Oh no he didn't....

I was driving into town to take care of a couple of small errands, and they were playing a bit of Barak Obama's lastest speech. It was just a snippet, but damned if he didn't say this:

Everyone should be prepared to give up something in order to solve our budget challenges...

Oh, HELL NO! I almost drove into a pole when I heard that.

First off, Barry, there would not be "budget challenges" today had you not recklessly spent so much more money than we had in our public treasury that our great grandkids will still be working on paying down that debt in addition to their own tax burdens. I had nothing to do with our present federal debt--in fact, I spoke out against every one of your spending plans and your election itself. It's not MY fault and I shouldn't have to sacrifice a damned thing. You're the one who caused the budget crisis, Barry, by jamming through an unaffordable health insurance scheme that most of the country did not want when you did it (one which even more oppose now) and by your so-called "stimulus" packages, which basically stimulated nothing except the bank accounts of the labor unions that supported you. So if anyone needs to be "sacrificing", Barry, it's YOU. How about we start by putting an end to all of these lavish family vacations every couple of months. You don't need to be taking all of these trips, particularly the ones to places outside our country where the money spent doesn't even trickle down to Americans.

I'd also say that the Democrats who were complicit in your wealth redistribution stunts should sacrifice too, but many of them did this past election because America was pissed and took the first opportunity to remove them from control of the House, a prelude of things to come when you run for re-election in 2012.

Aside from that, the only other parties who should sacrifice anything at all to atone for your actions are those union members who supported you and your party and who got so much of our money in return. Personally I'm thinking that we need legislation to bar labor unions from spending a single penny on public elections or campaigns, and I hope that the newly-elected representatives of the American people across this great nation continue to work to restrict collective bargaining and reduce the ability of these greedy organizations to extort money from businesses, the public treasury, and every worker across this land who doesn't want to be a union member but has been forced to pay dues by "closed shop" rules which mandate it. I also want to see the repeal of the Davis Bacon Act which mandates that non-union employees be paid at the prevailing wage (read: union scale) if they work on government jobs. In fact, I want to see the ability of government workers or contractors on union jobs to unionize abolished completely. You want to work for us (We, the People.) then you need to give up some of that high-wage pie and and associated right to strike. (That'd be a "sacrifice", so Barry undoubtedly approves.)

Frankly, a lot of other people are starting to get these ideas too, and with any luck--and a stronger non-Democrat majority in 2013, we can make some of all of it happen.

I'm thinking that the abolition of public-sector unions, the elimination of the "closed shop" and the prohibition against remaining unions like the UAW or AFL-CIO and SEIU engaging in any political activity aimed at electing legislators or passing/blocking legislation might be a good down-payment on the debt owed to the American public courtesy of the actions of Barack Obama and his band of constitutional scofflaw cronies.

Breakfast of Champions

Because I actually can cook.



--Take 1/2lb of Andouille sausage, slice up into pan with some olive oil.

--Chop up two or three potatoes, put in same pan.

--Fry at medium heat for a while, adding garlic, tabasco, Frank's Red Hot (different from tabasco) and crushed red peppers.

--Next chop up onion and toss into pan. (Add green or yellow peppers too, if you have any.) Simmer it all together, stirring every few minutes, until potatoes are crispy and sausage is blackened.

--Give dog a taste. If he doesn't fall over, add more tobasco.

Savor and enjoy!

Why does the dog...

have my oven mitt again?

Every time I turn around lately, it seems as if Murphy is walking past me with my oven mitt in his mouth. He keeps taking it off the counter when I'm not watching and carting it off to his own sovereign territory, better known as his dog bed. He doesn't damage it--he just sort of gnaws on it and licks it until I take it away from him and return it to the kitch--uh, I mean the laundry basket.

Now you might wonder why a real man even has an oven mitt in the first place. I mean, that's sort of a thing that you'd expect to find in a girly kitchen, right? Well, truth is, it was a gift--from a girl--and while I use it for cooking sometimes, I've also been known to press it into service as a barrel-changing mitt for my machine guns. I've had to do this ever since I lost the military-surplus asbestos glove that I used to use, both on the machine guns and to take hot pans out of the oven. A gal I used to know thought that it was unseemly to use a "Mitten, heat protective" in my kitchen, so she bought me this neat yellow oven mitt with finger pads which not only makes it easier to grab pans off the oven rack, but also helps me get a better grip on those smoking-hot machine-gun barrels when they need to be swapped out. And since I misplaced the asbestos one, the new one has come in quite handy for both applications.

Now if I can just keep it away from the dog.

Thug woman in Denver follows in her husband's footsteps.

Detra Farries sits in jail in Denver, Colorado at this moment, and rightfully so. Farries is accused of hopping into her SUV and driving off as a tow truck driver tried to remove it from an apartment complex where it had been illegally parked for an extended period without license plates. In the process, the tow truck driver was dragged for over a mile and killed. Several people tried to stop Farries, but she just kept going as the man screamed. When the tow truck driver--a married father of two and an Iraqi war vet--finally came disengaged from the SUV, Farries quickly made a U-turn across the median and sped away. However the police found her shortly thereafter.

And here's Farries' MySpace page. Aside from the fact that all of her "friends" seem to be relishing the thug/gangster lifestyle, it's also noteworthy that she's a big Obama fan and supporter.

I guess that like Peggy, she thought that Obama was going to pay her car note, but apparently he didn't because it was also apparently subject to a repossession notice, which is probably why the license plates had been removed--so the repo people couldn't find it as easily.

Oh, and adding to the "just plain wrong" of this case, her husband is Terroll Farries Jr.. He's currently in prison for hitting and killing a 51-year-old Denver woman then driving away and hiding his vehicle back in December, 2009. And after his sentencing, she actually wrote in to the newspaper to defend her husband and blamed the victim for walking in front of him! I guess that depravity and a lack of conscience is something that the two of them have in common and I hope that she gets more than the four years that her husband got.

Out of the house!

So after being trapped in the house for most of a week, I got out for a few hours courtesy of Old NFO, who came up to spring me for a bit. We shot, we ate, we talked about Brigid. It was good times even though I had to make the best of it on crutches. (And my best sure wasn't much today.)

Oh, and he met Murphy. Murphy wasn't sure if he wanted to let the stranger in the house at first, and there was much growling and barking, but they quickly became best friends.

We went out to the range, and started shooting pistols. He's got this trick FN .45 with a Trijicon optic that just takes all the work out of actually aiming. I went Old School with my .40 Glock 23 and my Smith and Wesson Model 19 in .357. Of course as soon as we get set up to shoot, another member shows up with a whole posse of friends, all of whom want to use the pistol range. Figures.

So we moved down to the rifle line, where each of us proceeded to sight in a scoped rifle. I had my Savage .308 left-handed Tactical, and da NFO has a sweet Winchester Model 70 in .30-06.
Is there anything more frustrating than trying to zero a riflescope those last few inches? I'm thinking not.

Finally it got cold and the ammo ran low so we adjourned to Five Guys for lunch, then back to the Lair. da NFO is on his way home as I right this, and I pity the fool who tries to waylay him because he shoots pretty damned good for an old guy.

Come back for tomorrow's post: 15 things you probably didn't know about Brigid.

Saturday Man Movie

Todays' Real Man of Hollywood: Ben Johnson.


If you're a fan of westerns like I am, you've probably seen several movies starring Ben Johnson in supporting roles. Ben Johnson was originally a rodeo rider who knew his way around horses. He was hired by Howard Hughes in 1940 to bring a bunch of horses to Hollywood from Oklahoma. He managed to turn that into a job as a horse wrangler and stuntman for the movie companies until, as luck would have it, he wound up being in the right place at the right time.

