Mission impossible

I love these. I used to be the dick that sent the FNGs out to various places to pick up grid squares, six gallons of rotor wash, the keys to the drop zone, squeegee sharpeners, cordless extension cords. . . .you name it. You know who you're clicked with too when the FNG's mission is perpetuated by your buddies who quickly send them over to the S-4 for a bottle of K-9P lubricant, which as we all know you have to fill out a ID-10T form to get.

That feeling again

When you're driving down the road to work and you think your cellphone is vibrating on your belt, only when you check you realize it's just your gut rumbling.

"Dammit, woman! I just left the house not fi. . . . . . .oh. Hmff."

Don't lie, fellas! You've been there before!

Kids say the darndest things: Bedtime Edition

I'm about as smart-assed as they come. I mean, I have to hold my breath and struggle to remain serious about everything, and not crack stupid redundant jokes in every single conversation.

--Wife: "I'm gonna jump in the shower."
--Me: "You shouldn't jump in the shower; it's dangerous."
--Wife: "That wasn't even funny five years ago. Does that ever get old?"

Not really.

So it's bedtime for my kids, and I suggest to my firstborn son (almost 3 years old) that he set up his bag of Cracker Barrel pirate figures in his bedroom and make the black pirates fight the red ones.

--Son: "But I caaaan't. It's dark in there and I'm scared of monsters."
--Me: "Your scared of what? Lobsters?"
--Son: "No. Monsters."
--Me: "Mobsters?!?" You're scared of Mobsters?"
--Son: "No. Monsters. And I'm scared of gween bwobs."
--Me: "I'm totally putting that on the internet!"

A couple of months ago he ran up to me enthusiastically and told me he saw a "wizard," which I knew through my Divine, daddy translation skills meant "lizard," but I just couldn't resist:

--Me: "You saw a Wizard! Cooool! Did he have a long beard?"
--Son: "No daddy. I said wizard!"
--Me: "Was the Wizard's name Gandalf?"
--Son: "No, daddy!! I said Wizard!! Not Wizard!!"

Kids can be endless entertainment! And yes, I can be a dick.

It's just the beast under your bed

An Idaho family was driven from their home and into bankruptcy by "hundreds and hundreds" of snakes that slithered inside the walls as they slept and left them and their children terrified.

I giggled my ass off when I read this short article, and the whole time I wrote this post. Don't judge me for my gallows humor - I feel bad for them, I really do, but there's something about a story of a family moving into a house that is literally writhing with snakes that makes me laugh insanely like an old man in an asylum that just found a piece of saltwater taffy in his pajama pocket. It's beyond awful, and terribly funny.

It reminded me of when I lived in a room by myself in the barracks on Camp Lejeune many years ago. I got some new neighbors one day, and I suspect that they did a thorough spring cleaning of that room because a few days later I woke up in the middle of the night with cockroaches crawling all over me. They were everywhere; all over the ceiling, the walls, the furniture, and they were even in my computer tower and refrigerator. Each barracks building is like its own little city, so there is no way to effectively get rid of them; they live in whatever room they feel that they get the best rent, so to speak, and will move from one room to another.

I lived in absolute horror for several days. The roaches were eating my mattress, the foam on my computer speakers, and anything else they wanted to feed on. They crawled on my face at night, and didn't even bother to scatter when I came home from work. I estimated their strength to be about a brigade sized element, maybe larger. It didn't matter that I kept the room clean and threw out all the food, they just kept coming. Their ingress point was the bathroom - the head, in Marine/Navy jargon - and one morning while brushing my teeth, watching the little fuckers pour out of the faucet like they were entering a DC nightclub, I grabbed a nearby can of WD-40 and tried to hose one down the drain. I swear I heard that roach scream out loud in torturous pain, his little antennae swishing back and forth, and at that moment it was like I was holding Excalibur. I laid the roaches to waste. At night I would make a slick barrier of sweet, sweet, water displacing formula forty around the doorway to the bathroom so they couldn't get in, and every morning for about four days there would be thirty or more dead roaches where the tile met the carpet -- the WD-40 had killed them on contact. I sprayed a box around my bed, and coated each of the bed's legs, too. Every roach hotel in the room was treated with WD-40 until one morning, there were no dead roaches at my bathroom door. They were gone; packed up their shit and left town.

I feel sorry for whomever or wherever they settled after that. I am certain some filthy Marines several doors down regretted leaving half empty pizza boxes on the floor, sweaty sox on the coffee table, and old Mad Dog 20-20 bottles on the counter. Sleep tiiiiiiiiiight, don't let the bedbugs bite!

