Saturday Western

A great bar scene from the movie Rio Bravo starring Dean Martin and John Wayne.

I never tire of this one...and Angie Dickinson was smoking hot in her first major movie role.

Lagniappe update

My friend doesn't walk very good these days. The Degenerative Myleopathy is progressing fast. His hind legs aren't responding well any more and he sways and staggers like he's drunk.

Actually that's not true. I've seen him drunk and this is worse. He stumbles and falls constantly and every trip down the stairs is a nail-biter as I watch to see if he's going to go head-over-heels down the steps. His rear paws drag so severely that even a short walk on concrete will bloody the tops of them, so he's restricted to the house and the deck and his run in the yard now. No more walks around the neighborhood like we've enjoyed almost every day for so long. On his birthday last week I took him to Harpers Ferry for an ice cream cone at the Swiss Miss shop, and it was all he could do to make the short walk from the parking area to the store. And when we got there he wasn't able to stand up on his hind legs and look in the window like he's always done. He tried hard because he wanted his ice cream so bad but he just kept falling over because his once-powerful hind legs won't support him any more. Afterwards, we sat and I saw the people way up on the scenic overlook on Maryland Heights. Lagniappe and I have hiked up there dozens of times just to enjoy the view. It was a powerful milestone in my own rehab just a few years ago and Lagniappe helped motivate me to make that climb by making it look so easy. That overlook might as well be on the moon now, because we'll never make it up there together again.

But he's not down. Sure, he gets a bit moody sometimes, like when he tries to jump up on something and misses, or when he has an accident in the house, something that happens fairly often now that his nervous system is shutting down. But most other times he's still cheery and playful. He still walks up and gives me licks, and tonight he brought me his hedgehog and we played a bit of fetch with it. He still tries.

It's pathetic in a way; between the two of us we have three good legs. He helped me come back from my injury, but there's nothing I can do to help him. He's going to keep deteriorating and I know that I'm not going to have him much longer.

So we don't walk together any more. Now we sit on the deck together. I read books while he lays beside me and stares off into the yard, perhaps wondering why he can't run down there and chase cats and drive off the occasional stray dog any more. Sometimes I shell peanuts from a bag and give him half of them. He loves peanuts. And popcorn. He loves popcorn and we're going to share a bag tonight. He loves ice cream too, of course. Now he gets some almost every night. Why not? It is so wrong to indulge a friend and try to make him happy? And he is happy. His tail doesn't wag any more because those nerves are gone too now, but I can still see the light in his eyes when I talk to him and scratch his special sweet spot on his chest. He knows that I'm going to be here for him as much as I can for as long as we have, and he's not going to go through this alone. When I took this dog in eight years ago, I promised him that I'd always love him and care for him no matter what. I meant that then and I mean it now, and I believe that he knows it.

Our time together is growing short, but we're still a team. Friends forever.

Charles Dickens: Right back then and right today.

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”
CHARLES DICKENS, Oliver Twist.

Antwione Hough appeared taken aback yesterday when, instead of being sentenced to a short probation period, he got 11 1/2 to 23 months of house arrest followed by seven years' probation for orchestrating the capture and beating of the man who raped and impregnated his 14-year-old niece.

"I'm just overwhelmed," Hough told Common Pleas Judge Harold M. Kane. "I didn't expect that."

Kane said that the sentence would send a message, while allowing Hough, 39, to keep working to support his family.

"I know it's a long [probation] and you don't want to be bothered with it, but you can't take the law into your own hands," Kane warned. "If everybody does that, there would be chaos."

The judge was not impressed when defense attorney Peter Bowers noted that a financial reward had been given to the men who beat and captured another child rapist - Jose Carrasquillo, who, on Nov. 15, will be sentenced for raping an 11-year-old girl in Kensington in June 2009.

"Well, he got an award - he's not going to jail," Kane said of Hough, who pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, conspiracy and possession of an instrument of crime.

Assistant District Attorney Bill Davis argued that Hough should do 11 1/2 to 23 months in jail for what he did to Emmanuel G. Figueroa, 25, in 2008.

"Obviously, there are laws against beating people in the street," Davis said after the hearing.

Despite what Figueroa did to Hough's niece, Davis added, it was wrong for Hough and his relatives to track down Figueroa, beat him bloody and transport him to the girl's house so that she could identify him.

Things have gotten only worse for Figueroa. On July 13, he pleaded guilty to rape, forcible compulsion and indecent exposure, and is waiting to be sentenced to eight to 20 years in prison, according to court records.

Hough, of Mayfair, who served 10 years in the Army Reserves and now works at a box manufacturer and as a home contractor, said the case has taken an emotional and financial toll on him.

He said his house is nearly in foreclosure after he spent more than $12,000 for bail and lawyer bills since being arrested Nov. 17. 2008 - the day he caught up with Figueroa.

