I lurve me some Dr. Seuss. Larry Correia found this and posted it on FaceBook, and I very quickly stole it for your reading pleasure.
Today’s Chuckle – AR vs. AK
Posted by daddybear71 on December 30, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/30/todays-chuckle-ar-vs-ak/
Range Report
Who has two thumbs and the best wife on earth? This guy!
This fact was demonstrated today by my ability to sign into my range as a member, which my darling wife bought as my Christmas present. This was after being urged to go shooting this morning, and being told that since my range is primarily for pistols, then I should get more pistols. Also got told that she got me the membership for a reason, and she expects me to use it. This from a woman that in 2003 wasn’t entirely convinced it was a good thing when I got back into shooting, and is still lukewarm to the idea of her going shooting with any regularity. Yeah, she’s a keeper.
Started out with the Remington R1 again. It’s still shooting to the left a bit. I changed my point of aim a tad and got the rounds into the center of the target. I need to get a set of calipers and do a comparison between the clearances on this gun and my Rock Island 1911. I field-stripped the R1 last night, and it is tight. I could take the RIA down with my bare hands, but I had to use the included plastic wrench to rotate the bushing and push in the slide lock pin on the R1.
The CZ-82 came next. I pushed the target out to 30 feet, and while my group opened up a bit from where it was at 21, I was still on the 10 inch splatter target I was using. I seriously need to stock up on ammunition for this on. I have one box of brass cased target ammunition left, and one box of defense rounds. I do have a case of TulAmmo for it in the basement, but this range doesn’t allow steel cased ammunition. I’ll use that stuff for outdoor shooting and start stocking up on 9mm Makarov when I have the extra pennies.
I also shot the S&W Model 13, but with .38’s. I’m working more on my trigger pull than anything else with this one. I was able to do a much better job of staying on target with double action shooting this time. This is another one where I need to start loading up on ammunition. I’m not as low on .38 or .357 as I am on 9mm Mak, but I’ve got less than I’m comfortable with.
Last came the S&W 22A1. I need to get more magazines for this one. I go through the two I have pretty fast, and it would be nice to load up four or five before going to the range. I had some trouble with this one today. I was shooting Winchester High Velocity from a box of 500 bullets, and had several stovepipes and a couple of duds. I shot Remington ammunition last time out with no problem, so I may switch back to that or try the Federal bulk stuff and leave the Winchester for the other .22’s.
I also noticed that the range is going to start having their Wednesday shooting leagues starting up in January. I think I’ll sign up for that and see what happens. It’s not IDPA or ISPSA, but it’s an excuse to get out and shoot more often.
I brought up the idea of reloading in order to save a bit of money (I know, I know) in ammunition, but Irish Woman is still not OK with the idea, so I’ll let that go for now. She’s come a long way when it comes to guns, so I’m not going to push too hard.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 30, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/30/range-report/
30 Days of Heinlein – Day 27
There is no safety this side of the grave. – Stranger in a Strange Land
My Take:
Stay aware of your surroundings and what’s going on around you. Carry and be able to effectively use your guns. Never assume that “it doesn’t happen here”.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 30, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/30/30-days-of-heinlein-day-27/
News Roundup
- From the “Good News” Department – A federal court in Washington DC has awarded Dick Heller more than $1.1 million to pay for his legal fees in his famous case against the District for violating his rights to keep and bear arms. Looks like the Second Amendment Foundation will be getting some of the money it spent on the case back so it can continue its good work.
- From the “Bad News” Department – The Government Accounting Office reports that the total amount owed by the American people in the form of Social Security and Medicare, if we were to set aside money now to pay for future use, is $33.8 TRILLION dollars. The Washington Post puts that in a great perspective by pointing out how that compares to the value of the New York Stock Exchange and the total of all homes owned by Americans. Folks, this isn’t a blogger or a guy on a late night AM radio show pointing this stuff out. It’s a mainstream media outlet. The numbers are getting so bad that even those who might want to ignore them are finding it hard to do so. Remember my investment advice – .22 Long Rifle, canned goods, and shotguns.
- From the “Scary News” Department – A young Louisville girl is healing after being attacked by two dogs in the street. She says she was riding her bike when she was knocked to the ground and bitten. She is reported to have multiple bites on her arms and legs. Her mother pulled her to safety in the bed of a truck while her uncle chased the dogs off. The owner of the dogs is expected to appear in court, so these weren’t strays. These were someone’s pets that were running loose. Folks, it’s not always the human predators you have to worry about. Carry your darn guns.