Muhhuhahah!! MUHUUHAAAHAHAAAA!!!!!

Hoarders

A discussion with pics at ARFCOM.

When I was a teenager, my dad and I went to go look at a job at a gorgeous house. . . . .on the outside. The inside of that house was so vile that I wanted desperately to take a shower after we left. The pics on the ARFCOM thread were not on par with what I saw, which was stuff and things piled all the way to the ceiling in every room, with a narrow walkway to shuffle through sideways to get around. There was cat shit and vomit all over too, just like in the thread, so that must be part of being a hoarder.

We never did take that job.

Dogs bark; snakes bite. . . .

. . .and Willie Nelson smokes pot. Come on Officer DooRight, what did you expect?

A Border Patrol officer smelled pot inside Nelson's tour bus when it was pulled over at a checkpoint on Interstate 10.

You know, I bet if I took a sniff inside my coffee pot, I would probably smell coffee! Weird how that works.

At least the prosecutor has determined that Willie was not endangering the public at the time of the incident, which is odd considering that just about all raging pot-heads are hyper violent sociopaths waiting on their moment to strike, and has basically given him a $800 pass. Just paying his taxes, I guess.

Random local violence roundup

Well now, it seems the local savages have been pounding their war drums this week and getting themselves in heaps of trouble.

First up we have the hard-core natives hailing from Culpeper county, Virginia fighting over the important things in life:

"Man charged after report of shots fired at controversial Culpeper river swimming hole"

I mean, we have droughts around here in the summer and all, but this sure ain't the Sahara or anything. Gunfighting over the local watering hole? Whuuuuuuuut??!?!?

Next we have a masked crusader who tried to Robin Hood the milk from the Stafford county Wal-Mart and deliver it to the emaciated community. Why, he should be given a medal and six high-fives! It takes a huge heart to steal milk from the rich and give it to the poor.

Meanwhile, in Spotsylvania county, desperate gunman robbed a pizzeria known to be a huge depository of county funds and Mountain Dew, but mostly Mountain Dew. The county has tried to keep it a secret that the store keeps $40 in cash there at all times, but the criminals these days have access to real-time intel on where the goods are being held.

Also, Stafford teens are getting into their groove by going all stabby on one another during Spring Break. If the adults are doing it, than why not? Right? Criminals gots to learn the ropes somehow.

Again in Spotsylvania, a young man was accosted by someone or something; we have no idea what or how, except that he was found in a ditch unconscious. Looks like we have ourselves a mystery, gang.

And no doubt all this violent rage is being fueled by massive quantities of prescription drugs from King George county. Generally, the local people in the surrounding counties are very docile and polite, but quickly turn to armed robbery, assault, gun violence, fornication, and ritual animal sacrifice when exposed to the dredges of their medicine cabinet which was stolen from them and then sold back at an inflated price plus interest.

Central Virginia used to be a place where random violence like this was unheard of. With the influx of tens of thousands of morons from Elsewhere, America, the crime rate is increasing rapidly. Or it could be the lax gun laws. You chose.

Circus side show

BERLIN (Reuters) – A shootout between two German circus families competing over tent space has left six people injured, police said on Tuesday.

If we can't agree on registration and background checks for circus folk, than what can we agree on?

Germany obviously needs to strengthen its gun, knife, baton, and circus freak laws to prevent madness like this in the future.

More non-gun stuff

It's this thread again at ARFCOM - U Laugh U Lose. Page 58 now. I lost it on this video.

Bizarre, I know, but don't be drinking coffee or anything if you laugh at random stuff like this. You've been warned.

MY HAND IS A DOLPHIN!!!

Because we've done enough to find the cure for cancer

Well duh! What did you think was gonna happen in a town called Manassas? Did you really think the sinless townsfolk would let an adult themed store get away with attracting people with money to burn by holding a contest where people get to see voluptuously subdued bewbies? Banish the thought!

Look, we've apparently got the cancer thing kicked, so we don't neeeeeeeed the dollars that such an event would bring anymore. We've got tons of money coming in. Besides, who would want to see such a sight? Young women prancing around in T-shirts and pasties won't attract legions of money spending people by dousing themselves with water on stage! Are you crazy?!?

Someone needs to tell those store owners to put down the dildos and try their hand at a proven money making event. . . . like a bake sale or lemonade stand or something.