In 1948, Director John Ford hired Johnson for stunt work on the film Fort Apache. One day during production, some horses pulling a wagon stampeded, taking three men along for the ride. Johnson, who was sitting on a nearby horse, rode after the runaway wagon and managed to stop it, saving the wagon and the men. Director Ford told Johnson that he'd reward him for his heroics and called him into his office. Johnson had apparently been expecting a small role or even a speaking part in a future film was shocked when Ford handed him a 7-year contract as a full-time actor. And his abilities were in great demand as many of the western actors at the time really weren't all that great as horsemen. He often rode as stunt double for actors like John Wayne, James Stewart and Randolph Scott.

Here he is doing some dangerous stunt-riding alongside actor Harry Carey Jr. in the 1950 classic Rio Grande. Notice that this was actually done by the actors in front of the cameras--no fake horses or stunt men and close-ups that pretended to show the actors riding--they really did this.


Here's Ben Johnson in that same movie showing us how to use a horse for cover to engage pursuing indians.



Ben Johnson kept right on working until he died in 1996, playing over 100 different roles in the movies and on TV.

Remember the store owner who gave the Wolverines his daughters in Red Dawn in 1984? That was Ben Johnson.

Gee, my dog is dumb.

I used to play a game with Lagniappe where I took a dog treat in one hand, put both hands behind my back, moved the treat at random between the two hands, then held out both hands as closed fists for him to inspect and choose between. Lagniappe would sniff both, then unerringly home in on the one that held the treat and slap that hand with his paw. I'd then open the hand and give him the treat. We'd done this for years, and he was never, ever wrong.

So cue Murphy. Yesterday I sat him down, let him see the treat, then put it behind my back and held out both hands to him. Murphy immediately picked one, but he didn't sniff them both first. Rather he just smacked whichever hand the treat was in when I put my hands behind my back; if he last saw the treat in my left hand, he'd slap the left hand when I presented it again. If the treat had formerly been in my right hand, he went right to the right hand again. Needless to say, he was almost always wrong, to the point where he got frustrated and plunked down on the ground, refusing to play any more. So I had to re-work the game and set him up to win a few times, just to keep him engaged while he figured out the concept. By the time we stopped, he'd gotten about eight or nine treats.

Suddenly it occurred to me that had he done the trick right and used his nose to properly select the hand holding the treat, he'd have likely only gotten two or three treats. But by messing the trick up, he'd gotten many more treats than he would have if he'd just done it right.


"Maybe I'm not as dumb as he thinks!"

All I ever find is change and spent brass shell casings...

But I'm using a flashlight to look behind the couch from now on. See if I just reach back there blindly any more.

3-year-old finds alligator behind couch

SAO PAULO (AP) - Firefighters say they have removed a 5-foot-long (1.5 meter-long) alligator who was hiding behind a couch after floodwaters washed it into a home in northern Brazil.

Capt. Luiz Claudio Farias of the Parauapebas city fire department says that when the floodwaters receded on Tuesday, a woman saw her 3-year-old son petting something behind the couch. It was an alligator.

He says "she snatched the boy away and called" firefighters.

Farias said Wednesday the alligator was apparently well fed. "If he was hungry he could have seriously hurt or even killed the boy."

The alligator was taken to an environmentally protected area near the city and released into a river.

Better yet..."Hey Murphy!"

The Brigadier is gone.

The London Daily Mail reports that Nicolas Courtney, best known as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart on the Dr. Who series, has died.

He was always one of my favorites on that show over the years.

RIP.

On home defense...

Hey bad guys...if you're feeling emboldened by the fact that I'm on sticks for a bit, just stop on by.


I may be down a leg, but I've still got a leg up.

Mitra

So yesterday, when I was getting ready to be surgerized, I started interrogating my nurse, basically because she was in the room, I was bored, and I couldn't reach any of the toys on the counter or the supply cart. (I'm a horrible patient...always have been.)

I saw that the nurse's name was Mitra. I asked her where she was from and she told me that she was from Iran. I asked her when she came here and she said ten years ago. Now she's in her 50's I'm figuring that there's a story here. She's trying to ask me questions about my medical history, so I tell her that I'll trade her an answer for an answer. She asked when my last meal was, and I told her that it was a Wendy's Bacon Double Cheeseburger with extra onions that I grabbed at the drive-through and scarfed down in the hospital parking lot below because no one had bothered to call me and let me know that the doctor was running two hours late. (I could have finished all my grocery shopping while still on two feet...sigh.)

Now it's my turn, I said. Do you remember much about the revolution in 1979 when the Shah left and the Ayatollahs took over? She stopped what she was doing and looked at me. I told her that I was curious to hear her opinions about the changes that took place. How was it different before and after for the average people?

I told you that I'm a horrible patient.

What I got for an answer was roughly a ten-minute tale about Mitra's life in Iran. She'd just graduated from the university in Tehran when the revolution came. She told me how before the revolution, people thought that the Shah was bad, but looking back, people had so much more freedom, especially women. But that freedom went away, and the Basij came into being, hundreds of thousands of government agents who were everywhere and saw everything that you did. If you did not dress right or said the wrong thing about the government, or if you acted "too western", they would take you away or take anything that you had that they wanted. She told me that it was really bad on the universities because that's where the young were the most connected to the west and they resented losing their clothes, their music and their whole way of life. And she told me about her sister's son who was 15 years old when the Basij arrested him for speaking out against the government. He was taken to prison and held without any sort of trial for ten years, and then when he was 25, the family was called and told to come to the prison with three thousand dollars. They thought that he was finally being released, but when they got there, they were told that he'd been hanged, and that the three thousand dollars was to pay for the hanging and that if they didn't pay it, they couldn't have the body back. There were tears in the corners of her eyes as she told me this story, and now none of the hospital stuff mattered any more. She wanted to tell these stories and I wanted to hear them.

She told about how you could not go anywhere in Iran without seeing Basij--they were everywhere and they always look as if they want to kill you. If someone has a grudge against you, they can make up lies to the Basij and say that you were anti-government and the Basij would come and take you away and give the person who reported you a reward.

So how did you get out of there, I asked.

She told me that because she was a nurse, she could travel more freely than most women. She was able to go attend to a sister in Turkey who was having a baby, and while she was there she applied to come to the US at the US embassy in Ankara. She said that it was the day before Christmas, and she was selected from many people who were waiting, and she could not even return back to Iran to say goodbye to her family or get any of her things, because they would never have let her leave again. So she came here with basically nothing but her international nursing license and had to work to support herself while waiting to become licensed as a nurse here. Then she went on to tell me how America is the best place ever, because there is so much freedom. "Here, everyone does whatever they want, and there is no Basij. The police are helpful and kind here and they don't kill you. In Iran, everyone is scared of the police, but not here. Here they are good." And now she was smiling.

I'd have loved to ask more questions, but another member of the surgical team came in and the discussion had to stop. But it was an awesome story, and I wish that I could write it all down as I heard it, because I'm not doing it justice here. But it definitely underscores the difference between America and many parts of the rest of the world, and it shows that even now, despite what the American left and the Eurotrash media says, America is still a shining city on a hill for people around the world who can appreciate freedom simply because they have none.

Post surgery post

So I'm back from a bit of minor surgery to my leg...and back on crutches for a bit. I'm bone tired now, even though it was just done under a local anesthetic so that I could drive myself home afterwards.

