Man At Arms

Whoo.

2005-10-07T23:47:00.000-04:00

Well, kids, I graduated Infantry OSUT today. I changed contracts about 2 weeks ago, though, so instead of Airborne then RIP, I'm going Airborne then SOPC; I have an 18X, Special Forces option. My opinion on the program changed since I was given a real taste of the regular Army.

I reported to Airborne School today, too, since they're rushing SF contract soldiers through ASAP. I start next friday. Who knows when I'll get to the SFAS prep course, but I'm guessing 5 weeks.

Well, that's my update. I'm tired and I don't feel much like writing right now other than to say I'm back, intermittently.

Ah, to be an Infantryman. Fucking awesome.

T-Minus 2 Hours

2005-06-14T13:55:00.000-04:00

I leave at 4 today. It's just about 2 PM, and I'm just doing the finishing touches on my packing. I still have to shave my goatee, which I'll save for last. I'm tempted to take pictures... I really want to see what I look like with just a mustache. Like a total dork, I'm sure.

This is the last post I'll make, barring some unheard of miracle, for at least 3 months. I might give someone authorization to post on my status while I'm gone, from my letters and stuff, but I don't know. Hell, I don't know if I even remember the password to give!

Yep. Cya later, people, aka the two people that read my stuff on a regular basis. I have to go cut up old t-shirts and wrap my carbon steel knives in them with oil now, so I'm off.

Trying to find some solace.

2005-06-13T02:50:00.000-04:00

I leave for Syracuse MEPS in about 36 hours. Can't sleep tonight, so I'm up reading OSUT/BCT journals and such to try to get a feel for what it's like. I always try to quell nerves with information; the unknown fucks with me if I have a lot of free time to think about it.

It strikes me just how much perception must influence the Basic experience. This one guy makes it sound like absolute hell, and while I'm sure it's hard, I've just run across this part of the journal that leads me to believe he's a pretty soft guy. I don't consider myself hard, but I've been through some shit, and I'm praying it has tempered my mind some. I've heard too many guys say that OSUT was really easy compared to RIP to believe it's quite so hard as he makes it sound; if it was, I wouldn't have a chance in hell of making it through RIP.

The funny thing is, the stuff that's really bothering me tonight is stuff like what to bring with me when I ship. In the end I'm sure it's no big deal, but little details really fuck with me. Should I bring index cards to help fold my shirt/underwear? What kind of underwear do they mean? What the hell do I need a comb for if I have no hair? And so on. In trying to find answers to those questions, I've only gotten more worried. Some people say don't bring a damn thing but some toiletries and a change of clothes, while others say bring a ton of extra shit to help with tasks. I really think it depends on where you go and your Drill Sergeants, but I guess in the end I'll simply pack everything--no more, no less--that's on the Infantry OSUT website and hope it's right.

I'm torn between hoping for a really hard platoon to get more PT and hoping for an easy one so I don't get mind-fucked. Maybe a nice middle ground without the potential for major injuries will suffice.

Another thing that's really bothering me is getting to Benning. It's not like I'll have an escort, and I'm always worried I'll fuck up something simple and get in an assload of trouble for it, or look like a total shitbag right off the bat. Wouldn't it be great to miss a flight on your first fucking day in the US Army? That's AWOL. Shit. I just hope I have another recruit coming with me... partially so I don't psych myself out and partially so if something happens I'm not the only one up shit creek.

Many a doubt waltzes through my head in these last few days. I think I'm tough, I think I have a strong mind, and I think I can will myself through really tough shit. But can I? I guess we'll find out.

You see how fucking nervous I am? Christ. I'm off for a drive to relax, then hopefully I can salvage some of the night to sleep.

Sunday.

2005-06-12T15:33:00.000-04:00

Two days left. My extended family just left, and I'm relaxing here in front of the Yankee game... I'm not sure how I feel about things. Tomorrow is going to be another stressful, run-around day, so hopefully I won't have time to worry about things.

Tuesday morning I'm going to shave my goatee.

Oh. Went to see The Longest Yard yesterday. I'm sure it would be good if you hadn't seen the movies it ripped off, but all I could think the entire last half is how much bullshit Hollywood is filled with these days. It was funny, at least.

We played croquet this morning. I only played 1.5 games, as I took over my Aunt's spot the first game when I first woke up. Our yard really sucks for croquet; it's got tons of bumps and holes and the grass is too high. That's hardly an excuse, though, since even with a big handicap I finished second the first game and playing the whole game myself I finished first; still lost both, though, because I suck as poison. For some reason I just can't manage to hit people when I'm going to get them out.

It's funny how much a year can change you.

I fucked up one of my knives yesterday. My Hissatsu from Columbia River was the black finish model, and apparently they're not designed to be sharpened. Or something. On one side of my knife, after absolutely normal sharpening (the same as the other 20 knives I sharpened yesterday, all of which survived very well), the finish is wrecked. I was not doing anything wrong, but I guess once a bit of finish caught on the stone next to the edge I was making it just ripped a huge swath of finish right off. At least it's damn sharp now. Maybe if I still really like it after hard use I'll get it refinished with boron carbide or something like that, with a millimeter of clearance from the edge to where the finish begins to avoid tearing it off again.

Eh. I'd still like to leave some insightful political posts before I ship, but I just don't see it happening. I don't know if I'll post again until tomorrow, depending on how the getting ready goes.

Bastards

2005-06-12T01:55:00.000-04:00

Gerber, that is. As in Gerber Knives. See, I bought a Gerber folder today, because it was a neat slim little thing that just looked so sexy on the rack. The folder I bought was the "new" Evo.

Yeah. New. It's new alright, freshly stolen from Kit Carson and Columbia River. I didn't do any research on it because it was an impulse purchase and now I have a knife the design of which was stolen without license by those bastards at Gerber.

If you curious, go look at the CRKT M16-13T folder and compare it to the Gerber Evo. Exact fuckin same thing. Now I'm going to have to buy a CRKT or two in the M16 series--I have room for them in my collection without being redundant--to make up for my ignorance.

I really like this knife, and now I'll always look at it with distaste... until I buy the real thing anyway. Just damn.

Sweet, Sweet, A/C

2005-06-11T11:27:00.000-04:00

Put in the AC yesterday 'bout 5 PM. Since my family is coming up I can't sleep in the basement, and my room was peaking at over 100 degrees yesterday, so it was a necessity. That, along with discovering that my damn attic door was open--one of the reasons it was so hot in here--leaves me a happy dweller.

When I went to sleep it was still about 80 degrees in here, but when I woke up (13 hours later, with weird dreams) it was cold enough that I had pulled my comforter and a wool blanket on top of me to keep warm. Figure below 60 in here.

I have to wonder if I'm getting sick or the caffeine withdrawel is getting to me. I feel woozy, like I'm going to drop off to sleep at any moment. I don't remember exactly what it was like the last time I cut caffeine off, but I know it wasn't pleasant. Splitting headaches, at least--those will probably wait until my first days at reception to fuck with me.

Off to clean the room some more. Rather, I'm boxing all my shit up and moving it to the basement or attic so people can use this room when I'm gone. Good times. I'd like to put up some more substantial posts before I leave, but I just don't know if I'll have time.

Army Junk

2005-06-10T11:00:00.000-04:00

What was I worried about?

Before you ship, you do a 17 situp, 13 pushup, and a one mile run to show that you don't suck totally. Or something.

Well, as it turns out, I do have something to worry about, and that is that my pushup form is not compatible with Army standards. See, I go up until my body naturally stops--I don't lock my elbows. It's not good to lock your elbows because it puts stress on your joints, the same way you don't want to lock your knees doing squats or your elbows with pullups or dips. Going 'all the way up' feels very exaggerated.

Yep. So I did my 13 pushups and 17 situps. No problem. I stretched a bit, then we went out to do the mile. I'm pretty surprised at how fast I ran it; 5 minutes, 39 seconds. I was figuring on running 6:30 or maybe 6:00 at the quick side. I could have shaved 10 seconds or more off the run if I was really pushing, but I didn't sprint the last 200 meters like I normally would. 5:39 isn't particularly fast for a 19 year old male runner, but considering how little I've been running in the last several months and the major hiatus I took from the running scene, it's pretty damn impressive to me. My half mile split was 2:40, so I paced pretty badly, but I think if I'd run my normal race-style mile with the sprint at the end, my pace would have been much closer. I just can't wait to see how fast I am when I'm really in shape. I have a feeling I'll blow my personal records out of the water without even trying at all distances; the male runner's peak age is from early twenties to thirtyish (for longer distances). Too bad there's a good chunk of runners at all distances that can kick my ass handily.

Concrete is hell on my shins and left knee. For some reason the concrete I ran on today felt harder than my roads, maybe because I was barely rested. I only hope new shoes help, and it would be even better if we ran on grass or dirt down there.

Now I get to run around all day, sweet sweet fun. Shower, haircut, bank to set up accounts, high school for my diploma or something that says I'm a graduate, then my college for a transcript... then cleaning my room! Figure I'll be out for four hours easy, then a few more hours to clean, then my aunt arrives and I entertain for a while, then sleep. Somewhere in there I need to cram a few hours of PT and maybe buy some of the crap I need to bring with me when I ship. Did I mention I only slept 3 hours last night?

I understand that some people love living every day just like this, but they're bloody crazy. Ah, it's ok, I don't mind. It'll be a relief to get all this shit out of the way and relax. I'm off!

Beware

2005-06-09T08:20:00.000-04:00

...of bead-blast finishes.

I own a Benchmade Steirer Eisen Monochrome folder. It loves to grow surface rust, even if I don't use it for anything. I don't exactly live on a Florida beach here, either, so down South it's probably horrible.

To get the rust off, a bit of oil and a rub with a cloth works fine.

The end.

Bleh.

2005-06-09T07:20:00.000-04:00

Went running just now. I had intended to do a half mile warmup, then run a mile for time, but that didn't happen. I quit, I'll admit that outright. I'll rationalize a little bit: I have to run for time tomorrow, and I didn't want to kill myself now for two reasons; for one, I don't want to strain my ankle (I turned my left ankle a few days ago and I have an inflamed tendon); and also I have to stay up all day and if I blast myself on a sub six minute mile run when I've already been awake for 15 hours I'll never make it.

That said, I'm happy with what I did run. I think I ran about a 3:15 or 3:30 half mile warmup, which is quick for a stiff old man like me. I felt a little ache in my knees and shins, but no pain. In my stretch routine I actually got my back to loosen up for once--a major problem I've always had is back and neck muscles cramping--and when I started my not-mile I felt like a damn gazelle. I only ran about 400 meters, probably a bit more, before I stopped; at that point my watch said 1:34, so I figure I was on pace for my target < 6:30 mile. The reason I stopped was nausea and feeling like I was going to pass out, mostly respiratory problems I think.

I've always run out of respiratory endurance before muscular, except in interval workouts. I surmise my major problem right now is a very weak midsection relative to the rest of my body. That would explain the cramping and breathing problems I have after relatively short distances, see. The good news is that if the weak link really is my abs, I'll get a shitload of conditioning in OSUT, and my running will improve disproportionally to the crappy running program they use there.

So it's entirely my fault I'm up this shit creek with my running. I neglected my abs in favor of pushups, rucking, and so on, and now I'm screwed. I'm going to look like a shitbag when I get to Benning because I suck at ab stuff so much, and that's just something I have to deal with. Learn from my example: don't ignore your abs. They're more important than you might think.

The 'Hybrid Man'

2005-06-09T06:00:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I'm not being original right now.

Check this out.

So, I'm confused a bit. Is this

"The masculine ideal is being completely modified. All the traditional male values of authority, infallibility, virility and strength are being completely overturned,” said Pierre Francois Le Louet, the agency’s managing director."

supposed to be a good thing? Frankly, I think they're delusional and separated from reality, because your average man in suburban America won't be wearing that shit-suit any time soon. Nope, the American Man is a jeans & t-shirt guy, and I don't see that changing.

I'm tempted to read Kim's Pussification of the Western Male essay right now. Oh hell, here I go. Join me, if you aren't familiar with it.

Authority, infallibility (wrong), virility, and strength. True authority, the authority imbued in the aura of a true Man, is natural. Infallibility is frankly a foolish value, because any true Man will be the first to admit when he has failed, to salvage the situation. Sitting on pride is not a characteristic of a Man. Virility? Boy, do I wish I was less virile! Right. Once again, a Man is de facto virile, because virile means to have the characteristics of an adult male! Strength? Apparently in Pierre's ideal future, men will be weak. Indecisive, impotent, emotional to a fault--non-Men.

You know what this sounds like to me? The pulings of a person who recognizes that he lacks the qualities of a true Man, and has come to despise his own shortcomings. In doing so, he has adjusted his reality--to maintain his own sanity--to view Men as archaic dinosaurs unfit for today's enlightened society. He chooses to use his influence, however exaggerated, to undermine them and try to establish his own vision of 'Man,' embodied, no doubt, by himself at the very core.

This is the same type of person who calls rural independent, self sufficient people 'redneck hillbillies' and calls our President a 'swaggering cowboy.' It is the same person who will call our soldiers morons that are better off dead, or spit on them and scream 'baby killers!' It is the person who would legally strip the rights of everyone to own weapons because he does not trust himself to do so. It is the person who asks 'but what about his feelings' just before acquitting the murderer because, after all, it wasn't his fault. It was Man's.

If that is a hybrid man, then a pox on them all.

Toiletblogging

2005-06-09T05:15:00.000-04:00

Apparently that dipshit in charge of NYC has signed into law a requirement with relation to the number of toilets in certain buildings. Specifically, two female toilets for every single men's room toilet.

What a fucking joke.

"We're talking about the quality of life for women. It's as simple as that," said Council member Yvette Clarke (D-Brooklyn) at the bill-signing ceremony.
Women "have had to really endure sometimes degrading situations just trying to take care of their personal business," Clarke said.

Quality of life for women? Degrading situations? Yeah... how about, instead of using the law as a cudgel, forming a group to put financial pressure on the building owners to fix that problem--by not fucking going to their events?

It's called a God damn free market situation, people. You can decide 'hey, I don't want to go there anymore' and (hopefully) tell the powers-that-be why, and if enough people complain they'll fix the problem because it'll be cheaper than losing all the revenue.

Or you could be responsible. I know to take a piss before I go to the movies and not drink much while I'm there because I don't want to get up in the middle of my movie after I drank a large diuretic beverage (It's shocking how much better my body absorbs, say, Gatorade than caffeinated soda. Like 3x better, really.) If you know you're going to a baseball game at a park with poorly designed bathrooms, don't drink anything! Do we really need to coddle foolish behavior?

I understand that men are more efficient urinaters than women because it's a simple zip, whip, pee operation and the urinal is easily twice as fast as a stall jaunt, but once again, that's a problem to be addressed with the free market. Unless, of course, you really believe that people are stupid enough to need Nanny Gummint to explain it to them.

Hat tip to Ravenwood. He has some more good points over there.

Oh, the other thing I wanted to talk about: urinals in the home. See, I don't know about that. Sure, functionally it's a good idea because they're more water efficient and sanitary, but it seems super tacky to have a urinal in the home bathroom. As for water efficiency they already make toilets with multiple flush buttons (to control flush water volume) for different 'loads,' but that doesn't address the problem of unskilled aimers... Eh. I think it's a toss up. Maybe if they were more decorative and without exposed plumbing, I'd get one or two. Unobtrusive, perhaps in a corner that would be hidden by the open door, in a color matched to the bathroom--maybe faux textured? Sure, I can see that.

Night Stuff

2005-06-08T22:06:00.000-04:00

Good Yankees game on. Tino and Joe Torre both got thrown out for objecting the same horrible call by the first base ump. Man, Torre looked pissed when he was talking to the ump, and I'd quote some of what I lip-read but I don't want to violate my profanity policy. Heh.

I don't have a home for my hamster. Erin flaked out, none of my friends can take her, and I don't know that I trust my family to take care of her correctly. Sigh. Maybe Julie will take her, she wants a hamster... I think.

Jeter just got a solo homerun. 8-2!

I'm not a big fan of doing all this family shit right before I leave. All it does is stress me out more than I would be already and put pressure on me when I'm trying to bloody relax. But that's the price of having a family, right? It's my job to keep everyone informed and make sure they don't worry while I'm gone, because that's what a son/nephew/grandson/cousin leaving to join the military does. I don't imagine it would be such a big deal if I was just going away to college. Maybe I would want to do this more if they didn't want to come see me off.

I didn't really watch the rest of the game, but the Yankees won very handily.

Alright, I'm working on a few complex issue entries tonight, so I'll get back to those.

Scared.

2005-06-08T04:19:00.000-04:00

I'm fucking scared. The enormity of what I'm doing, how it will change my life, is staggering. I can't sleep because of it, at least not for now. I close my eyes and start thinking, and I get this icy ball of absolute fear in my stomach...

I'll be getting on a plane a week and eight hours. Everything I know, everyone I love, all that will be left behind. I don't know if I'll ever come home for more than a weekend at a time. I'll probably never see any of my friends again; I'm not bringing any part of my life with me.

I know this is the thing I want to do. I always get worked up like this before I go away by myself; I did before the Europe trip, that's for sure. Once I'm out the door, I'll feel like I'm in the front car of the biggest fucking rollercoaster in the world just crawling up that first hill, right until I have to actually do something. Then I'll snap out of it.

The 61st anniversary of D-day was Monday. I didn't say anything because frankly, I don't have the words, but right now I feel like I'm in one of those landing boats, waiting for the ramp to drop and the bullets to fly.

I'm starting a new life, erasing all the vestiges of my past, and that is terrifying.

Eh

2005-06-07T22:43:00.000-04:00

There is a broad range in self-pity among the humans of the world. In Africa, death and disease among the native population is regarded as much less horrible than in the eyes of pampered Americans and Europeans. Kim du Toit's excellent article on the reality of life in Africa is a frequent link here, but it's well worth repeat visits. Life in Africa is, in a word, cheap.

Events that we here in America find horrible and loathsome--and tend to scream never again! after--are commonplace in Africa. In fact, horrors that American soil has never seen are pretty common on the dark continent.

We put so much value on human life that we have come to view life as something that does not even belong to the person who, well, doesn't own it after all. We overreact and try to control everything so that these awful things never happen again, and it of course never works, but creates more and serious problems. We throw money at problems like American 'poverty' and the issues in Africa and other parts of the world, never grasping the fact that it will only do more harm than good.

This is the same trap legislators fall into when they don't seem to understand that despite the power they wield over the proles, most problems can't be fixed with laws. Most politicians just can't grasp the concept that they aren't little omnipotent gods on Capitol Hill.

The combination of a true bleeding heart collective urban population and power hungry politicians with the mantra 'try again, harder!' is the rot our nation faces.

Along the way, we entered a period of reverse evolution*, where the few have become so adept at protecting the many that the evolutionary process will reverse until humans are weak enough again that we can not hold back Mother Nature. Or perhaps we will simply lag behind the evolution of disease until another plague that all of our medicine can't fight (and indeed helped create) wipes out most, or all of us.

Fact is, in the long run, the people of Africa might outlast all of us. Sink or swim? We stopped swimming a while ago. Thing is, we didn't sink, we're cruising along on a raft, stagnating in our self-granted glory of achievement.

*I don't know who I first read that from, so I can't give credit, but I didn't come up with the term.

More Guns

2005-06-07T14:40:00.000-04:00

Auto Ordnance has long been a favorite 1911 manufacturer of mine, though I missed the boat on buying one of their pistols when they still cost $350. Quality has not increased but as they made a name for themselves, their prices went up accordingly. Still affordable, but not quite the same amazing deal.

I was wandering around the net last night for production 1911s that fit my requirements without making me screw around with them too much. By lucky happenstance I ran across a new (to me) Auto Ordnance pistol:

I like it. I've pretty much given up on finding an acceptable production pistol under $2000 without the front slide serrations (I could customize my own Springfield Mil-spec but that's a pain in the ass when I have little free time), so the only real gripe I have the Custom there is the grip safety: I prefer a high grip style, not the 'speedbump' style. However, it's a minor consideration for all the rest of the features you get for a mere $650 including shipping and transfer. Probably cheaper from other sites, also; I found it on Impact Guns.

So. Before I had the Kimber Tactical II picked out for my next 1911 to buy (12-16 months in the future...) but this Auto Ordnance ousted it. It's at least $150 cheaper and the included front strap serrations would bring the real savings up to at least $225. While the Kimber might be minutely more precise, my skill is hardly at the point where I'll be able to take advantage of it.

A major problem with 1911s these days is the sighting systems they all use. The Hienie or Novak low profile, ramped style sights might look slick, but the day you need to rack the slide with only one hand, you'll die before you get it to work. There are two good methods or one-hand racking that I know of: hooking the front edge of the rear sight on either your belt or shoe. Those are the only ways I've ever had work out with a 1911, and with a ramped rear sight it's damn near impossible. King-Tappan style sights are the sights I want the most, but once you cut the dovetail for a given sight at the rear of the slide, there ain't no going back without major gunsmithing skill.

Okay, yeah you can use the front sight in a pinch, but it's tough to do correctly in a peaceful setting, much less with someone else trying to kill you. Try doing it with your off hand!

Random

2005-06-07T02:40:00.000-04:00

Well, the Yankees lost after coming back from 0-3 to tie it; a solo homer in the, oh, 6th or 7th by a Brewer took care of that. Man, they haven't been playing well. Oh well, they DID just come off a really good streak.

I was out driving just now, and there was this dead skunk completely flattened on the side of the road. I passed it twice because it was on one of my turn-around roads, and the first time I saw the glint of an eye right near this skunk. Turns out, as I found on the way back (it ran away when I flashed my highs on it the first time, but stuck around the second time), a fox was eating it, or at least checking it out. I'm betting on the eating, since it ran and returned when I was past. I didn't know foxes were carrion eaters... I figured it was just a skunk hovering around its dead mate. Do skunks do that? No clue, really; I know they're related to ferrets and are mustelids, but beyond that my experiences and knowledge are limited to the nasty fucking stench. Since the Lacey skunk episode, though, it doesn't bother me nearly so much, so I guess I came out ahead.

In case you're curious and don't know, a group of foxes is a skulk. I didn't know that, but it's a lot cooler than a gaggle (geese)... I wonder how people came up with these names, anyway. Well, I suppose they're descriptive, for the most part, of behavior or personification. A murder of crows, for example, or a wake of buzzards. I like the bullfinch collective, a 'bellowing' of bullfinches. Heh, a group of geese on water is a plump. A convocation of eagles? Very appropriate. Yep, I love the wiki.

I was thinking about how people used to tell me to try to learn one new thing every day. One? What the deuce kind of slacking is that? Assuming it is a realistic goal for most people, which I can't really believe, it would mean I'm very far removed from normal. And that, at least, is accurate. Sometimes I wonder what kind of psychoses I harbor, when you compare my mind to the 'normal' mind.

By the way, the collective for hedgehogs according to the wiki is a prickle.

Where are our Renaissance Men, our Polymaths? Where are the Leonardo da Vincis of our time? Are we placing more importance on excellence in specialty and ignoring those who are talented in many fields but not quite enough to stand out in such specialized fields, or do they frankly not exist? If the latter is true, why is that? Education system, lower expectations, culture, demography? I don't know, but my aspiration is to look back in forty years and see the life of a Renaissance Man. I look at our leaders in both the private and public sectors and see nobody who impresses me nearly as much as a da Vinci, Jefferson, or Aurelius.