Stranger things can happen

So you buy a gun, shoot it, train with it, carry it, and keep it safely loaded in your home just in case some tweaker scumbag fresh out of prison and on parole tries to force his way into your home. Or perhaps things don't go quite according to the defense scenarios that you have been playing in your head since you bought the piece, and you have to use it to subdue a drunken Middle Eastern doctor who is shooting at a stripper and her bodyguard in a townhome parking lot with a shotgun because she wouldn't have sex with him. Man, have people lost their minds? The bizarre stuff that happens these days just defies description.

Hoppe's #9: Dog Attractant

In a routine police investigation of the truck, a bomb-sniffing dog alerted while next to the truck, Collins reported, so Independence Avenue was closed from Fourth Street to Seventh Street while the FBI investigated. Part of the Johnson Building was evacuated.

Ok, so a U-Haul truck is parked next to the Department of Education, and the cops do an investigation? Alright, Force Protection being what it is, the truck may have been parked there for some time, and someone thought it should be checked out. I can see that. But what exactly did the dog "alert" to? Some drycleaned clothes? Did it smell gun oil, solvents, powder residue on the "small handgun?" Can police dogs pick up the smell of Hoppe's #9 from the outside of a car? Interesting, none the less.

***ETA: Defensive Carry forums has a thread on this very thing, and the best I can gather out of it is "maybe." Some commenters who handle dogs say yes, and some say no. The glaring question if the dogs can sniff out guns is why don't they alert to every cop with a gun? It's not like the dog hangs out with every cop it may encounter, and is trained to not flip out on the flaky Fed, or the new Deputy. I think it's voodoo.

Alcohol fueled weekends can be expensive

I guess these three guys had determined that the fun that they were having wasn't quite as good as it gets, and injected a little bit of hillbilly power into their camping trip:

After the truck got stuck, Sillitoe said, one of the men took a bucket loader--without permission--from a nearby land development site about a mile away. He said the owner is a distant relative of one of the men and declined to press charges. On its journey down to the river, the 40,000-pound Caterpillar 963 loader took out about a dozen trees, carving some deep ruts along the way. Its tanklike tracks were imprinted along a narrow path winding through the woods.

It gets way worse from there, but at least they got their truck back! Backwoods people sure do have a way of making things right! Be sure to check out the slideshow from the incident to get an idea of what happens when you mix lots of booze with too few brain cells.

So a guy walks into a doctors office. . . . .

. . . . with three small sick children, snot running down their red little noses, and when the nurse opens the door and calls out his name, down came a Glock 26 wrapped in a Comp-Tac Infidel holster made of kydex, bouncing off of his thigh and clattering onto the floor of the waiting room.

True story.

Thankfully the waiting room was completely empty, and neither the nurse at the door or the one at the desk was the wiser. The problem I see is that it's possible to bump the bottom of the holster and knock the belt clip over the belt, and with the Glock 26 being so short, it tumbles right out of the waist line. Handling a three, two, and almost one year old with all the gear that's needed to sustain them, things like a pistol clipped inside the waistband are easy to get knocked around.

Well, I've always wanted to try a Summer Special!

*Edit: I can't remember who said it; I think it was Michael Bane but I'm not sure, who said that this is the same reason why he avoids using yaqui style holsters, as the muzzle of the gun can be bumped upwards and the pistol can come out. Same concept.

Bringing sexy back

When I was a kid, raising the question in school of what was the most awesome fighter plane ever would have brought about heated discussion between the powerful F-14 Tomcat, the nimble F-16 Falcon, or the fast F-15 Eagle, with perhaps the delusional foreign exchange student from Krasnoyarsk whimpering something about a 'Megg thayerty whon' before being told to shut his commie face. Mentioning the Supermarine Spitfire at the time would have probably invited a punch to the nuts, unless one of the beasty boys had ever layed eyes on one of these British beauties.

If you throw sexy into the criteria of awesomeness, the Spitfire would rise to the top of the stack. Damn, that plane is gorgeous.

Clicky the linky here to see an audio slideshow about some wonderful British folk who restore the Spitfire so that rich yahoos can either fly them, or pay someone else to. The price tag on a restored plane will set you back $2 - $3 Million big ones, which is a drop in the bucket next to the going rate of a F-18 Hornet these days.

If I were a wealthy entrepreneur, I would buy one of these in a heartbeat and learn to fly. I might even pick up eight Browning 1919 machine guns for like $30 bucks from my local gun show to bring the plane up to its full authenticity, which would serve to keep the icky guns out of the hands of the local Mexican drug cartels who buy them up with impunity.

Flying sexy fighters and saving the children is what it's all about!

Malice Aforethought Gun Violence

That's a mouthful, huh? You saw it here first!!!