I got short notice on this one. I went to see the doctor last Thursday for a recurring infection in one spot under the edge of the prosthesis, and he examined it for about thirty seconds then told me that he wanted me in ASAP to have it cut out and analyzed. And this means that I probably won't be able to put my leg back on until it heals, and maybe not even until the sutures are taken out in a couple of weeks. Freaking great.

So I had a few days to resign myself to being sidelined for a bit. I stocked up on meat, beer, old movies and books, and I'll probably be blogging more than usual. I've also arranged for a neighbor to stop by and walk Murphy a couple of times a day, because he's more than I can handle on crutches right now.

When I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to get a few more things, I used my crutches to get into the store, then tossed them into a cart and hopped along behind it on one foot to get my stuff. All went well except for the one item that I needed that was way down on the very bottom shelf where I had a heck of a time trying to get it. But I'm nothing if not resourceful, so I waited until the first cute gal came along and then looked pathetic as possible so that she'd get the things for me and I could express my gratitude properly and try to talk her into coming over to cook the food. Alas, the one that I selected also had a wedding ring on so the latter part of the plan was a no-go. Just my luck.

Then as I was heading to the cash register, a large woman saw me hopping out of the aisles towards the only register without a big line, and damned if she didn't step up her pace just to get in front of me. Fucking bitch! I mean, it's got to suck to have to stand in line on TWO feet and all, so I can see why she'd want to rush to cut in front of the guy who only has one, but damn...and then I get to watch her unload her food and I understand why she's so freaking fat--it was all crap food--two boxes of Tastykake donuts, a bag of chocolate chip cookies, a bag of potato chips, a tub of ice cream, soda pop...yeah, that was worth making me wait another five minutes. But karma's a bitch, too. When she opened her wallet I saw her ID card with her name on it. Cheryl Tighner, you might want to try a few more fruits and veggies and a a lot less of that sugary stuff. And if you add some exercise a few days a week, maybe people will stop saying "Look out, she's backing up!" every time your pager beeps.

OK, that was mean. But I'm tired and cranky and I don't care. At least I was nice enough not to say anything to her and cause a public scene. Besides, if she'd said anything rude back, I might have whacked her with my crutches a few times. The legal defense would have been easy--I'd have argued that I didn't actually hit her but rather the crutch was just drawn in by her own personal gravitational field.

Sorry, that was mean, too. I'm really tired.

But one thing that did keep me chuckling was when they were digging into my leg, the doctor has this little tool like a soldering iron that cauterizes blood vessels to stop much of the bleeding. Every time he pressed it home, I could hear the sizzle and smell the burning flesh. For some reason, I just kept remembering that old Warner Brothers cartoon about the little indian chasing the moose around his mansion. In one scene, the moose sets him on fire. The indian, not realizing that he's on fire at first, says "Me smell Mohican burning. Me last Mohican...must be me! Yeowwww!"
So when I smelled that smell, I sniffed loudly and said: "Me smell Mohican burning..."

I had to explain that to the Filipino intern and the Iranian nurse, and I'm still not sure that they got it, but the native West Virginian aide laughed as soon as I said it. He grew up on Bugs Bunny like I did and knew exactly where it came from.

And if you don't know--or if you do--here: (Above-referenced funny bit starts at 4:40, but the whole thing's great.)

Shoveling snow with three-legged Murphy

Two days ago, it was 60 degrees here.
Tomorrow, it's supposed to hit the mid-40's again and stay there or higher for the rest of the week.

Today, it's 20 degrees and I have 3-4 inches if wet snow on the ground, the bottom layer being solid ice.

This, coupled with my 100+ foot long, steeply-inclined driveway, does not bode well for my need to get our of here in a couple of hours. My SUV is at the top of that ice slide, and a big ditch sits just across the road at the bottom.

So I went out to shovel the snow off the top, chipped away at what ice I could, and put down 15 lbs of snow-melt salt. Come on, sun. Get to work. I also took Murphy for his morning walk, and along the way, I stopped to talk to two neighbors who were clearing their own driveways.

Now Murphy is normally a nice dog when it's just the two of us. But when I am trying to talk to someone else--on the phone or in person--he acts up because he doesn't want to share my attention.

First he plunks himself down in the snow right between the three of us. Then when that doesn't do it, starts jumping into and out of the snowbank until he gets some ice up between his paw pads, at which point he comes whining to me, hopping on three legs with the iced paw held off the ground. I take his paw, brush the ice out, and resume talking. He goes right off and does it again. And again. Funny how I've never seen this happen when it's just him and I together. But as soon as there's other people in the mix...

Then I walk back towards the house with one neighbor. We're trying to talk but Murphy is now turning and trying to grab the leash from me and turn it into a game of tug-o-war. When I push him back, he jumps at my gloved hands and tries to get my gloves off, or failing that, he grabs my forearm and tries to pull me down. It's all clowning (granted, he's 68lbs and doesn't really appreciate his own strength) but it's also nearly totally distracting, which is, I suspect, the point. Like I said, he never does this unless there's another person around or I'm trying to talk on the phone. He finally got to where he was jumping up in front of me so high that we were almost face to face, and I had to grab him in a headlock, order him into a "sit", and make him hold it as kind of a time-out. At that point, the neighbor went up his own drive, and Murphy reverted back to calm dog again. And even though we walked through quite a bit of ice and snow on the way home, he never seemed to get any more stuck between his paw pads.

Crazy dog.

How times have changed

As we watch today's spoiled youth mock and malign our troops who are in harm's way, and as we recall a generation who came of age in the 60's and 70's who considered it "cool" to hate and spit on our troops and burn recruitment centers, sometimes I need a reminder that it wasn't always that way. There was a time when Americans got behind our troops and our leaders, and back then, a pro-America, pro-war-effort Hollywood actually led the way.

Here's a little gem I found consisting of veteran actor William Frawley (known to many later in life as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo's grumpy landlord Fred Mertz or Bub O'Casey on My Three Sons) leading a movie matinee patriotic sing-along about supporting our war effort and buying war bonds during World War Two.

Catchy, ain't it?
It's ironic that he's dressed as an academic. Maybe those sheltered shitbird Columbia U. kids could learn a thing or two from "Professor" Frawley.

Murphy vs. the Vacuum Cleaner

In this corner, weighing in at 68 lbs...Murphy!
In that corner, wearing the red tank and black hose...the Shop Vac!

These two have been going at it all afternoon. I just wanted to vacuum up the dog hair that's all over the place thanks to you-know-who, but as soon as I switch the vacuum on, he goes bonkers, barking and leaping at the floor wand, repeatedly trying to wrench it out of my hand.

So he wants attention, does he? OK. As he lunges in again, I raise the wand and start to vacuum him with it, figuring that maybe I can cut out the middleman if I just suck the dog hair right off the dog instead of waiting for it to clump up on the floor. Naturally he freaks, shrieking and running out of the room and then turning to bark defiantly from the other side of the doorway. He then runs back in and commences chasing the vacuum around some more, barking loudly as he jumps at it.

OK, fine. I turn the vacuum off and walk away from it, figuring that maybe if I let Murphy wind down, I can actually finish this job. Maybe he just needs a bit of time to get used to the vacuum in it's static state. But no. No sooner do I walk away from the vacuum than Murphy runs up on it, grabs the hose, and begins shaking it, treacherously renewing his attack now that he's managed to take the vacuum by surprise. Clearly there will be no truce between dog and machine today.

I put Murphy outside on the deck so I could finish, but once he was (safely) on the other side of the glass, he began furiously barking and jumping up against the windows, just daring that vacuum to step outside for Round #3.

