oh, it's Brother Jimmy's turn to throw the bomb...
And while we're at it, why not flag the assault craft?
And while we're at it, why not flag the assault craft?
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