Continuing from above, athletics is a good example of specialization. If you're good enough to get noticed on the world scene, as in at the Olympics or similar, you're probably not going to be much good for anything else. Notable exceptions are decathletes, but even then, they're typically not good enough in at least half of their events to have a competitive chance in the specialized competitions. You could say that a major contributor is the sheer quantity of people on the earth; there will always be a bell curve of any given ability, but when the population really gets up there, even the 99.9999th percentile is full of so many people that they're the only ones that have a shot.

The last thing I wish to be is a specialist. Continuing with the athletics example (sigh), I'll never be a great long distance runner. I'll never be a great sprinter. I'll never be able to bench 600 pounds or throw a discus 300 feet. I'll never be able to dunk a basketball or throw a 90 mph fastball, and I'll never swim the English Channel. But I can run farther than most people and still turn on the afterburners when I need to, I can handle more weight in real life applications than most people, and so on. I used to aspire to greatness in running, and I used to dream of playing baseball in college and moving up to the majors, or climbing Everest some day. But somewhere along the way I realized that a 185 pound 5'10" mesomorph with good natural athletic ability is a damn nice thing to be, because while I'll never be great at any sport I can think of, I can be good at all of them. And I'm happy with that--in all aspects of my life.

Ooooh.

2005-06-07T00:11:00.000-04:00

Cold Steel is coming out with a new folder that I really like the looks of:

It's call the Spectre; not much else to say, but it's a beauty. Classy and made with the San Mai III steel they use in all of their high end knives these days. It's also very pricey... too expensive for me, at least right now.

The folder that I really itch to own is the Benchmade Pardue/Osborne Apparition:

Beautiful, enough so that it makes the Spectre look plain. That's the next knife on my list, assuming those damn Anzas ever show up.

Sigh

2005-06-06T17:15:00.000-04:00

So I saw Revenge of the Sith the other day. I finally really dislike Lucas.

See, he wrote the original trilogy, and in the early 90s (I want to say '93) Timothy Zahn wrote--at the behest of Lucasarts, or whoever controls Star Wars--the first expansion novels. His trilogy, the name of which I don't actually recall at the moment, remains one of my favorites in all genres. Since Zahn, dozens of writers, at least a hundred books, and a few dozen games have expanded the SW universe. Those writers and other producers are the people that really made Star Wars what it is today.

Now, every single one of those creators was approached by Lucasarts (or whoever) and asked to do work in the SW universe. They worked hand in hand to make sure the plot and other background junk was acceptable. So, basically anything you see published in the SW universe was approved by some high level Lucasarts dude, if not George Lucas himself. That's how all franchise-type operations work in writing, see, be it D&D, Starcraft, whatever. You can't just set out and write whatever you want for obvious reasons--you know, copyrights. Also, they don't take submissions from fan-fiction type people because if they were to read it, then happen to use a plot device coincidentally some years down the road from a rejected manuscript, the rejectee could sue. They return those with a big ass stamp that says it wasn't read so you don't get any ideas to do that.

So where the fuck does Lucas get off ignoring or flat out contradicting all the work of those other, mostly superior authors? Hmm? My guess is he is a conceited, arrogant fuck that thinks he can just piss off his commitment to those authors to do their work justice, as they did his. I'm not going to list off my complaints just yet because I'd need to watch it a bunch of times on DVD to catch them all, but some day I probably will just to see how much he deviated.

Okay, I'm going to complain a little about the movie as a movie alone. Way too much flash, poor continuity between installments (mostly between the two trilogies), wooden acting... That says it all. I had to stop watching most of the scenes with Anakin and Padme because they were so horrible. Oh! And I have an excellent example of Lucas being a dick: in Timothy Zahn's trilogy, Mara Jade tells Luke that after the Cloud City debacle, the emperor took Darth Vader's biological hand. Hmm, too bad he was already apparently missing both by then, thanks to Lucas's work in the prequel trilogy! Look, guys, it's the little things that really ruin books and movies.

P7000 Pistol

2005-06-06T15:00:00.000-04:00

Well now, this is an interesting concept. Basically the P7000 is a 1911 style pistol with an open top slide, similar to the Beretta 92 design, chambered in 7x23mm aka 7penna, a proprietary cartridge.

Talk about a solution looking for a problem.

You see, 7mm is an awfully small bullet to fire out of a handgun. Currently the ammunition is offered in two flavors, 77gr LRN or a 46gr... brass bullet. WTF? Okay, this is a real dumb ammunition design, because with small light bullets you are relying on expansion and frangmentation to damage your target. Brass won't expand or deform much, if at all, and my problem with the lead is below.

They claim the 46gr bullet can hit 1740 FPS, which means the 77gr LRN would be a lot quicker than you want to be firing lead bullets. IIRC, it's best to jacket bullets that you plan on sending down the barrel much over 1300 FPS because the lead will foul the barrel horribly and yield poor accuracy. Harder alloys can hit higher velocities without that problem, but they also don't deform much at all.

A suggested use for this pistol is self defense. Other than pocket pistols and the FN FiveseveN, this is about the last handgun I would choose for self defense. I'd take a full size 9mm over it any day, and you know how I feel about the 9x19mm cartridge in handguns. The only real use I can see here is competition and varminting.

Okay, next gripe. It's a single stack, from what I can tell. Why not stagger stack or even double stack it with such small bullets? The 1911 grip has room for very close to double stack, at the least. 13 rounds of 7penna doesn't trump 9 rounds of 45 ACP, that's for damn sure. Maybe if it held 20 rounds I'd like it more.

It sure is pretty, though a straight mainspring housing would look a lot better, and it could use a high grip safety. It's also very expensive. Suggested retail is, I think, 1560 Euro; that's about... 1900 US dollars? Something like that? It would be more but the Euro dropped 6-7 cents against the dollar after Italy made its Lira comment. Ha.

Whoa, shit, I was wrong. Its suggested retail is 1800 Euro, which is over $2200 at current exhange rates. Jesus. If you're interested in learning more (and seeing the pretty picture), read here. And Defense Review has a piece on it, which has a slightly different point of view from mine on the handgun.

Bottom line is I could buy a pair of 1911s semi-customized to my hands (and by my hands...) and a dozen mags for less than $2200 that would be more effective for self defense every day of the week and twice on sunday. This looks like a toy for people who are uninformed on the facts of self defense cartridges or don't mind buying a fairly useless pistol to add to the collection. I might consider it if I had the money, because as much as I talked shit about it, if someone handed me one I sure wouldn't turn it down.

Like the FN FiveseveN, the most alluring aspect of the pistol is that it is unique. It offers little else.

How Close?

2005-06-05T16:00:00.000-04:00

How close do we have to get to any given loathsome extreme before people will wake up and realize we're on the path, only a few steps away? How long are the perceptive folks going to be called Chicken Littles, alarmists, and radicals?

I think it's foolish to throw out references to Nazi Germany, for example, under a misinterpretation of Godwin's law. There's one hell of a difference between screaming Bush=Hitler! and comparing the relationship of gun control to the Holocaust and other social disasters (read genocides and oppression).

I may make references to fascism, socialism, police states, and so on, but I'm not claiming we're there. Yet. I'm saying that certain steps are proven in history to lead to such undesirable situations and the people had better wake the hell up before they look out the window some day and see the Gestapo coming up the front walk.

Now, I'm not claiming to be a great social prophet here. I'm a rank amateur compared to a great many bloggers, and my knowledge of all aspects of the cultural morph we're undergoing (for example) is inferior to just about all of theirs. I ask this question not for myself, but for my betters who are decried, ignored, or nonexistant in the minds of 95% of the population.

Whew

2005-06-05T14:00:00.000-04:00

It's sure hot here. It's pushing 90 in the shade with an easy 85% humidity, so we're talking serious crush your ass in 5 minutes heat. (I realize that isn't too horrible for much of the country, but to a lifelong Yankee that's been relatively inactive in heat for a while, it's fucking awful. And I'd like to see you Southerners take subzero winter days.)

Yet I went running. Dumb? Well, it depends on your point of view. I wanted to see what it was like to run in this type of weather again, something I haven't done in three years at least, and it's insanely rough. I ran a half mile, almost collapsed while stretching, ran a quarter mile, almost collapsed again, kind of staggered a dozen meters and trotted another quarter mile, and that time I started getting tunnel vision and horrible cramps in my diaphragm. Walked fifty meters, jogged a couple hundred, walked a couple hundred, then ran the final 300 or so. Collapsed in the garage on the dog table sucking wind like a god damn Hoover, then after a few minutes I could walk again and I made it up here, stripped, and started drinking water in a cross breeze from my window fans. I'm still overheated, but I feel alright as long as I don't move too much. Did I mention I was wearing a tight black cotton/poly shirt? Yeah, dumb. I was trying to simulate GA conditions but I ended up almost killing myself.

I'm going back out around 7 PM, I think, or maybe around dusk.

I can not believe I used to run XC in summer heat like this. Dear lord. Run around the lake was a summer event, usually in August... that's a 9 mile or so two person race, you see; a fast person is paired with a slowish person and they run half laps until they meet, turning around and running back, meeting again, etc. The faster person ends up running more of the course, and it's chafe city for the balls.

Lacking a good way to close this... I guess I'm just a hot weather pussy for now. I'm going to go out every day in midafternoon and run at least a mile--but do my real running in the cool parts of the day--and try to build up my heat resistance. I know I can get over it, because while I didn't like running in the heat back in those XC halcyon days, I still pulled off an average of 8-9 mile days at a good clip. Can you believe the athletic director said we couldn't take our shirts off while we were running on the HS grounds my junior year? What the fuck is that? I'd like to see that jackass out there running with us to compare 9+ miles with a damn shirt on to 9+ miles without one. Guess he didn't grasp thermodynamics and heat exchange and shit like that, because it can be an easy 10 degree difference. (Compare the shirt which absorbs IR, reflects heat from the skin instead of letting it escape, and prevents sweat from evaporating... to running with a bare chest. Even the slightest breeze can turn a 95 degree day into a very bearable 80 degree running temperature. Hell, I've been actually cold on runs in the summer without a shirt on!) What a stupid fucker. Is it really that hard to understand why the dry sock and wet sock thermometers will show different readings with wind? Duh, that's the whole fucking point of sweating.

Indifference

2005-06-05T10:45:00.000-04:00

Something I run into frequently when debating the merits of various laws is the old 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear' line. Or someone will say 'oh, well I don't do that anyway, so I don't care that they restrict it.'

Well, to those folks, I give a hearty FUCK YOU.

How would you women like it if the government decided to strip you of suffrage and all of the men and the women who don't vote said they didn't care because it didn't apply to them?

How would you feel if all the whites and other minorities said they didn't care you were being evicted from the country because it didn't apply to them?

How many of you that say you don't care will come crying to the rest of us, those you've been putting down and oppressing with your very indifference, when the government does something that DOES apply to you?

We have to stay united. I will fight for drug, tobacco, and alcohol freedom--despite the fact that I do no drugs, I do not use tobacco products, and I do not drink--if you'll fight for firearm and knife freedom. It's called a quid pro quo, and if you don't help me when I need help, I may just tell you to piss up a fucking rope when you come crying to me for help. Probably not, because I'm a nice guy... but I might. I get closer to that point every day.
_____

Unity is a total pipe dream, because most Americans don't give a shit about anything beyond their own life and maybe some vague platitudes. I see that to be true, and I'd have to be real dumb to believe the government doesn't see--and utilize--it as well. Need I remind you of the nature of government? It is to acquire, hold, and build power within itself, not serve the subjects. Realize this: the agents of the government are not required to live within most of the laws the rest of us proles are. That alone should tell you a great deal about the JBTs* running this country.

*Jack Booted Thugs: The deragatory yet scarily accurate name for agents of the government, Federal especially, with a specific reference to the ATF (also FBI or DEA depending on the context).

Cash Laws

2005-06-05T10:34:00.000-04:00

Man, from a writing standpoint I just love the way the government likes to fuck with us because it gives me an incredible amount of shit to write about.

You should know that it's illegal to leave the country with more than $10,000 in US currency. It's also pretty much a guaranteed confiscation of your cash if you enter the country with a lot of money. Why? Well, the presumption is that you're going to go buy drugs with it. Funny, though...

Read.

I don't want to excerpt it, and I'm not going into their profiling complaint--other than to say that yeah, no shit they're going to stop people who fit the profile of drug runners more, but it's a separate issue. Profiling goes both ways, guys; if the cops see a white guy in a nice car in the ghetto at 3 AM they'll probably assume he's a buyer and stop him. It's not racist, and the inflammatory claim-makers that spew that shit should be shot in the face with a fire hose.

Also, if you're wandering around town with a lot of cash and are stopped by a cop, prepare to lose it all. It's considered a crime, at least de facto if not de jure, to carry large quantities of cash. If you 'don't have a good reason' in the cops' view, you're screwed. Ok, if I want to carry my god damn life savings in a duffel bag on my back, I don't NEED an excuse. It's called freedom, mother fucker, and the response to a police inquiry should be "What fucking business is it of yours?" The reality is that the police have every motivation to find enough suspicion to confiscate your cash because it goes directly to the system that employs them and I would be surprised not at all to find cops got a cut of whatever they confiscated.

Oh boy, enter the tedious Constitutional pedantry. There's this little snippet of law called the Fourth Amendment, and it reads as follows:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
To go along with that, we have a piece of the Fifth Amendment:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Well now. I'd say that makes the actions of various JBT agencies rather unConstitutional, wouldn't you?

Terrorism

2005-06-05T10:25:00.000-04:00

That word is tossed about like a damn hot potato these days, applied to everything from legal militias to granny with a paring knife in her bag from the picnic that she forgot to take out before she hit the airport. But what is terrorism?

ter·ror·ism (tr-rzm)
n.

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

Hmmmm. Somehow I don't think granny fits that mold.

The 'War on Terror' has become a vehicle for expanding government powers--ostensibly temporarily, but since the WoT will never be over so long as we dick around with soft tactics in the Middle East, in a few years people will become so accustomed to the new powers of government that even if the WoT is over some day, it won't even occur to them to make Congress repeal them. It's worth mentioning that the 'War on Drugs' did the exact same thing.

You're branded a terrorist for having the capability of perpetrating a terrorist act, not for actually committing one. That's a common government theme and one of my major fucking gripes (to put it mildly) on this blog. Realistically speaking I'm more 'dangerous' with no weapons than the overwhelmingly vast majority of the human population is while armed with a knife, so if granny with a knife is a terrorist, I guess I am too, only there's no way for me to turn off my capability. What about other martial artists? Should we sedate them? How about doctors, sports therapists, and nurses, with their dangerous knowledge of human anatomy? The list goes on. Better ban those aviation engineers because they know far too much about how to cripple and airplane to trust them!

Look. The terrorists that took over all those planes on 9/11 did so because the passengers did not resist (with a notable exception), not because they had terrorist knives, er, box cutters that made them supercriminals. There could be many reasons for them not resisting, such as if the terrorists killed the pilots and there was nobody else to fly the plane if the passengers did regain control, but we will never know. What I do know is that after that snafu, no self respecting airline passenger will just sit back and let a bunch of fruitcakes with utility knives take over their plane. The TSA bullshit--tossing your ass on a blacklist with no redress--is just one more measure of control the government has passed on us without preventing any real crime, and gee fucking whiz does it smack of police state or what? Toe the line or you'll be driving everywhere, buster--and that's just for now. What if they decide folks on the terrorist watch list can't be trusted to drive either? Or have access to their bank accounts?

More on Gun Laws

2005-06-04T14:37:00.000-04:00

Disclaimer: I wrote this during commercials while watching Mythbusters and reading about battery technology, so if the logic and structure isn't clear, my bad. I didn't edit it either, and I don't feel like it now.

Gun laws are something you need to keep a sense of reality about. Yeah, I get really pissed when I look at the infinitely unConstitutional measures our various legislatures keep trying to pass, and do manage to pass, but really... getting the guns out of the hands of Americans is an impossible feat for the present.

Look. The RKBA movement is pretty god damn big, full of military personnel and other independent, action oriented men and women that own a lot of guns. Guns aren't just tools to most of them, but a way of life; skill is earned, polished, and honed, all as a matter of pride. We're talking about millions of armed, willing, and ready people here.

People seem to think that as soon as a confiscation/registration law is passed, it's all over. Poof, the guns are gone. Well, that's not how it works. At absolute best the government has, oh, two million or so foot soldiers to try to confiscate the guns from seventy million owners, and if even 10% of those owners resist, the government will be outnumbered rather handily.

Now, I understand that there are a few dozen ways the government could put pressure on gun owners to pretty much ruin their lives until they give up their weapons, but how many people do you suppose will stand for having their lives shut down by control freaks on capitol hill without fighting back? Some certainly would, either by mental weakness or responsibilities to family and such, but it would take only a tiny percentage of pissed off militiamen to force the government to push a police state that would spark a general revolution or recognize the 2nd Amendment affirmed right again.

I think the way the government will ultimately disarm our society is cultural indoctrination in schools, growing whole generations of collectivist anti-gunners. They're working on it right now, perhaps not specifically to remove guns from the hands of gun owners, but to establish a socialist culture. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but I'll just have to turn around and call you a blind sucker.

Read this for a scary view of the future of guns.

I tried to find the sabotage piece by Connie du Toit on our public schools, but I'm not having any luck. I'm browsing her very worthy archives and essays right now, though, so if I run across it I'll update.

I'm Home

2005-06-03T23:07:00.000-04:00

A lot earlier than I thought I would be. Nothing changed mid-trip, I just wasn't aware that we were planning to come home today.

So, a few highlights. I really missed Erin the whole time. That's not a highlight, but it was a repeating theme.

We went to a mother's side of the family get together in Binghamton and I saw a few aunts and cousins I hadn't seen in a while. It poured in the last half of the day and we went on a several mile jaunt around the lake and the dogs were annoying as hell, but we saw an abundance of rare plants - like lady slippers - and it was overall a fun time.

Next major stop: Antietam, Maryland. As in, the battle of Antietam, in the Civil War (War of Northern Aggression, as I'm coming to view it, despite being a Yankee). It was pretty interesting, even though the driving tour was confusing and we got turned around a few times. I lost interest 3/4 through though because it was too long and some of the stops were just rambling on. It's shocking the type of battle (Napoleonic) they fought in the Civil War, the horror of forming in lines and standing firm against the opening volley from your enemy... I can't imagine the courage it would take to stand there in the front lines, rifles leveled twenty yards away are your chest, praying that the first shots missed you and hit your brothers instead--or maybe hoping you'd take the bullet rather than a friend. I'd rather walk into a modern battlefield than face that kind of combat any day of the week.

Okay, many hours later we ended up in Virginia at Stone Manor cabin, a nice little place on the Shenandoah River. It was beautiful and peaceful except for the fucking trucks running up and down the road all damn day; one day when I was sitting on the screened in porch attempting to write, a grading machine came up and down RIGHT in front of our fucking cabin literally 12 times in a row. It was loud enough at 50 yards that I couldn't hear my voice speaking normally, so I hope the bastard running it went deaf.

The nicer bits were the horseshoe pit, fire pit, spa on the porch, the big ass painted turtle that sunned on this rock maybe 70 yards out into the river from our banks... it was pretty cool there. I'm taking several bits of architectural wisdom from the cabin to apply to my own house some day, if my dream of building my own place on my own land with my own hands (as much as possible) is realized. I'd think about going back some day if I could get a guarantee there would be no trucks.

We went to Luray Caverns, the tour of which was rather short on geology and history. It sure was worth seeing though, and I only wish I had a better camera; my digital is fine for up close stuff in good lighting, but I'd need a digital SLR or regular SLR and a bunch of film to really do it justice. It's God damn amazing if you think that all of those formations were the result of dripping water with a few minerals.

What else did we do... I dunno. I'm losing my mind. I broke in a new folding knife, a Benchmade Pardue Ambush, the only folder I own that I can open with one motion of my thumb instead of two. The rolling lock was annoying at first, but it's grown on me. I also managed to cut my middle finger when I mis-caught my Benchmade Monochrome folder; the serrations got me. No big deal, but it's the first cut I've had since Christmas. Otherwise I read a bunch of books, played some Monopoly (sometimes with myself... and I still lost), watched a few movies, just relaxed, and realized HOLY SHIT I'm leaving in two weeks! I almost had a panic attack the first time that hit me when I was trying to go to sleep the first night at the cabin, and I had to read another hour to get my mind off it and not have awful dreams when I did fall asleep.

I think I'm running out of steam. I lost my train of thought a while ago; I see the Yankees lost, and I'm getting all nostalgic and lonely so I might as well sign off. 'Night.

Oh! I forgot. On the way home, we got to sit unmoving in a damn traffic jam for 90 minutes. Sweet, huh? It doesn't trump the five hours in an airplane coach seat on the tarmac we did once, but it was pretty bad all the same. Yeah, the driving part of this whole trip, which totaled about 18-20 hours, was really shitty. Not going to bitch too much, but let's just say I don't really fit in the seat...

C-ya

2005-05-27T16:50:00.000-04:00

I'm going on vacation down south somewhere, VA I think, tomorrow morning. I don't really want to go, but it's the whole family thing... so this will probably be my last post for a good 9-10 days. I don't exactly have a large readership anyway, but to those that care, I'm not dead or anything.

The good side is I get to run and do calisthenics in the heat and humidity of the south to kind of get used to it before OSUT. From a performance standpoint I would be best off spending the next several weeks before my ship date down there acclimatizing, but I'll take what I can get.

I'll probably use my spare time writing, or at least roughing, some of the essay type things I've been wanting to write. It'll be harder without the internet's instant data but conversely easier to actually work because I won't have any distractions. Maybe I'll get some fiction going too. 'Course with my luck the place we stay will have free wireless and I'll be all distracted anyway.

A Simple Calculation...

2005-05-27T15:15:00.000-04:00

Social Security is, in theory--and so believed by many Americans--a government controlled savings system. You work, you pay, you take your money back out. But...

Let's assume it even worked that way (it doesn't). You pay taxes for the government to do things, which means you would be paying a fee for them to manage your money. You would not get any sort of interest on your money, like you would in the weakest savings account in any private bank. That means your money's real value is less over time.

Let's say the government uses an optimistic 1% of your social security input to manage it. That means you're really getting 99% of the money you put in. Reduce it by an average of ~2.7% per year to adjust for inflation, and after ten years your money is worth, what, 80% or so? I'm guestimating here--it's a relatively complex formula and I'd need to actually use paper or a spread sheet to chart it out--but count on losing at least 15% of your money. That's not including the loss of revenue from any interest or other investments you might make, which could be a very impressive amount of money if you're a skilled or lucky investor.

So even if it worked the way the gummint claims, it's STILL a really shitty deal. Math don't lie, folks. About the only good thing is it keeps some money out of the hands of the 'Charge it!' crowd, but that's not a fix for irresponsible spending, it's a patch.

On a cheerier note, it looks like rain outside.

Movie commentary

2005-05-27T14:35:00.000-04:00

That's a pleasant surprise, Shane Brolly is in a B movie on scifi and he's actually acting decently! Shane Brolly is the guy that plays the asshole vampire Kraven in Underworld and does an awful job of it, if you don't know. Maybe there was something to the claim that it was partly director induced... but I'd have to see more than two of his movies to say for sure. We'll see how he does in the second Underworld, I guess.