Finally I brought him back inside and sent him upstairs while I finished up. This actually worked. Once he was upstairs, he took up a position where he could keep an eye on his new nemesis and from then on, he was pretty quiet and I was able to complete my chore.


"I don't know what that thing is, but so long as it stays down there, we won't have a problem."

Saturday Man Movie

In this scene from the 1975 movie Hard Times, Charles Bronson fights bare-knuckle brawls while his fast-talking promoter, Speed (played by James Coburn) sets up the fights and blows the winnings.

In this scene, he's fighting Robert Tessier, a stunt man and former circus performer who was well-known back in the 70's and 80's for his roles as a villain in numerous tough-guy films. He usually played an outlaw biker or other rough, and before he took up acting, he was a paratrooper in the Korean war, earning the Silver Star and a Purple Heart. Robert Tessier died of cancer in 1990, a real man to the last.

PIC means it's all on you.

I was supposed to fly today. I had it all set up with a photographer that I've flown with off and on for a while.

Now I occasionally take passengers up if they want to share the rental costs, usually when I didn't have the money to fly by myself but needed to keep my proficiency up, and I've flown Ansel for a long time. He's a nice enough guy, but lacks any understanding whatsoever of what an aircraft can, can not and should not do. "FAA Minimums", "Noise Abatement" and "Restricted Airspace" are just words to him, and the blue coloring on the sectional charts that highlights the DC ADIZ and Camp David reservations doesn't impress him in the slightest. If he wants a shot of something, he expects to get it and doesn't really care why I'm not willing to fly over certain things or descend to the altitude that he wants.

Well yesterday he called me up and asked if I'd fly for him this morning. I really don't need to any more, but when I heard that he wanted to be up for two hours of flying time, I decided to take him up on it. Hey--two hours is two hours, and it's always been standard that I get to shoot a few touch-and-goes at flight's end.

Morning came, and we'd planned to go early because a cold front was expected through here this afternoon and I wanted to get us up and back down before the weather got here. It was looking good at first--just a slight breeze and no clouds when I headed off to the airport. I'd called the tower and winds were 8 with gusts to 13, however it was almost right down the runway so I wasn't worried. But forty-five minutes later when I met him at the airport, I noticed that the flags were really flapping, and the wind sock was almost straight horizontal. This wasn't any 8-knot wind. Not only that, a line of low, black clouds was visible in from the west, and it appeared to be coming this way. I knew that we'd be flying to the east, and I don't like having bad weather come in from the direction of my airport when I'm up because it means that I will have to buck it flying back and may not even be able to go back at all if it gets bad enough. I told Ansel that it wasn't looking good and tactfully suggested that we think about doing this another day.

Ansel wasn't having any of that, though. He'd blocked out his whole morning to do this and he needed these pictures before the spring foliage started to sprout. And it didn't help that at this moment another aircraft took off.
"Look, he's flying," Ansel said. "Obviously it's safe or he wouldn't be taking off. Let's just go for a bit, and we can come back if it starts to get rough."

I pointed out that the Cessna 310 that had just launched was a lot more aircraft than the rental Cessna 172 that I'd just grabbed the keys for, and I didn't think that his flight plan was going to be a bunch of low-and-slow along a mountain ridge with high winds perpendicular to that ridge. But Ansel being Ansel, he didn't get it. A plane took off to go somewhere, therefore all planes can take off to go anywhere and he wanted his flight.

I switched the avionics on and dialed up the AWOS--the Automated Weather Observing System--and listened to it's current forecast. The first thing I heard was current weather reporting winds now at 10 with gusts of 25-30 knots. I switched off again and took the key out. "We're scratched," I told him. "We can try this again next week, but we're not going today."
As expected, he wasn't happy. "But you just saw that other plane go! Why would he go if it's not safe? Come on--I'm paying, aren't I?"

And suddenly those three letters in my logbook took on meaning: PIC. Pilot In Command.

Yes, you're paying," I said. "But you're paying for the gas. I'm the pilot and I'm responsible for my safety and yours as well as this aircraft, and that means that I make the call. I call no-go for the day. Sorry. Let's try again next week."

I walked back into the office to return the keys and aircraft log, and when I came back out, Ansel was already driving away. He hadn't stuck around to talk to me about next week, and somehow I'm thinking that I won't be getting another call from him any time soon. Oh well. Fact is, I don't need him like I used to--I don't need him at all, actually--and I've reached a point in my life where I don't care to gamble or play games with the weather just to keep a patron happy. And I was vindicated just a short time later. I stopped into a local bar adjacent to the airport for a quick lunch, and when I came back out not half an hour later, the sky was black, the roiling clouds were low enough to touch, and the wind gusts were picking up dirt and gravel from the parking lot. We'd have gotten off the ground all right had I decided to go, but there's no way in hell that we'd have made it back here through that and gotten cleared to land. Ansel may be mad at me right now, but he's actually lucky that I didn't give him what he wanted.

From the "Serves You Right" department...

So this morning, I'm talking on the phone.

Murphy is showing a fair amount of jealousy towards the phone, and when I talk on it and ignore him, I can almost expect him to act up and try to get my attention.

Well this time, as I was talking, Murphy spied a pair of BDU pants on the floor. He grabbed them and began to shake them from side to side.
"Stop that," I said.

"Who, me?" said the lady on the phone.

"No, the dog," I explained as Murphy retreated with the pants in his mouth, taking himself out of my immediate reach. Once safe half-way across the room, he began to beat up the pants again.

But as I strode towards him to recover them, suddenly I head a loud "CLACK!", followed by a surprised yelp from Murphy, who dropped the pants. I grabbed them up before he could get another grip on them, and as I did so, I felt something heavy in the pocket. It turned out to be a loaded 8-round Wilson Combat .45 magazine. Apparently as he was shaking the pants, the pocket containing this magazine had whacked him solidly on the side of the head. I stomped my foot at Murphy, who ran out of the room and took up a post in the doorway from whence he watched me as I finished the phone call.

Ironically, I was on the phone with his new vet, making an appointment for him this afternoon for a basic check-up and micro-chipping.

EDITED TO ADD: Murph got his microchip. And he didn't even flinch as the vet drove that honking big needle into his neck. Now he'll always be identified as my dog. Guess that means I'm gonna have to keep him.

Road-rage, the Liberal version.

So I'm driving home last night. Heading out on the Dulles Toll Road, I note that rush hour traffic seems to be a bit heavier and more congested than normal for some reason. But I can see that way up ahead, traffic is flowing normally, suggesting that whatever is causing the congestion is localized and not to far ahead of me.

Eventually I spot the problem--one small car driving along almost right at 55mph in the far left lane. Thanks to that car, everyone trying to go any faster and use the passing lane to actually pass has to merge right and try to get around the slow one. Basically, this toad is turning a four-lane highway into a three-lane one by denying everyone else in Northern Virginia the use and access of the whole left lane. As a result, the people trying to get around this inconsiderate boob are creating a back-log which is congesting and slowing the other lanes. And the longer this goes on, the worse the congestion gets and the longer the commute home for everyone is going to be.

It's been said that "one monkey don't stop the show", but one chimp sure can mess up the commute for thousands of people.

I finally manage to get up close enough--on the right, of course--to get a good look at this car. It's a Toyota (probably a hybrid) sporting a big Obama/Biden sticker on the rear bumper and a "Vote Democrat" sticker on the trunk. The license plate is one of those personalized vanity tags that Virginia hands out like Halloween candy: DLYKOS. It doesn't take much imagination to figure that one out--the car obviously belongs to a Kos Kid--one of the uber-liberal elite that live and die for the pablum spooned out to them on the leftist Daily Kos website. This freak actually likes that site so much that he/she had it put on their license plate.