- From the “Mother of the Year” Department – A woman in Louisiana has been arrested and her foster children taken by child services after she left them at a playground and went to a nearby casino to gamble. Mama needs more than a new pair of shoes. She needs a good attorney and a maternal instinct.
- From the “Officer of the Year” Department – A policeman in Cincinnati has been fired after asking a prostitute for child pornography. He claims he was trying to investigate a child pornography ring, and his co-workers say he told them that was what he was doing. The police department claims he was not authorized to be running such an investigation, and he never took his suspicions or plans to his superiors. He is over course trying to get his job back, with the support of his union. Here’s the kicker: He was employed by the police department for four years, and had been disciplined 17 times. That’s a little more than once a quarter, for those of you doing the math in your head. If I got written up 4+ times a year, I’d have been fired long ago. Now that’s some good unioning going on right there.
- From the “Qel Surpris” Department – Manufacturers of artificial marijuana seem to be keeping one step ahead of the law. They have changed the formula for the chemicals in their ‘herbal incense’ enough that it is no longer illegal under the drug control laws earlier forms of the product were violating. Gee, who would have thought that a chemist would have looked at the law forbidding a specific chemical, changed the formula for his intoxicant just enough that it was no longer that chemical but still had the desired effect, and then started using the new concoction. I wish state officials luck in this particular game of whack-a-mole. A law broad enough to make every possible intoxicant like this illegal would be so broad it would never stand up in court. But it’s all worth it because we have to keep people from getting high, no matter the cost.
- From the “So Much Fail” Department – A man in Florida is recovering after shooting himself with a .410 shotgun shell out of the pistol he kept under his pillow. He had heard his dog barking in the night, and grabbed his gun to take with him when he investigated. Wow, lots of stuff going on here. First, he kept his gun under his pillow. One of the reasons I keep a pistol safe in the nightstand is so that I have a few moments to wake up before I touch a gun. Second, either he put his booger hook on the bang switch while it was still pointed at his head, or he kept the gun in such a way that bedding or the pillow caught the trigger, causing it to go off. Not going to comment on his choice of gun. Maybe it’s the gun he can afford, and any gun is better than no gun. Also not going to comment on using .410 shot as a defense load. No-one wants to leak. I’m just glad it hit him in the arm and not in the neck, or this would have brought on yet more of the anti-gunner blood dancing, and I don’t need that right now.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 29, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/29/news-roundup-45/
30 Days of Heinlein – Day 26
Live each golden moment as if it were eternity — without fear, without hope, but with a sybaritic gusto. – Stranger in a Strange Land
Posted by daddybear71 on December 29, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/29/30-days-of-heinlein-day-26/
Darn the luck, ye scurvy dogs!
We watched the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie tonight, and it’s a pretty good flick. Review is pending.
One drawback – everything I read now has the voice of Captain Barbossa in my head.
It was amusing until I read something by the beautiful and not a scruffy pirate at all Nancy R. Just doesn’t sound right.
 |
| Not Nancy R. |
I’m off to figure out why the rum is gone, and if it’s not, to make it so.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 29, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/29/darn-the-luck-ye-scurvy-dogs/
News Roundup
- From the “So Last Month” Department – The Occupy Louisville group is asking a judge to stop the city from forcing them to dismantle their camp on free speech grounds. Who knew there was an Occupy Louisville movement anymore? I’ll be watching this closely. Judges around here are elected, and if a judge feels that it’s OK for this group to squat in the public square (in more ways than one), then I guess I know who I won’t be voting for.
- From the “This Ain’t Christmas” Department – Priests from the Catholic and Orthodox branches of Christianity had a bit of a brawl the other day in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of fighting going on during the yearly cleaning up of the church. Maybe they’re trying to start a new tradition. What would Christmas be without Midnight Mass, mince pies, and of course, the annual Christmastime beatdown? Heck, my family has had fist fights at Christmas on multiple occasions throughout the years. Why not make it official?
- From the “Fail” Department – A teenager in Wyoming is in trouble after a .38 Special derringer in her purse went off at a Starbucks. Luckily, no-one was hurt. Let’s see, we’ve got a minor in possession of a handgun, without a carry permit, and probably without being in a holster. Wow, she hit the trifecta. Personally, I hope the judge orders her daddy a good beating for not making sure she didn’t have a gun when she shouldn’t have.
