Yup, Can’t Win for Losing
Artist is, again, Chuck Asay.
Author: Kevin
Did You Have a Good Weekend?
I did. Celebrated my parent’s 49th wedding anniversary on Friday, took a couple of newbies shooting on Saturday, went in to the office on Sunday and programmed.
This looks like a really busy week, so posting will be light. Sorry about that. So, to give you something to think about (and possibly more information than you really wanted to know about me,) I’m going to follow Steven Den Beste’s lead and answer Acidman’s 25 questions.
1. Do you have a personal hero? If so, who is it?
Um, no. There are a lot of people I really admire, but no single person I’d consider a hero.
2. What is your favorite book of all time and what made it so fucking good?
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Anson Heinlein.
I think this book is mostly responsible for my political outlook.
3. What does “diversity” mean to you?
Let me quote from someone who put it better than I could:
Diversity is: “…a white guy driving his chinese girlfriend in an Italian car to a Mexican restaurant, and getting pulled over by a black cop.” Mix ethnicities and genders as desired. That’s America, baby!
4. What is the wildest thing you’ve ever done?
Spun a 5.0 liter Mustang off an on-ramp at about 70mph.
5. Do you regret doing it?
No. No harm, no foul. And I think it really proved to me I’d chosen the right woman to marry when she (sitting in the passenger seat) didn’t rip me a new one for showing my ass.
6. Can you drive a stick shift?
Not only can I, I prefer it. I’d much rather stir my own gears.
7. What’s the highest speed you ever traveled in a car?
120 mph indicated. In that same Mustang. It had more in it, but the road didn’t.
8. Were you driving, or riding at the time?
Driving.
9. Which is better: snakes or spiders?
I prefer snakes. Spiders give me the willies.
10. What is the most disgusting thing you ever ate?
Asparagus. Sue me, but I find asparagus disgusting.
11. Have you ever shit your pants? Be HONEST!
Yup. Syncoptic episode, voided my bowels. Not pleasant. When I regained consciousness someone was looking down at me and said “Are you OK?” To which I replied: “If I was OK, would I be laying here?”
12. Was losing your virginity an enjoyable experience?
No. Educational, yes. Enjoyable, no.
13. Should oral sex be outlawed or encouraged?
Who in their right mind would want to outlaw it?
14. Name one man with a fine ass.
Not my cuppa. I suppose you could pick any random Chippendale dancer. At least that’s what my wife says.
15. Do you watch golf on television? If not, will you iron my shirts?
No, and no.
16. Who is Martha Burk?
A laughingstock, I hope.
17. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I’d drop at least 50 lbs.
18. Do you eat raw oysters?
I don’t eat anything that resembles snot.
19. Are you claustrophobic?
No.
20. If you rode a motorcycle, would you wear a helmet even if the law said you didn‘t have to?
Yes. I’ve studied physics, which is why I wear a seatbelt regardless of the seatbelt laws.
21. Name five great Presidents.
Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Reagan,
22. Name three shitty Presidents.
Carter is the only shitty President I can come up with. Everything he did turned eventually to shit. There were certainly some that were no gems, but I wouldn’t hang the term “shitty” even on Bubba. He was merely bad.
23. Now call me fanny and slap my ass. Just kidding.
Ha ha.
24. This is the 4th of July. Did you set off any fireworks?
No, but I went shooting Saturday. Does that count?
25. If you could have dinner and conversation with anyone in the history of the planet, who would you choose?
Robert Heinlein, I think.
THE WAIT IS OVER!
TRINITY is up!
Nineteen twenty-one printed pages worth! (Taking lessons from J.K. Rowling, Bill?)
More later. I need to read & savor.
UPDATE:
Done – although I had to go back and get the rest. Apparently even Moveable Type has a length limit.
Worth the wait, too.
Trinity: Capitalism, Freedom, Ingenuity. Get out of the way, we don’t know what this thing can do! (But it’ll be great!)
Go spend some time. Read. Improve yourself.
Quote of the Day, Last Post of the Night
From Tex’s Whacking Day blog:
Tex’s first law of government: The inevitable failure of legislation will be seen as a justification for even more legislation.
Ayup.
Emperor Misha Addresses an Excellent Question
As you all know, we Americans are extremely proud of being the freest country on the planet, and rightfully so.
But sometimes I fear that we fail to state exactly why we feel that way. To us, I suspect, it’s just so self-evident that we don’t really feel a need to remind ourselves and each other just why it’s so.
I can’t help but thinking that maybe we should. I think it would be healthy for us to do so more, actually, because the unique privileges we enjoy because we’re American shouldn’t be taken for granted. Thousands of people line up every year to earn the privilege of becoming part of our family (I should know. I was once one of them, after all).
[snip]
Tomorrow we’ll all be celebrating the Birth of Our Nation.
Wouldn’t tonight be a perfect time to reflect upon just why and what it is that we celebrate?
I rather think so.
Take it away, Loyal Citizenry. I can’t wait to read your input.
Go to the post. Leave a comment.
Make it a good one.
Well THIS is an Interesting Question.
New blogger Wince and Nod asks:
Sofia Sideshow commented a while back about how a shotgun is Hollywood’s weapon of choice when it comes to dealing with monsters. I wonder what Rachel Lucas, Kim du Toit or Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority would have to say about this.
This is reminiscent of the oft-recurring question “What caliber is best for defeating flesh-eating zombies?” that somebody brings up on AR15.com at least once every two or three months.