"I thought I was making a citizen's arrest," Hough said during an interview. "I think the judge was fair under the circumstances. But I didn't think it would be that severe."

On July 1, 2008, Figueroa saw the victim sitting on the front steps of her Lawndale home and tricked her into going next door to his girlfriend's house, where he raped her and warned her not to tell anyone. Frightened, she complied, but four months later the secret was revealed when she fainted and doctors told her she was pregnant. The pregnancy was terminated.

Hough said that when he and his relatives learned where Figueroa was staying, and that he was making plans to leave the city, they moved in.

Hough's niece, who is now in therapy, recently told him that she felt responsible for his mortgage troubles.

"I told her, 'No, it's not your fault. This is how we protect our family.' "

The judge said that he wanted to send a message. Well he did. The message is: "we're probably not going to catch the scum who rip apart your communities, but you're sure not going to be allowed to do it, either."

Yeah, I know...beating people in the street is technically wrong, even if they are despicable child-rapers. But I can understand and even identify with Hough, as can many other people, I'm sure. I'm personally all about law and order, but I'm more about justice, and if someone were ever to victimize one of my relatives like that--especially a child...well let's just say that they'd be lucky to have the police catch them first. And even then, I'd probably be waiting outside the prison on their parole date, Louisville Slugger in hand.

Mix a slacker with an X-Box and a lawyer and you get...

one of the dumbest lawsuits of all time.

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - A Hawaii man is suing the maker of an online video game because he says the game is too addicting. Craig Smallwood says he has played Lineage II for about 20,000 hours.

The lawsuit alleges that he is so addicted, he can't do daily activities like get up, get dressed, bathe or communicate with family and friends. Smallwood says the company, NCSOFT of South Korea, did not display proper warning that the game could become addicting.

The NCSOFT website describes the game as "an immersive and dramatic fantasy world known for its unique political and economic systems."

A federal judge is allowing the lawsuit.

So to sum it up, this loser spent 20,000 hours playing a game--a game that he could have turned off and walked away from any time that he wanted. He played so much that he failed to bathe, alienated his family and friends, and presumably didn't work (so whose house was he living and playing his game in and who bought the groceries that he ate?) and that's now suddenly someone else's fault and he deserves some cash? More to the point, he couldn't clean himself or talk to people but he still managed to shop for a lawyer?

According to Smallwood, he has spent some 20,000 hours from 2004 to 2009 just playing Lineage II. Because it got him hooked so bad, he is now asking for an unspecified amount of money as damages from NCsoft.

He also alleged that NCsoft "acted negligently in failing to warn or instruct or adequately warn or instruct plaintiff and other players of Lineage II of its dangerous and defective characteristics, and of the safe and proper method of using the game." Had he known that the game would be that addicting, he said he wouldn't have touched it in the first place.

The judge handling the case, U.S. District Judge Alan Kay gave out a ruling earlier this month, making it possible for the case to proceed to trial: "In light of plaintiff's allegations, the court finds that plaintiff has stated a claim for both negligence and gross negligence."

The only thing stupider than Craig and this lawsuit is the addle-brained judge, U.S. District Court Judge Alan Kay, who decided that this case was worthy of occupying space on the court docket. This is why we need tort reform...and a means of sanctioning plaintiffs like Smallwood and any attorney sleazy enough to file a case like this.

In other news, Jimmy Carter has gone to North Korea to try to gain the release of Aijalon Gomes, an American citizen held in prison there after (rather stupidly) entering North Korea illegally from China. Might I be the first one to suggest a trade where the North Koreans get Craig Smallwood in exchange for Gomes? That sounds like a good deal, at least for us, and if it's not good enough for North Korea, I'm open to letting them keep Carter too.

Oh, so now "Ebonics" is a language again?

Oh, and here I thought that it was just lazy, uneducated people mangling the English language that the rest of us speak.

DEA wants to hire Ebonics speakers.

AUGUST 23--The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.

A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media”

The DEA’s need for full-time linguists specializing in Ebonics is detailed in bid documents related to the agency’s mid-May issuance of a request for proposal (RFP) covering the provision of as many as 2100 linguists for the drug agency’s various field offices. Answers to the proposal were due from contractors on July 29.

In contract documents, Ebonics is listed among 114 languages for which prospective contractors must be able to provide linguists. The 114 languages are divided between “common languages” and “exotic languages.” Ebonics is listed as a “common language” spoken solely in the United States.

Ebonics has widely been described as a nonstandard variant of English spoken largely by African Americans. John R. Rickford, a Stanford University professor of linguistics, has described it as “Black English” and noted that “Ebonics pronunciation includes features like the omission of the final consonant in words like ‘past’ (pas’ ) and ‘hand’ (han’), the pronunciation of the th in ‘bath’ as t (bat) or f (baf), and the pronunciation of the vowel in words like ‘my’ and ‘ride’ as a long ah (mah, rahd).”