- From the “Bad Trend” Department – 2011 has been a deadly year for law enforcement in the United States. 173 law enforcement personnel died in the line of duty this year, with 68 dying from gunshots and 64 dying from traffic accidents. We give police a lot of heat, usually when they deserve it, but we should never forget that for every cop who’s out on a power trip or is a criminal, there are plenty who are just good, honest people trying to do a job that most everyone else doesn’t want to do. Here’s hoping next year is better.
- From the “3 R’s” Department – An Arizona judge has decided that a “Mexican-American” studies program in Tucson schools is illegal, which could cost the school district millions if they don’t change or eliminate the program. Tucson has a large Hispanic community. I’ve never understood these ethnic study programs. I lived in a predominantly Scandinavian area growing up, and we didn’t need Norsk-American studies programs to get us to get to class and perform. I don’t think there are Hybernian-American studies programs in Boston, or Italian-American studies programs in New York. Maybe if a little more time and energy was spent to get kids to just show up to class and put forth some effort, their ethnic background wouldn’t matter.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 29, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/29/news-roundup-46/
Movie Review – The Muppets
Dear Jim Henson,
As a lifelong fan of the Muppets, Sesame Street, and just about every other project you were involved in, I would like to extend a heartfelt apology to you and your legacy for spending $19.50 to buy Boo, Girlie Bear, and myself matinee tickets to see the gilded turd that has been foisted upon the world by whoever owns your trademark these days.
I plan to begin a personal quest to discover what remains of your carcass and return it to its final resting place. I fear that there will not be much left, seeing as how it has been picked over to make this waste of digital celluloid, but I will do my best.
Sincerely,
Daddy J. Bear
Today was clear, bright, and cold. If there was snow on the ground, I would have taken the children sledding. Since I live in Kentucky, that magical region where it’s too warm to get snow on a regular basis and too cold to walk around in jeans and a tee shirt, I found another activity for our little band: we went to the movies.
Our choices that seemed at all appropriate for a 3 year old, a 13 year old, and a 40 year old boiled down to the new Chipmunks movie and “The Muppets“. Since I’d rather gouge out my eyes and immolate myself in the runoff pond from a goat ranch than watch another Chipmunks movie, I decided to go see the Muppets.
I love the Muppets. I grew up watching the Muppet Show and Sesame Street. I have seen every Muppet movie that I can in the theaters and I own most of them on DVD. My kids have also enjoyed Jim Henson’s work from as early as I could get them to watch it. So this seemed like a natural choice.
You know, maybe Alvin and the Chipmunks wouldn’t have been that bad.
The plot of this ‘movie’ centers around two brothers, one a Muppet and one a human. The human brother is in love with the school shop teacher, played by a cute redhead with a tolerable singing voice. The human guy, well, he could hit some notes but hold few. Yes, this is a musical, in the tradition of most of the other Muppet movies. Difference is that in the other Muppet movies, the main characters were mostly Muppets, and they did the majority of the singing. Here, it seemed to be a Muppet musical about humans singing.
Also, in other Muppet movies, the creators were trying to tell a story. In the original Muppet Movie, it was about how the Muppets came together as a group. Same goes with the rest of the movies, all the way down to Muppets in Space. Yeah, that one was cheesy, but it was funny, and it was Muppets telling a story, not Muppets for the sake of Muppets.
Basically, this is a “let’s get the band back together by a deadline” movie. For those of you who’ve seen the Blues Brothers, it’s kind of like that, but without the car chases, good music, Illinois Nazis, or jokes.
The movie spends most of its first two acts poking fun at Muppets cliches. Some gags worked, some didn’t. The third act moves pretty well, but if you’ve seen the other movies and watched the Muppet Show a bit, you’ve seen most of it already.
The villain, because there has to be a villain, is a rich oil executive. Yeah, rich white guys who want to exploit Gaia get to be the bad guys. I could have accepted that as them doing another cliche, but the gangster rap number the villain did just didn’t click with me.
About halfway through the movie, I quit trying to kickstart my interest in the movie and started observing the crowd in the theater. Like I said, it’s slim pickings for movies that are appropriate for young kids, so the small theater we were in was busy. What I heard was kids talking and playing with toys, with adults occasionally bursting into laughter. Once the popcorn, soda, and Skittles were gone, Boo gave the movie about 20 minutes before he started to get really bored. Girlie Bear didn’t even make it that long. By the time I looked up, she was reading a book by the light of her cell phone. (We were in the back row of the theater, so I didn’t mind so long as she was polite about it).