As I passed the car, I made out an elaborate blonde hairdo on the driver, but could not tell if it was male or female. But that's probably because most of the Kos demographic is so androgynous that the lines are typically blurred even on a clear day; the females tend to look and act like men and the males are all effeminate sissies.

Now I confess that I'm not above a little "corrective road rage" when faced with self-important morons like this one. The idea that one person feels so entitled and superior that they deliberately jam up traffic for everyone else on the whole road just doesn't sit well with me. And if they're so clueless as to be doing it unintentionally, well then they need a slap sufficient to knock their head out of their ass for the good of the free world. So shame on me, but as I pulled past this lane-hog, I sharply cut left in front of it and tapped my brakes. Wake up, jackass!

The little Toyota's nose dipped as the operator slammed on his/her/it's brakes, and I looked back in my mirror to see if he/she/it would take the hint and move over to a slower lane and let other people use the passing lane to actually pass.

He/she/it did not. Instead, the driver began acting out, flashing the high-beams at me over and over and blowing the anemic little horn that these Toyota's come with. And it wasn't just a couple of times. No, this car started following me, and as long as it was within a hundred yards or so, the lights were flashing and it's horn was going "Eeep! Eeep! Eeep!"

This silly shit went on for over four miles. Seriously--four miles of total loss-of-control by this person just because they got cut off after driving like a douche. Real stable crowd, those Kos Kids...NOT!

Now normally I'd have done something to dissuade someone from sitting off my rear bumper flashing their high-beams at my mirrors. That's not only rude, it can be distracting to the point of dangerous. But in this case, that little Toyota's headlights--which I'm sure are totally environmentally sensitive--just weren't bright enough to constitute an annoyance. I mean, a real American car or truck that has real halogen headlights would have really lit my ride up, but this car's lights were so soft and dim thhat the only reason I knew that I was being flashed was that the lights sort of shifted shape.

Well that and the "eeep, eeep, eeep..." sound that was still coming from it's cute little horn.

I should have been offended and perhaps even irked, but I was just too amused. This car was totally incapable of offering offense even though it's driver was undoubtedly shaking with anger while furiously blowing the horn and flashing the lights, neither of which had the capability to convey the intended outrage. Despite their best efforts, all that this poor person manged to accomplish was to outline and highlight their utter and total impotence. And this was funny to me.

I finally lost the Kos Kid because traffic opened up and allowed me to assume my normal traffic speed and the Toyota's driver wasn't willing or able to keep up. The flashing lights grew less distinct as I put a bit of distance between us and the plaintive "eeep, eeep, eeep..." eventually failed to be heard at all over Mark Levin's show on WMAL. I left it behind, but I noticed that the sad, pathetic little man-child (woman-child?) never once got out of that left lane.

I'm figuring that he/she/it probably went right home and kicked a very effeminate little dog...but not hard enough to hurt it.

Compassion...

Imagine arriving home late after a long day at work, looking forward to collapsing into your nice warm clean bed for a few hours because you have a very short turn-around before having to go back, and seeing that your dog buddy has gotten sick all over his own bed while you were away.

Yes, you could just go to bed and wash that tomorrow, but then your pal would have to go without his bed for the night. Compassion is what makes you spend half an hour hand-washing that bed cover and waiting for it to tumble dry so that your friend can sleep on a nice warm clean bed too.



Or maybe that's just spoiling the dog...I don't know. I'm too tired to think about it.

And this is why many of us choose to own firearms.

New Orleans, LA.

A 16-year-old boy was killed and a 15-year-old boy was rushed to a local hospital in critical condition after they were shot by the occupant of a house they allegedly broke into to try to burglarize, New Orleans police said.

Police were called to the 7400 block of Woodbine Drive about 11:30 a.m. and found the teens shot in the house's backyard, said officer Hilal Williams, an NOPD spokeswoman.

Paramedics pronounced the older boy dead at the scene. He wore gray pants and a hooded purple LSU sweatshirt. They rushed the second boy to a local hospital in critical condition.

According to investigators, the youths cut the power to the house and then threw a brick through a back window.

The burglary victim, who according to a relative is in his early 20s, was sleeping in the house when he heard a commotion, police said. He found the two teens climbing in the window, grabbed a gun and opened fire, police said.

The teens escaped the house through the same window they entered through, but were not able to flee the scene because of their injuries. Another 16-year-old boy who allegedly worked as a lookout was arrested without incident, Williams said

The Orleans Parish coroner's office did not find any weapons on the teen who died, and police could not immediately say whether the second suspect was armed when he was shot.

The victim's cousin, who asked that his name not be used because of safety concerns, said his cousin recently bought a gun for protection.

"I told him not to get it, but he said, 'If I have a gun -- you never know (if you'll need it). It's New Orleans East,'" the cousin said.

One neighbor who stood near the scene said the neighborhood, with its renovated houses and tidy lawns, has recovered well post-Katrina but that home burglaries have been a problem.

Williams said she did not expect police to file any charges against the burglary victim, because he apparently fired his gun in self-defense. However, detectives will discuss the case with the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office to decide if any action should be taken.

In 2006, then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law a bill that protects from prosecution anyone who kills an intruder "who has made unlawful entry into the dwelling ... and the person committing the homicide reasonably believes that the use of deadly force is necessary to prevent the entry or to compel the intruder to leave the premises."

Now I'm sure that by tonight, the families of the dead criminals will be all over the news, sobbing about how the deceased were good boys who were just getting ready to turn their lives around, but the real issue here is that today there is another man alive because he had one of those guns that many of our Congressmen want to keep us from having. Of course none of those Congressmen live in New Orleans East, or comparable neighborhoods with their own districts. Most live in gated communities or other well-heeled, neighborhoods that are far from where most criminals live and boast superior police protection.

But most of us will never be able to afford the level of security that our public servants enjoy on our dime. That's why it's incumbent upon us all to learn how to protect ourselves, and why Congress needs to back away from attempts to deny us the tools needed to do this.

In my case, Murphy's showing early signs of being a good watchdog--real good. But I can't just leave it all up to him. That's why I've invested heavily in quality self-defense training over the years and acquired quality tools that I can bring to bear when things go bump in the night or the patio door shatters.
And it's why I advocate for the gun rights of every other law-abiding citizen of this country, even those so stupid that they vote for Obama and other anti-gun legislators who will disarm them the moment that they have even a scant majority in Congress.

Remember, folks...when seconds count, the police are just minutes away. But when they get there, rest assured that they'll probably write a pretty good report and take lots of neat pictures of the crime scene.

Whether or not your part of that crime scene is up to you.

Saturday Man Movie

In The War Wagon (1967), two lesser hired guns in the employ of dishonest land baron Pierce deliver a message to expert hired killer Lomax, played by Kirk Douglas. They tell him that Pierce is upping the bounty on wronged hero Taw Jackson, played by John Wayne. Lomax was brought into town specifically to kill Taw Jackson for Pierce. But Lomax and Jackson have apparently gotten past the need to kill each other on sight.

The cowboy in the brown jacket doing most of the talking? That's a young Bruce Dern.

I'm so proud...(sniff!)

A short time ago, Murphy was sitting at the window looking out at the world beyond the deck.
Suddenly, he let out a low growl.