Detractors reject the notion that Ebonics is a dialect, instead considering it a bastardization of the English language.

OK, aside from the fact that some scammers out there are going to get paid for nothing more than translating "from Loser to English", I suspect that unless the government drops it's requirement that any potential candidates have a college degree (or even a GED), they aren't going to find many applicants who talk like that.

And serious good luck trying to find "ebonics speakers" who can pass a criminal background check and a drug test.

Just more Dopey Change from the Obama Administration.

Just because...

A gratuitous Lagniappe shot taken over the week-end.

I can haz bone?!

Saturday morning western

In keeping with the tradition of spending Saturday mornings at the Lair enjoying good westerns, here's Lee Van Cleef, one of the real western stars, taking down the villain who murdered his sister, with a little help from a friend.

Would-be Tea Party crasher loses teaching job...but others still lurk

Left-wing whack-job Jason Levin, the public school teacher from Oregon that I wrote about here back in April when he tried to start a nation-wide movement to discredit the Tea Party movement and harass it's members just resigned his job in lieu of being fired, and I don't have a problem with it at all.

Wheeler said Levin learned the results of the district’s investigation and resigned. She would not comment on those investigative results.

Conestoga Middle School media lab teacher Jason Levin became national news back in April when he announced his intention to bring down the Tea Party on his “Crash the Tea Party” website and in media interviews.

The now-ex Conestoga Middle School media lab teacher said in April that he would seek to embarrass Tea Partiers by attending their rallies dressed as Adolf Hitler, carrying signs bearing racist, sexist and anti-gay epithets and acting as offensively as possible -- anything short of throwing punches.

In a post on his now defunct website, Levin once called on his supporters to collect the Social Security numbers—among other personal identifying information—about as many Tea Party supporters as possible at rallies taking place across the country on Tax Day.

"Some other thoughts are to ask people at the rally to sign a petition renouncing socialism. See just how much info you can get from these folks (name address, DOB, Social Security #). The more data we can mine from the Tea Partiers, the more mayhem we can cause with it!!!!" he wrote.

In an April interview with Talking Points Memo, Levin said of his plans, "Our goal is that whenever a Tea Partier says 'Barack Obama was not born in America,' we're going be right there next to them saying, 'Yeah, in fact he wasn't born on Earth! He's an alien!'"

Complaints from around the nation flooded the school district’s office and Levin was suspended in April as the school district investigated whether he had used school time or resources to engage in political activism. The state’s licensing board also launched its own investigation.

Public dissent and a free exchange of ideas is one thing, but pretending to be your opposition so that you can speak falsely in their name is about as un-American as you can get...and trying to get people's social security numbers to cause "mayhem"? He should really go to jail for that.

In any event, at least this loon is away from America's kids.

He's not alone though. In Michigan, a fake Tea Party movement has been created at great expense and it's running candidates in twenty-three districts where the race between the Republican and Democrat candidates is expected to be very close. It's being run by a guy named Mark Steffek, a fellow unknown to any Michigan Tea Party activists or organizers. Steffek of course won't grant interviews or talk about the source of funds used to hire the paid circulators for the petition drive to put his slate of candidates on the ballot (60,000 signatures at a dollar apiece, or $60,000), but it's come out that Steffek is a retired UAW member who has donated money to Democrat Party candidates in the past--notably extreme liberal David Bonior--and his attorney/"election specialist" just happens to be Mike Hodge. Hodge was legal counsel to former Democratic Gov. James Blanchard and has worked regularly since then for the state Democratic Party. Also, the outfit that he used to circulate the petitions turns out to be Progressive Campaign, Inc., a George-Soros-financed firm that works almost exclusively on behalf of leftist organizations and the Democrat Party.

Obviously, putting a third candidate in to siphon votes away from the more conservative Republican is going to benefit the Democrats hugely, which is probably why all the fingers are pointing back to them. They know that a majority of voters now want something other than what they're offering so instead of changing and giving the people what the people want, they're offering fake candidates who promise what the people want but who are really only in the race to divide the vote of those who oppose the Democrats.

That is totally wrong and 100% un-American and every single individual linked to this and similar sham campaigns needs to be publicly horse-whipped, then tarred and feathered, stripped of their US citizenship, and deported to sub-Saharan Africa. Again, you have the right to stand up and advocate openly for what you want in this country, but when you eschew that and decide to lie and deceive instead, there should be a cost.

As it stands today, Levin is out of the game, but the fraud in Michigan is still going forward with it's shill candidates on the ballots under the Tea Party name and we won't know the results of that un-Democratic scam until after the November election. If it results in just one district's fair election being sabotaged, may God have mercy on the souls of every Democrat involved.

(Wait--do Democrats even have souls?)

My neighbors

So tonight, as I sit on my deck cleaning my pistol after today's range session, I cannot help but overhear my neighbor and his drinking buddies as they loudly talk amongst themselves out in his yard. They're talking about what they plan to do in a SHTF scenario. (for those of you unfamiliar, that mean "when the Shit Hits The Fan"--in other words, what they plan to do when revolution, nuclear attack, alien invasion, zombie attack, etc., comes along.