The B movie of which I speak is Deadly Swarm. It got a whopping 3/10 on IMDB, which is about the lowest score I've ever seen; it's not that bad, but what do you expect from a scifi slot filler movie? It's decent for a TV movie; the only problem is it's not a TV movie, it's a real box office thing. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than Ocean's 12... plus Kaarina Aufranc is worth a second look. And a third.

Update: LOL! Whoa I spoke too soon. Horrible fakeness in the last quarter of the movie. 'Sandra! Sandra!' He sounds like he's calling her to dinner, not freaked out that she might be dead from the scorpion wasps. Sigh, I had such hope too. See, I hate finding out that someone acting as a professional in any arena, operating under the delusion that they are talented, really just plain sucks. That goes for sports and other such things too... it's just sad, pitiful in the true sense of the word.

Things the Gummint Should Not Be Involved In, Part I

2005-05-27T13:25:00.000-04:00

I'm going to use this space as a digital chalkboard to tally the things the federal government does that it has no fucking business getting involved in. I'll amend and bump it as necessary.

What made me think of this? My toilet. The first entry is...

Telling us plebeians how much water our toilets can flush!
In 1992 the EPA enacted the Energy Policy Act, a part of which required toilets to reduce capacity to 1.6 gallons per flush by 1994. Prior, most toilets used a healthy 3.5 gallon flush. Ever throw a few paper towels in the toilet in a moment of carelessness while cleaning the sink, toilet, tub, whatever? Instant clog with a wimpy 1.6 gallon flush; I've done that a few times. A goddamn toilet should be able to shred the hell out of a few paper towels, but instead it turns into a six flush half hour plunger project that uses three times as much water as a single 'high capacity' toilet flush would have taken. Hell, screw 3.5 gallon flushes, I'd get the supercharged five gallon flushpuppy if I could. How much would you like to bet the patricians have real toilets in their mansions? Kind of like how they don't have to pay social security, but that's another entry.

Okay, rant off; in all seriousness, water conservation is NOT a federal issue. Here in the northeast we're hardly having a water crisis, you know. We had major rains twice in the last three months that flooded much of the area, for example. Now, in the southwest where water shortages are actually an issue, it would be a state or local issue--by law. Probably state, and that assumes that the free market wouldn't take care of itself. Fact is, this law is a solution looking for a problem and causing no few of its own. There's literally a toilet black market, if you can believe that.

Disclaimer: The most recent article I found pertaining to this regulation is dated 2000, and I can't find any actual text; I guess the 1992 Energy Policy Act is a very broad piece of legislation and googling it just gets me stuff on nuclear waste and such. Even my beloved Wiki just has a stub entry. So I suppose it's possible the law has been repealed, but I seriously doubt it; you'd think I would find a few articles about the repeal if it happened.

Perspective

2005-05-27T11:00:00.000-04:00

It's good to reexamine things sometimes. As much as I bitch about the way our idiotic legislatures on all levels are abusing power, violating oaths, etc; as little faith I have in the judiciary and executive branches--this is still America, and it is still the greatest nation in the world.

For now.

Knife laws

2005-05-27T08:21:00.000-04:00

A knife is one of the most basic tools the world has ever seen, and by far one of the most useful. In the society we live in today knives are hardly as important (in a scalar sense) as they once were, but that's not to say that knives don't retain incalculable value as tools. When you need a knife, you need one bad.

Now, despite the hoplophobia and ignorance of most suburbanites and city dwellers, the majority of knives are not intended to be weapons. They are tools first and foremost, though the fact that they are designed as tools does not preclude them from being used as weapons. How many tools do you have that would make highly effective weapons, eh? Hammer, crowbar, screwdrivers, length of chain, washers (put them in a sock...); I could go on for quite a while. How about an axe or hatchet? A simple two and a half foot 1" dowel makes a great club.

So why are knives singled out? This is a less easily answered question than that of the war on guns, you see, because guns are indisputably designed to kill; the argument there is more what kind of killing is acceptable (self defense, resistance of tyranny). And I don't have an answer for you, other than the fact that the government is striving to control the lives of the masses and to elevate the police and military (automatic knives, anyone?) from the plebeians.

NY Gun Bans...

2005-05-27T07:38:00.000-04:00

Apparently the NY Assembly passed a bill that would ban several of the weapons I own. It's not a law yet, pending approval by the NY Senate--which is controlled by the Rs. See here if you're interested. Hat tip to John Lott via SayUncle.

So. I see they have a grandfather provision that would require me to register my weapons with the police and provide ballistics. Fuck that. Also notice the quote: "Under Lavelle's bill, a semi-automatic gun with a detachable ammunition magazine that accepts 10 or more rounds would be outlawed." I don't see a 'rifle' in that sentence, so I guess they mean just about all double stack pistols in existence too. I guess the NY AWB didn't go far enough on that score?

Yeah, I'm glad I'm getting the hell out of here and I'm certainly never coming back. I'll have to find a place to store my shit out of state before November if this thing passes, because I won't have anywhere to store them wherever I get tossed in the Army--at least not for a while.

There's a 50 caliber ban coming too, I see. The usual BS claims of 'shooting down airplanes' are made, of course. Did nobody in the NY Legislature take a physics class in high school? Maybe they have an IQ cap before you can run for office.

I'm slumming on the NY .gov site and am frankly staggered by the kind of laws these fucknoses are trying to pass on us. I'd mention a few, like trying to raise the legal hunting age to 18, giving tax officers the authority to carry weapons without a license, automatic concealed carry permits for retiring LEOs, one handgun per thirty days, further restrictions on ammunition purchases... but I won't, because I don't want a fucking stroke.

Read this...

2005-05-26T12:10:00.000-04:00

Love it.

Free Choice Truncated

2005-05-26T10:41:00.000-04:00

What the fuck gives any person or body of people the right to say what I can and can not do if there is no victim of my 'crime'? Or if the 'victim' is me?

This annoys the shit out of me. I see it all the time, the little regulations and restrictions the legislators have placed on the populace to control its actions. For example: it is illegal to attempt to go over Horseshoe Falls in the Niagara Falls area. WTF? If I want to risk my ass in a stupid stunt like that, who the fuck are you to tell me I can't? I'm not hurting anyone but me if I fail, so fuck off! The irony here is that I assume it is to prevent people from killing themselves in a stupid act, but the only way you can punish them is if they fail to kill themselves. Kind of like outlawing suicide...

Yeah I'm too scattered to write a full blown rant/analysis of this phenomenon, but it's one of the essays I have on my plate. Some day I'll publish them and you'll be shocked by my profound writings; I'll promptly usurp Bill Whittle with my insight... HA! Yeah right. While I'm dreaming, I want a pony.

OMG!

2005-05-26T10:18:00.000-04:00

How fucking embarassing to realize you actually like a song by one of those pouty mussed blonde teenage boys? Holy shit. I was like XXXX XXXXXXX? Who the fuck is that? when I looked up the song on WinMX, and when I got to the homepage and saw that thing looking at me... Christ, save me.

Then comes the question: what the hell is this kid doing singing a song like that? I was thinking early 20s black hip-hop artist every time I heard the song on the radio, not 14 year old white twerp. Yeah, it does matter somewhat; how weird would it be to see a, oh, Tibetan guy singing country?

On the subject... it's weak to just sing without any other musical talent and call yourself a musician like so many people do these days. A decent singing voice is natural to someone skilled with an instrument because singing is basically a function of your ear (to a point), so it's not impressive at all to have a naturally good ear and ONLY sing. Exceptions granted to truly amazing vocalists. My standards may be set high, however; I know many extremely talented musicians and I have been a very involved musician all my life, so just learning a dozen chords on guitar or singing in a choir is going to leave me shrugging a 'so fucking what.'

Nothing specific

2005-05-26T08:20:00.000-04:00

Good Yankees game last night. They won... 4-2, I think. Yay. I watched it on tape, but I barely remember any cool happenings (if there were any) so you don't get any commentary. I feel weird talking about the game in realtime when it's not actually on, anyway.

I spent the rest of the night reading military forums and watching military movies to try to psych myself up again, to get inspired for training. So that was fun, like always; it gives me kind of an adrenaline jolt that lasts several days at the least.

I went running about 30 minutes ago, and that was bloody awful. I ran my regular half mile warmup, pushing kind of hard but not really--I'm stiff when I start running, usually, and a short warmup does wonders for opening up my form and letting the motion flow smoothly. I hit the canal path to stretch and as soon as I stopped I felt like I was having an episode or something: I got a really bad headache, it felt like my blood pressure spiked, I was having trouble breathing, and my throat felt really gummy and I couldn't clear it no matter what hack/spit technique I tried. Well, the run ended there, and after trying to recover for another 5 minutes I started slowly limping my broken ass home, which took 15 freakin minutes because I was walking so damn slow. That's a new experience; despite all the ways I've punished myself running, including some very hard hot weather 5k races, 8x1200 intervals at threshold, twelve+ mile days... I never felt quite that way. Kind of like someone had my lungs and trachea in their fist and squeezed; I hope to fucking God I'm not developing asthma or something, because that's an infantry career killer. I'll go running as soon as I wake up tonight around 11 and if it happens again I'll get worried. That's a lie, I'm already worried, which is why I rambled on for so long about this crap. Any kind of new, bad experience in running bugs the shit out of me because I've been running for long enough at a high intensity that I've had most of the regular problems already happen to me.

Yeah, I'm going to find some food. Have a good day.

My poor back... an AR-180B story

2005-05-25T08:50:00.000-04:00

My back is killing me because I just spent about a half hour trying to learn how to detail strip my AR-180B without instructions because they apparently don't exist on the internet and the stupid booklet doesn't tell you how to take down the lower half. Actually that doesn't explain the back thing... my back hurts because I did it hunched over on my couch with the rifle on my knees and tools in my lap, like almost all gun work I do. I really need to build a work table.

The secret to a detail strip lies in the e-clips. There are two larger pins that are held in place by e-clips, the semi-circular things on the small ends of the pins; one allows you to separate the upper and lower, and the other allows you to remove the trigger group. You get said e-clips off by pushing on both ends of the C (you'll see the E in e-clip when you get it off) with paperclips or punches equally. Pretty simple, really. I'm not sure how strong a point in the design they are if you take the rifle apart a lot, but I suppose we'll see in time. Maybe I'll stress test them by detail stripping it at least once after every firing session and get back to you in, oh, a couple years. I'm sure they'll last a longish time, but they might not last decades like many gun parts do.

I'm not going to talk about the rest of the rifle because I seriously doubt anyone reading this owns one, but I'm going to put together a detailed instruction sheet with photos and host it on my main server. I figure it's about time someone ponied up and got the info out there, though learning to do it yourself is a great exercise in mechanics and learning the mistakes not to make--like what parts to hold down when you remove a pin so they don't go flying across the room or smash a finger when a spring is let loose.

So after I wrote that, I figured hey why not put in that Rock River NM trigger group I have laying around? Shoot me now. It's in, but putting the hammer in is a fucking nightmare and hell on my fingers. That alone took at least 25 minutes. Argh. This detail strip I also launched several parts like both e-clips and the bolt catch and the spring that launched it. That last one came about two inches from hitting the glass of my TV at full speed... this is why my work table will include a plywood three walled part trap. I've dinged my ceiling and walls a half dozen times launching recoil spring plugs from my 1911, too.

I'm not sure I like the trigger. There's an awful lot of take-up; I know it's a two-stage trigger--and I've never experienced a two-stage trigger before so maybe this is normal--but it feels weird. The break is very clean and relatively light, though, so I'll probably leave it in, at least until I take it shooting once or twice.

Yankees... Belated

2005-05-25T00:52:00.000-04:00

Well, I slept through it (I'm on a F-ed up sleep schedule) but I taped the game and I'm watching it now. I'm too busy to do a total rundown of the game, but I guess I'll mention the highlights. Oh, when I turned on the TV, despite all efforts to the contrary, I glimpsed the damn score on the YES score scroller thing. It just happened to be on the one game I did not want to see the scores for! ...So the outcome of this game isn't a mystery to me. I hate knowing the outcome, because it destroys most of the suspense in a game of suspense.

Entry 1, middle of the fifth:
The Tigers have gotten a few hits, but they're scoreless at the bottom of the fifth.

A-rod has hit two home runs so far for a total of three runs in the 2nd (solo) and 4th. Posada hit a solo home run immediately after A-rod in the 4th, and Cano hit a sac-fly to bring Giambi home again in the 4th inning. Yankees 5, Tigers 0.

Mussina is pitching very well. He's given up a few hits, like I said, but he's pitching an excellent game; not once have the Tigers had a runner in scoring position for an earned run.

Entry 2, bottom of the fifth
Womack was hit in by Sheffield's deep homer to left field to bring the score to 7-0. That's the fourth home run of the game for the Yankees. Man, I'd hate to be the Tigers starter...

Oh my. Fifth home run of the game by Posada for three (Matsui and A-rod were on base)--the second of the game for him--against the relief pitcher, Ginter. That brings the score to 10-0 with no outs.

The inning ended quickly with a double play off the bat of Cano and a ground-out by Jeter. One more run was scored by Russ Johnson running for Giambi (on the double play hit), so it's 11-0.

Entry 3, no clue what inning it is (turns out it's the top of the 8th)
WTF? Quantrill apparently hit Jason Smith intentionally and was ejected from the game, along with Joe Torre... this is a new one for me. Heh. Kind of funny, I guess; the announcers are speculating that it was retaliation for the Tigers hitting A-rod after his hot game.

Tigers hitter Thames got a three run homer off Buddy Groom.

Entry 4, bottom of the 8th
Cano got a solo home run to lead off the inning, bringing the score up to 12-3. That's the seventh home run of the game, six of which were hit off Yankee bats.

Entry 5, final (Yankees 12, Tigers 3)
Well, that was a pretty one-sided game. Fun to watch the Yankees kick ass, but I feel bad for the Tigers. They got 10 hits, only 4 less than the Yankees, and that's pretty bad for only getting three runs in.

Crazy...

2005-05-24T12:02:00.000-04:00

What kind of crazy fucker cuts off his trigger finger to protest firearms? This is one of the more incomprehensible things I've encountered from the antis.

Hat tip to SayUncle.

Even stranger is the fact that he's trying to sell his finger chopping device. Maybe he's hoping some other crazy ass will buy it and follow his example, or maybe he's just an attention whore trying to get some quick cash along the way... $10,000 (he dropped the opening bid) is a hell of a lot less than my finger is worth, though.

Other movie stuff

2005-05-22T07:27:00.000-04:00

Besides Ocean's Crap, I also got out Darkness, a horror flick, and the first two discs of Deadwood's first season. I'm watching Darkness now and watched the Deadwood episodes overnight.

I really like Deadwood. I'll talk more about it after I finish the season, but it's great how they portrayed the West and some of the significant people like Hickok, Jack McCall, Calamity Jane, etc. Western movies almost always take the romantic view, and as a result most people know jack shit about the real Wild West. I don't know if Hickok was armed with his trademark Colt Navy revolvers in Deadwood, but it looked like it. I don't know that type of handgun well enough to say without better pictures and something to compare them to. Also I don't believe he wore his guns like that: in a general fashion, yes, but I think they're slung too low and back on his hips.

Speaking of the Wild West (horrible segue) what the fuck is with the History Channel being 100% uninformed about guns? Some jackass was on there the other day saying how shooting a 44 magnum revolver could knock you down if you didn't grip it well. Note this was not getting shot and knocked down, a far more common misconception, but actually shooting it. There are tons of other examples, but that one was a record mark on the stupid scale.

About Darkness; it's creepy and suspenseful so far, and I love the house. Anna Paquin is a lot prettier with her mouth closed... her teeth freak me out. She has to be SO rich by now, you'd think she could get at least invisalign braces or something. For Christ's sake. I digress. The father is suitably freaky and good at playing the crazy guy, but the mother seems misfit; she's not acting in a natural fashion. The young kid is kind of weird. I like Anna Paquin's acting for the most part, but it's not amazing. I just hope they explain some of the random little acts (the picture of the three women, the ghost in the room under the stairs, etc) and don't just leave us to wonder. If it strikes me fashion I'll write a better review later.

Ocean's Twelve spoiler warning

2005-05-21T21:04:00.000-04:00

Summary, before you go further... if you haven't seen it, don't.

Anyway...

WTF? What a bad sequel. Very slow start and huge leaps of logic; for example, did you see all that shit they used to break into the agoraphobic guy's house? Any clue how much equipment like that would cost? I wouldn't be surprised if it cost more than the 2.5 million they planned to score, or very close to it. So they're spending a lot of time and capital for a minimal or probably negative cash return. Brilliant plan, guys.

Okay, so I finished watching the movie a while ago and didn't bother to update my criticism until now. It was a confusing plot that relied far too much on a flashback, for starters. What was with the breakdancing thief? Laser nets... can't move like that. A laser sensor has two ends so that it can tell if the laser is broken, but if it's moving all over the place how is it supposed to know if the beam is broken? Stupid.

Other things that pop out... the holographic egg thing. How the hell were they supposed to install a whole new pedestal with impossible holographic technology in the middle of a museum? What was the point of all that? Isabel or whatever Catherine Zeta-Jones's character was named also just knew all sorts of things, like when she just knew they would go after the faberge egg. She just knew where to find the gang, also. What was with Julia Roberts pretending to be Julia Roberts, also?

I can't talk about this anymore.

Gladiator

2005-05-21T04:22:00.000-04:00

I'm watching the movie Gladiator just now. When I watch movies I've seen before that aren't fluff I usually try to learn more about the subject matter (and am usually disappointed by the inaccuracy of the movie) by reading on the Wiki and such.

Marcus Aurelius is the emperor at the beginning of this movie. Unfortunately for the writers, he wasn't the only emperor in reality; he co-ruled with Lucius Aelius Verus, a result of fighting wars on two fronts (Marcus Aurelius handled Germania in the west, Lucius Aelius Verus took care of the Parthians--I think--in the east). Seems strange that they didn't even mention that fact, but I guess it would have ruined the story. Okay, I fact checked my ass and it turns out Licius Verus died 11 years before Marcus Aurelius, so it wouldn't have been an issue for the successor of Marcus Aurelius, our buddy Commodus.

It's not like the movie is particularly true to history in other senses anyway, though. Commodus ruled for 12 years and was murdered by the prefect of his Praetorian guard, IIRC there was no such general as Maximus, and so on. Gladitorial combat was hardly the way they portrayed it. I'm a bit rusty on this next bit, but I believe Lucilla, Commodus's sister, tried to poison him and was exiled and subsequently killed. Oh well. It's a damn good movie anyway.

Okay, not really about the movie, but I love late Roman armor and weaponry, both for functionality and beauty. A decked out Legionnaire must have been quite a sight to behold, and the simple genius behind the pilum is just stunning. I could go on for a long time about my fascination with Rome, but I'm tired. Maybe some other time.

Last Deanimator Post

2005-05-20T08:41:00.000-04:00

I've grown bored with the game since I hit a mark I haven't even come close to beating since, but a reader asked for my secrets (such as they are) and I suppose I can oblige.

I guess it's a matter of arranging the priority kills in the game. You can always kill the two smaller zombie types with two shots no matter how far you get in the game: they both will fall down if you shoot them in the lower legs, and then one shot will kill them as they're getting up. Aim lower on the lower leg than high because a hit around the knee won't necessarily knock them down, and when they're down it's easiest to let them start to get back up before finishing them off because when they're flat it's difficult to actually hit them. Now, the middlish size zombie with the big head is easiest killed by knocking its head off and putting another shot in its chest, but with a horde of zombies rushing you you're probably best off knocking it on the ground to slow it down while you take care of the big ones.

So, about the big ones. They grow progressively stronger, requiring more shots from the revolver as the game goes on; I stop using the revolver on them unless absolutely necessary around 400 kills, but I seem to recall 7 hit kills around then. Basically at that point it's impossible to kill more than two or three with just the revolver and then only if they're alone and you have time to reload. The big ones are best taken care of with a single shot from the revolver before they even get out of the ground, of course.

The answer to killing the big ones is the shotgun. For about the last 150 kills I was using a true combination of the revolver and shotgun rather than just running one dry and switching, which is suicide. I'd try to keep the revolver as full as I could while switching to the shotgun to take care of any big ones, relying more and more on the shotgun for the ones already up and killing as many as possible before they got out of the ground with the revolver. Very quick shooting and counting your shots is vital because the fourth shot with the shotgun always misses and it's slow as hell to reload.

You're up shit creek if you have four or five zombies coming using the shotgun and an empty revolver; at that point you're best off blasting any big ones (up to 3), not reloading, switching to the revolver, reloading, and killing the rest with it. But! You'd want to switch back to the shotgun and shoot off the shells before the CLEAR thing was all the way on the screen, because you can reload while it's up so long as you are done with the actual firing before you can click to the next level. I do not know if you can begin the reloading (but not finish it) and click to the next level and still have a reloaded gun because I never took the chance.

Reload management is the absolute most important thing in the game besides actually being able to hit your targets, and I'll still occasionally struggle through lowish levels (like 14-15) if I make a crappy reloading decision. I've died at only 150 kills a bunch of times because a big bastard got the jump on me when I was reloading. Oh, when you're done reloading if you start firing as soon as possible sometimes you can get an extra shot before it starts subtracting from your 'magazine,' but I didn't spend any time trying to figure out what sort of timing or conditions there are to do so, because it feels somewhat like cheating. I don't complain if it happens on accident, but I won't strive to do it.

Er, some miscellaneous tips... Any lull in the fighting means shooting off the ammo and reloading if the revolver has four or less and the shotgun if two or less. If you hit the big bastards in the right spot (around the hips?) sometimes they'll take a step back, which is helpful. I don't practice that technique, really, but it's worth knowing. It doesn't matter where you hit the big ones with the revolver, they don't die any quicker. I could go on for a while (sorry if I repeated anything I wrote before) but the best help you can get is practice and luck.

It's morning...

2005-05-20T08:35:00.000-04:00

You might be surprised how many entries I decide not to post here. Well, maybe not, I suppose... but I probably write two or three for every one that I post.

There are many topics I wish I could write coherently about--in politics and law especially--that I just can't seem to properly express. A number of basic problems crop up, see: I might not feel I have enough knowledge to properly support my points, or I might not have a clear enough point in mind to begin with. Maybe I feel something is true or right but I can't adequately explain why, or maybe I'm trying to pick up a thread that I left off of three months ago and have a dozen answers at my fingertips without recalling the reasoning behind them. Even if I can say 'thus and such is true' and I am 100% positive I am correct I don't feel comfortable posting it without a solid explanation.

Well, I think that's the way things should be. There's no use thinking 'the right thing' if you're thinking it for the wrong reasons, or for no logical reasons at all. If you come up to me and make a statement, you should be able to support it with facts and logic; even if I agree with you, I'll probably ask you why you think it's true, and I'm not going to feed you my own reasons. It's called critical independent thinking, folks. A vanishing skill in today's society, it is: most all the people I know in my generation get really pissy and whiny when I challenge their statements, and most adults are about as good at defending their POV on 98% of the issues today as they are growing raspberry trees. What a sentence that was...

****

I'm cheating. I got out of my warming-up bed to write something fictional (and listen to music... I had the third Harry Potter soundtrack stuck in my head and it was distracting me from reading) and here I am writing on blogger. Lame, Dave, real lame. Five days ago I told myself I would write X (I was going to go by how well my first session went, though the theoretical number was three) pages per day no matter what, and so far I have a total of 0 pages. I fucking suck. I think I'm afraid to write because I know I'm nowhere near as good a writer as I once was and it's a lot easier to ignore that fact when I'm not actually writing. Sigh.