Sofia Sideshow’s site puts it this way:
Shotguns are also good demon-killing tools. Shotguns are really the action-movie Leatherman. They’re so useful. Aliens, Terminators, Demons, Raptors…whoever grabs the shotgun at the “we better grab some weapons” part of a movie usually lives.
To go along with that, I’ve got a quotation archived by a “K.R. Murphy”:
“There are precious few horror films that couldn’t be cut well short by a single loaded 12 gauge and someone with the sense to use it.”
Truer words…
“I like to keep this handy,” Click-CLACK! “for Close Encounters.” – Michael Biehn as Corporal Hicks,
with his (short-barrelled!) Ithaca Model 37 from Aliens
(In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length” at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.)
Sorry, just had to throw that in.
“This… is my BOOM STICK! It’s a twelve gauge double barreled
Remington, S-Mart’s top-of-the-line. You can find this in the
sporting goods department. That’s right this sweet baby was made in
Grand Rapids Michigan. Retails for about $109.95. It’s got a walnut
stock, cobalt blue steel and a hair trigger. That’s right. Shop
Smart. Shop S-mart”
Bruce Campbell as Ash from Army of Darkness
Just a couple of examples.
Shotguns are quite effective defensive weapons. That’s one reason that police cruisers were for years equipped with a riot gun. Nothing gets someone’s attention quite like racking the slide on a pump-action, and very little else makes as much an impression as 12 .33 caliber 00 buckshot pellets from a 12 gauge shell, or a 1-1/8 ounce slug.
At close range, the shotgun is a devastating weapon, even against the undead! No demon will remain unaffected after receiving the contents of both barrels of a boomstick, no zombie will be munching on your brain after you’ve removed his lower jaw with a well-aimed blast of buck, and even though you risk getting splashed with blood with a pH of zero, no alien exoskeleton will withstand a point-blank impact of a slug.
Of course, not too much is effective against the polymer alloy of a T-1000 Terminator, but a shotgun at least slows one down – more than a 9mm Europellet anyway.
I think the defensive shotgun is an excellent choice against goblins of all types, which is one reason I own one of these:
Mossberg 590
But mine has the Speedfeed stock that holds four spare rounds. Magazine capacity: Nine rounds of 2-3/4″ shells. Barrel: 20″, evil baby-killing heatshield, and (gasp!) bayonet lug for the M-9 bayonet. I keep a box of #4 buck (25 .24 caliber pellets) for mine, and a couple of slugs in the stock just in case I need to stop a charging rhino. Or demon.
Thanks for asking.
Isn’t This Nice: Sean Penn Gets One of His Guns Back
In April, Sean Penn’s Buick Grand National was stolen while he ate lunch at a Berkley restaurant, and in it were two handguns, a 9mm Glock and a .38 revolver. Turns out that Mr. Penn (who has a conviction for assault and spent a month in jail for it) has a California concealed-carry permit! The car was recovered five days later, but not the guns.
Well, at least one of them has turned up, and Mr. Penn is going to get it back. The Glock might have turned up. A Glock matching Penn’s was found, but it has spent at least a month in the ocean and barnacles obscure the serial number. Per the article:
Police said there is no evidence that Penn’s .38 was involved in any crimes, and it will likely be returned to the actor, who is currently filming his latest movie called “The Assassination of Richard Nixon” in Oakland.
“We were pleased to have recovered one of Mr. Penn’s guns, and of course we’re always pleased when we can get any gun off the streets.”
OFF the street? I thought that people with CCW’s put more guns on the streets!
I cannot help but wonder if, should this have happened to John Q. Public (who probably would have had a much harder time getting a CCW), would the police have been so enthusiastic about giving it back?
I feel safer already.
If You Didn’t See This in the Carnival of the Vanities…
Read it now. Via Nikita Demosthenes, Orson Scott Card’s article Moral Stupidity. Money quote:
It makes me ashamed of the Democratic Party that this seems to be the only moral process available to the party’s leadership. I used to call myself a “Moynihan Democrat.”
But now that he’s dead, I’m reduced to calling myself a “Tony Blair Democrat.”
That’s because I cannot find a single leader in the Democratic Party who is capable of acting on the basis of what is right, rather than what will make our side win.
A Democratic Party that had any honor at all would not be filibustering judicial appointments, making a mockery of the President’s constitutional authority to appoint federal judges with the approval of a simple majority of the Senate.
But “honor,” like “patriotism,” is a word that the Democratic Party mocks except when they wrap themselves in it to make themselves immune to attack.
I’ve seen the high dudgeon of Democratic leaders saying, “How dare he say that I’m not patriotic!” Even though that very Democrat has been heard to complain that “patriotism” is an outmoded and dangerous idea.
Likewise, Democrat leaders can’t speak of honor without embarrassment — except when they want to accuse Republicans of accusing them of being dishonorable.
So now these same people of the American Left have decided that the Palestinians are “our team” and therefore even their worst atrocities are to be declared as being “no worse than” what the Israelis do in their own defense.
The same moral geniuses who could find nothing wrong in Bill Clinton’s endless lying, in Hillary Clinton’s criminal manipulation of the futures market, in Al Gore’s cynical attempt to subvert a free election by changing the rules after the fact — they now stand in judgment of Israel and declare them “no better than” terrorists.
Much, much more crunchy goodness.
I’ve always liked Orson Scott Card, although I find his fiction writing hit-or-miss.