Apparently they plan to band together, which is fine. However, it sounds like they'll all be gathering at my neighbor's house. WTF? Why can't they go gather at one of the other guys' houses? These hillbillies are annoying enough in the best of times.

It's interesting to listen to them, though. They admit to themselves--and to me and Lagniappe--that they don't have much stockpiled in the way of foodstuffs and other supplies.

Lagniappe and I have plenty, BTW, but I make it a point not to advertise.

Then the one starts in on how he's got everything that he needs in the form of four boxes of .25 ammo, because his .25 pistol is so small that he can "walk right up on anyone and then POW!"

Uh-huh. I don't advertise because I don't want people who think like that to know that I've got anything that they might want.

They talk for a bit, then start pontificating on what sort of food that a mutual neighbor nearby has in his house. They all hate this guy--and he hates them--and they decide that he has "hippie food" and announce that come the day, they'll be eating hippie food, the implication being that they plan on helping themselves to whatever the "hippie" neighbor has.

Now I've talked to that neighbor plenty and he really is an aging hippie. He and his wife are also strongly anti-gun and he's told me several times that they won't have one in their house.

So right next door I actually have the redneck posse planning armed assault on the home of the resident (unarmed) leftist pacifist as soon as society breaks down. Very interesting.

Note to self: If the S does HTF, immediately shoot the redneck neighbors as soon as they approach the property line. For all I know, I may be on their list, too. Fortunately my house is not within .25 range of theirs, however all of their land is well within the effective range of my Browning .30 MG...the one that my would-be freebooter neighbors don't even know that I have.

I guess it's time to make up a new range card for the Browning.

Lessons to take away from this tale:
1. If you have supplies set in for bad times, keep it to yourself.
2. Bad guys really are out there, and in a crisis, they may be people that you know.
3. Have a gun and know how to use it.

Obama quietly hoses gun owners. Few notice.

Thankfully, the Korean press wasn't as silent on this outrage as the American press was.
The U.S. government is opposing Korea’s bid to sell thousands of aging U.S. combat rifles to American gun collectors.

By Jung Sung-ki

The U.S. government opposed South Korea’s bid to sell hundreds of thousands of aging U.S. combat rifles to American gun collectors, a senior government official said Thursday.

The ministry announced the plan last September as part of efforts to boost its defense budget, saying the export of the M1 Garand and carbine rifles would start by the end of 2009.

The U.S. administration put the brakes on the plan, citing “problems” that could be caused by the importation of the rifles.

The problems the U.S. government cited were somewhat ambiguous, said an official at the Ministry of National Defense on condition of anonymity.

“The U.S. insisted that imports of the aging rifles could cause problems such as firearm accidents. It was also worried the weapons could be smuggled to terrorists, gangs or other people with bad intentions,” the official told The Korea Times.

“We’re still looking into the reason why the U.S. administration is objecting to the sale of the rifles and seeking ways to resolve the problems raised,” he said.

Critics say the ministry pushed to sell the firearms in a hasty manner without enough consultation with the U.S. beforehand, as calls were growing to increase defense expenditure.

The Seoul government sought to sell the outdated U.S guns back to the United States.

A total of 86,000 M1 rifles and another 22,000 carbines were to be sold, as the weapons have been mothballed for about five decades in military warehouses. The per-unit price of the M1 rifle is about $220 and the carbine is more than $140, according to the ministry.

Firearms accidents? Terrorists and gangs? Please... That crap sounds like it was written by Josh Sugarman or Sarah Brady personally. Unsafe? They were sure safe enough for our troops to use all over the world from World War Two up into the early 1970's. And criminals? Criminals don't want old, hard-to-conceal rifles like these. The only ones who do want them are American target shooters, military history buffs and collectors. These weapons flowed freely into our country without a problem during the eight years of the last administration and everyone was happy. But Obama is in a tough spot here. He promised his left-wing supporters that he'd enact new national gun control laws like the ones he supported in Illinois if they put him in office, but since then, he's read the mood of the people and realized that we're not in the mood for any more gun control, especially while he's still in the White House and his party is busy crashing our country. But Obama is and always has been anti-gun, and this move was a way for him to keep 100,000 pieces of shooting history out of the hands of American citizens, ideally without anyone noticing.

Well we're noticing. The question now is what we're going to do about it. Spread this around, gunnies...it may be too late to undo this screw-job, but at least we can hold the responsible guy and his followers accountable and rebut their claims that Obama isn't out to take our guns away.

August 18th--Happy Birthday to my pal.

Happy Birthday, Lagniappe.

Nine years old today. We're gonna spend the day together and there will be treats.

Michigan Senator Carl Levin gets pied.

You can't make this us.