Okay, I'm tired as hell, but I'm going to write 1500 words good or bad before I let myself lay back down. The sooner I start writing again the sooner I'll get through the bloody fucking awful story phase. I doubt I'll post again until late tonight (I have no clue if I'll be around for the Yankees game again, life intrudes), so have a good day y'all.

Miscellany

2005-05-19T16:03:00.000-04:00

Kelly Clarkson has an amazing voice.

DO NOT buy a Para Ordnance pistol. I've had two fucking parts break in light use (one is a god damn pin!) and apparently they don't use standard magazine catches, so I have fucking three mag catches from different manufacturers that I CAN NOT get to fit my pistol. They are not cheap either, about $25 each. I'm pissed as hell because I could have gotten a Springfield for $200 less and avoided these problems entirely, but Para Ordnance is a quality company, right? What a load of shit!

Airborne Physical = biggest waste of time in recent memory. I spent a total of 22 hours on this project, from getting in the car at 4:30 yesterday to getting home today, and guess how long I actually spent doing something worthwhile? Ten. Minutes. Assuming three hours of travel no matter how long I was there, that means the Army operated at 0.8% efficiency. Thanks a lot guys.

I see the Yankees lost last night. I only saw about three plays on ESPN (six fucking times because apparently SportsCenter's idea of a good show is replaying the same shit over and over for two hours), but that ends the winning streak. They're now six games back in fourth instead of tied for third with the Blue Jays at 5.5 back, but I'm not too worried about it yet.

Sgt Hartley has a Dodge Stratus sedan (I think, it might be an Intrepid... I generally ignore Dodge vehicles), and I actually like it a lot. It's roomy and comfortably powerful. I'm trying to figure out what kind of cars there are out there that meet my specifications for a supplement to a full size truck, see. A Cherokee Sport would do nicely, actually... good power and torque with traction for shitty weather without gulping fuel like a 350 cubic inch V8, compact, and roomy to boot. Ah, yes, I would love a 1996 or so Cherokee Sport. I think I just solved my own puzzle. So for my third vehicle (pending lotto winnings) I'll just buy a third generation RX-7 to fill the sports car slot in my garage. No problem.

Bill Whittle has a new essay up, a two parter. See here and here.

Oh, I didn't even ask about the leaving early thing. Events transpired to make me reconsider that option, and you don't get to know how. Nya nya.

What an asshole

2005-05-18T14:56:00.000-04:00

Michael Crook of the indescribably loathsome website Forsake the Troops faked his own murder a few days ago. Now, I don't want the guy to get murdered, but I would not have been terribly upset if his hoax was real.

Where the hell would you get the idea you could get away with making high profile claims like that? We live in a society where anything can be fact checked with two minutes on the internet and a phone call, stupid! It might have worked 30 years ago (for a few days), but it sure as shit isn't going to fly now.

Oh, by the way, it's illegal; the regional police departments were swamped in inquiries after the hoax bloomed, which may well have preventing the solving of other time sensitive crimes. Nice job dick drip, you may be responsible for a murderer getting away.

I hope this asshole goes to jail or is ruined financially with a huge fine. Whatever else happens he ruined his credibility (such as it was) with the rational segment of America, sinking his own cause. The irrational military haters will love him for this, of course, regardless of the morality of his actions, but they aren't the people that matter.

MEPS...

2005-05-18T13:32:00.000-04:00

I'm real nervous. I've been through this before, so you'd think it wouldn't bother me, but... I don't know. I'm just nervous.

I'm making up a list of questions to ask my recruiter, like how long I'll be waiting between my ship date and the start of OSUT. I'll ask about moving my ship date up with this option, probably just if he's heard of it, but I guess that's why I'm so anxious... if I am offered it, what do I do?

I do want to leave early, but. But... will I regret it? Long run, I don't see how it matters. It might even be better because I'll get tossed into the situation with less warning and I usually perform well that way. See, I'm my own worst enemy and by making all kinds of assumptions and dwelling on things ahead of time I get a skewed point of view for a while when I finally get where I'm going. It sets me back for a short time until I realize I'm being an idiot, and that's just a fact of Dave life. However, in the short term... well, I don't think I'm missing any opportunities, really. Maybe one, but it's not the kind of thing that would be affected by leaving in 3 weeks rather than 1. It's just hard to make this decision.

Well, I've got three hours to figure shit out. All I have to do is a wash so I don't smell like a yak tomorrow, trim my stupid goatee (I eat way too much protein... my beard is like 3 inches long), and find stuff to read. Maybe I'll run by the store and grab some benadryl to help me sleep tonight. I got about 6 hours of sleep last night, not quite few enough hours to assure an easy entry to dreamland about 9-9:30 PM. Sigh.

I shouldn't post anything else before I go, and obviously I won't be around for the Yankees game tonight, so I'll be back tomorrow night sometime.

Hey, yet more random stuff

2005-05-18T04:45:00.000-04:00

It was suggested in the comments at some blog (SayUncle probably) that the revolver in Deanimator was a Webley, seen here. I disagree, as the Webley is a break top, and it's obviously not a break-top clearing action when our hero empties the pistol. I'm guessing an early model S&W. Anyway, I really want a Webley Mark VI some day... though maybe converted to 45 ACP (I think they can do that...). 455 Webley ammo is a bit 'spensive.

I'm watching this movie on Scifi about two thieves who are on a religious quest or something. I only watched about half of it. Anyway, it's called Soulkeeper I think, and one of the actors (the one that doesn't blow himself up at the end) looks a hell of a lot like a younger Ray Liotta. Kind of confusing.

It seems the older and wiser I get and the more knowledge I accumulate, the less I enjoy movies and television. Soon my only refuge will be in books, not that that's a wholly bad thing.

Sometimes in science fiction you're better off simply not trying to explain your universe's technology. That way in fifty years when humans can actually do the things your books suggest, you won't look like an idiot when you're wrong. Hard scifi (as in books that actually do have a very deep basis in science) is limited to the near future, generally. I enjoy the other kind more, though I suppose at that point we're talking fantasy.

You know that commercial where the father is sitting in a chair watching TV and a channel he wants to watch is blocked? He asks his daughter what's up, and she says he has to ask his wife for permission, and then she walks in with her hands on her hips and says 'No.' What a flacid tool that guy is.

I'm not a fan of big pieces of garlic. I really enjoy the taste, and garlic salt/powder is great, but actual chopped garlic is gross. For example; when eating a slice of fresh garlic bread, biting into a large chunk of soft, mushroom like garlic is an awful experience. I like that about as much as finding hard bits in a hamburger or hair in my sesame chicken. Okay, I've never found hair in my sesame chicken, but the hard bits in hamburger thing is nasty and happens all too often.

Why do they put shrimp in egg rolls? And why does it only happen sometimes, with no noticeable pattern, so I have to examine each proposed bite of egg roll before I take it to ensure no shrimp finds its way into my mouth? Generally when we order Chinese I get 6-8 egg rolls to enjoy over the next two days as snacks; sometimes I'll go through them all without finding a single bit of shrimp, and others it'll look like someone used the egg roll batter as a bloody shrimp net. Yeah, we always order from the same place, I'm not dumb enough to miss something that obvious.

I kind of like power outages. The last one we had was a little over... two years ago, I think, in March or April. It was an ice storm and we lost power for about four days. We have a cast iron wood stove in the living room that we use for heat in those situations, and it would get VERY warm in that room, like 85+ degrees, while staying below 45 in the rest of the house. My parents were crazy enough to sleep in their bedroom across the house, but I slept in the living room to keep the fire going. I can't wait until I have a little house of my own with a fireplace and wood stove that I can use just for the hell of it. There's nothing quite like laying back on a soft couch, reading a good book by candlelight and being surrounded with the smell of a wood fire.

I'm running out of stops on this thought train. It probably wasn't obvious but I was writing about whatever popped into mind thinking about the previous post; the power outage thing was because we last got Chinese from a different takeout place during that ice storm (and the sesame chicken was hair free, though very spicy). Obvious where egg rolls fit with the post above. Above that... well, it was a bit more random. The last few posts flowed more because I had the TV off, where before I had more influences on my mind.

Gambling stuff

2005-05-18T02:00:00.000-04:00

Acidman posted about this the other day. I'm watching the Roulette episode now, though I did see the blackjack one he wrote about.

I agree that it's total bullshit to get thrown out just for being a skilled player. What kind of deal is that? Hey, if you're not an amateur and uninformed player, you don't get to play! Assholes.

Cheating is another thing. I don't believe paying attention to the odds on a particular Roulette wheel is cheating by any means; it is simply being smart. That's all they're doing in this particular episode. If you do cheat, you deserve to get left in the alley missing teeth; the problem is that casinos are prone to calling you a cheater just for winning regularly.

I'll never play a game of chance that doesn't involve skill on my part. Blackjack? Sure. Poker? Absolutely. Texas Hold'em is my favorite game, though neighborhood poker (each dealer gets to play whatever variation of poker he wants) is very fun.

Yep

2005-05-17T22:40:00.000-04:00

Well I decided not to actually ban anyone because they're fun to piss off, but I did delete the comments. We'll see how persistent they are.

I call shit like I see it. I am dedicated to the truth, and if you are a woman and don't like what I have to say about women in general, well, too fucking bad. That's the way it is, and to pretend otherwise is foolish.

It probably would have bothered me once upon a time to have people rag on me. Not anymore. Like Acidman says, to blog you have to grow a cast iron ass. I long since stopped being politically correct, and I have no need for everyone to like me. Why should I? Being PC is one of the most basic societal problems we have. More on that later.

Oh, and by the way: if you don't fucking like what I say, fucking leave. I'm not shoving your face against the monitor, holding your eyes open with toothpicks and forcing you to read it. I do this for me, whether my close friends alone or the whole world reads it. I'm not changing for you.

Sigh, Yankees

2005-05-17T22:06:00.000-04:00

Not really in the mood to do this tonight, but I don't have anything else to do, so what the hell. Since blogger doesn't like letting me indent, I'm adjusting the format for ease of reading tonight.

Inning 1
NYY: Jeter leads off with a bunt and almost makes it on base. Not sure I agree with that tactic given his performance in the last several games, but whatever. Womack is back in the lineup tonight, batting second. He flies out to Winn in left. Two down, looks like a slow start this game. Up next is... Sheffield? Yep. He starts out with a big chop at empty air. There's a fly to Ichiro in right, three down.
Mariners: Carl Pavano is the starting pitcher for the Yankees tonight. Ichiro starts out with a one pitch fly to Womack in left, one down. Winn hits a hard grounder to Tino, who tosses it to Pavano, who tags Winn right before the bag. Beltre is up next... strikes out swinging on a high fastball. Quick inning.
No score.

Inning 2
NYY: Matsui gets a nice single to right field. What happened to his slump? Nice, A-rod grounds one past short for a single; two men on, no outs. Tino! Eh, 0-2 in the count, both strikes looking. C'mon Tino. He flies to center, no runners advance. Posada is also back tonight. Sounded like a broken bat; single over 2nd to center, Matsui scores and A-rod makes it to second. Giambi, heh, got a nice high fly that wasn't caught, amazingly. A-rod scores, Posada stops at third. Cano flies high to Valdez (the SS) for the second out. One runner in scoring position for Jeter. Struck out swinging. Two runs for the Yankees.
Mariners: Argh I wasn't paying attention because I was reading the fun hate comments and deleting them. One out though. Ibanez grounds to Tino who easily steps on first for the second out. Boone is up next. He made it to first on... something. I was doing more blog-management. Nice hustle by Matsui in center to catch Reed's deep center hit.
Yankees 2, Mariners 0

Inning 3
NYY: Womack flied out to Olivo (the catcher) who made a funky teenage mutant ninja turtles back slide catch. Sheffield just flied out to Ichiro. Matsui hit a deep line drive to right field, but Ichiro was there for the play. One, two, three.
Mariners: The lead off batter lined one right to A-rod for out number one. Valdez grounded to Jeter for an easy out at first. Ichiro chipped one foul... Should've been caught but three fielders converged and all slowed down. Ichiro looks out of rhythm, or maybe he just has a funky swing. Geez, he's fouled off like five in a row now. Okay, inning over, he chipped one again right to Jeter.
Yankees 2, Mariners 0

Inning 4
NYY: A-rod leads off, 0-2 in the count just now... 2-2... 3-2... Popped up to Sexson well foul. One down. Tino! Full count. And he walks. Well, Posada flied out deep enter. Giambi comes on... Olivo fails to stop a pitch and Tino takes second. Two outs here, Giambi needs a hit to keep the inning alive. And there it is! Tino scores easily because Ichiro bobbled the ball and Giambi takes first. It was on the ground between first and second, if you're curious. Cano delivers a base hit to move Giambi to third. Nice inning so far. Jeter's up! Well, Jeter grounded to short for an out. Three down, one run.
Mariners: I'm covering this game very poorly. Winn and Beltre both, I think, grounded out, but I'm not sure. Sexson just hit a single past A-rod to left. Oh man, Ibanez just hit a single past Cano to right! Men on first and second, two outs. Pavano is ahead in the count 1-2 against Boone... struck out swinging. Whew.
Yankees 3, Mariners 0

Inning 5
NYY: Womack doesn't look happy with the pitch calls... not that it matters because Ichiro made a great play to catch his bloop to right. Not many RFs would have made that play. One down. Sheffield--and what a weird martini stir that is--makes it to first on a slow grounder to third. Beltre missed the barehand grab anyway, but Sheffield would have been safe regardless. C'mon Matsui, home run! Or a single. Whatever, get on base. He's behind in the count 1-2... fouls one off... high fly ball to Reed in center. Two down, Sheffield just chilling on first base. A-rod is up; and that's a home run! 5-0 Yankees! Sweet! Aw, poor Tino. That was a good hard grounder that should have got him on base, but the Mariners 2nd baseman made a diving stop and got him out at first. Three down.
Mariners: Reed grounds to Cano for an easy first out. Olivo strikes out swinging. Pavano is pitching a good game so far; he's only allowed 2 hits in 5.1 innings. I believe his average is 1.333 per inning, but I could be wrong. Uh oh, full count for Valdez. That's a chop over Pavano's head to Jeter, who makes the play to first to end the inning.
Yankees 5, Mariners 0

Inning 6
NYY: Posada leads off. Posada is down in just three pitches; he struck out swinging. Giambi takes the plate... Whew, home run for Giambi. Nice job buddy. He's doing fairly well lately. Whoa buddy they're closing the roof! OMG IT COLLAPSED ON THE FANS! Ha just kidding. Cano is at the plate, and he just struck out swinging. Jeter's well ahead in the count 3-1, and he'll ground it right to Valdez at short for the third out.
Mariners: Interesting, the home plate ump didn't call time for Ichiro and Pavano put one right down the center as Ichiro stepped back for strike one. We'll see if it stands, the Mariners manager is out there arguing. Yep, it stood. He's behind in the count 1-2 now... quick grounder to A-rod, out at first. Randy Winn takes the plate... grounded straight to Cano; he didn't even move. Two outs. Womack makes the catch on the move for the third out from the bat of Beltre. Inning over.
Yankees 6, Mariners 0

Inning 7
NYY: I was out of the room, but Womack flied out and Sheffield walked. Matsui is full on the count 3-2, and he struck out swinging. Two men down. Heh, they boo A-rod every time he walks out. Two balls, no strikes yet. Full on the count with one badly called 'strike' in there. Well A-rod almost got a home run there, but it was just a little short to center. Three down.
Mariners: Sexson grounded to A-rod for the first out. Whew, Ibanez came close to a home run, but it flew foul past the right field post. Struck out swinging on the next pitch. Two outs, no men on. Oh no! Boone got a hit over A-rod's head, a line drive to left. He stopped at first. Reed grounded to Cano for the third out.
Yankees 6, Mariners 0

Inning 8
NYY: Tino's up first. Aw, he struck out. Poor Tino, he's not doing much this game. I hope his hot streak is just hiccuping and not coming to an end, because I really like to see him deliver. Posada's up next, taking a big swing at pitch #1. Strike one. Posada gets a single hit hard on the ground past the second baseman. Next is Giambi... eh, popped up foul, and that's an out. Bah. Two men down, one on first. Cano is 0-2 in the count. 2-2... and that's a strikeout. Semi-swinging; he tried to hold up but couldn't do it.
Mariners: Remember when I said I didn't know how Boone got on base a while back? He got hit. Olivo's at bat, out on a hard grounder to third. Valdez grounded to Jeter, and that's it for him. Up next is Ichiro Suzuki. 1-2 in the count. Holy crap! He struck out (swinging)! Inning over.
Yankees 6, Mariners 0

Inning 9
NYY: Jeter leads off with a first pitch fly right foul. He took a ball high and fouled one back for a 1-2 count. Ouch, very deep hit to center which Reed caught. I thought it was a home run, and it was only a few feet short. One down. Jeter doesn't look happy about that. Womack is behind in the count 0-2, and that's 0-3... struck out looking. He's 0-5 this game. Sheffield walks in 5 pitches. Matsui takes the plate... blooper to the second baseman, three outs.
Mariners: Pavano is going for the shutout here. I'm betting he'll get it. One down on a grounder to Jeter. Hansen is behind in the count 0-2... make that 2-2... argh, 3-2... c'mon, Pavano. There's a hit past second base to short center on the ground. Sexson is up... one strike. Oh man, Posada just took one in the face off Sexson's bat. Tough guy, he doesn't even look phased as he checks his mask for damage. The count is 2-2 on Sexson. 3-2... Pavano might get pulled if he doesn't take out Sexson here. Sexson fouls one back... fouls another one back... just get out already! Shit, there's a hit past Jeter. Men on first and second, one out. I want Pavano to finish the game for the shutout, so he'd better not wuss out. Good, he's staying in. Pavano is behind in the count for Ibanez, 2-1. 2-2 on a swing by Ibanez. Jesus, Ibanez fouled three in a row. HA! Cutter in the dirt and Ibanez swung at it. That's two outs. Olivo is the last batter we'll see, I hope. 2-0 on the count. Damn, Posada just took another ball in the face off Olivo's bat. Olivo took a big swing at an outside pitch for 2-2. Full count, 3-2 and 2 outs. The drama! And that's the game, Sheffield makes the catch in the right field corner.

Final: Yankees 6, Mariners 0. That's 10 games in a row, go Yankees!

Totally lied

2005-05-17T20:11:00.000-04:00

Yeah here I am. My friends ditched me so I have nothing to do now that I'm done with my cleaning for the day.

So since I've been talking about my bad experiences with women, I figured I'd say good stuff about them.

I like having female friends. I have always had more female friends than male, for whatever reason. I think girls are more interesting to talk to in general (assuming they're not shallow), and there's little I like more than spending time with an interesting woman and talking.

Women are more open, and receptive, in my experience. I don't believe in hiding feelings all the time to be 'manly' because that's just plain stupid. It's good for mental health to let things out and not let them sour you inside. Women are better listeners than most men.

What do I look for in a woman? Well, being prone to 'vapors' is a major turnoff. I like women that are capable, hard working, intelligent, and at least somewhat self reliant. A partner, if you will. I like women who are willing to get their hands dirty. I like a challenge. Here in suburbia there are few women like that; as such, I've been attracted more to small town and rural girls than others.

Physically? Eh, I don't like a standard 'type' of girl. Looks are less important than the rest, of course; the mind is the most important trait in a woman. That said, in general I'm more attracted to athletic, read fit, women. Heightwise I've found delightful both very short and medium, though almost never tall girls. One girl, a Rachel (not the Rachel) from early high school, is only 4'11 or so. So cute. 5'6 is a good height with the right build; taller seems strange to me. I'm only 5'10 or 5'11, after all, and I'm very much used to looking down at girls.

A natural draw would be horseback riding and shooting, of course. I know not one single girl personally who shoots, but I know several riders. Oh my.

Women can be delightful creatures, and I have many more good memories than bad. Ah, I feel good about the 'fairer' sex now. Good to dwell on their good traits, it allows me to expunge the shitty experiences of late.

Oh boy, threats RANT WARNING

2005-05-17T19:00:00.000-04:00

Hey, it's like a anti-woman night! As I said before, I don't hate women, but this is the second occasion today in which blogging material has been handed to me, and it just happens to be the same general topic.

Word of advice to all men: If you break up with a woman, get her the fuck out of your life forever. Nothing good will ever come of dealing with her again.

I've been threatened a few times now over nonexistant and imagined threats, or just flat lies they convinced themselves of. Just now, in fact, my crazy ex Erin decided to threaten me with legal action if I didn't 'stop'. Stop what? I'm not doing anything! Evidently I'm a dangerous crazy guy that could decide to kill her at any moment!

Well, yeah, I have the capability. So fucking what? I've never laid a hand on any woman in anger, nor would I ever. The irony here is that Erin did, on several occasions, hit me in anger. And I'm the abusive one? Yep, that's the femmelogic for ya. And you know what? She would probably win in court. How? She would lie her ass off.

I love the twisted perception that I'm somehow 'stalking' her, too. Oh, by the way, this is about the third girl (Abby did it, I think... Rachel for sure, and now Erin) to accuse me of stalking when in fact I did nothing of the sort, so I guess it's a common theme. I'm not the only guy I know that got this shit thrown at him, either. So we've had a very up and down relationship since we broke up; the last about six times we were talking again she initiated contact. Now she's saying she's told me dozens of times to leave her alone and OH MY GOD I just never do! Right. Again, riiiight.

No, what happened the second to last time we spoke was she was having an emotional breakdown in class and texted me asking me what she did wrong to drive me to Rachel, and against my better judgement I answered as truthfully as I could, which of course she would not accept. She was normal for a few days, even to the point where we agreed we should get together and talk shit out to try to settle issues between us. Then I made a joke about checking her story (note JOKE) when she said she was busy all week, and BAM, psychowoman was born (again), rising from the ashes of sanity like a fucking phoenix. Suddenly I was acting suspicious and wouldn't answer straight (I asked her to drop it after the fifth persistent question HOW COULD YOU DO THAT), and now I'm stalker Dave. I told her it was a joke, and I wouldn't be able to check her story even if I wanted to, but nope. I'm Stalker Dave now!

Okay, so I was really upset because I'm sick of being viewed as a psycho, so I Txted Rachel to ask her what the hell she told Erin about me way back when they got together for Hate-Dave sessions. I'm serious, they did that. Now I'm a stalker for her too! No matter that we talked for months rationally without her once saying LEAVE ME ALONE. Don't you love the magic?

Ugh. So, guys, unless you want to have a similar experience, learn from me and stay the fuck away at all costs when you break up with a woman. Just do it. Your heart will ache to have her back (unless she's a total bitch), but just stay away. Did I do everything right here? Of course not. I felt like I was going to have a fucking stroke when I realized what Erin thought I was. Probably my youth alone saved me; John Ross had a similar experience in his divorce, though he actually DID have a stroke when he heard his wife said he was abusive.

No doubt any women that read this will think I am a psychotic killing machine rapist baby killer who eats puppies for breakfast, and I'm not interested in such commentary. If you don't have something constructive to say, don't fucking say it. If you attack me in the comments, I will erase your comment and block your IP, same as I said last post. Nobody's forcing you to read it.