"What you got, boy?" I asked, suspecting that it was just another damned cat from the neighbor's house. But part of training Murphy to be a good watchdog is to validate him when he alerts correctly, and check him when he just goes off on cats, so this means that every time he alerts, I have to respond and reward him when he gets it right.

Tonight he got it right.

As I walked over, his growl turned into a full-fledged barking fit. There was a man down by my SUV. Now I recognized the man as Bubba, a neighbor, and saw that he was dropping something off for me in his usual fashion: leaving it atop my SUV instead of knocking on the door. But Murphy, who also knows Bubba from encounters on the street, wasn't having any of that; he was going crazy. I opened the patio door and let him out onto the deck, and he hit the 2x4 deck rails so hard that I expected to hear wood cracking. He then proceeded to jam his head between the rails and barked at this neighbor like I've seldom heard a dog bark before. He was giving it everything he had, and I had to wave Bubba back when he tried to get close enough to reach up and pet Murphy like he's done before. I knew that Murphy was in protection mode, and if Bubba put his hand within Murphy's reach, he'd likely not get it all back. This dog was not playing. Not one bit.

I told Bubba that I'd come down and catch him next door in a couple of minutes after I got Murphy back inside. As he left, I petted and praised Murphy and gave him a dog cookie, because that's exactly what I want to see him do when strangers approach the house. I want him to let me know that someone's there, and if for some reason I'm not around and the stranger attempts entry, I want Murphy to deal with the situation. And this little exhibition gave me good reason to suspect that Murphy's pretty close to getting it. It was obvious watching him that Murphy's not trying to get off the deck to attack, but he's clearly drawing a line in the sand and warning people not to cross it. And I pity the fool who comes up those steps and dares step over the baby gate.


"Go ahead...make my day."

Obama called himself WHAT?!

He dared. He actually dared refer to himself as "The Gipper" today while lamenting the departure of his outgoing Chief Propagandist Robert Gibbs.

President Obama recounts an anecdote about the 2004 Democratic National Convention at White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' final press briefing:

"The most challenging problem was what tie to wear. And this went up to the very last minute. I mean, 10 minutes before we were about to go on stage we were still having an argument about ties. I had bought five, six ties. And Michelle didn't like any of them, Axelrod didn't like a couple of them -- him being one of the best dressed men in the world. So we really valued his opinion.

"And then somebody -- I don't remember who it was -- turned and said, 'You know what? What about Gibbs' tie? What about Gibbs' tie? That might look good.' And, frankly, Robert didn't want to give it up because he thought he looked really good in the tie. But eventually he was willing to take one for the gipper, and so he took off his tie, and I put it on. And that's the tie that I wore at the national convention."

Time out, Barry. Politically speaking, there is and will always be just one Gipper: Ronald Reagan. You are not the Gipper. You pale in his shadow on your best day. Barry, we've discussed your attempts to channel President Reagan (and other real men) in the past. We've discussed it here and we've discussed it here. You'll never be President Reagan or those other men, Barry. They were patriots before they were partisan. They knew what it was like to labor and sweat and sacrifice. They stood up to our enemies and critics because they had spines. They had pride in this country. They even had birth certificates.

You need to stop comparing yourself to your betters, Barry. You ran as "a different kind of President" and in so doing, you made your own bed. So lie in it and savor your high unfavorable ratings and just let the rest of us remember a time when America was led by real men.

And for those who need a comparison, I offer the following.

The Gipper:


The Gypper:


Who would you rather have addressing the world and dealing with those who would do us harm?
Anyone?
Bueller?
Anyone?

Sigh...

So I'm making dinner and Murphy starts to beg. This is an annoying habit that he's developing despite my refusal to ever hand him anything.

Wouldn't you know it, but just as soon as I tell him "no" with a firm voice, I go and drop a fair-sized portion of the food on the floor literally right into his waiting mouth.

Right now, he's probably noting in his "English to Dog" dictionary that "No! Aw, Dammit!" really means "Thank you for your patience. This is for you."

In Defense of President Reagan

Not that our greatest 20th Century President needs defending, but commenter NE posted a few issues that he has with The Gipper, so I felt like responding here in a new post rather than sully the President's commemorative post.

NE said:

Hey, I'm the guy out of my comfort zone reading and commenting on a conservative blog. I don't see much attempt to understand my viewpoints. Other conservative bloggers have have successfully altered my views on gun-control and immigration, so it's not like I'm set in stone. It's better not to use sweeping generalizations that cannot be proven like “most of Reagan's critics are failures” or all liberal policies fail as they tend to discredit your argument.

Perhaps I was being overly dramatic when I said I spent my life trying to undo Reagan's policies. While I do believe he did significant harm to America as president, it is the Reagan myths and simplifications I have worked to eliminate. Reagan presented the world in black and white terms - us good, them bad, deregulation good, government bad. He gave credence to falsehoods like "welfare queens" and short-sightedly supported some truly awful extra-national organizations in a knee-jerk response to communism. That mindset has stuck with us and now we have news channels that just bark talking points at us 24/7. The world is much more complicated and we deserve leaders who speak to American like critical-thinking adults, not children content to clap whenever anyone says a buzzword into a microphone.

So I researched and wrote up a whole big long history of how Reagan systematically worked to dismantle public education in both California (as governor) and the nation as a whole (as president), but it occurred to me that you might not see that as a bad thing. We might need to establish that public education is good thing first. To answer your question, Reagan's education policy is what has affected me the most personally. I see his face in the crumbling walls and moldy textbooks of the schools I volunteer at. I am reminded everyday that Reagan continued to cut the nation's ED budget despite his own commission on education warning against it for reasons of national security. He blamed falling test scores on excessive federal intervention even after several credible studies showed the exact opposite was true. Public education has never recovered, and now we find ourselves struggling to compete globally in a field we dominated for most of the 20th century. If you want to know more on Reagan's education policies I could finish it up and post the whole sad story, or you could pick out another issue and I'll do my best to back up my views on it.

Also,

Social justice is a movement for equity. It is a term used to describe the efforts of many in moving wealth and power from those that have a lot of it to those that have very little. If that concept flashes an image of Karl Marx in your head, it shouldn't, because the basic philosophy is rooted in the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic saint. Social justice has furthered by everyone from Andrew Jackson to MLK Jr.

And by way of reply, NE you say that I don't understand your viewpoints. But it's difficult when you refuse to be specific about what exactly President Reagan has done that has made your life harder. You claim that he's supported some awful extra-national organizations in the fight against Communism, but then you don't say which ones. Are you trying to say that Communism wasn't the scourge and threat to the world that those of us who were here and operating in the adult world in the 1980's remember it as being? I note that you haven't told us yet how old you are, and that's you're right, but it would help to know if I'm talking to a generational peer who, like me, was actually there, or just someone who only knows about those days from reading history books and listening to leftist professors talk about them. Fact is, everyone who was of age to understand in the 1980's knew that Communism had to be stopped, and it was, chiefly by President Reagan and the like-minded patriots in his administration along with our military, which he built back up to credible levels after President Carter gutted it. If you can't appreciate a strong military, it's most likely because you can't remember a time when America needed one, and for that you can thank President Reagan.

You next say that you don't like Presidents who speak to us like children. Well if that's the case, you must be beside yourself with Obama in office. He's always belittling someone for not understanding his greatness or his agenda. But President Reagan never did that to anyone. He was known as The Great Communicator precisely because he was able to explain his plans, ideas and concepts for government to the people of this country in such a way that people understood and agreed. He did not talk down to people like Obama does, nor did he ever insult either his critics or this country as Obama does routinely. President Reagan actually engaged people and talked straight to people, and he gave people reasons to be proud of this country and our place in the world. That's why he was so popular: he was a leader, not a term-limited dictator, and he respected the American people enough to regularly address them, unlike Obama, who generally refuses to do press conferences and never takes questions.