Carl Levin, one of the most liberal, far-left members of the Senate, was attacked by an even more liberal, farther-left moonbat this morning at a public meeting in Big Rapids, Michigan.

The Democrat from Detroit was speaking to members of the Mecosta County Democratic Party when a young man -- who described himself as a student -- began chastising Levin for his work on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which helps direct military and war policy.

After a few minutes of speaking at Pepper's Café and Deli, a woman who accompanied the student to the event walked up to Levin and hit him in the face with a pie, a source with Levin's office confirmed.

Big Rapids Police arrested the woman on assault and battery charges.

The Big Rapids Pioneer newspaper reported the woman's name as Ahlam Mohsen, a 23-year-old senior at Michigan State University; and her friend who instigated the incident with Levin as Max Kantar, 23. MSU lists Mohsen as a student, while Kantar attends Ferris State University.

Had these two fools done their homework they'd have figured out that the only reason that Levin has sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee all these years is to obstruct military planning and readiness, to kill vital weapons systems and force the closure of bases that we still need, and to be able to pry into and meddle with classified operations. He's never been a friend of the military or a supporter of our troops--he's always fought to make their jobs harder.

So along come these two cretins. Ignorant of the fact that Levin is solidly on their side, they hit him with a pie then run away and wind up getting stopped and arrested down the road. And now Ahlam (and out of curiosity, what sort of a name is "Ahlam"?) is in jail, properly charged with Assault. I'm no fan of Senator Levin (and haven't been since he had me tossed out of one of his town halls back in the 1980's for accidentally referring to him as "Senator Lenin" via an unintended Freudian slip) but assaults on public speakers are unacceptable conduct no matter who the target it. Here's hoping that Michigan State has some stones and expels her, and ditto for Ferris State and the other loon.

UPDATE: Turns out these two have been arrested for harassing Levin before, apparently on behalf of Hamas. Can you say "jihadist stalkers"? Lagniappe says that Levin might want to reconsider his lifelong opposition to gun ownership and learn to use a pistol.

They're gone...

So Spud, his mom and his grandmother are gone, leaving Lagniappe and I to savor the silence and the peace and quiet.

Ahhhhhhh...........

Honestly, having the kid here was great. From all of the things described here, to the little things, like taking him to church and listening later as he recounted--and explained--the pastor's lesson is detail, or sitting with him next to the river as an egret stalked it's prey right in front of us. He watched as it reached down and snared fish or frogs, and he was excited for the bird until it clicked with him that some other creature had just been killed right in front of him and he got a real understanding of how nature worked at that moment. I liked watching the boy grow and learn and begin to express himself, and it was sad to see his mom immediately start trying to force him back into the little boy role that she seems bent on keeping him confined to.

But I have to say though that one of the most revealing things of the week came thing morning when my saintly mother came into my office as I was reading Old NFO's blog. He posted the following "Alzheimer's Test" and as I was looking at it, she began to read it over my shoulder. So I asked her what these words with the missing letters were:

1. F_ _K
2. PU_S_
3. S_X
4. P_N_S
5. BOO_S
6. _ _NDOM


My saintly mother looked at the list for about a second, then started at that bottom and said:
"That's 'condom', that's 'boobs', that's 'penis', that's 'sex'...I don't know that one, but the top one, that's "fuck'."

When I scrolled down the page to show her that the words were actually Fork, Pulse, Six, Pants, Books and Random, she turned beet red and didn't stop laughing for over two minutes.

As for me, I can't believe that my (formerly?) saintly mother--a white-haired little woman how doesn't even have to ask for the senior citizen discount at restaurants any more--actually thinks like that!
"WHAT did she just say?!"

Spud and the Knife

So the other day, I had the boy over at the local pawn shop and he was drooling over the knives like all normal little boys do. I made the decision that based on his conduct while he was here, he was old enough and mature enough to handle a small folding pocketknife. So I bought him a little $4.00 Chinese-made folding lock-blade knife with a pocket clip. And like every little boy who receives his first knife, he went crazy over it. I oiled the mechanism and showed him how to flip it open with one hand and how to wear it on his pocket, and that evening, I taught him how to whittle sticks. (He's spent several hours sitting and quietly whittling since then. I should have thought of that a long time ago.) And he told me that his mom would go ape when she found out that he had one, because she's always told him that knives are too dangerous.

I knew that the storm would be coming when I bought it for him, but darn it, he's not five any more. He's growing up whether she wants to acknowledge it or not.

And sure enough, when his mom--accompanied by my own saintly mother--showed up, the first thing he did was show off his new knife. And the hysteria commenced.

"WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?!"