I told everything above as honestly as I could (you might need background to get some of what I said), and that's all there is to it. Women go crazy sometimes and they just can't help it. That's why you learn to stay the fuck away from them when they do.

Argh, I just got distracted from cleaning yet again. I have another half hour or so before I can drag the TV up here, find the cable in the crawlspace where I tossed it, and hook it up. Then I'll sit on my ass (aka go running and do pushups and situps) for a while before the Yankees game, and hopefully write a bit. This is definitely my last post before my baseball post at 10... unless it isn't. We'll see.

Hate comments!

2005-05-17T18:00:00.000-04:00

Sweet, I got some hate comments for the first time in months! Look down to my coverage of the Yankees game last night if you're wondering what I mean.

I'm not going to go into the situation with my mother, because frankly it's none of your business. It's telling though that all three commenters are women as well, and assume I'm in the wrong here without any real knowledge of the situation. That's a frequent issue I run into; if I talk to a random female friend about a problem with another girl it is assumed that it is my fault, no matter what. I'm a man. It has to be my fault.

This is the victimization attitude so many women fall prey to in our society, and one of the major reasons American men are so much better off marrying foreign women that don't think they're entitled to the hard work of their husband just because they lack a dick. Also, sex is not rape. It's not entirely the fault of the feminist movement, however; it is also the fault of many men failing to stand up for themselves. Read this essay on the subject by Kim du Toit.

I'm not a 14 y/o kid venting. I'm an adult, have been for some time, and I've been stuck in this hellhole because college was nearby and not worth paying room & board for. I leave in a matter of weeks, possibly in a week if I can wangle it, and Thank God for that.

I don't hate women. I find certain classes of women morally and culturally disgusting, and the unfortunate reality is that a large percentage of American women fall into that category. Oh, here's a good essay by our expatriate buddy Fred on this subject. Another...

Do not even think of posting a comment here without reading the articles I linked or spewing off meaningless drivel. If you do and feel like trying to bite my head off for posting THE TRUTH, well, kiss my ass. I encourage such comments so I can delete them and ban your IP.

Argh!

2005-05-17T17:28:00.000-04:00

For starters, cleaning sucks. I'm making headway, though. I'll easily have my TV set up before 10:05.

The Argh! is for a different reason. I think I may be missing an opportunity to leave early. My current ship date is June 15, but a DEPper I kind of know says he was given the option of moving up to May 24 and retaining all of his options, plus a larger bonus. I want that!

I'm really sick of sitting around. I know I should be working harder than ever to get my running and situps in better shape, but I just want to fucking leave. I'm confident in my abilities, which is the most important thing.

I'm going to MEPS again tomorrow for my airborne physical, whatever that is. I'm always on a really fucked up sleep schedule when I need to go to MEPS; lately I've been going to bed around 5-6 AM and getting up at 2 or so in the afternoon. I'll have to wake up at 5 AM on thursday... I don't know how I'll pull that off. Probably I'll have to go to bed at my normal time, get up on like 2 hours of sleep, and fix my schedule in one excruciating day.

Oh, I get the pre-Basic PT test on saturday, too. Yay! I have to do like 13 pushups, 17 situps, and run an 8:30 mile. I'd cry if I couldn't do that.

I've distracted myself from cleaning for too long...

Sigh, Cleaning

2005-05-17T16:06:00.000-04:00

Man, I've really got to come up with some system of organization that's deeper than taking out the trash every few days and putting the cans in boxes for returning. My room is a massive mess.

It's not unclean in the sense that there's mold growing in the corners and I don't need a heater because of the decomposing food or anything, I just own enough junk for a small house and it's all crammed into this one room.

I figure I could have my daily checklist, where I make sure all of the cans and junk are out of my room (or in boxes) before I go to bed, same with dishes when I eat up here, etc. A clothes hamper would probably help too. Weekly checklist could be... well, other stuff. Maybe just go through the room and put everything back in place, books and such.

I'm being a slacker right now, because I should be cleaning, and I'm blogging instead. Argh, I really hate cleaning this room. It was fun when Erin was around to help... that's the reason, actually, that my room is so fucked up now. For a long time I pretty much avoided everything we did together because I was totally destroyed, and then I moved to the basement for a while... only for the last few weeks have I really been up here a lot, and I've been putting off this awful cleaning day the whole time.

Really the only reason I'm doing it now is the intrahouse, self imposed exile I'm practicing from now until I leave. I need to get my TV set up for the Yankees game tonight at minimum, which means cleaning a whole half of my room. The rest I can spread out over a few days if I get too sick of it.

Sigh... alright... back to cleaning now... if I have to.

Night stuff...

2005-05-16T21:49:00.000-04:00

My mother is fucking insane. She finally crossed the line tonight, and that's the end of our relationship so far as I'm concerned. She's been pulling this shit for years, and I'm fucking sick of it. I'm not speaking out of anger here, by the way; I mean every word. She's a control freak, and she can't stand that I'm not a pussy that's going to get bossed around like some crony at work.

Yankees block:
1st Inning: Jeter leads off with a single, just like the last several games. Cano grounds to short, who fumbles enough to just get Jeter instead of pulling in a double play. So Cano is on first, one out. Sheffield walked, Matsui struck out looking. Two on, two outs. Bah, A-rod grounded to third and that's the end of the inning.
...Weird, Womack's not playing. I'm glad he was pulled rather than Tino, though.
Ichiro Suzuki leads off... I like watching this guy play. Wow, nice hit. He hit a short line drive right over second: leadoff single. Ichiro steals second base. Winn grounds to short and is out. One man on second, one out. Crap, Beltre got a nice single to short right field. Ichiro was held at third because Sheffield has a cannon for a right arm. Two men on, one out, one in scoring position. What we need right now is a grounder to third or a line drive to an infielder to stop Ichiro from scoring. Or a strikeout! Yay. Two outs. Shit! Two runs on a double by Ibanez. Damn! Base hit from Boone, so a man on first and third because A-rod fell in the mud. Thank God, it's over with a fly to Matsui in left.
Yankees 0, Mariners 2; inning over.

Inning 2: Tino grounds out to... second, I think. Bernie Williams is back tonight in CF, and up now... full count... walked. Giambi has been doing decently the last few games, so I hope he delivers now. Even a sac fly would be fine. Man, he's been up there forever. Shit, he was down looking. The 3rd strike looked a bit high to me, but what do I know? Oh, it was well within in the strike zone. Flaherty is our last chance this inning. Full count for Flaherty... nice! Bernie makes it to third, Flaherty stops at first on a light bloop to short right field. C'mon Jeter! Nope, grounded to short and the Mariners are up.
The first batter flied out, I think. I was writing about marriage below, so I wasn't watching. Bloomquist grounds to Jeter at short, who makes the play to Tino. Two outs. Ichiro hits a line drive right to Sheffield in RF, and it's over.
Yankees 0, Mariners 2; inning over.

Inning 3: Cano got a nice double to deep center field. Sheffield walks for the second time this game. Two men on, a big fat zero outs! Nice. They HAVE to score this time! Whew, not if Matsui keeps swinging like that though... I have to wonder how weird this is to read. It makes sense to me because I have the game on, but it seems like I might sound like a nut to an outsider. Matsui is ahead in the count 2-1... and I'm not sure that was a strike. 2-2, though. Matsui chops one to second, advancing the runners though getting out himself. Good play, all things consider. It doesn't rest on A-rod's shoulders this time, but I'd sure like to see him get a solid right field single just now. I realize that right handed batters don't typically hit to right field... and he doesn't. Grounded to third, and Cano scores. Tino just got intentionally walked; pussies. They're banking on Bernie's rust. Just like yesterday I hope he blasts one out of the field for a 3 run homerun. Just like yesterday, it doesn't happen, and Bernie grounds to first for the third out.
Leadoff batter grounds to A-rod at third, who makes the play to Tino for the first out. Whew, big swing by Beltre. Wang is even in the count, 2-2... slowish grounder to short, two outs. I feel bad because I don't know most of the Mariners' names. The huge 6'8" first baseman is up now. Nice, Wang struck him out looking. Oh, Sexson is his name.
Yankees 1, Mariners 2; inning over.

Inning 4: Giambi starts out with a slow chop to the pitcher who will beat him to first for the out. Flaherty... is I have no idea where in the count because they don't have the thing that tells you up on the screen. Well, he flied to Winn in left, so that's two quick outs. Jeter gets a nice line drive single to right. Cano, damn, just railed it to third. Quick three outs, that was.
Ibanez grounded out, though I'm not sure where. Boone grounds right to Tino at first. Whoever the third batter was chopped right to Wang for the third out. Very quick inning.
Yankees 1, Mariners 2; inning over.

Inning 5: Sheffield got on base somehow... and subsequently gets caught in a run down when he steals too soon. Brilliant. Matsui grounds right to first for an easy second out. A-rod walks. Nice hit by Tino: a single on the ground past first to right field. Two outs, two on; if Bernie doesn't deliver I'll be sad. He's far behind in the count, and I'm guessing he'll choke. Yep, he flies to Winn in left. Great. How many runners have they left on base so far, eight? Jesus.
Olivo grounds to A-rod who makes the play to Tino at first. Easy second out grounder to Cano. Looks like it's going to be another short inning. Well, maybe not, Ichiro is up. I'm betting he'll get at least a single here. And I lost that bet; another grounder to Cano for the third out.
Yankees 1, Mariners 2; inning over.

Inning 6: Giambi leads off. Oh, I was wrong about how many they left on, by the way. It's 9 runners in 5 innings. AKA awful. Back to Giambi... his second strike out tonight. I honestly don't think he's playing that badly lately, despite appearances. I don't want to see him kicked to the minors, but I have a bad feeling about Giambi's future. Flaherty is up now; struck out swinging. What an awful pitch to swing at, though he's hardly the only one to fall for Sele's slider tonight. C'mon Jeter, again! He doesn't look too happy right now... it's 2-2 on the count. 3-2... struck out swinging. Argh. Sele struck out all three batters this inning!
Randy Winn leads off for the Mariners. He grounds one to Tino, easy out at first. Beltre is up next... struck out swinging. Sexson, Mr. First Base Giant, fouls two right away. Low/left ball, foul... high ball... ball inside/low... struck out swinging! Nice job, Wang.
Yankees 1, Mariners 2; inning over... running out of time.

Inning 7: Cano starts out with a grounder to second; out. Wow, Sheffield almost turned himself inside out on that swing. Whoa, nice diving stop by the Mariners SS. Sheffield made it to first, with one out. Matsui knocked one off the right field wall there, only making a single but moving Sheffield to third. It was only about 8 feet short of a home run. A-rod walks, bases loaded for Tino! Now would be a great time for another grand slam. If they don't score here, with the bases loaded and only one out, I might just stop watching tonight. Shit! Broken bat grounder to third, but lucky that Sexson didn't hold on to the ball at first for the double play. Bases still loaded with Bernie coming up, two outs, no runs. SWEET! Grand slam for Bernie! 5-2! Giambi got a hit! Man, this is great. Flaherty makes a nice single line drive to the gap between left and center. Womack comes in to pinch run for Giambi at second. I won't be disappointed too bad if Jeter doesn't make it happen here, but I'd love to see something... Womack steals third. Triple twos! I can come up with dumb sayings just like an announcer. Full count for Jeter; he fouls it off to right. Jeter struck out looking. Well, no big deal. Grand slam! How freakin cool is that.
Wang is really pitching a great game. This is the guy up from AA, if I recall correctly, which makes it all the better. Alright, so the first batter for the Mariners flied out and the second hit it to center where Bernie should have got it, but he got a slow start for some reason and missed the catch, leading to a double. Bah. Well, Reed just got an RBI double deep center which let the other runner, Boone I think, score. Wang is done; they're bringing in Tanyon Sturtze, which I think is a good choice. Suddenly 5 runs doesn't seem like that many... 2 runs is easily doable in a good inning. Olivo is at bat, behind on the count 0-2 now. C'mon, strikeout. I want this inning to end before the lead shrinks to one. Heh, he swung but the ball was in the dirt so he's out at first. Bloomquist is done for the game and Hanson is pinch hitting instead. Foul fly for the third out to A-rod, inning over. Sweet.
Yankees 5, Mariners 3; inning over.

Inning 8: Oh my, what a start. Cano got a single, then Sheffield grounded one to Boone who messed up the shoulda-been-double-play and now Cano is on third and Sheffield on first. No outs. Matsui is 2-2 on the count; he grounded one to Boone at second, who barely made the play at first; Cano scored, Sheffield is on third, and there's one out. Very close play at first. WTF? A fuckin redo? Are they going to explain, or what? They're saying Matsui might have hit it twice in the swing (again off the bounce). And now he strikes out. Ugh. *angry face* C'mon A-rod, make 'em pay! Nice, RBI single for A-rod. Cano scores (again), Sheffield goes to second. Two runners on, one out. Sigh, Tino flied out to Ichiro. Two outs. Bernie is up.. first pitch strike. Yeah I don't think that second pitch was a strike, looked high to me. 0-2 in the count. Grounded to first, three outs. That makes it 6-3...
Ichiro leads off for the Mariners. Easy grounder to Tino, one down. Tom Gordon is pitching this inning, if you're curious. 3-1 in the count for Randy Winn; make that a walk. One on, one out. Beltre is up... a strike and a foul so far, 0-2 in the count... 1-2... two more fouls, still 1-2... ugh ball in the dirt, Winn moves to second. 3-2 in the count... strikes out swinging. Hot. Two down, one runner on second. Nice, some Mariner hit a foul fly that Tino caught over the rolled up tarp. Three outs, one man left on.
Yankees 6, Mariners 3; inning over.

Inning 9: Womack starts off for the Yankees. The score/count thingy isn't up, again, which is annoying; I think he's 3-1, but who knows? 3-2 on a foul. Struck out swinging. Flaherty comes up... Mariano Rivera is getting ready in the bullpen, if you're curious. Jesus, keep chopping there Washington. Two strikes swinging in a row... fouled back... 0-2 in the count. Slow grounder to third, two outs. Jeter is 1-1 in the count; big swing, big fat strike. One ball, two strikes (swinging). Ball in the dirt, 2-2. Fouled back, still 2-2. Struck out looking, apparently three strikeouts in a row for Jeter. Barring a Seattle miracle, this game is over.
Well that's 3-0 so far for the first Mariner up. Walked 'em. Great start. Jesus, that's 6 balls and 2 strikes for Rivera so far. It's 2-1 in the count for Boone. Double play grounder to Jeter, two men down. Good play. 1-2 in the count for... I don't know who this guy is, #7. Broken bat single to short center field for Reed (apparently). Two outs, runner on first. Dobbs is 1-2 in the count... fouls away to stay alive... argh, ball in the dirt through Flaherty's legs, and Reed moves to second. 2-2 in the count. Another foul, Dobbs is stiiiiiilll alive. Whew, game over on a swinging strikeout. Heh, he swung at a shoulder high pitch.
Game over! 6-3. The Yankees are 20-19, having won 9 games in a row now. Cool.

I've been thinking about how crazy you would have to be to get married these days... if you're a man. Women are favored incredibly in divorces, and since over 50% of American marriages end in divorce, of which 70% are initiated by women... you'd have to be a moron to go into that situation with your eyes open. I can forgive ignorance, but if you know what you're getting into and end up getting shafted anyway, well, nice job idiot. That won't be me, ever. I don't care what kind of woman you are, I'm not taking the chance. If you trust someone and love them enough to marry them in the SPIRIT of the ceremony, why should it matter if you don't get married? Why do you need a contract? Risk vs gain... marriage is a terrible proposal for men in America.

Man, it's hard to talk to people online, write on here about non-Yankees game stuff, and write about the game all at once.

I feel like I'm always living for the future these days. The sad thing is for some people they do it their whole lives. There has to be some balance...

More Deanimator!

2005-05-16T19:40:00.000-04:00

Well I totally crushed my old high score of 361 this time. Five hundred freakin forty two. 542! I have a new method of shooting, see. I can't reveal it because it's a top secret formula for Deanimator success. I would have a higher score, indeed I would still be playing right now, if the background color wasn't really bad in level 28. It's worse than the purple in 10-12, and while I can dick around in a lower level and survive, it ain't gonna happen on level 28. I'll have to try out the new technique on my laptop where the contrast is good enough that I can see the whole game on the dark levels.

Lovely morning

2005-05-16T15:04:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite things in the world is waking up to messages from someone I care about more than most anything ruining my day.

On the way downstairs I punched my door in anger and got a splinter in my knuckle. Annoying.

I want her back. That's no secret. I don't want to jump back into a relationship, by any means; I want her to at least trust me enough to believe me when I answer her questions. She evidently doesn't, now. She probably never will. I'll never hold the one girl I loved more than life itself in my arms again, I'll never look into her loving eyes, I'll never see her shy smile when she brings me an unexpected present for no reason just because she loves me... sigh.

The only thing I know to do is harden my soul and move on. I don't want that. She gave me so much, and it feels like all I did was destroy her. The amount of self loathing I feel... I can't even describe it. Probably the only reason I'm still sitting here typing this is I don't trust the 9mm cartridge to kill me, and since I got my .45 I haven't felt the death wish I did for so long. You know, it's funny, all I could think about when I held that pistol and looked death in the eye is what whoever found me would feel, and I realized I could do that to anyone.

I'm not here for pity, and I frankly don't give a shit what anyone reading this has to say about it. I'm just getting my feelings out, because I'm stuck in a corner here and I can hardly breath for the stress I feel.

For all the anger I feel toward her for hurting me, for believing the shit she at least says she believes about me, I love her. I love her more than anything. If she really wants me to leave, if she can't trust me, well I guess I don't blame her. I fucked it up, I ruined what we had, and that's all there is to it... it makes it a little easier to handle. I deserve this.

But I still love her.

I lied...

2005-05-16T03:54:00.000-04:00

Because I'm posting again before sleeping.

I was reading up on space stuff, like known planetary systems and galactic properties and junk.

...How the fuck can you look at the numbers and think it's even remotely possible we're all alone in the universe? The Milky Way Galaxy has, what, 300 billion stars in it? Let's say that only 1 in 1000 stars is a planetary system, and only 1 in 100,000 of those systems has a single Earthlike planet conducive to carbon based life. That means 3,000 such planets exist in our galaxy alone. Note I'm not saying that complex life will exist on them, merely that they exist. I personally think the numbers I quoted were grossly low, I might add.

How many other galaxies do we know of? A couple dozen? So tens of thousands of planets at the least exist in the known universe given my probabilities.

Life is out there.

3 AM Monday...

2005-05-16T03:02:00.000-04:00

I had a good night so far. Went over to Kaitlyn's house after the Yankees game to watch the original Star Wars trilogy; we only got through the first two, but it was fun. I could say stuff about her that's good but she might read this! Can't have that. I will say I like her house. Oh, and I got called gay by her 17 year old sister. I guess it's a hobby of hers to insult all of Kaitlyn's friends.

I'm watching Return of the Jedi right now. This is my favorite SW movie. Like all things Star Wars, it makes me want to write. Argh.

I'm almost done with Silverberg's The Man in the Maze; it's a good book, though with about 15 pages to go I'm really wondering what kind of ending there can be. I'll review it fully when I'm done, maybe tomorrow if I feel like it.

Beat my Deanimator score just now. 361; not a huge improvement over 355, but considering that it's only the second time I broke 300 even, I'm happy. I regularly get 255-270 before dying, usually due to fucking up my shotgun/pistol rhythm.

I'm really tired and achy, and I would love to take a bath, but I don't have anything to read... I have another book I'm about 20 minutes away from the end of, but that's nowhere near long enough for a soak. I usually put about an hour into a bath, more if I'm sedate and the water is hot enough, so I read on average probably 100 pages per bath. I like to have a huge margin or another book on standby so I don't run out of reading material and have to get out early. I don't understand the people that take baths without doing something else; hell, if I plan to sit under the water for a while in the shower even I bring a book. Hardcovers are better for this; the glossy covers of paperbacks get wet from the condensation, and I have to hold the book in a small washcloth to avoid that annoyingness. No, I've never ruined a book in the shower, and only once did I drop a book in the bath. That was Michael Crichton's The Lost World, a hardcover, and it happened about 8 years ago. Hardcovers suck in the bath; I hate reading hardcovers laying down as well, because it's hard to lay on either side comfortably while holding one.

Wow, how long can I go on about baths and reading in them? Jesus. Alright, I'm off to sit in this semi-comfortable-but-bad-for-my-back recliner (my God I would love a Benchcraft chaise...), maybe write some scifi, and watch ROTJ. I'll write something tomo--er today, before the Yankees game at 10 PM, and then I'll probably blog the Yankees game again. I really enjoy doing that, even if you don't enjoy reading it. Nya nya.

Sunday stuff

2005-05-15T16:30:00.000-04:00

So now it's Sunday, and I got up about 2 hours ago, at 2:30 in the afternoon. 12 hours solid of sleep because I was up for 36 hours with only a few naps in the car the whole time. The Yankees are playing, off to a shitty start. Jeter got a lead off single and the next three hitters dropped the ball. It's 0-3 at the end of the 1st, so they'd better turn on the magic. I wasn't really paying attention to the manner in which the A's scored their runs, but I suspect Randy Johnson was pitching like crap. No defensive errors stood out in my mind other than the one he made.

Updates per notable (or every, as it turns out) inning.

2nd Inning: Tino got a home run. Yay Tino! Nobody else did anything for the Yankees; A-rod grounded out, Posada struck out, and Giambi flied out.
For the A's, two hits so far but Cano flipped to Jeter to get the lead runner out. Good. Keep those runners out of scoring position. Ugh, stolen base. Okay, a slow grounder to Tino got one out, now there are two outs and a runner on third. A short tap to Tino ended the inning, no runs.

3rd Inning: Cano and Jeter both grounded out to short. Womack got a hit to mid left field, and is on first. Sheffield's 0-2 in the count but Womack stole 2nd base, so a decent hit here could let Womack score. I'm guessing Sheffield will strike out. ...Nope, he hit a straight up fly to the catcher. Whoo.
The A's first hitter grounded out to A-rod. Thomas got nailed by a pitch, which looked a lot worse than it was. Kinda dramatic scene, he flopped to the ground like a dropped fish. Ok, the third batter grounded to A-rod who tossed it to Jeter for a double play. At risk of sounding like a Tino Martinez groupie... he made a good play there.

4th Inning: Matsui got a nice leadoff single. A-rod hit an out to center on the first pitch. WOW. Tino got his 2nd home run of the game for two runs, tied the game at 3-3. Jesus. He's playing incredibly hot lately. Posada flied out. Giambi walks. Moron fans run out on the field and should be shot with potato guns... still waiting after several minutes. Cano got a nice hit to center, and Giambi made it to third. Jeter's up with two runners on 1st and 3rd, and I'll say that Cano has really picked it up lately. I'm beginning to look forward to him hitting. Jeter got a single! 4-3, runners on 2nd and 1st. Ok, Womack grounded to short and they tossed it to 2nd for the end of the inning out. Great inning.
Don't know how the first batter got on base, but he did. Johnson walked the second batter. Two on, no outs. Grounded to Cano who tossed to Jeter who missed the double play to Tino. Quick throw so I won't hold it against Jeter too much, but it's uncharacteristic. Someone flied out, still two runners on (1st and 3rd) and two outs. A quicker runner would have tagged third and scored on that play, so it's good he's pokey. Damn! Single to left that lets the runner on third score, and Womack didn't make a perfect play but at least it didn't get past him. Even if he made the catch on the first bounce it would not have stopped the run. The next batter flies out foul to Posada. Inning over, tied 4-4.

