Don Surber hits one out of the park, out of the parking lot, and out of the county.

Sometimes you read things that sound so right you just can’t imagine why you didn’t think to write them yourself.

The deer bow-hunting season here in Kentucky ends tomorrow.  It runs pretty much non-stop from late September until mid-January.  During the season, when I was able to get out to the woods, I saw precisely three deer, only one of which I could have gotten a legal shot at.  Of course, that doe ran off before I could bring my gun to bear.

Occasionally, I would see small groups of deer here and there as I drove around. Luckily none of them tried to play chicken with my car again.

This morning, the day before bow season closes, and knowing full well that I will not be able to get out to the woods before hunting light ends this afternoon, I saw two groups of no less than 20 does apiece in fields near my home.  While driving the interstate to the office, I saw between 5 and 10 other deer in pairs or singly, including one buck that had a big enough rack to make a grown man stare.

My question is this:  Who gave the deer a bloody calendar so they’d know when it’s safe to come out?

For my 10th birthday, I got a Flexible Flyer sled.

For my 20th birthday, I got Operation Desert Shield and 100 extra pushups.  (Thanks Uncle George!)

For my 30th birthday, one of my buddies in the 101st Airborne arranged for me to fly as cargo in the co-pilot’s seat of an Apache gunship.

I wonder what’s going to happen today?

Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York and noted Toole, has decided to try and get the Army to act as a stooge for the ATF.

“After Jared Loughner was interviewed by the military, he was rejected from the Army because of excessive drug use. Now, by law, by law that’s on the books, he should not have been allowed to buy a gun,” Schumer told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“But the law doesn’t require the military to notify the FBI about that, and in this case they didn’t. So I –this morning — I’m writing the administration and urging that that be done, that the military notify the FBI when someone is rejected from the military for excessive drug use and that be added to the FBI database,” Schumer said.

So basically, Chuckie wants military recruiters to inform on prospective recruits if they admit to drug use so that they can be deprived of their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.  This is to be used to feed the list of people who can’t have a gun.  In this instance they would be put on it without a trial, adjudication, or whatever.  If a recruiter made the subjective decision to reject someone due to an unacceptable amount of drug use in the past, they would lose a constitutionally protected right.


You see, when someone who wants to join our military talks to a recruiter and they get to the point they’re filling out paperwork, a series of questions is asked. When I went in, among a lot of others, were such things as:


Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual?
Do you now or have you ever used an illegal drug?


The Army uses these questions to weed out recruits who, in the eyes of military leadership, shouldn’t be in uniform.  The Communist question went away a few years after the Berlin Wall went away.  I imagine that if the homosexual question is still asked its days are numbered.


If Congress and the ATF pressure DOD to inform on their own recruits, then I say they stop asking the drug question.  Anyone who has been using in the months prior to recruitment will be caught out when they take a drug test anyway.  


Chuckles, I’m going to explain this to you, and I’ll try to use small words, but I’ll provide links to any advanced concepts:


Two words:  Posse Comitatis.  The United States Military is not now, nor has it been for a century and a half, a police force charged with enforcing the laws of the land on the civilian population.  If Congress and the courts want to exclude drug users from buying a gun from a licensed gun dealer, so be it. But soldiers are not policemen.  The job of a military recruiter is to find young people who have the potential to make good service members and convince them to join up.  They are not there to watch out for people who use drugs and inform a law enforcement agency.  If they start doing this, I expect that even kids who are squeaky clean will stop walking down to the recruiter office.


Senator Schumer, I suggest that before you start using the blood of American citizens to further your agenda, you figure out if what you want to do is legal, and whether it actually makes sense.  Is it worth making every recruiter who comes to a high school into a narcotics officer in order to keep people from buying a gun?

To the nice, deeply Christian family that sat next to us at the McDonald’s playland today, I am so deeply sorry for scaring the wits out of you during your post-church McNuggets.

You see, my son, the young, brash, and loving BooBoo, had crawled behind the video game system that McDonalds had put in the play area and was fiddling with the electrical outlet.  He has been repeatedly warned to not mess with these things, but for some reason is still fascinated with the domesticated lightning receptacles.

I do not like to use my command voice to address him, but since he was outside of my immediate reach and doing something dangerous, I was forced to.  As a semi-experienced father, I felt it was necessary to project my displeasure with his behavior in a way that not only stopped him from either electrocuting himself or destroying the video game, but also did so instantaneously. Please note that as I was vocalizing, I was rising from my seat and was headed over to physically interact with him.