So I interceded on behalf of the boy and he got to keep it--although I suspect that it's going to disappear as soon as they get home. And all was well until we went out to go get dinner and he stuck it proudly into his pocket only to have his mom shriek: "Put that upstairs right now! You don't ever take a knife outside!" He protested, and she launched off on a tirade about how he didn't need a knife because there was nothing to cut where we were going and no reason to carry knives in public. I told her that in West Virginia, it was the law that all males over the age of ten had to carry a knife and that as long as he was staying here, he could continue to carry it as he'd been doing for the past couple of days. She relented, but there's no doubt in my mind that that knife is SO going to disappear when he gets home. But for now, it's his most cherished prize possession and a symbol of his impending manhood.

Gun Commercial

We interrupt the Spud Tales to bring you this new gun story.

I got a Ruger LCP.

It was sort of an accidental purchase in that I found a dealer who'd ordered one for a customer only to have the customer back out. The dealer agreed to sell it to me for his cost plus shipping and I took delivery of it the other day. It's small. Real small.
In fact, the picture doesn't do it justice. So for scale, here it is below a Beretta 92 and next to a paperback book.
Like I said, it's small. It's 5.16 long, 3.6 inches high, and 0.82 inches wide--less than in inch. But it holds 7 rounds of .380ACP and it's earned a solid reputation for reliability since coming onto the market. With it's polymer frame, it weighs next to nothing, making it a handy, easy-to-carry pistol.

Now I'm generally not a fan of little guns. In fact I usually disparage them and try to talk novice gun owners out of getting them as first-line defensive pistols. But there are a few niche areas where a pistol like this comes in handy, usually in situations where a bigger gun is impractical. Even a small gun is better than no gun, and the concealability of this one makes it a perfect fit for a role that I have in mind for it.

I took it out shooting two days back, Spud in tow. It functioned 100%, putting 100 rounds of Remington 95gr. FMJ downrange without a hiccup. It's not the most comfortable little thing to shoot because of it's size, but it put almost every round right where I wanted them, the few exceptions being my fault as I was still getting used to it. A 1911 it's definitely not.

But I like the little sucker and it fits in almost any pocket nicely and without printing, so even though it lacks the stopping power of my primary carry guns, I can see it earning a permanent place in my armory.

Now if only Ruger didn't gouge so hard on spare magazines!

New day, new adventures.

Yesterday, I borrowed two kayaks from a nice Democrat neighbor--one of the few Democrats that I habitually support every election--and took the Spud down to the river for his first ever kayaking expedition. As is usual with this one, he was excited until it came time to actually launch; once he was seated in the boat, every time I asked him if he was ready, he responded with a panicky "wait..."

Finally I got tired of it and just shoved him out into the river. He was floating on his own before he even realized what had happened, and then it was suddenly all right. I launched after him and caught up with him, then showed him how to paddle and turn his boat. He took to it surprisingly quick and we went up and down the Shenandoah River for a couple of hours, splashing each other and watching the egrets and blue heron along the banks. He wouldn't stop telling me how much fun he was having, and he kept saying with some pride that his mom would "freak" if she saw how far away from the shore that he was. We found a shady rock outcrop and pulled in to enjoy the sandwiches and chips that I'd stowed, and then we worked our way back to the landing where I had to shoot this video of him handling his boat like a pro:
After we stowed the boats, we went over to a nearby tree that was set up with diving platforms and a rope swing. He's fixated on this last year but hadn't gotten the change to play on it, and he'd asked me about it daily since coming here this time. As I'd used the kayak to check the area beneath the rope and determined that it was safe-no rocks or submerged tree branches waiting to intercept him--I told him that he could try it.

As is all too typical for this boy, he climbed about half-way up the tree, paused, then announced that he didn't want to do it any more.

Unfortunately, quitting is a learned behavior and this little guy'd learned it well somewhere.

But we don't play that way here, so I told him that he could quit after jumping but that he was was going to finish what he'd started first. He went through his usual repertoire--backing down one step at a time, each time telling me that he would jump from the next lower step. I made him get back up to the top step where he'd already been though. He whined, he tried to bargain, he did everything but jump. I told him that he wasn't allowed back down that ladder, because this was a "no quitter zone". Finally I told him that I was coming up, and when I got to him, I was just going to toss him off. He cried "Noooo!" as I hit the base of the tree and started up, but just before I got to him, he decided that going on his own was the less frightening and he leapt into the river. When he surfaced, however, he was grinning from ear to ear and he gave a yell of cheer--he'd done it and it was FUN!

He spent the next half an hour climbing and jumping from that tree and pronounced it the most fun thing ever.

And he actually thanked me for making him jump, telling me that if I hadn't made him do it, he never would have done it.

He's growing up. One little adventure and experience at a time.

Airsoft...

Last Christmas, I bought the Spud an Airsoft rifle. Hey, he wouldn't be shooting it in MY house, so why not? But as with most things fun and good that uncles buy nephews, he wasn't allowed to play with it after I left and it resided in it's box until the day that he was sent here, when it too was mysteriously sent along.

So yesterday, when we were at Walmart, I bought a cheapo Airsoft pistol for myself and last night we went out to do what little boys his age are supposed to do--we ran around in the woods and shot each other silly with the guns.