I think this one is going to go into the “Movies I will not admit exist” file, along with Highlander 2 and Starship Troopers. If you want to see this movie, give it a year or so, at which point it will be played repeatedly on Disney Channel or one of the other cable channels that wants to appeal to young families.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 28, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/28/movie-review-the-muppets/
Going to have to watch this one
The Indianapolis Star is reporting that a Kroger store manager reacted to someone putting something up to the back of one of his employees and demanding that she go to the back office by shooting the thug in the face. Said thug has reportedly shuffled off this mortal coil.
Not surprisingly, Kroger seems to have a “No guns in the workplace” policy, as do most businesses. Being in Indiana, employees are allowed to keep firearms in their locked cars while at work, but companies are allowed to prohibit them in the workplace. I don’t have a problem with that, by the way. Company premises are usually private property, and what a property owner wants to allow or not is up to them.
Authorities are still investigating, as is Kroger. I imagine that the family of this misunderstood young man, who was turning his life around and only went out of the house to get his mother’s medicine and to take orphans to vespers, will be hiring themselves a lawyer within the next 36 hours. I fully expect both the shooter and Kroger to be sued six ways from Sunday on this, no matter what the police find.
Of course the newspaper has to throw in a couple of digs, but that’s to be expected:
Records suggest Elliott at one time had a carry permit for a gun, but it’s uncertain whether that’s still the case because lawmakers recently changed the law to make such information confidential.
As I understand it, the law was changed to make them confidential because some newspapers wanted to do a Google Map mashup of CCW carriers’ addresses.
On the other hand, not all shoppers would feel entirely comfortable if they thought the produce guy might be a wanna-be Wyatt Earp.
Right, because all CCW holders have fantasies of being an Old West lawman who goes on a personal vendetta against a gang of men who shot up his family. Yep, that’s me. Hey, I’ve even been to Tombstone!
Like the title says, I’ll be watching this one. My family shops at our local Kroger a lot. But if this manager is fired, I’m switching to somewhere else. I left Walgreens after they fired a pharmacist for defending his life, and I’ll leave Kroger too. Not calling for a boycott. I’ll leave it up to everyone else, but I sure won’t be giving them any more of my money.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 28, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/28/going-to-have-to-watch-this-one/
What I really listen to
Yesterday I listed the top 25 songs played on my iPhone. Just from that list, you’d think I was pretty white bread in my tastes, and to a point I am. But that list skews towards family friendly stuff because I usually listen to music in the car when I have the family with me. If I’m alone in the car or listening to headphones, I usually listen to podcasts. Curiously, listening to the sound of people talking in a podcast helps me to drown out the sound of people talking in the office.
So here’s what I normally listen to when I’m listening for myself:
- Bryan Suits on KGO – A podcast made from the daily show on a San Diego radio station. Center-Right politics, but the snark is strong with this one. Lots of reminders of why I’m glad I never moved back to California.
- Coffee and Markets – Libertarian/Republican economics and politics
- Common Sense with Dan Carlin – Libertarian politics and current events.
- Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History – Essays about historical topics given from the standpoint of a dedicated amateur
- Dark Secret Place – Weekly show by Bryan Suits about the military, politics, and military technology
- Down Range Radio – Michael Bane’s weekly talk about guns and shooting, from the secret bunker high atop the Rocky Mountains. Bonus points if you’re familiar with the music he plays at the beginning and end of the podcast.
- Empty Mags – JP does a bang-up job discussing shooting topics for the everyman.
- The History of Rome – Good semi-weekly show that’s been going for years. Great chronology of the Roman civilization, starting with the founding of the city. The series seems to be winding down, as the host is just about to the point where the western empire dries up and blows away, but all of the old episodes are available for download and it took me weeks to listen to all of them when I decided to restart.
- Vicious Circle – A guilty pleasure. Good talk between good friends, but definitely not something I’d listen to with the kids around. Sometimes very insightful, always entertaining. Warning – DaddyBear is not responsible for loss of sanity points due to listening to Vicious Circle. Especially if Weerd and Stingray are having a “Who can find the grossest stuff on the Internet?” contest or if the participants are indulging in porno theater of the mind. You have been warned.
Posted by daddybear71 on December 28, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/12/28/what-i-really-listen-to/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 