And as for cutting education, well in the first place, there's nothing wrong with cutting the federal government out of what should be a state's task exclusively. As a citizen and taxpayer in the State of West Virginia, I should not be given a bill for schools in California, Texas or anywhere outside of my state. This nation is supposed to be made up of 50 largely sovereign states, after all, not one big kingdom run by a room full of jokers in Washington, DC who don't know jack about the needs and issues of any one state. President Reagan understood that. He also understood that the biggest impediment to schools actually teaching was and still is the teachers' unions. To the extent that his policies weakened those, America owes him a debt of gratitude. However, I doubt that his efforts to take control of the schools away from the unions and the DC bureaucrats back in the 1980's can be blamed for the state of schools today. That's just silly.

Finally, on your bit about “Social Justice” in the form of wealth redistribution—taking from those who earned it and doling it out among those who chose not to bother—that is socialism at it's rawest, and it's something that our country's founders sought to prevent here. You name a few other people—without specific cites again—and accuse them of supporting government-sponsored theft, but that, even if true, doesn't make it right. President Reagan knew that when Americans are free to acquire wealth by hard work and innovation, the whole country prospers and the world is a better place. And the only ones who oppose such things are the ones too lazy to go out and work hard enough to make it, and the Democrats who cater to those lazy ones in exchange for their votes. (Frankly, it's the liberal elites and their followers talking about such "social justice" that spurs gun purchases by the rest of us who worked for what we have and intend to keep it. But that's for another post.)

In summation, even with a Democratic Congress trying to undermine him for eight years, Ronald Reagan gave our country a period of great prosperity and made us safer than we've been at any time since the end of World War Two. He beat the Russians, he checked terrorists and the states that sponsored them, and he brought freedom and democracy to several other nations as well, all while championing greater freedom and independence from oppressive government and cutting taxes here at home. he was also an unabashed Christian and a Patriot. That's why he's remembered so fondly today while lesser Presidents like Carter, Clinton and Bush Sr. are but footnotes in the history books.

It's truly a pity that you weren't here to experience President Reagan's terms firsthand, because they were eight great years for this country, and that was despite the best efforts of the Democrats and the mainstream media, who failed to stop him from restoring hope and pride to every American and making the world a better place.

Blaming Singleton

I was going to post something really profound tonight. I was going to post and respond to NE's latest comment too.

But alas, while out walking Murphy I was waylaid by a neighbor who wanted my opinion on a bottle of whiskey that he'd been given, he not being a whiskey drinker himself.

It was a Singleton single malt, twelve years in the aging. And oh my, was it ever smooth. It might be one of the best Scotch whiskeys I've ever tasted. In fact I had to have a couple more glasses, just to be sure.

But now I don't feel like blogging. And I don't type that well right now, either.

See you tomorrow.

Happy 100th Birthday, Mr. President

On February 6th, 1911, Ronald Wilson Reagan was born. He was an accomplished actor, starring in over 50 films. He was president of the Screen Actors Guild back when Hollywood was filled with patriotic stars who loved America as much as America loved them. (Boy, that's sure changed, hasn't it?) He was a two-term governor of California back when that state was still worth living in. (That's changed, too.)
And he came along when America needed a real leader after four long, dark, depressing years of Jimmy Carter. And he was just what America needed. Grounded in solid conservative principles, he was a strong leader, both domestically and in world affairs. Though the Democrats tried to hobble him for eight years, and the media relentlessly tried to bring him down, he not only survived, but he prospered and he beat them at their own game. He stood up to unions and to the Communists (OK, that's redundant, I know.) He fought terrorists and sowed the seeds of freedom in a number of countries, from Grenada and Nicaragua to a newly reunified Germany. He brought an end to the Cold War, and he made people feel proud to be Americans. He was also adored overseas by people who wanted to be free. Ronald Reagan was an icon who, in my opinion, belongs on Mt. Rushmore right alongside of the other great presidents carved there for all time.

He was a real man, as I've previously pointed out here and here. But he was genuinely warm and charismatic, and he never seemed to care what his hateful liberal critics said about him behind his back. He knew he was right and he went on to make America great in spite of them.

He could be funny.



He could handle hecklers like few other politicians would ever dare:


He could handle Sam Donaldson:


He understood the role of government and advocated liberty and freedom for our citizens.



And he could be forceful in support of freedom of others.


Here he was in his pre-political days, on the old show "What's My Line?"


And here he was at a 1977 roast for Frank Sinatra.


President Reagan was a leader, a uniter, and a role model for a nation, if not the world. He was never bitter or petty, and he was always proud of this great country and it's citizens. Ronald Reagan never had an unkind word for anyone, and he never forgot his place as America's highest public servant. In his eight years as President, he reportedly never ever took his suit jacket off while in the Oval Office, out of respect for the office. Later, lesser men who followed him (the current occupant of that office in particular) could do well to learn from the examples that he set, both as a President and as a man. Ronald Wilson Reagan made America great again, and every great American will always remember him with pride.

Adding to the TTAFM list

TTAFM. Things Taken Away From Murphy.

Every day it seems as if this dog has something else in his mouth that belongs to me. It could be a sock that he's taken from the laundry basket, a glove that he's plucked off the back of the couch, one of my hats...pretty much anything.

To his credit, he never damages any of this stuff. Quite the contrary. Every time, he brings these things to me and gently hands them over on demand, as if to say "with great honor I am giving you this precious gift..."

Today though, he really took it to extremes. I had this tin of Christmas cookies that used to contain assorted types of cookies, each type stacked in it's own paper wrapper much like you'd find around a cupcake. The cookies had been eaten, a few at a time each evening, and now they're gone but he tin is still sitting on the floor next to my reading chair, and not long ago it still had a dozen of these empty paper cupcake-like wrappers in it.

But as I sat here typing just a short time ago, I heard something rustling the tin. As there's just two of us here, the suspect was fairly obvious. "Murphy! Get away from that! Not yours!"

A moment later, he walks into my office with one of the paper wrappers in his mouth. He's not chewing it up though. He's just holding it by the edge.

"Give me that," I say, reaching out to take it from him. He releases it without protest and I put it in the trash can next to my desk.
"Not yours," I say as Murphy turns and walks out.

A few seconds later, I hear rustling in the tin again.

"Murphy..." I say.

He walks in with another one of the papers in his mouth. This time he walks right over to me and waits for me to take it.

I sigh and take it from him. And as I put it in the trash can, he walks right back out and I hear the tin rustling again. WTF? A few seconds later, here he is with a third one.

I take this one away from him and wait to see what he does. Sure enough, he turns around, goes back to the tin, and brings me a fourth wrapper. And a fifth, and a sixth. Every time I take one from him, he goes and gets another one and presents it to me as it it's some sort of gift or offering. He does this nine times, then he suddenly quits.

Hey, where's the last three?" I ask him.

But I guess that he's saving those for another day, because he just plunked down on the floor next to me, his mission apparently accomplished.You want the last three, too? You know where they are. Help yourself.

Saturday Man Movie

Today's Saturday Man Movie revolves around several real men, the likes of which are unknown in Hollywood today. In The Killers, produced in 1964 and adopted from a short story written by Ernest Hemmingway, we see Jack Browning, played by Ronald Reagan--a real man on and off the screen--teaching Angie Dickinson's Sheila Farr to do what she's told.