We had three rules:

1. No deliberate face shots (at least by me)
2. No crying
3. No time-outs unless you had a gun problem...and running out of ammo didn't count--that's on you to remedy, from behind cover if you're smart.

OK, now as one unfamiliar with Airsoft guns, I admit that I was unaware of how hard they hit and how far they can shoot. I also didn't think that the Spud was all that dangerous until the first time that I peered around a tree and he zapped me in the face from about 40 feet away.

DAMN! That STINGS!

Crediting the boy with a "lucky shot" that I was sure that he couldn't repeat, I peered around the other side of the tree and caught another one right on the edge of my lip.

MOTHER@#$%&!

It finally dawned on me that these guns are the real deal, and although I had two stinging welts on my face, I couldn't help but be proud of the boy for making those shots--he was actually aiming and using the skills I'd taught him on the rifle range.

I learned quickly to stay behind cover, because the boy could hit pretty much any part of me that he could see. So I moved back--distance being a good shooter's friend in a gunfight--and used the cover of rocks and trees to slowly outflank the boy every time he went static behind whatever he thought made a good redoubt. After giving him a few pellet welts on his little body every time he failed to stay behind cover for more than a second or two, I paused the game and taught him the concept of "fire and maneuver" and showed him better ways to use rocks and trees as shields. Once the boy learned that it was to his benefit to remain mobile, I could no longer just work my way up behind him and "kill" him. Our gun battles became fluid and we moved back and forth across the wooded hillside behind the Lair, each occasionally scoring on the other. I was nice and let him know when he got me because I didn't give him any free shots and he deserved to know when he'd done it right and whacked me, and of course there was no doubt when I'd get him because everyone for a mile or so would have been able to hear the loud "OWWW!" resonating through the forest. But he never cried or quit and we finally used up all of the airsoft pellets out there in the woods and had to call the game.

We'll get more today though and I've already told him that he can use them to "hunt" the neighbors' many feral cats. And I'm gonna have to find some old Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone videos for the boy.

Good times.

Wow--kids are expensive

So yesterday, I took The Spud to Baltimore. Fort McHenry and the USS Torsk are always good for kids to see, and the Aquarium looked like a good bet, too. I also figured he'd like the water taxis, and we'd try some decent seafood since I know that he's never had that opportunity before.

The drive into Baltimore was good, but once downtown, I overshot my turn point and wound up down on Broadway, where I was surprised to observe literally hundreds of working-age hispanic males just sitting around in a couple of parks and on many of the stoops. Where the hell did these guys come from? It's 9:30 in the morning and many are drinking already. None are apparently working, and I can't help but wonder why ICE isn't down here with big nets. Seriously--it looked like they were waiting for a parade to start, there were so many of them. Maryland, you need to clean up your mess; it's no wonder that Casa de Maryland--a state taxpayer-funded illegal alien advocacy group--has so much power in your legislature. If all of these layabouts and their compatriots in the state ever get the right to vote en masse like Obama and his labor union cronies want to see happen, it'll be all over for the working people in your state.

After that brief detour, we wound up down at the Inner Harbor, where I got gouged $20.00 to park for the day. Then we wandered over to the aquarium where I got hit with an admission price that made me forget all about the parking fee. I would have walked off right there had it been just me, but this was for the kid. So...

We saw exhibits on Australian wildlife, rays, turtles, and the dolphin show. While not up to Sea World standards, the dolphin show was amusing even discounting the strong emphasis on environmentalist propaganda.




















































My only real critique is that the three girls working with the dolphins--and dressed in skin-tight wetsuits--could clearly all use a gym membership as part of their compensation package. Hot chicks in wetsuits would have made this an A+ show, but that's just me being incorrigibly sexist again. Still--for the money those tickets cost...

After a couple of hours there, we saw pretty much everything from jellyfish to sharks. We grabbed a quick (and overpriced) lunch nearby and dropped in on the USS Torsk (SS423), moored next to the aquarium.

And here's Spud up next to the sail. WHY can't kids ever just stand up straight?

I'll do another post on Torsk later, but suffice it to say that Spud enjoyed this exploration about as much as he did last year's visit to USS Cod in Cleveland. Here he is in the sub's enlisted mess, as close to his native habitat as any place on the boat.

Next, we took a water taxi out to Fort McHenry. It was Spud's first time out on a real boat and he was just going crazy watching the other boats and the sea birds.
Here I explained to Spud how the British tried to capture Baltimore in 1814, only to fail in their efforts to reduce or bypass this fort. It was here that Francis Scott Key found the inspiration for the Star Spangled Banner as he watched the bombardment of the fort by the British Navy.