Anyways, Utah is going to execute a murderer via firing squad in about a week, and there is an outcry from some about how mean it is:

"The firing squad is archaic, it's violent, and it simply expands on the violence that we already experience from guns as a society," Bishop John C. Wester, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, said during an April protest.

There's a lot wrong with that statement.

First, can it really be considered archaic if it's still in use? That it's violent is about the most stupid thing I've heard in a long time; exactly how do you expect someone to be put to death non-violently? Sprinkle poisoned fairy dust in their last meal? Death by pillow squad?

People are always bitching about how violent, barbaric, unfair, unethical, immoral, inhumane, or disgusting state sanctioned executions are, and they may be right, but every type of execution arguably meets all of that criteria, so what's the controversy? It's like protesting that water is wet. So a firing squad is too violent, and lethal injection may hurt too much, so what's the answer? Hanging? Guillotine? Ol' Sparky is probably the most violent way to go, yet people still ask for it from time to time. This scumbag asked for the firing squad over lethal injection, so what does that say?

Lastly, how does execution by firing squad expand on violence in society committed with guns? Does lethal injection expand on violent poisoning? Does the use of the electric chair cause scumbags to run out and electrocute somebody? Pretty silly.

Of interest to me is that one of the five rifles is alleged to be loaded with a blank round of ammunition, under the idea that none of the executioners will know for sure if the fatal round came from their rifle. This is really stupid in my opinion, mainly because if you can't tell the difference between a real shot fired and a blank round fired, then you have no business shooting at someone who is owed a clean death. If you have never fired a blank round of ammo, there is virtually no perceived recoil, and the report from the rifle is noticeably different, although it's likely that an executioner firing amongst others won't be able to hear his rifle anyways. Considering that these executioners should be experienced marksman, and are probably mandated to familiarize themselves with the rifles to be used by firing them on a range with live ammunition, they should definitely be able to tell from the recoil of the rifle if they are one of the unfortunate souls who fired a live round into the heart of a fellow human being. There's just no way.

On a lesser point, if executing condemned human beings is in your job description, and you volunteered for that job under your own power, why exactly does anyone think you're owed the opportunity to have a cloud of doubt cast on your duty? It just seems kinda pointless.

The thing that gets to me the most in all of this though is that there seems to be no question of his guilt. Nobody is arguing that he shouldn't be shot to death because he's not guilty; the argument is that it's wrong to shoot someone to death because it's too brutal, which brings us back to the whole death by pillow fight thing. Gardner shot his victim to death without consideration of the cruelty of his method, so really this sentence satisfies pretty much every criteria that I can think of in Exodus.

Again, I'm not advocating state executions. That I'm pretty torn on. Ultimately though, there is no real argument that putting someone to death one way is less nasty and cruel than another. We can have a round table discussion on what is the best way, and we can even invoke methods and ideas from the likes of Tom & Jerry or Roadrunner, but at the end of the day there is a heavy job to do. Here we have a man who has chosen his way, and he should have it.

Porno man gets stabby

Who uses a samurai sword as a prop for a porno movie? Strange.

Anyways, this is another example of a sword being a deadly weapon. I'm not inviting them to be banned, only pointing out that sharpened pieces of metal can still be used as effectively as they were a thousand years ago.

eNinja

Remember that ninja who slashes in the woods? Yeah. . well. . .he did it to save the trees.

Okeey Dokeey then.

I see that the machete that he used is the same crappy type available at Wal-Mart for the nominal sum of like $6. I would know because I have one. Unbelievably, Wal-Mart does not do a background check or even a simple retinal scan to determine if a customer is eligible to own one.

OOOh-ooooh that smell. . . .

Last week, I noticed a whiffy emanation in my truck that my senses told me was originating from the back seat somewhere. My first thought was that the higher temperature outside was agitating the fabric on one of the carseats, which at several points in time last year captured barfed material from the kids; those of you with rugrats know exactly what I'm talking about.

I removed the seat at once, but the smell did not go away.

Several days later, I detected the smell coming from the floor of the rear driver's side, and upon further investigation I discovered a rogue, unsecured sippy-cup leaking weapons grade, homogenized bovine lactates, the potency of which increased three-fold with every degree above 90F.

Sippy-cups pose a unique problem for parents: you issue full cups to your children several times a day, and when they go missing you have to track them down lest the contents spoil. The last thing in the world that you want to see is one of your kids sucking from a cup of partially hardened milk that they dug out from behind the couch.

In my house, when a sippy-cup of milk goes unaccounted for we go to DEFCON 12.

Quick, subsidize it!

I'm waiting for the USDA to move in with a quick subsidy on this one any day now. Any. Day.