Apr 4, 2013

Note on the formerly free state of Connecticut

As written by free men and women some years ago:


Connecticut gun code of 1650:

"All persons shall bear arms, and every male person shall have in continual readiness a good muskitt or other gunn, fitt for service." 

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As written this week by a quite different breed:

The bill text is here

It is tough going but probably essential reading. If you can't be bothered, I suppose a fair summary is this: "Your natural right of armed self-defense as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed; you may or may not be granted a limited privilege of preserving your life and property. We, your elected and appointed masters,will decide."

Crying solves nothing, but a tear or two here would not open you to any important criticism. 

Apr 2, 2013

It takes a Smith and Wesson to Beat the Sugar Shack Blues

The main problem here is a feeling like I'm getting to be a liberal hippie with a Gibson knockoff strapped to my 10-speed, looking for a commune and humming something by Joan Baez while dreaming of world peace and free love achieved by  eating nuts and berries and crapping in a hole in the ground.

About the only way I can restore psychic balance is by keeping in mind that real maple syrup is getting expensive enough to attract thieves.

That justifies strapping on the SW 645 and threading my macho saddle-leather belt through the slots on the tactical magazine holder -- the one that holds my extra clips back and forth like a real 21st Century ninja rather than up and down like an old Elmer Fudd.  I'm cocked and locked on sap-bucket patrol. Come on, Maple Mob, make my day.

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It was supposed to be lower key than this. I figured two silver maple taps would get me a couple gallons of sap. I'd boil it down to two ounces and check one more thing off the bucket list.

Think about the Guinness tap in a busy Galway pub on Saturday night.

The sap ran free on Day One, and that night I reduced two gallons or so to about a pint of not-yet-syrup. Friends, that stuff is good, even at that thin stage.

So four more taps -- which produced nothing for 48 hours of wrong weather, then, today, better than eight gallons. It's all on the stove now, three burners worth in the three biggest pots I own. The crock pot is pressed into duty as a pre-heater. There's still a gallon of raw material in the refrigerator. And the taps continue to drip. I understand Mary Shelley better now.

It looks like I'll go on this way until Thursday when the weather gets wrong again and the buds get more robust. (The internet tells me  budding-tree sap sucks; the season is over.)

TBC, he says as he ambles off to put on a camo sweat shirt and dry fire his big, dangerous pistol. Whistling  Kumbayah.











Apr 1, 2013

A Happy Birthday to you, Time


On this date in 1988, the first edition of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time was published.

Thank you, Dr. Hawking. I have read it three times. I confess that some of it is still somewhat unclear to me. (Who the Hell am I kidding?  I mean most of it.) But at least my cosmic ignorance of the universe can now be expressed more elegantly and in much larger words.

In the introduction to a later edition, Hawking reports with a certain measure of pride that he has sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex. It occurs to me that I have read none of hers. And it further occurs that sex as she seems to understand it might cause me as many puzzled frowns as does the cosmological  wormhole.

Letter to Pyongyang

Dear Kim:


We're trying to think of a  nice new name for Pyongyang if you really decide to point a missle at us.

So far, "Crater Lake" is leading in all the polls.


Sincerely,

Barack