Here's Spud, directing the batteries against the British ships...or the cement freighter across the river.As purists can surely tell, the 1812-era guns are gone, replaced by Civil-War-era Rodman guns, the largest of which weighed 50,000lbs and hurled a 440-pound shell several miles. If the fort had had these back in 1814, the British would have gotten a fine comeuppance for attacking and burning our capital just a few weeks prior.
As you can see, the boy takes his devotion to the defense of our nation seriously.

After checking out the fort, we took another water taxi back to Fell's Point, had dinner followed by ice cream, and called it a day.
Spud really enjoyed himself, and as I write this, he's still chattering on about all the things he saw and did, which is about the only thing that makes the expense of the day worth it. I never realized how expensive kids can be...I mean, it's like ponying up for a good date, only without the expected prize at the end of it.

But he had fun and did a lot of things that he's never done before, so it was worth it.

The first full day with The Spud

Saturday was another shooting day. A couple of months ago I'd volunteered to take a group of novice shooters out to the local range. This bunch was from a local Tea Party chapter and none had much shooting experience but they wanted to get together and try it so one of the organizers, a former student of mine, called me up and asked me to take them. For the record, I'm not a Tea Party member myself, but as any reader of this blog well knows, we share the same views on most things. I'm just not a joiner. As luck would have it, the selected day fell on Spud's first full day here, so I took him along.

Here's the Spud, posing with the Ruger 10-22 that I entrusted him with. He did a great job of aiming every shot and demonstrating good muzzle awareness. The boy's learning to be a good shooter and we'll make a rifleman of him yet.









After we shot, a couple of the shooters offered to treat Spud and I to lunch. So we stopped at the Golden Corral, an excellent buffet-style restaurant. It was here that I learned a lesson about letting kids--or at least The Spud--work a buffet line without supervision.
On his first foray, he bypassed all of the quality meats and vegetables and returned with a plate just heaping with macaroni and cheese, pasta in tomato sauce, and that crappy all-dough pizza that places like this put out. I just sighed, because I'd told him up front that he was going to east healthy here and that we were going to try to get him off of his regular all-carb diet that his mom and grandmother seem to keep him on. So after he'd finished that mess, I accompanied him back up for the second round. After stopping him from heaping his plate with a massive scoop of mashed potatoes, I "suggested" a few healthy alternatives--broccoli, roast, shrimp and some catfish. (This place had some excellent lightly-breaded catfish.) He kind of screwed up his face a bit because he'd never had catfish (yes...he's a yankee boy all the way) but as soon as he sat down and tried a piece, he announced that he LOVES catfish.

Hey...it's a start.

So after eating that balanced, sensibly-portioned plate, he said that he wanted some more catfish. So I goofed again and let him return to the buffet counter for plate #3, figuring that just he'd get a couple more pieces and call it a day.

He returned with about 15 fillets on his plate...and more pasta. Cue the face-palm.

The rest of the day was spent swimming--I took him and Lagniappe down to the river--reading (I've started him on my old Hardy Boys books and he's loving the first one) and watching a movie. Do you believe that he's never seen Smokey and the Bandit and had no idea who Burt Reynolds, Jackie Gleason and Jerry Reed were? I will give this boy a sense of culture yet.

He loved it. Now I gotta find another movie that instills positive "guy values" for tonight. Anyone think that eleven is too young for Full Metal Jacket? Any other recommendations?

Oh, and just as an aside, to anyone with kids...do they all have this programming that makes them turn on every light in a house--even lights in rooms that they are just passing through in broad daylight--and then leaving them on? I mean, WTF?

So where have I been?

You may have noticed that I haven't been here lately. That's why there have been no articles on Michelle "Marie Antoinette" Obama and her expensive European vacation that we taxpayers are paying for. There has been no pointing out the fact that this is her eighth taxpayer-funded vacation so far, no pondering about who her sixty friends who accompanied her to Spain at our expense were, no questioning why she had to go spend all that money abroad instead of visiting our own Gulf Coast and infusing that money into the local system to help the people there...Yeah, I missed out. Sorry.

Fact is, Lagniappe and I took a little trip. We went up to visit family and see Aaron of The Shekel, shown here with his new Colt .38 and his stylin' shades that just scream: "citizens of Earth...I come in peace."

Actually, we went to his gun club and shot for a bit. We lucked out as no one else was there to use their indoor pistol range so we shot most of the session (after we finished enjoying that very nice vintage Colt) with the lights off, using my Surefire weapon light and his Crimson Trace laser for some "low light" training. We even made barricades out of range chairs and trash cans and practiced firing from behind cover in the dark. Good practice, because one should always aspire to train like you might have to fight, and let's be realistic--very few bad guys intent on doing you harm are going to agree to relocate the attack to a well-lit place and pace off a set distance from you before starting again.

After this short visit, I packed my guns, my dog and THIS GUY:
That's right--back by popular demand--The Spud has come back to visit Lagniappe's Lair for a week or so. (Tank not included, darn it.)

Bonus points to anyone who can identify the tanks and tell me where these were taken.