5th Inning: Sheffield hit a leadoff double. Thank God. That's his first hit in at least the last seven at bats. Matsui hit one out to center. A-rod struck out, and now they're walking Tino. Pussies. I hope Posada knocks one 600 feet out of the fuckin park. Bah. Posada grounded to first. He swung on two shitty pitches right off the bat; that's just not smart hitting. A-rod and Posada have both been disappointing lately.
Cano caught the fly from the leadoff hitter. Broken bat grounder to Tino, easy out. Next up a short grounder right into Johnson's glove, or so it looked. I'm sure he was trying to catch it. Easy out to first. Good inning; the way Johnson started out pitching the leadoff hitter I was expecting at least a hit.

6th Inning: Giambi flied out. Cano got a single, which just reinforces my belief that he's shaping up to be a real player. Weird hit by Jeter, looked to me like it should have been a double play but instead it's 2 men on and only 1 out. Another shoulda-been-DP hit from Womack, but his Speedy Gonzalez impression stopped the double play. Runners on 1st and 3rd, 2 outs. If Sheffield delivers, it'll be a 5-4 game. Womack stole 2nd... sweet. Sheffield broke a bat on that pitch, grounded to third... out. No runs. Oh well.
Two outs, not sure how that happened because I was juggling conversations. A hit over Jeter, one man on 1st. Alright, Cano made a good play, inning over.

7th Inning: Matsui popped one up to left, one out. A-rod was walked. Tino is 0-2 just now, I think he won't get a hit here. I'd love to see another home run, but I doubt it's in the cards. Yeah, he flied out left foul. A-rod tagged and took second, though. Posada is due to do something, so we'll see what happens here. Well, Posada walked, and Giambi is up. Excellent! RBI double by Giambi, 5-4. Runners on 2nd and 3rd. Cano hits an RBI single, another run! Giambi is on 3rd and Cano on 1st, 2 outs. 6-4, Jeter coming up. Bah. Jeter struck out looking.
New pitcher for the Yankees, Tanyon Sturtze. Funny name. Huh. I was playing Deanimator so I missed how the first batter got out. Second batter grounded to short, easy out at first. 2 outs, no hits so far. Third hitter grounds to short again; whew, nice play by Jeter. Inning over.

8th Inning: Womack leads off. Ha! Grounded and SHOULD have been out, but he was zippy and made it to first. Womack stole second. Runner in scoring position, full count on Sheffield but no outs yet. Sheffield walks. Two runners on, no outs. Matsui is looking a bit shaky, and I'll be surprised if he gets a hit this AB, but I'm hopeful. Nope, he lined to right and is out. 2 runners, 1 out. Womack stole 3rd. A-rod struck out. Tino is getting walked intentionally again. Bah. Posada flied out with the bases loaded, game over. Sigh. That should have been at least a one running inning, I mean come on. Dinner time so I'll be missing the A's at bat, probably.
No runs, that's all that matters. I was eating pasta and fresh parmesan. Oh, I saw an A get hit in the hand from afar. Interesting. The only thing was it looked to me in the replay like Posada threw the ball... odd.

9th Inning: Giambi got out somehow. Cano got a nice hit to right field and a double out of it. Jeter struck out swining. Womack grounded to first, three outs.
Mariano Rivera is coming in to pitch. The leadoff batter flied out. Second batter grounded to Cano, out at first. Third batter shattered a bat and hit it directly to Rivera, game over.

That's 8 wins in a row. Go Yankees.

Bad Saturday

2005-05-15T16:13:00.000-04:00

I had a pretty crappy day yesterday. That's why I didn't really write anything last night; I knew it would be negative.

So let me explain what happened so you can feel sorry for me. First of all, my 1911 broke. Not a major problem: the magazine catch broke, which is a problem I've never heard of, but it ended my 1911 shooting because I wasn't going to load the gun one cartridge at a time. I was shooting well enough, though, about 5" groups at 20 yards. I was shooting into a big woodpecker hole in this dead tree in the woods because there were too many people around at the cabin to shoot there. I did recover one bullet, entirely intact except for the rifling.

The AR-180B has never been sighted in, and a half mile up a logging road I realized I forgot my leatherman so I couldn't adjust the front sight. No big deal, I figured I would shoot at 25 yards and make sure the windage (left and right) was correct. Well, no fucking dice. It was shooting 10-12 inches high at 25 yards! Dear lord. So I fired 29 rounds; the stupid magazine spring was too weak to properly position the 30th round for feeding, which pissed me off on top of everything else so I stopped shooting at that point. Six hours in the car total for less than 75 shots. Fucking brilliant.

After I got home my day went better. The Yankees kicked ass last night, winning 15-6 over Oakland. It was great! Four home runs, three of them multiple runs I believe. Jeter and Tino both got 3 run home runs and Posada got a two run homer, with the individual home run going to A-rod. A-rod made several errors in the game, though one of them got stuck in Tino (WTF). There were some other defensive mistakes, but all in all it was a decent game.

Record!

2005-05-14T21:13:00.000-04:00

I got a new record in Deanimator. That's the game I linked to before, if you don't remember.

Blasted past my old mark of 289: 355 kills on level 22. I like the green; on this monitor the purple background is fucking awful because I can only see the middle half of the game. Good thing it's only purple for levels, I believe, 10 through 12, because those aren't very hard.

And now, I'm going to watch the Yankees.

Some night stuff

2005-05-13T23:59:00.000-04:00

Yankees are playing well. It's 5-2 in the top of the 8th, actually make that 6-2 off the sacrifice fly by Matsui. Sadly Tino isn't hitting very well; I think it's 0-3 tonight. He won't have more than one more at-bat, which means his home-run game streak might be over. This will be, I think, a 6 game winning streak assuming they don't blow it. My dream ending? Tied in the bottom of the ninth and a game winning home run by Tino in the 11th inning. That would be sweet!

I've been playing this game a lot in the last few days. My record before about an hour ago was 211 kills, but then I blasted through it for a new record of 289. Good luck, should you choose to play it; the only advice I'll give is look for the weakness, or rather most efficient way of killing the different types, shoot them before they get all the way up, and shift gets you to the shotgun. Hat tip to Sayuncle.

Gun cleaning supplies are fun. Cleaning a rifle without a table at all and keeping shit on each knee with the solvent on the floor etc is rough, though. One of my rods either wasn't shipped or was stolen/fell out in transit; I ordered three 24-25" Dewey nylon coated rods, two for rifle and one for shotgun, and the shotgun rod never showed up although a tube for it did. The tube was not sealed like the others (plastic cap and staples), so I'm not sure what happened. I'll contact MidwayUSA to find out on monday, I suppose.

I'm going to the cabin to shoot and stuff tomorrow. I'll be bringing three pistols and three long guns, though I'll be concentrating on my 1911 and AR-180B. I'm bringing my Mosin Nagant M38 to see if the extensive cleaning I did (without the table...) helps with my case extraction problem. The others are my 870 to shoot with the new Hogue furniture, Ruger P95 9mm for the hell of it to burn some 9mm ammo and warm up before shooting the 1911, and my Single Six just for fun. Oh, hell, I'll bring the 336 as well. It's bored and wants to be shot, I'm sure, though I have very little (like 75 rounds) ammunition for it.

I'll be able to try two, maybe three target handgun engagement drills because I'm bringing the other standup target down. I have 198 of the 200 silhouette targets I bought in February left and only a month to use them so I will burn through a few dozen of those without worrying about getting 50-100 shots out of each. I'd also like to try rifle/shotgun to handgun transitions and other fun drills like that, but I'll probably be so tired by the time I get around to it I just won't have the will.

Speaking of handgun stuff, I'm still waiting on two holsters and two mag pouches I ordered about 4 and 8 weeks ago (one holster and pouch for each length of time) from CopsPlus. They keep pushing the backorder time back, which is annoying enough, but they also don't bother to tell you something is on backorder or low stock before you place your order to begin with. I liked them before, but they've been really pissing me off with this sort of thing. I can not recommend them. Some other stuff I'm waiting on.. my Anzas, though that doesn't bother me quite so much. My Marvel Precision 22LR 1911 upper. Some other crap, I think, but I don't recall off the top of my head. It's getting down to the wire, here, and I'm wondering if I'll even fucking be here by the time these morons get off their fat asses and SHIP ME MY STUFF. Ugh. The holsters and 1911 upper REALLY bother me because even if they get here monday morning at 7 AM I'll hardly have time to use them in any practical sense before I ship. Thanks a lot guys, I thought a three month buffer was enough but I guess I underestimated your incompetence. I'm getting really frustrated right now because it seems like 80% of the stuff I planned and invested in got shot down by other people being complete fucking assholes.

Well, about 2 minutes ago Tino got walked. Two walks in a row, actually, now, so unless there's some A's miracle this game is over and Tino's streak is over as well. Sigh. That's really disappointing. I was greatly looking forward to this game because I wanted to see him hit at least 6 (that would make him the 4th or 5th Yankee to ever hit a 6 game home run streak). Who gives a shit if they win if Tino loses? As I wrote this Giambi hit in 2 runs, so I think the A's are done. Poor Tino...

A few, er, many things

2005-05-13T18:28:00.000-04:00

I'm thinking about taking titles off.

Via GWA45, we have a Victor Davis Hanson piece about the revisionists and WWII... read it.

There's a lot of crap happening in the country that I want to talk about, but I can't focus enough to write about it. Take the REAL ID act, for example. Aside from the fact that one of the greatest problems in our legislative system is the irrelevant amendment issue... see? Lost my train of thought. I think TV is giving me ADD. I really have noticed a decline in my ability to focus on things since I started watching it more. I've been cutting back to just watching movies occasionally and baseball, though, so we'll see if I fix my brain.

UPDATE: Since this post turned into a pile of crap and I don't feel like editing my 100 minute blather, you can just skip to the bottom and read the bullets for a recap if you don't want to read it all.

Anyway, about the REAL ID act. Aside from constitutionality issues (10th Amendment, anyone...?), it poses a very real security issue. See Bruce Schneier here for more on that.

I feel overwhelmed by the degree of government invasion our lives have realized in the last 25 years. My whole generation grew up accustomed to meaningless and arbitrary restrictions to the point where they do not question them, nor do they understand why I am so angered by them. For example: If you told most people walking on the left side of the hall would result in an automatic reckless walking ticket, they would not question the government's authority to decide that issue for them, and they would comply. I don't remember my point... besides that my generation is a bunch of fucking sheep.

Let me explain something: our legal system is (supposedly) based on the concept of negative law. That means unless you are specifically restricted from doing something--AND the law is constitutional--you can do it. The US Constitution does not follow the same rules, however; it is a description of the powers granted and denied the various levels of government, and all powers NOT granted are illegal to wield. Read the Constitution some time and compare its text to real life and see how far the Federal government in particular has strayed. Maybe I'll do a comparison some day when I have a lot of time and energy. I'll give you a basic clue: the gummint ain't supposta be that big.

How much do you pay in Federal income taxes? I pay jack shit right now because I'm unemployed, but my parents pay 35%. Way back in 1861 the first income tax was passed into law, a 3% tax on individuals with an income over $800 (about $16k now) and 5% on citizens living outside the US. It was never enforced. In 1862 a new tax act was passed into law, 3% on incomes from $800 to $10,000 and 5% on higher incomes. That's 3% on 14,500 to about 182,000 dollars per annum and 5% on the incomes higher than that. Three to five percent. Wow. Those were the fuckin days. Can you imagine having that much of your income back? The only reason a federal income tax was levied to begin with was to pay for a war, and they had been doing just fucking dandy without it for the first 70 years. How far we have fallen. I could go on about taxation for a while.

Oh, and let's revisit an old point: The BoR (Bill of Rights... there's always one that doesn't get it) IS NOT THE THING THAT GIVES YOU THE ENUMERATED RIGHTS. It is an affirmation, a list, that's it. They are innate rights, rights you have simply by existing. Thank fucking God it was put in the Constitution, since many of the states believed it so obvious as to be unnecessary. Also, the list of enumerated rights is by no means complete. It is merely the most important few. How many people do you know that have no clue what their innate rights are? Do you?

Important distinction: right != privilege. Right does not equal privilege for those of you that do not recognize code speak. To say that the BoR grants rights is an oxymoron; rights can not be granted. That which is given can be taken away, and that's not the way it is. You can try, and most people might let you, but be prepared to dodge bullets if you try it with me.

Are people scared of having rights? I think many are, especially in our current societal climate of 'it's not your fault'. No, no, it's someone else's fault. Blame it on the video games! Blame it on the music! Blame it on the guns! The movies! The chocolate! The pizza! Whatever. With all the emphasis on 'self esteem' these days in schools especially (my school didn't have that shit, thankfully), nobody ever takes responsibility for their actions. You don't expect kids to magically grasp calculus without teaching, so why would you expect them to understand personal responsibility and the fact that there are consequences for actions without SHOWING them? There's no "'You fucked up, Timmy,' said the teacher as he reached for the cane..." anymore.

Yeah, I believe in corporal punishment. Not for all things, obviously; if you cheat on a test, I don't think you should be beaten by your teacher. Nope, ripping up the test and writing a big fuckin 0 on your forehead would work fine. But if you mouth off to a teacher, I don't think it's a bad thing to get whacked on the top of the head with a ruler. If you get up in a teacher's face or are beating down some other kid without provocation you should be tossed into a wall a few times. My parents taught me that shit because they were actually good parents and not spineless fucks, indulgent saps, or crack addicted gutter whores or any of those things. Students should respect their teachers, not walk all over them, and they should be smacked the fuck down when they violate the rules, instead of being sent to an administrator (MAYBE) and given detention. I got detention once in HS and all I did was read a book the whole time: totally stress free environment. Big fucking deal. I was embarassed without help from the school because I knew what I did was wrong, but most other kids would just shrug it off and learn nothing.

Gratuitous Heinlein quote:
Eh, can't find it online and I can't find my book so I'll add it later. It's the one about learning and the puppy in Rico's civics class.

My parents didn't coddle me when I did shitty in school; I'm a damn good speller because my father made me work at it until I got them all right. Also he checked my math through 10th grade, helped me study for science, etc. My mother handled the music end of things and helped with projects. They encouraged learning and sports and were willing to shell out money to help me learn or improve myself in some way. They never did any work for me, of course, but they made sure I did my work and learned the lessons about life school contradicts these days. Bad schools + bad parents = socially retarded adults. We're on about the third generation of the evolution of idiot sheeple coming up in schools these days.

New topic...

Why is it so accepted that 'he had a gun!' is a bad thing? BFD. I have... *looks around room* two handguns and three long guns in view. Mosin Nagant boltie, Marlin 336 lever action (loaded), Armalite AR-180B (loaded) with thirteen full 30rd mags in various rigs, Ruger Single Six 22LR revolver, and a loaded 1911 in my back pocket. ...Yeah I got fed up with putting a holster on every time I changed pants so the back pocket works fine, as long as I don't move too quickly or jump around. Three loaded 1911 mags on the bed and a few more spread around the house, one in my pocket. How about 'he had a knife!'? I have... *looks around room again* an open knife drawer with about two dozen knives in it, sundry folders scattered around the room (my Opinels came; they're a little lighter than I imagined, but nice), a CS Kobun on my belt, Marble's boot knife on my belt behind my right hip, and a Gerber AR 3.50 folder in my pocket. I'd have a lot more knives in here but half of my fixed blades are in the basement where I was sharpening them. Oh, I have a sword over there against the wall too, a 'practical' Wakizashi by... CAS Iberia, maybe. I dunno. It's a low level sword but not a cheap POS like most of the production japanese blades.

The point is that the capability to do harm is feared these days. If owning a single gun makes you a murderer in waiting, what am I? I have martial arts training and I study human anatomy for weak points and practice crippling/lethal techniques with bare hands, knives, bludgeoning weapons, and of course guns. Holy shit, I'm the next fucking Jason Voorhees! I even have a machete! What other crap is there? Oh, I wear real boots, boots that turn my feet into SUPER NINJA FLYING MINISTERS OF DEATH! Well, maybe the irrational fear of inanimate object phase hasn't progressed that far, but it will some day. Look at the airlines; instead of the logical arming of pilots and allowing CCW holders to carry handguns on planes, they try to make sure NOBODY gets through with anything more deadly than a quarter. It doesn't even work! My mother brought a carryon soft cooler type thing on the flight to Yellowstone with a medium size paring knife in it on accident, and nobody caught that. It was big enough that I would feel comfortable fighting with it, especially against an unarmed foe. It was sure as shit more capable than a box cutter!

Lost my train of thought... I got distracted by Bigger Than Cheeses comics. Oh well, I've been rambling for like an hour and a half.

To recap:

REAL ID is bad
Gradual violations of basic freedoms are the best way to remove them
Income taxes are insane
Right != privilege
Corporal punishment is NOT abuse
Capability != desire nor intent (to hurt people)

Basically, our society has begun to backslide while claiming that things are better than ever before. More on this in (yet again) a dedicated post later.

...WTF is with the word verification? Fixing the text color issue apparently means I'm a spam risk. Well, whatever, it's no big deal but it's the first time I saw it.

...Yeah, except the fix didn't work. I love it when Blogger gives me bullshit problems for no known reason. Fucking A. Bullets != proven technology, I guess, since they are the things messing up my formatting.

Pointy sticks

2005-05-10T17:49:00.000-04:00

Got my Knifecenter knives today. That's a Linder Pathfinder, SOG Gummint Agent, CS Kobun, and CS SRK. Yay. The Opinels didn't show up, though, sadly enough.

I'm disappointed somewhat in the Linder; it's a nice enough knife, I suppose, but the sheath design is annoying. It's also designed for people with smaller meat hooks, obviously. Anyway, about the sheath: it IS metal, but it uses a leaf spring and two metal strips to secure the blade by friction... and scratches the blade on both sides all the way along the length. Argh. The spine is also a little rougher than I'm used to. Good value, though, and since I wasn't planning on using it for serious use anyway, I don't mind much. Usually I'm pleasantly surprised in my purchases, and maybe my disappointment is stemming from the fact that it didn't wow me. It bears mentioning that you (or I, at least) can't put the knife in the sheath ambidextrously, although the sheath appears to be

The SOG is really nice. I love the grip; it's Kraton, just like all of my Cold Steel blades, but somehow it feels better in my hand. Perhaps it is the grip's design alone without any influence by the material, but it feels like the SOG Kraton is a little softer and more tacky. Actually, my Cold Steel Safe Keeper II push dagger feels this soft, but the other fixed blades have harder handles. QC or manufacturing tolerances maybe. But anyway. The Gummint Agent is very well balanced and light; it hardly feels like I'm holding a knife and just slips right into my hand, where gripping many of my other knives requires a bit of adjustment before it feels just right. The blade is powder-coated AUS-6A steel, if you're curious, with a gorgeous grey powder coated finish. My only gripe is the guard gets in the way of putting my thumb on the spine of the blade right at the ricasso (where the blade meets the handle). All in all, VERY pleased with this knife.

As for the sheath; it is Kydex, with an interesting clip for the belt. I'd describe it, but I'm not feeling too good with words right now so I'll just take pictures later. I like the fact that it's a bit softer and more pliable (and probably less prone to extreme temperature breakage) than Secure-ex. So far my favorite synthetic sheath in my collection.

The SRK is great. It feels good in my hand as a tool, though I find it a little too heavy for my taste as a defensive knife. The blade is very thick: looks like a quarter inch or maybe a little less. It is Carbon V, which is a proprietary name for Cold Steel's chosen steel of the day, which is unknown to me as of the moment. Carbon steel, not stainless, obviously, and it has the typical black powder coat. I took it out back to chop on some softish wood and it performed well enough for me with no noticeable blade damage or dulling.

I've lost my train of thought here... damn Stargate. Anyway, the SRK will be first on my belt for tool use because of the heavy, tough blade and my ability to brace the blade with my thumb on the spine. For finer work, the Kobun or a folder will suffice, and for defensive and light utility use I would choose my SOG. I would choose none of them for serious combat; I have several more appropriate blades, such as my CRKT Hissatsu, push dagger, etc. Though the Kobun does make a great backup blade. The stock sheath is way too big, but with a thin leather or nylon sheath it would be right at home in a boot.

So... all in all I'm happy with my knives. They bring honor to my collection. I'm getting kind of sick of eeeevil black knives, though. I crave leather or wood handles, polished steel, and leather sheaths. Now that I figure I have enough fixed blades to handle anything I need to do, maybe I'll start buying prettier pointed sticks. And folders.

Thoughts.. again

2005-05-10T02:07:00.000-04:00

Yankees won. 4-3 is a little closer than I like in a game that doesn't go into fun extra innings, but a win is a win. Johnson didn't look as solid as usual.

Braves lost. I wouldn't mind, but they lost to the Rockies! The bloody Rockies! Argh. It'll be pretty sad if they lose the series because the Rockies are one of the worst teams in baseball right now, whereas the Braves are about tied for 3rd (with the Cardinals). Obviously it doesn't mean as much right now because they aren't playing interleague yet and it's not even 1/4 through the season, but still. Blah. The Rockies!

So I'm watching this B movie on Scifi called Within the Rock. It's one of those asteroid gonna hit earth movies, low budget though. They describe it was a moon; magically this moon has Earth-like gravity and they have 'oxygen generators' which can keep breathable pressure without sealing off the caverns or whatever. They show poor knowledge of physical, biological, chemical, and mechanical science in this 'science fiction' film. I like the cast, though; the demo chick was hot before she died and the doctor chick is cute. Xander Berkeley, one of my favorite supporting actors, is in it and so is Brian Krauss of Charmed fame (he plays Leo). If you ignore the poor science and such it's actually not a bad movie so far. Though they certainly killed off too many of the lovable cast members, if you ask me (Krauss and the demo chick both died... WTF? There were much better ways to handle it, especially with the fledging romance between them.) Oh hey, what a lame ending. Totally impossible. I'm not even going to analyze it...

What is it about commercial writers these days? Now, about half of them I actually enjoy watching because they're funny, but the rest are just fucking annoying. Or gross. The vagisil commercial? 'Feminine itch and odor' is not something I want to hear about, quite frankly, and it's hardly the worst commercial out there. Any commercial with animals running around talking or singing like young kids, or adults for that matter... ANNOYING. Babies singing or talking like adults? ANNOYING. I'm not anti-children, now, but holy Christ do I hate those commercials. I also don't enjoy commercials for long lasting erections; I don't need help with my dick. I know I'm not the target of most of the commercials that piss me off, but they're just irritating.

I wish I'd played baseball as a young'un. Realistically I was better suited for my chosen running sports, but I love baseball and I really wish I could play somehow.

I wonder if gangbangers actually shoot waving the pistol around and holding it sideways and stuff. If they do, it's amazing they ever hit anything... probably the only reason people ever die is this stuff happens at powder burn range. I've always wanted to try shooting with the handgun sideways, but every time I go shooting I forget to do it. I know I'll be able to hit my target, if not incredibly accurately, simply because I'm a moderately talented point shooter, but I'm really curious how the recoil will hit me.

Boy, pizza ovens are expensive. I figured a nice countertop pizza oven would run maybe 250 bucks, but all the ones I could find--and they would only cook like a 13" pizza--were around $1000. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right spots, but Damn!