I appreciate that you accepted my immediate apology once I returned to our table, but I want to point out that I did not actually shout.  What I did was to contract the bottom of my diaphragm in order to provide a short, focused burst of air through my windpipe, manipulate the muscles in my throat to bring my voice down about an octave and a half, and engaged the language center of my brain to select the proper monosyllabic commands that a two-year-old would understand to mean “Stop trying to kill yourself and destroy property”.  The result of all of these preparations was a short, sharp, well-aimed command that my son responded to very quickly.  A shout is a general exclamation, usually emotional, that I have found to be ineffective.

Again, please accept my apologies.  If either of you should ever want to learn how to project your voice without it being a whining keen, please feel free to contact me.  I give the first few lessons in command voice and “The Look” for free.

If you’re looking for something to fill up your reading list this weekend, might I suggest “Tanya:  Princess of the Elves” by Larry Correia?  It’s a tale of growing up, pushing boundaries, and shooting things.

Here’s a sample:

There was a knock on the back door of the van. There were many humans present not worthy to witness urkperfection, so Edward reached for his mask and goggles. He didn’t get to them in time before the door was flung open.

It was a girl. She saw his face and screamed. He saw her pointy ears and bellowed in surprise.

The elf regained her composure first. “Orc! Your Hunter masters need you. I summon you to battle!” Confused, Edward lifted his ax and pointed at himself, then at her. “No!” the elf shrieked. “Not me! The monster. Go battle the monster!”

His first inclination was to just lop off her peroxide-colored head. The clan ancestors had always taught that the only good elf was a dead elf (and also, coincidently, that dead elves made great holiday decorations), but Edward hesitated, because he did not want to upset the Harb Anger. Edward had never actually seen an elf before. He didn’t know if any of his clan had. This one was kind of scrawny. Not very impressive at all, really.

“Come on, what are you waiting for?” She moved her hands about like she was trying to shoo him out of the van. “You guys are supposed to go berserk with blood lust. You call that berserk? You’re just sitting there. Are you going to go into a killing frenzy or not?”

That was the idea before you showed up. He put on his mask and reluctantly got out of the van.

Enjoy!

Mega H/T to Robert over at BlackFork for this one!  Enjoy!

LabRat has a wonderful post about how the parts of the chicken that most people don’t want to eat, the skin, bones, and thigh meat, make the best food.

I couldn’t agree more.  The best food in our collective menu here in the U.S., such as chili, barbecue, chicken soup, are best made with the lowest cuts of meat.  What all of these have in common is that they started out as the food that poorer members of society made, and they are all cooked slowly.

A lot of people I know are hooked on food that is either processed until it’s no longer directly related to its base ingredients, restaurant carryout or fast food, or things that can be whipped up in a few minutes.  Of the three, the last tastes the best, but foods that cook quickly tend to dry out unless loaded down with added fats or heavy sauces.

That’s one of the reasons I love my crockpot.  I can take inexpensive meat, spices, and liquid and make a delicious, nutritious, moist meal while I’m at work.  The best food is cooked slow.

• Take picked over chicken, turkey, duck, or whatever-poultry-hits-the-pot bones and spiced water, simmer for 8 hours in a crock pot, add some vegetables and you’ve got the best soup you’ve ever had.
• Take some hamburger made from the least edible parts of the cow the government will allow on the market, add some spices, chilis, tomatoes, and beans (yes, I know, this is a religious statement), leave in the crockpot for a day, and you’ve got chili
• Take the above, leave out the beans and change some of your spice combination, and you’ve got the best spaghetti sauce you’ve ever had.
• Take the cheap parts of a cow or a pig, soak in a brine for a day or so, rub with a collection of your favorite spices, then smoke them for-freaking-ever with hardwood and your favorite honey, mustard, or tomato based sauce and you’ve got the food of the gods.
• Put an inexpensive beef or pork roast in a crockpot with carrots, onions, garlic, and potatoes, add some liquid, and your dinner is waiting for when you get home.

All of this food is the same kind of cuisine your grandmothers made way back when.  Labor saving devices like ready made food, microwaves, and steamer bags are a heck of a lot more work than chopping up your favorite ingredients, throwing them in a pot with a bay leaf and some salt, and letting them simmer all day long while you do something else.

Many thanks to LabRat, Stingray, and everyone else who posts recipes for making good food on their sites!

If you normally drink at most two beers a week, drinking three glasses of good wine with dinner and two glasses of limoncello with dessert is probably not a smart idea.  Damn, I’m a lightweight.  Where’s the Tylenol?

It was the proudest moment of my life, second only to the birth of one of my twins – Adam Corolla, In Fifty Years, We’ll All Be Chicks

I’m about halfway through this book of giggles and snorts, and I’ll be doing a full review when I’m done.

One warning – If you’re not offended by at least one thing in this book, read it again.  You missed something.