I get a bunch of knives tomorrow. I ordered some cheap Opinel collar locking folders with thin carbon steel blades from Lee Valley (apparently the warehouse is only a short drive away, which is really cool) and the four knives I wrote of before from the Knife Center should be coming as well. That is unless the package and the single knife that was in stock before, the SRK, weigh 2.3 pounds... highly doubtful. At least two knives are in that package. No clue when my Anzas are coming, nor if they even shipped. Ugh, those are the ones I want the most!

Why do people say Keanu Reeves is a bad actor? I like him, and while he doesn't have the depth of the greater actors of this day, he's by no means untalented.

Another question... why are so many people so willing to trot out the racism accusations when they don't have a cogent argument of their own? I was reading on an IMDB thread about the new Jet Li movie Unleashed and I ran across an indictment of Rap-fu movies (heh, props for the excellent name). Rap-fu is a movie either based around the rap culture and including a martial artist or a martial artist teamed up with... a rapper. Think Exit Wounds, Cradle 2 the Grave, stuff like that. One poster, who evidently calibrates his cultural barometer by MTV and black comedians--while lacking an understanding of tongue in cheek and self depracating humors--went on for about 20 posts about the white man keepin the brotha down. He kept saying how we honkeys was jealous of the black culture's minority connections, or something. I only skimmed after his first few posts, mostly because he was functionally illiterate. It was suggested at first that he was stirring up shit to mess with the board, but it was obvious he really believed what he was saying, which is scary. I suspect him to be a white teenager, actually, a 'wigger' if you will. Sigh. I guess he didn't like a rational evaluation of his favorite mediocre Rap-fu movies, and as such had to trot out the racism crap. No doubt someone reading this will come up with the notion that I'm racist and black hating, which is total shit. I can't even wrap my late night mind around this phenomenon, which means the whole last paragraph makes little sense. Sorry. I'll write a real post or two about my thoughts on racism, race baiting, and reality in the near future.

Back to baseball... why does Ichiro Suzuki have his first name on the back of his jersey? Kind of weird, if you ask me. Ichiro Suzuki is a Mariners player, if you don't know; he's a huge Japanese star, though not as big as Matsui. Came over a few years back. Very quick, and small for an MLB player--smaller than me, and I'm smaller than 98% of the players on the field--which isn't that important but interesting anyway. Offensively he's a great baserunner and good at getting hits to begin with, though lacking in power. His career batting average is .339, and last year he batted .372 in 161 games. Wow. Very impressive. Defensively an outfielder, I believe he plays RF, but he might be CF; I'm not sure and way too lazy to check right now. Okay, I checked to get his batting stats, and it's RF. An interesting fact about Ichiro is his father trained him from the start to bat left handed; he's naturally a RH hitter, but from a young age he batted LH and it really shows. I'm tempted to somehow watch the Mariners just to see this guy play.

Okay, that's about it this fine late night. 2:07 AM = time to lean back and enjoy a movie on TBS.

Worth Reading

2005-05-08T23:50:00.000-04:00

Not often do I link to other pieces, mostly because I prefer to write my own posts. However, when I find something that really strikes me as funny or worthy in some other respect... well, I link it. Duh.

See here. The sentence that made me link is this:

Of course the man complies with his woman’s wishes because he wants her to shut the fuck up already.

Hah! Priceless.

Oh My

2005-05-08T13:50:00.000-04:00

Can you say major scare in the top of the 2nd? I'm fucking amazed Brown didn't blow the game. Good pitching along with some breaks and A-rod's catch saved a pretty bad situation (bases loaded with no outs).

Then the Yankees loaded the bases in the bottom of the 2nd and didn't get anyone home. Ho hum. More updates as the drama unfolds... if I feel like it.

Update 1: Well, Brown got himself out of another bases loaded. At least this time there were 2 outs, but come on. The second bases loaded situation in a game before it's half over is pretty bad. A-rod got a home run, so it's not scoreless anymore. Unless Brown blows it really bad this next inning my dire prediction (I don't even really remember what I said... 4 runs in the first half, I think) was wrong. I'm glad to be wrong sometimes.

Oh, and about the Braves game: I haven't been watching, but Atlanta is up 8 to nothing. Heh. Go Atlanta.

Update 2: Cool, I was wrong. Not to say the rest of the game will go swimmingly, but I'm hopeful. I'd surely like to see more than 1 run on the NYY end of things. Impressive play by Sheffield; he wasn't the only one to make a good play this game, though: Cano (the new 2nd baseman) made a nifty pirouette throw to first near the beginning of the game, and A-rod made the quick catch to save one of the bases loaded near-SNAFUs that I already mentioned. They really are playing well today, thank God. A-rod also almost got hit by a broken bat, a huge chunk of it. Interesting game so far.

Update 3: Poor Sheffield. He messes up his ankle and then gets hit 10 minutes later. He didn't look too happy when he was taking his base; I'm guessing he was disappointed he didn't get to blast a fastball. Womack scored on Matsui's single, and then A-rod's hit yielded a pretty nice play by the A's 3rd baseman Chavez. It was a third to first double play, which is relatively rare to see made (probably because the combination of events to even make it possible is fairly improbable).

As I wrote this, Matsui made a tough catch in center field where the wind was playing with the ball a lot; he changed direction three times before he caught it. Brown looks like he's going to close out this inning with no hits, much less runs... yep, there it is. Struck out the last batter. He's making me believe in him a bit more with this showing.

Heh, Atlanta is up 13-0. Wow. No more needs to be said.

Update 4: Big inning, that 8th. Tino hit a 3 run HR and Posada hit a HR as well to bring the score up to Yankees 6, Athletics 0. Nice. I was disappointed when Jeter didn't get a run in the 7th, but I guess it's ok. Three more outs and it's over. C'mon, shutout!

The Braves game final was 16-0, if you're curious.

It's the top of the 9th as I write this, so I figure I'll just finish it now. A bit of a scare from the 2nd A's batter, don't know who it was; about four feet shy horizontally of a home run, that hit turned into a double. Posada just caught his second fly of the game; that's a relatively rare opportunity. I enjoy seeing catchers get fly balls.

Oh boy. A hit past A-rod put a runner on 3rd and 1st, but with 2 outs there's a good shot this game will end with its present score. The runner on 1st just took 2nd, but big deal, right? Fly ball, game over. 6-0 win, the 900th win by Joe Torre as the Yankees manager, which is cool. Good show, Yankees.

Morning Junk

2005-05-08T08:40:00.000-04:00

My mother woke me up at the ungodly hour of... 4.5 hours after I fell asleep, namely 7 AM, this morning. The hour itself is quite nice, but feeling like my brain is half misfiring and my eyes are going to fall out of my head is pretty shitty. I laid down to go back to sleep, but between the bright ass light shining in my face unless I smothered myself with my comforter (have I mentioned lately how I hate natural light in my bedroom?) and the odd and somewhat disturbing thoughts that kept surfacing--a guarantee of fucked up dreams--I decided to tough it out and get back on the 9 PM to 5 AM sleep train tonight.

So I read the first 85 pages of Foundation last night. Interesting book, for reasons I can't really explain; I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment 'violence is the last resort of the incompetent' or however that quote goes because it is typical holier than thou intellectual crap, but at least the story is interesting. Maybe I'll write later just why that quote is, in fact, crap.

The Yankees and Braves play today at the same time, so I guess I'll be watching NY unless they start losing badly, at which point I'll watch my Braves. I'm predicting that Kevin Brown gives up at least four runs in the first half of the game, for the record. No predictions on the Braves because I don't watch them play enough to even really know the team. Andruw Jones played well in the games I saw, as did Chipper, and apparently Smoltz is wounded... that's the extent of my 2005 Braves knowledge.

You know what's sad? That the Yankees got spanked really bad by the Devil Monkeys (Devil Rays, if you must), 3 games out of 4, and now the Devil Rays are getting crushed by Minnesota. The scores were 1-7 and 1-8 the last two games. Now, it's possible the Devil Monkeys just played competently vs the Yankees and the Yankees kept fucking up (which they assuredly did) to complicate matters, but it doesn't seem to bode well for my team. Minnesota is 2nd in AL Central, behind the White Sox who seem to be kicking total ass so far (23-7, best in baseball), so this might all mean nothing, but it certainly doesn't say anything good about the NYY series at Tampa.

I'd dearly love to write some fiction this morning; maybe I'll do some shorts to try character development or rough out the hows and whys of my setting. Then again... remember how I wrote in my last post about writing how outlining helps keep a piece, well, not suck? I think I may take it too far when I write fiction. I'm loathe to write 40,000 words and then figure out, oh, shit, I need to make this small but crucial change... and now the last 80+ hours of my writing life need to be reevaluated! I much prefer to figure out the framework and rules of the world in which I'm writing beforehand so I don't have to change, or entirely rewrite, a large hunk of prose. However, it becomes a handicap and not a foundation when I spend so long on trying to figure out what the hell my world is that I never get to the writing part.

That's about all I can think of to say this morning. Have a good day? I'll be back to bitch about or sing the praises of the Yankees around 2:30, probably.

Books

2005-05-07T23:35:00.000-04:00

I've been trying to read more novels than non-fiction (articles) lately. It's harder than one might think to get back in the rhythm of reading.

The last two books I read were Red Planet and The Puppet Masters, both Heinlein works. After Starship Troopers, those two are the most enjoyable I've read of his; I have a few others, such as Stranger in a Strange Land and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, but I actually failed to finish either as I lost interest. Odd, considering their popularity, but I suspect that they just click with a certain type of reader and I'm not one of those.

I'm torn between reading one of my new books, trying to tackle some Neal Stephenson (I have Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon sitting unread after about five years and two months since I bought them, respectively), and digging out my separate copies of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.

The new books of which I speak are Asimov's Foundation and two novels by Robert Silverberg: Roma Eterna and The Man in the Maze. I don't really know anything about them; I went to Barnes and Noble a few days ago--thursday perhaps--and just wandered around the Scifi section.

Silverberg caught my eye, and as I enjoyed a collection of science fiction shorts narrated by him a year or two ago I decided to give him a shot; The Man in the Maze seemed kind of iffy from the blurb, but I bought it anyway. Roma Eterna had the most striking blurb of the remaining Silverberg novels on the shelf, so into my library it went. Kudos to Silverberg for picking good titles, by the way; it's more important than most people think, and I think the provocative title of TMitM was what made me buy it despite reservations. I know it drew my eye to Roma Eterna.

Not much to say about Asimov; I think it's a 50/50 shot that I'll like his work, considering the nature of science fiction and fantasy readers. This genre in particular is prone to cult followings and the worst members of such expelling the virtues of their paper god all out of proportion to its worth.

I'll report back on those novels when I'm done with them, which will probably be in a few days now that I've got myself all worked up about them. Sooner if they don't pan out; I usually give an author 25 pages at the minimum to get my attention, and a good one will have it inside two (if that). We shall see.

Break that slump!

2005-05-07T17:02:00.000-04:00

Excellent game by Mussina. I got a little worried at the top of the 9th, but he pulled off the shutout. That's the first time I can remember in the last few years I saw a pitcher play the whole game.

I only half watched it because I was do PT and such, but I was impressed on the whole. They played like a real team again! Not much to say besides I'm happy with the win; we'll see if they can keep it up.

Speaking of Mussina, the most exciting game I ever saw was a few years back when he almost pitched a no-hitter. Poor guy, IIRC he lost it in the 8th or 9th to a well placed hit in the hole between right and center field.

The Braves play tonight at 7, and I actually get this game on TBS, so I'll be sure to watch that. Maybe I'll blog that game... this is turning into a baseball blog real quick, though, and I'm not sure I want that.

Holy shit

2005-05-06T22:14:00.000-04:00

The yankees (purposeful mis-capitalization...) are playing like shit. If you saw the game tonight--still painfully not over--you know what I mean. Three fucking errors in the 10th inning and a forced run by base on balls? That's about five games of bad juju in one inning.

All it would take to cap this off as the most disappointing game I've ever seen is a grand slam... which as I wrote didn't happen because Rivera actually did something right by striking out the last A.

Hopefully the Yankees will not give up like they did last night and at least tie it back up this inning. Down 3, that's highly unlikely, but I'm going to wish for the miracle anyway.

Update: Game over. Cruel fate that the A's left fielder would miss Cano's fly so close to second and get Martinez on a forced out. Even then I wasn't convinced it was over, but Jeter flied out and cut the chances of a second comeback by about 98%. Another fly-out put the final touches on a 4 game losing streak. Sigh.

The good news is my other favorite team, the Braves, won against Houston 9-4. Nice. They're leading the NL East, like usual, but my father figures they'll choke (like usual). We'll see in another... 133 games? Something like that. It's too bad I only get a fraction of their games on TV.

And no, I'm not a fan of the Braves and Yankees just because they're good (inevitable accusation by fans of other teams). The Braves have been my favorite team all my conscious life and the Yankees just have a great aura and I enjoy watching them more than anyone else.

More thoughts

2005-05-06T00:40:00.000-04:00

Yankees lost. Ugh. They made a ton of little mistakes that just added up, and at the end it seemed like they quit. We'll see if they were just having a super concentrated shitty series tomorrow when they're home against Oakland. I sure hope so.

It's fun as hell to drive a 2x4 truck. I really like the V6 in this particular F-150 because it's a lot lighter than the V8s... and since it's already a couple hundred pounds lighter in front with the plain RWD the truck is well balanced and not underpowered. With 4WD I would definitely at least upgrade to the 4.6L V8 and probably toss a few hundred pounds of sand in the back to help the balance, but that's another story. With maybe $800 in bolt-ons I could get a big increase in power and torque (and gas mileage if I took it easy on the throttle... HA!) from the V6 and make it even more fun, though I'd definitely have to keep a few bags of sand tied down in the bed to prevent too much wheel burning. I'd like to take on that project some day, but the truck I plan on buying in the spring is most likely going to be an early 90s Silverado with 4WD and the 350ci V8. I'll take an F-150 if it's a significantly better buy, but I really want a Silverado.

It's funny how finding a little thing out about someone can totally destroy your respect for them. I've spoken of Rachel before, and she was always someone I had a lot of respect for and held in high esteem, but as of today... not anymore. I'm not going to go into many details why, it's just the way it is. Makes me feel sick, almost betrayed, and I hate it. The sooner I can forget about her the better, basically.

I haven't written anything more (in fiction) since I wrote that post about how I was starting to write again. I wonder if I will ever be able to. Since I've been looking more at the possibilities of predestiny or fate or some higher being lately, I guess I could say maybe it's not my time to write, but that sounds like a total copout. Maybe I just suck.

I'm confused by my relationship, or not, with Erin. That's my ex, if you're just tuning in. Today she text messaged me when she was worried about me because of a lot of fire trucks and police and such blocking my street entrances, and a few messages back and forth later she called and we talked for about 2.5 hours. It wasn't even weird. I feel a bit like it was one of those random one-time deals that happen sometimes when you don't talk to someone for a while, but only time will tell.

I had very strange dreams last night. It's entirely possible they were so odd because I was sleeping in the basement on the futon, being too effing tired to come up to my bedroom and get the bed ready and all that crap. I was cold all night because I slept in my clothes with just an afghan to wrap around my legs and I woke up at least three dozen times. I only remember choice bits of the dreams, but the Olsen twins were in there as terrorists on the plane me and my team of some kind of agents or whatever were on; they hurt the plane and we had to emergency-land on a highway. Crazy stuff. I have unrelated, vague images of the statue of liberty, another flight without enough seats, and a girl. I think we were a couple, and I can actually feel on my hands the way her pink pleated cotton shirt felt when I held her in the dream. Beyond that I couldn't tell ya what happened, but it was a fun dream. I hope I have another like it tonight.

On that note... I'm bloody tired again. It's way past my bedtime; I already tried to sleep once, right after the Yankees game, but I couldn't make it happen and I went driving instead. I'm going to kick the crap out of the God of Wakefulness if he doesn't let me go this time, dammit! 'Night, y'all.

Some thoughts

2005-05-05T17:00:00.000-04:00

The Yankees lost again last night. That game would have been much better blogging material than the one I actually did, but I was exhausted from about 2 pm to 11 pm or so when I finally got to sleep and I just didn't have the energy. Also, it started slow; if it was interesting from the start I might have hit some Jolt and blogged it, but by the time the third inning rolled in I was too out of it to care.

I didn't get any knives today, so I still have six out in limbo. I did get some presents from Santa (the delivery guy), though: my Norton bench stones and my Rock River Arms 9mm mag-well block.

As for the knives, I found out that three of the four I ordered from Knife Center (not the Anza ones) are on backorder, with the SRK the only one in stock, so they might just wait to ship it all together. I don't remember if I had an option to choose on that. No clue when the Anzas will arrive; I don't recall which shipping option I chose and I have no tracking number. Hopefully soon.

I ordered the Norton stones from MidwayUSA, and they're pretty exciting. Most expensive chunks of rock I've ever bought, that's for sure, but they should be worth it. I had wanted to buy 10x2x1 inch stones, but I settled on 6x2x1s when I couldn't find any decent larger ones for a good price. I bought single medium and fine grit stones with two dual stones, one in coarse/super fine and the other in medium/fine.

I figure I'll bring the medium/fine with me when I travel rather than two stones and I won't use the coarse/super fine stone enough to justify buying individual ones. If I'm wrong I can just buy them in the future, but the super fine stone especially was twice as expensive as the other single grit stones and I'm not made of money, here. I'm planning on making some bench blocks out of red oak for the single grit stones and possibly the coarse/super fine, but we'll see how lazy I feel over the next few weeks.

Still thinking about a sharpening entry...

Firehand

2005-05-04T10:57:00.000-04:00

I started reading blogs when I came across a link to Kim du Toit on an Army forum. I read Kim's entire site over the course of a few days. I can't remember doing that again, though I follow about three dozen blogs daily and another dozen when I think of them. Not one of those grabbed me enough to make me read it from start to finish.

Until now. A short time ago I stumbled across a link to elmtreeforge.blogspot.com, a blog written by a very interesting guy that goes by the name of Firehand. The blog isn't having the impact upon my life that Kim's did, and I skim parts of the past entries since I actually paid attention to the political events while they were happening this time around... but I really like it, especially the commentary on sharp things and steel.

He's absolutely worth checking out. I'm off to read a few more months right now.

More TV blogging

2005-05-03T21:03:00.000-04:00

What can I say? I spend a lot of time with the TV on in the background while I'm on my laptop, so I am exposed to it a lot.

One of the things that bothers me in most TV is the blatant redundant pounding of liberal talking points. Like I wrote before about the COP KILLER BULLETS! thing. They seem to go way out of their way to say the terms, which makes the dialogue seem kind of stilted.

I saw the new triple X movie last week with Sgt Hartley and some other kid. It would be enjoyable if I didn't understand physics, politics, guns, etc. So basically it's a mindless SFX show that probably cost 100x more than one of the better movies in the last dozen years, Equilibrium. Just for example. Not to say a big budget is inherently bad, and they really did do a good job with the flash, but at this point in my life I want more substance to my movies.

There's a new show coming out, The Closer, which is just absolutely repugnant. As far as I can see, it's based around this interrogator talking the truth out of people or some such. First of all, the character played by Kyra Sedgwick is just plain irritating. Her accent grates and she's a total bitch. Second, the last thing you do when you're arrested is say anything other than 'I want my lawyer'!!! The entire show is based on a foolish premise! Ugh. If you don't know why I say that, it's because the vast majority of criminals talk themselves into jail.

What else is there? I dunno. I hate Law and Order and all of its offshoots because they blatantly violate civil rights and push the practice of ignoring the law in favor of what's right. And people like that, because who wants to see a scuzzbag get off the hook based on his rights? The result is two, coming up on three generations of people who don't value civil rights at all.

Most TV is crap. The really good shows like The Pretender and Firefly get canceled while the idiotic shows like Survivor and American Idol flourish.

Oh, I'm still waiting for a cable company to allow you to buy the channels you want individually rather than in packages. Pay 75 cents a month per channel outside the basic 3 or 4 and that's it. I'd even pay 99 cents! More expensive per channel than it is today, sure, but cheaper in the long run and I'd be able to get the deluxe channels I want without paying $100 a month for cable. With the digital revolution in TV, it's not like the technology isn't there. Come on, people!

Cartoons...

2005-05-03T20:52:00.000-04:00

...REALLY suck these days. Total crap. I'm not going to parse why, they just suck. I mean the kid cartoons, not stuff like the uber hilarious Family Guy. Watch Cartoon Network for a half hour pretty much any time outside of Adult Swim and you'll see what I mean.

Damn Yankees!

2005-05-03T19:45:00.000-04:00

Well, not really. I'm a Yankees fan. I am from New Yawk, after all, though on the other side of the state in Rawchester. That's how us Rochesterians say it, anyway. I have more of a snobbish accent, I think, than most people, however. I can't explain it. I digress (a lot).

So I wandered downstairs to check out the Yankees game and see what's going on with the family, and the Yanks are down 1-0 in the bottom of the 1st at Tampa Bay. While I was down there, Brown let in 4 more runs and the bloody inning isn't even over yet! Jebus. The Yankees are good at comebacks, but the bullpen hasn't been delivering and Bernie's out, his hitting power being subbed for by Giambi (Sanchez I think has CF) who has some problem with his forearm; a cramp, they said last night.

Cramps don't sound bad until you have one, and when you do, they suck more than anything in the world. I regularly get cramps in my hands that I have to massage out and I can't lay certain ways at night or my feet cramp really bad. Cramps suck. Sometimes my feet and calves cramp up really bad when I'm running... I'm digressing again.

On a normal night with a regular lineup and a good bullpen I'd say the Yankees have a shot, but tonight I just don't see it. Down 5 in the first inning? Good luck, guys.

It's kind of funny, but in a way I enjoy watching them lose sometimes. Or rather I think it's humorous when they have a bad inning or six and come back to still win; it makes the game interesting. I don't really enjoy games where one team gets slaughtered 1st through 9th. That's one reason I enjoyed the World Series last year, even though the *hack, spit* Red Sox won it; those were some damn good games.

Oh, as I wrote this the 1st ended. They let in another run, so they're down 6-0 right now. I might update this as the game progresses with the dramatic twists and turns (should there be any).

Update 1: Bottom of the 5th, 8-3. Well, in the third inning Tino Martinez got a home run. That made it 6-1, and hope flared. Nothing else of note happened until the bottom of the fourth when Brown let in 2 more runs, to bump it up to 8-1. Hope died. As you can see, this isn't actually a terribly dramatic game. Jeter hit in Giambi and Martinez (I think) with a triple that was humorous because the Tampa fielder ran into the wall full tilt. Whoo. I predict a 10-5 Yankees loss! I'm totally full of shit and picked those numbers relatively arbitrarily, but even the blind hog finds an acord every now and then. We'll see if I'm right.

Update 2: Top of the 7th, Giambi strikes out swinging. Posada rails a home run DEEP in right field, way up in the stands. Martinez flies out. Whoever that guy after Martinez was chopped one right to the first baseman, out. 8-4.

Update 3: Bottom of the 7th, 2 runs. I was writing the TV thing above, so I didn't really pay attention how it happened, but it's now 10-4; I think it was a triple with two guys on. Yankees just have to get 1 more and I'll win my bet to myself.

Update 4: Game over. 11-4. Yikes. I didn't really see how the last Tampa Bay run came in, so I can't comment on it. I was close to the right score, though. Hopefully the Yankees will come back tomorrow and kick some ass! If they do, I'll be sure to report it.

Writing...

2005-05-03T19:14:00.000-04:00

It has occurred to me of late that I am no longer a good writer. I was, once upon a time, because I had a lot of practice even when I wasn't doing anything on my own time. Since I left high school I've hardly written besides in this blog and occasional papers or fiction when I was inspired. What came naturally as breathing is now about as easy as juggling geese.

My grasp of grammar is better than ever and I can spell as well as I ever could, but I can't sit down and write a flowing, well structured piece from start to finish with minimal editing like I did all through school. I think I might have to go back to the techique I use with research papers and longer fiction, which is basically just detailed outlining.

I've written many papers, but the best ones I ever wrote were built from the ground up with a thesis, research, and a real outline down to the point by point structure in each paragraph. I know Acidman uses a pretty basic formula for his posts, and though I'm a great deal longer winded than him, maybe I should do the same.

Toys of the steel variety

2005-05-03T17:30:00.000-04:00

I've spoken before of my love of knives. Along with the many draws they have for me, they allow me to invest in one of my passions when F-ing laws and second class citizen (18-21 years old) status won't let me partake in the other.

I own about a dozen fixed blade knives and a few nice folders, with sundry cheaper folding knives in a drawer across the room. I'd post a picture of my favorites, but quite frankly I'm too lazy right now to break out the digital and gather up the toys and pose them and all that junk. Maybe later.

So, being bored over the last few days, I put together a list of knives I was interested in buying should I win the lotto (or that I was interested in collecting over the years). I tried not to be redundant, but I still ended up with over 50 fixed blades alone. I have barely looked at folders so far. This doesn't count the ones I already own, and is entirely made up of production knives with the notable exception of a few Randall customs.

I have six knives on order at the moment. Two, by Anza, I ordered before I started this list thing: the 705 and 709 with wood laminate handles. They were about $55 each and should arrive at some point in the near future, hopefully tomorrow or thursday. I haven't decided on their roles yet; if they perform better than my current choice belt knives, I'll carry them instead. If they don't, I'll love them anyway for being works of art in a bridge between my favorite mediums, wood and steel. Oh, and a BIG thanks to Kim du Toit for reminding me of this company; I had entirely forgotten about them until about a week ago. Anza is notable for using very hard file steel, which is 59 HRC if I recall correctly, and annealing it to remove the brittleness. Most quality knives run 57-58 HRC, again IIRC; the harder the knife, the sharper edge it can take and hold under use.

I don't know if I've ever written a post about sharpening, but maybe I'll do that at some point. It's something of an art with plain ol' Arkansas stones and some oil or water, and much more satisfying than using a guided system or machine.

I have a few Cold Steel working knives coming too; they should arrive thursday. I ordered a second Kobun and a Carbon V SRK; if the SRK is worthy, I'll order a backup for that as well. I love my Kobun, and I'd rather spend the money on a backup now than wait anywhere from a week to a much longer period of time depending on where I am in the world when I lose the first one. I've heard good things about the SRK as well, so I'm hopeful on that front.

Also coming thursday is an SOG Gummint Agent, which I bought for kicks because I can afford it and it made my wish list (and it's not exactly useless), and a Linder Pathfinder.

Interesting bit of trivia on the Linder Pathfinder. When I first saw it, I was struck by its similarity to a historical knife of the Nazi persuasion. I did a bit of research and I found that the Hitler Youth knives were originally made in Solingen, the same place Linder knives are made today. I'm not saying the original HJ knives (Hitler Jugend) were made by Linder, but it wouldn't surprise me if at least some were; unfortunately I can't be sure because Linder isn't the only old-time knife company based in Solingen. Basically the Pathfinder is the exact same design without the Blut und Ehre! (Blood and Honor!) inscription on the blade and swastika on the handle. The swastika is replaced with a fleur de lis, if you're curious. It also comes with a leather sheath instead of the HJ metal, but that's ok.

That similarity bumped the knife onto my list over the objectionable fact that the blade is 420 stainless rather than my preferred 440. Am I a fledgling HJ? Nope. Sorry. The Third Reich did have some incredibly attractive militaria, however, and I'm particularly enamored with their weapons. My uncle Neil (on my mother's side) has a collection of historic bladed weapons, including a Luftwaffe dagger, fire department dress axe, and a few other broad bladed daggers I don't recall the place of. Very cool stuff.

I'd love to get into knifemaking some day. Add that to my woodworking, gunsmithing, A/V (much less these days, but it's still there), and an interest in all things mechanical... sigh. I'm gonna have to win that lotto after all and use it to buy myself another life to enjoy my hobbies.

Whoa.

2005-05-02T12:35:00.000-04:00

Been a while since I wrote anything. My bad, I've been slacking off. I don't have any excuses this time.

I'm going to talk about my pathetic generation.

We, as a group, are uneducated, unable to think for ourselves, impressionable, and insecure.

Almost nobody I know that is my age is educated or strong minded enough to develop an opinion of their own, nor secure enough to defend it (or even try) upon challenge.

Merely saying something doesn't make it true. Often in my, err, discussions with my peers they will make statements that I may challenge or ask for substantiation on and they are utterly unable to do so. It doesn't help that the majority of the time people are, as I've written, both unable to distinguish between opinion and fact and unable to see when I'm talking about phenomena (such as racism) on a very large scale vs individual events.

Another issue I have with my peers is their tendency to devolve to personal attacks in lieu of a true argument. It happens with almost everyone my age I've ever had a real discussion with. Apparently the fact that I have a ton of background facts and examples to prove my points and I refuse to change my stance without a lot of convincing information means I'm (pick your own negative adjective). Today alone I've been accused of being arrogant or some such; it was a long insult so I can't really break it down into a few adjectives.

There's no quicker way to lose my respect than to argue with emotion rather than logic. The result is that I respect almost none of my peers. It doesn't help that they, for the most part, get their opinions and views from pop culture and an incredibly narrow view of the world. ...And young folk like me wonder why nobody takes us seriously?

You can trace all this crap back to public schools, but that's a whole 'nother thing.

Poor sleep

2005-04-26T11:30:00.000-04:00

I've been having crappy dreams the last several days. Mostly they involve people that don't really exist in my life anymore and I really miss. That's why I haven't really been writing the past few days; I've been more upset than usual and unrested and such.

I normally have strange dreams about guns or a game or whatever my brain decides to take from my experiences of the day. I almost never have bad dreams, but three days in a row I've woken up at least once very disturbed and either had to get up to deal with the subconscious idiocy my brain indulged in or fallen right back into a new nightmare.

This trend needs to stop. I need my sleep, and a poor night's sleep can utterly ruin my day since I'm not well adapted to poor sleep patterns right now. I survived for two school years in a row getting 3-4 hours a night and I was fine, but the last 2 years have been very restful so my tolerance is extremely low. I'll get plenty of restless nights in the Army, I'm sure... I just want my fucking sleep for now.

COP KILLER BULLETS!

2005-04-26T07:55:00.000-04:00

Every weekday I watch a few shows in the morning, rain or shine. One is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, which apparently shares only a few names with the book but as I've never read it I can't say. The other is The Pretender, one of the better shows that I've ever seen. It was unfortunately canceled.

I'm not here to talk about those shows, though. I'm sick of the bullshit anti-gun agenda the TV industry shows, and the myths they perpetuate. The Pretender set me off this morning because the entire episode revolves around armor piercing ammunition, or as they are called in the show COP KILLER BULLETS. Yeah.

There are a few facets of misunderstanding to this issue. The first is that body armor is bullet proof except when the horrible COP KILLER BULLETS are used. Even non-armor piercing ammunition can penetrate body armor. Body armor isn't magic, especially soft armor. Soft armor is designed to stop handgun rounds, and just about any rifle bullet will zip right through like a hot knife through butter. Hard armor is just soft armor with reinforcing plates in high risk areas. It's not like you're a walking tank, and even the hardest armor (Class IV) will be penetrated with multiple high-power rifle shots.

Another misunderstanding (read out-fucking-right lie) is that AP ammunition was designed specifically to kill policemen. Try again, asswipes. AP ammunition was developed at the latest in World War I, well before the invention of personal body armor, and earlier still than the advent of LEOs wearing body armor.

Lastly, AP ammunition is not more lethal or devastating than regular ammunition. It is, in fact, the least damaging of the various bullet designs. Would you rather have a small hole punched right through you or a small hole with massive tissue damage inside your body? Obviously the best option is no holes at all, but if I had to choose between loads for a particular cartridge and rifle I'd be picking AP.

Self Censorship

2005-04-23T13:40:00.000-04:00

It occurs to me that when I ship in June, I'll have to be extremely careful about what I say here. I don't know all of the consequences of speaking my mind 'in uniform,' which will be pretty much all the time if y'all know I'm a soldier. I've been warned never to speak out politically in uniform.

There's always the option of starting another blog and trying to avoid linking the two in any way, not telling anyone I write both. Maybe I will do that. Something to think about, I suppose.

I'm speculating almost 100% right now; I just felt like saying something about it because the topic came up elsewhere in my life. Maybe I won't be able to say anything at all about what I'm doing because of OpSec worries, who knows. Maybe I'll fail and be too fucking ashamed to tell anyone about it. Maybe I'll die and all this won't matter, who knows.

More TV silliness... aka Fucking Commie Hollywood

2005-04-23T09:58:00.000-04:00

So there's this movie I just watched on TBS called Counterstrike. So-so action movie; the only reasons I watched it are Rachel Blakely and boredom.

What really pissed me off about the movie is the fact that they made Taiwanese freedom fighters the bad guys. They also preached China / US cuddling and nuclear disarmament.

This is the plot: the female US president (they really loaded it up with liberal shit, see--I'm not anti-women or anything, but it's a fact supportive of my thesis) is meeting with the Chinese president on a cruise liner to discuss foreign relations or some such thing. The Chinese president doesn't trust his government, so he brought the Chinese 'nuclear football' on board with him. The Taiwanese 'terrorists' take over the ship to steal the Chinese nuclear codes and gain their independence by declawing their oppressors. This is a bad thing? WTF? Yay oppression! Yay collectivism! Fucking commies.

I could mention the fact that stealing the codes would do you no fucking good at all because they would be changed in a matter of hours at the very most, but this is a liberal film so anything relating to guns, bombs, etc is automatically incorrect.

Oh yeah, and the USSS sucked something awful in this movie. They just got taken by surprise? Yeah... that happens. A great way to die is make a SS agent even THINK you're a threat to the president. Anyway, eventually the 'good guys' kill or capture all of the real Heroes of the film and voila the day is saved. Whatever. I'd like to think that the US forces only took out the Taiwanese people to save the president, but I'm certain that's not the way the writers thought.

The L3s (Loony Liberal Lefists) need to stop disrespecting SpecOps soldiers and elite units like the USSS Presidential Detail. Every time I see a movie where soldiers in general and elite units in particular are made out as morons and incompetents I want to find a liberal to kick in the nuts.

In case y'all don't understand why I'm anti-China, it's because China is the single greatest threat to US security in the world. If you think otherwise you're a damned fool. As for nuclear disarmament... nuclear proliferation = nuclear deterrence. Better yet would be the US alone having nuclear weapons.

You may think I'm an opinionated war hawk, but you'd only be half right. I wish for an isolationist policy, but I also want the US to have the most kick-ass military in the world... and KEEP it. Opinionated? Damn right. I'm not interested in debate.

I'm a Double Dumb Ass (and no, I don't get it)

2005-04-22T05:17:00.000-04:00

Via Frizzen Sparks. I'm surprised I did even this well:

The Double-Dumb Ass
Survey Says... You scored 39 %

Oh dear - have you even watched an episode of Star Trek? Antimatter
relays have no meaning to you and you couldn't explain the mechanics of
a temporal paradox if a phaser was pointed at your head. The sly
significance and humour of your designation - the Double Dumb Ass -
will also be lost on you. Still, on the upside, you're statistically
more likely to be well-adapted, socially capable and are probably even
popular with your peers.

Like this test? Then don't forget to rate it!!

Want more? How about some shameless self-promotion? I've also written other tests - check them out! You know you want to...

The Do *YOU* Remember The 90's Test http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=5703678562131497032

The Australian Trivia Test http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=5445221572207587108

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 4% on Trekkies

Link: The Trekkie Test written by MadameBoffin on Ok Cupid

I guessed on 90% of the questions, as in absolute guessing because I had no fuckin clue what they were talking about. Star Trek just ain't my thing. My dad, sister, and I all used to watch Star Trek the Next Generation a long time ago, but I hardly remember it, and I never watched the original series or movies or any of that.

I do know a great deal about Star Wars, which is much more entertaining and thought provoking for me, and have written inside the Star Wars universe (outside of the mainstream plots and absent of anything but the basic guidelines and history of the galaxy). Star Wars is one of my inspirations in science fiction, and one the main literary collections that makes me want to write.

TV stuff

2005-04-22T04:45:00.000-04:00

So because my sleep schedule is so F-ed up, I spend a lot of time watching TV in the early morning hours. Usually I just watch the X-Files on TNT, but tonight I guess it's Anna Nicole Smith movie night.

In the last movie, they cut out all of the nude scenes of Anna Nicole Smith, which are the only reasons for her to be in the movie. It didn't even flow for one of them because they went from the guy ripping her shirt open to him randomly flying out the window. So this guy who is maybe 6 foot and well muscled with a gun was just overpowered by Anna Nicole Smith, a woman who is on the low end of physical capability because of her massive handicaps? Right.

I don't find her that attractive, so I'm not really complaining here, but what the fuck? Why even show the movie if you're going to cripple the plot line to absolutely avoid all references to sex or nudity? I remember when I used to watch late night movies on USA that were basically killing, nudity, and sex the entire time and they cut NOTHING out, just blurred the tits a bit. How sad is it that 3 AM cable TV is so controlled?

These movies don't even make sense, they're just a showcase for her to wander around, boobs and ass jiggling, randomly changing clothes and taking showers and stuff. Bad? Nope! But jesus, if the entire point of the movie is stuff they don't want to show on regular cable, why bother?!

Fucking nannies.

Quote...

2005-04-21T01:52:00.000-04:00

...but not of the day. Way too early to declare a QotD.

"You girly-men, back in my day we tracked deer by their scent and killed them with our bare hands."

Paulk, if my 85 yr old father is to be believed, in HIS day they did that with bears. Grizzlys, browns, everything.

(Of course, he also used to tell me how he walked 50 miles each way to school in North Dakota, in bare feet, in the snow, while it was 120 degrees... then when he got home, he worked 20 more hours that day for a nickel a month. I believe him... don't you????)

Yep.

It this POS working?

2005-04-20T22:40:00.000-04:00

Ugh. I hate it when my blog doesn't work right. 'Course, if I can't get to the page, I have no reason to think anyone else can, so posting this doesn't really make much sense.

Edit - It works again. Yay.

Quote of the Day

2005-04-20T13:19:00.000-04:00

"Im in australia, but keen to leave, and get myself a bit of land, and a machine gun."

Naming firearms

2005-04-20T12:38:00.000-04:00

I don't know how I feel about this. Or rather, I don't know how most people think of it, as I'm apathetic on the matter. I think it's fun to personify my firearms and try to find the name that I feel is right for the ones I rely on, but I don't necessarily like to talk about it with other people because most people just don't understand, and will think I'm crazy.

I feel a great attachment to a couple of my guns. My 1911 and I have bonded, you could say, because I keep it either within reach or on my belt constantly and it's the best pistol I've ever felt. The name that feels right for it (her) is Christine; I don't know why, really. So from now on I'll be referring to my 1911 as Christine.

The other firearm I feel something for is my Marlin 336RC. I don't have a name for it, but it feels masculine. I'll come up with something appropriate. My Remington 870 is too ambiguous for me to feel anything for; it's just a tool. I don't spend enough time with any of my other guns (except the plastic ones that never will get names because they're too cookie cutter) to be able to feel--or not feel--the attachment. When I do, I'll name them appropriately.

I might as well toss out some more gun porn while we're on the topic of guns. This is a rifle I could certainly feel something for:

She's a beaut alright.

Exhaustion

2005-04-20T12:01:00.000-04:00

It's funny how the body responds to exhaustion. I spend a lot of time in a state of minor to extreme exhaustion, so I have a lot of experience with the phenomenon of my senses kind of fading out as my energy winds down.

Right now I'm experiencing minor tunnel vision and decreased touch sensitivity. I can't feel the 3 pound gun on my belt, when normally the weight is obvious, though not bothersome. My hands feel detached, almost.

When I get to around 26-30 hours awake, my hearing starts cutting out. I'll randomly realize that I have no memory of ANY sound for the previous several minutes, even if I'm watching TV or a movie.

Also, after I get past about 20 hours awake, I enter this zone where I can push my body VERY hard, performing feats of strength and endurance that are difficult enough when I'm fully rested. For example, I did over 200 dips in sets of 10, 15, or 20 over the course of an hour one morning before going on a 3 mile ruckmarch with a 70 pound pack. That same morning I did a couple sets of 30+ pushups with the 70 pound pack on. Mind you, I max out at 60 some odd pushups with just my body weight. That's maybe 40% of the stuff I did that morning, and that was after I had a full workout during the normal day.

The downside is I messed up my body clock really bad and didn't even know what day it was for like 10 days, staying up for over 22 hours at a time between sleeping 10-16 hours straight. I tried to fix my sleep schedule, but I just couldn't do it. I'd lay there reading, my eyes blurry and dry, my body just ACHING to sleep, but the relief wouldn't come.

It's good I can push myself above and beyond when I'm exhausted, but I have to wonder if I'm going to drive myself crazy (or break my body pushing too hard). It's not good to wake up at 9 PM and think 'hey, why is everyone still here, they're going to be late for work.'

Israeli Carry

2005-04-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

I've been practicing Condition 3 drawing, also known as the Israeli draw or Israeli carry, because frequently around the house I leave my pistol unchambered but the magazine loaded.

It's actually pretty snappy when I do it right, a fraction of a second slower than my normal Condition 1 draw, but it's somewhat hit or miss. I make an effort to draw more swiftly, which is a mistake, because sometimes I don't pull the pistol far enough out of the holster before pushing forward to my midline and twist my wrist. In a life or death situation that could result in dropping the gun, or more dramatically in breaking my own wrist if the adrenaline was pumping enough.

Even when I do get the first stage of the draw right I don't always rack the slide well. Sometimes I miss the serrations by gripping too low, on the frame, maybe about 5% of the time. I'm getting better, but say a combined failure rate of 8-10% between the two major errors and it's just not acceptable. Nobody in their right mind would carry a handgun that malfunctioned 8-10% of the time, and the same standard should be applied to the draw.

At least it's a safe draw; I don't sweep anywhere but my target. I think with practice it'll come more naturally, but the Israeli draw will never be as smooth or fast as a normal strongside Condition 1 draw. I don't recommend it unless you can put a lot of time into practicing it. I also do not recommend practicing the way I do, with live ammunition. Get some snap caps.

WTF is wrong with these people?

2005-04-19T00:53:00.000-04:00

Read.

Back?

What the fuck is that? Guess I'll be driving everywhere, because I usually bring about 8-10 books in my backpack. Nice job TSA, you kept Dave the Terrorist off the plane with your book restrictions! Where the hell do they get these ideas, anyway? Was there some MacGuyver episode where he used a book to make a bomb or something? Maybe they're worried about papercuts?

I don't get it, and trying will just sprain the logic centers of my brain with all the fucking leaps.

Oh, and since when were we only allowed 4 books to begin with? I've been on probably forty individual flights in my life, including to and from Europe, and on every single one I had more than 4 books on me. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on violating the carry-on code of conduct?

Dammit Barry!

2005-04-18T06:13:00.000-04:00

So I was, yet again, browsing the NoR forums, and a frequent commentor who has a similar taste in fine firearms as me got me all worked up about cowboy type firearms again.

A less frequent commentor is planning on an Uberti 1873 Special Sporting Rifle to celebrate BAG (Buy a Gun) day late, and he asked us gun nuts for advice on the caliber. That's how this began.

So Barry makes a comment on how beautiful the rifle is, a museum piece out of the box, and all that. I definitely agree that it's an absolutely beautiful rifle, though I would choose the carbine for comfort reasons if I planned on using it for more than a wall piece. I can't stand the sharp metal crescent shaped stocks.

He also mentioned the Uberti pistols, which are a whole 'nother story in my mind. They're fucking gorgeous. I have this dream of owning a ranch in Wyoming in 15 years with a horse or two and going out riding with an 1873 Cattleman Old West single action in 45 Colt in a crossdraw rig, cartridges on my belt and all, and a lever action rifle in 45/70 or carbine in 45 Colt in the saddle scabbard. Call me a dork if you want, but I love that image.

So I guess I should post a picture of the Cattleman Old West SAA copy. Here ya go:

Drool.

Oh, and in case you're curious why I would choose a crossdraw holster... try drawing a pistol from a strongside belt holster when you're on a horse. Have fun when you fumble it and drop it muzzle down in the dirt or onto some rocks.

The Punisher!

2005-04-17T21:25:00.000-04:00

The NoR forums give me good material for blogging, even if it's not particularly creative and original. Anyway, a commentor said this, regarding moving around the house without electricity at night:

I do low light drills any place I'm going to be staying any length of time. I memorize the layout, including obstructions, I also know all openings, silhouette poinTs, entrances, and locations of all the weapons, and all the lights.

I keep a loaded weapon out of plain view, but easily accessible in every room at all times. I keep a loaded shotgun and a loaded pistol by my bedside, along with a small surefire, and a large maglight flashlight.

All of my defensive weapons except my 12ga have tritiums sights, including my AR; which also has a long eye relief illuminated reticle tactical scope, or a red dot on it at all times.

I'm actually looking to put a tritium ghost ring on my 12ga; it has rifle sights on it now.

I can find and operate each of these by feel, without any light, and they are always placed in the same spot every time; and in the same condition (generally loaded, chambered, on safe, but the long arms are kept without a round in the chamber).

I also have a portable high speed strobe; and a couple of flashbangs, and IR suppressive grenades in case I ever get hit by some asshole with an NVD. I know where those are at all times too.

I WOULD use NV, but I cant afford a Gen3A or better piece, and anythign less than that is actually more of a disadvantage than an advantage in my tactical environment.

Yes, I am overtrained.

I've said it before, the person who attempts to assault my home is in SERIOUS deep shit.

Is it just me, or does that remind anyone else of the Punisher's apartment? Yeah, this one made me laugh out loud too, but I'm not going to say anything bad because my house will be just like that some day.

It's getting there, but I can only do so much when I'm the only one in the household that gives a shit about home defense. The shitty thing is that I'm in the least accessible room in the house most of the time, which means that instead of coming through me and being killed any crazy asshole that tries to kill my family will probably succeed before they get to me.

Annoyances

2005-04-17T20:50:00.000-04:00

It's kind of annoying how blogger never updates my number of posts or words written and such. I'd be interested in knowing how many words I've written on here in the last year and how many posts I have. Just sayin'.

Oh, and in case you're confused by why I say 'in the last year,' I actually started blogging back in March 2004. I deleted all of the posts a couple times when I thought I was giving it up, which is why they only go back to October now. It's probably better this way because now my entire blog applies to my life as it is today, since I started writing again after Erin left me. The posts before were probably crappy quality anyway.