Obviously that didn't set well with Johnny North, played by John Cassavette (another real man), who, after belting the future best President ever in the mouth, steals away with Dickinson, trying to save her from Browning.



OK, maybe Johnny North should have thought that one through a little better. That Sheila was pure evil and not at all ready to walk away from her meal ticket Jack.

But the movie ends in a way that we could expect from Hemmingway--when confronted by hired killer Charlie Strom, played by Lee Marvin (yet another real man), Sheila throws Jack under the bus too in order to save herself.

So much for that. And lest you think that Johnny North got away clean, his death at the hands of Strom a year ago was the opening scene to this excellent movie.

This suspense-filled masterpiece was Ronald Reagan's last movie before he went into politics, and it was the only one in which he played a villain. For years afterwards, he always expressed regret over that role because he hadn't liked slapping a woman, particularly Angie Dickinson, who was a good friend of his.

Lee Marvin, on the other hand, said that it was one of the movies that he enjoyed the most.

Claude Akins and Norman Fell had roles in this one, too. Definitely worth seeing even after I untwisted most of the plot for you, if only for the star power. This one was vintage Hollywood--not a girly-man like Woody Harrelson or Brad Pitt even allowed near the set.

Flying time again.

It seemed like a nice day, and I need to step up my game a bit in anticipation of a possible long-distance cross-country flight later this year, so I went up for another hop today, taxiing out past the assorted ramp ornaments and hangar queens over on the G side of the field.

Once aloft, I headed east, over towards the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah River, this time singing "Free Bird" loud and off-key.


I did my usual tour about the neighborhood, looking down on all the mere mortals below and wishing that I had something worth dropping on them. This little red-roofed house looks like a great target from here...and me without even one bag of flour!
Heading back north along the Shenandoah, I get to Harpers Ferry, the place where I usually bank left and follow the Potomac River back towards the west. But not today! Today it's off into new territory as I head through the pass and up north to the airport at Frederick, MD.


And there it is, just past the big quarry and Interstate 70--the Frederick airport, otherwise known as FDK. I've never been here before, because the old Washington DC ADIZ used to be in the way. But now that they've shrunk it, I can fly direct without worrying about accidentally busting it.


There's no control tower here, so it's basically every plane for himself. Each pilot in the area announces his position and intentions and in a perfect world, everyone gets along nicely. Today is not perfect, though. There are several aircraft trying to use this field and a couple of jokers doing ILS landings are messing things up for the rest of us, calling in nonsense like "9 miles out on final approach to runway 23" when I'm already on a downwind pattern leg VFR for the same runway. A nine-mile straight-in final with closer aircraft already in the landing pattern? What kind of silly shit is that? But me being nice--and also because I could not see this other aircraft that I knew was coming in, I turned out of the pattern and went around again for "noise abatement reasons". (Two aircraft hitting each other in mid-air makes a lot of noise.) Once the other traffic had landed, I came around again and executed a flawless touch-and-go, then skated on out of the pattern to the west, running back along I-70 towards Hagerstown, and another airport (HGR)that I'd never been to before.
Switching over to Hagerstown Tower (they actually have one there), the first thing I heard was another pilot coming in from the north calling up to ask the condition of reservation P-40, which is the airspace around Camp David. This is an important thing to know, because while the airspace directly over Camp David is always restricted, on those occasions when the president is out there, the restricted zone expands and even an inadvertent violation of this larger restricted zone will result in you seeing fighter jets up close and personal, and typically meeting with Secret Service and the FAA upon landing.
So this pilot calls in and asks the status of the P-40 airspace, and the tower replies with: "P-40 airspace is as published."
In other words, you should have checked your NOTAMS, and if you had, you'd know.
The other pilot replied with: "Uh, P-40 as published. Roger." But he was undoubtedly thinking the same thing that I was thinking, that the Hagerstown controller is a dick of the first order. Yeah, the other pilot should have checked, but still--he was asking for help and the information is important in this area.

A few minutes later, I called Hagerstown to let them know that I was five miles out and request clearance for another touch-and-go. They just told me to call back when I was turning base (the last leg of the landing pattern before final approach) and went back to whatever it was that was more important than paying attention to the Cessna pilot who has never been here before. Well, ok then. I can do that. I set up for a left pattern on runway 27 and headed on in.

They cleared me before I started my base turn so I went on in and put the rear wheels smack on the numbers for a perfect landing--the kind that I can only ever seem to make when I have no passengers or other witnesses.

Once all wheels were down, I pushed the carb heat off, smacked the flaps up, and jammed the throttle to the firewall to take back off again--Oh, look! A DC-3. I love those things!

OK, ADHD on take-off...probably not good. But I got off the ground without a problem, climbed out over I-81, banked left, and headed south for my home field again.

All was good at this time. I got back to my airport, called at five miles, and they set me up for a right base pattern. Uh, surely there must be some mistake, as left patterns are the norm at this field. I called back for a repeat of the instructions, and they confirmed that I was to call back when I was downwind for a right-base pattern. Darn it, guys! All of my landmarks are on the other side of the field. Not only that, a nearby industrial plant is putting up a ton of smoke, and you're making me fly right through it. Thanks for that! But it's their airport, so I fly a right-base, meaning that I fly a clockwise pattern, making all right turns. Once more, I come in and make a nice, no-bounce touchdown on the numbers, and this time I go full-stop and turn off onto the second taxiway, right back to the FBO. Elapsed fight time: 1.8 hours. Much fun!

For the pilots, and the pilots at heart

The US Navy Blue Angels didn't always fly those nifty F/A-18 Hornets that they fly today. Heck, the first time I saw them, they were flying A-4F Skyhawks. Before that, they flew the awesome F-4J Phantom II.

The Blue Angels have been flying jets since 1949, when they began using the old Grumman F9F Panthers.

But before the Panthers--before the day of the jet--from 1946 to 1949, the Blue Angels flew the F8F-1 Bearcat.

And in this video, best watched blown up to full-screen size, the Horsemen Aerobatic Team join the modern-day Blue Angels with a flight comprised of original Bearcats, and special guest Al Taddeo, one of the first Blue Angel pilots.

Enjoy this video as the present meets the past.

AR-15 upgrade (yet again)

I do love these guns. They're so modular that they're almost like Legos for grown-ups. You can always add or change something on them.

In the case of this carbine of mine, I just added a quad rail, replacing the old round barrel handguards. To that I mounted a GPS GripPod on the lower rail. This is a forward vertical grip that contains a pop-out bipod which deploys with the press of a button. Now I'd seen these before and always shrugged them off as a gimmick until I got a chance to try one on Old NFO's way-cool carbine. Once I saw how solid it was as a rifle rest and how handy it was as a foregrip, I just had to have one on my rifle.
I also added a Blackhawk quick-detach sling made special for us left-handed shooters. It's a nice three-point sling, however it came without installation instructions, which meant that I got to spend half an hour trying to figure the damned thing out on my own. (Thanks, dicks!) Other than that minor customer-service screw-job though, it's a nice sling.

Now I have to rant here, because I'm seeing what looks like a trend in tactical gear, that being the lack of instructions or any literature enclosed with the products. The sling had none. The handguard that I bought had none, and lest you think it no big deal, they can theoretically go on four different ways, but they will only fit correctly ONE way. Again, not something that I cared to have to go all trial-and-error about. The Super Sniper scope for my Savage tactical rifle also came with no instructions, and me not being an optics guy, I had to call for help from other gunnies on that one. Bottom line: you gun-stuff companies need to spend the extra quarter or so per item and include at least a basic instruction sheet for those of us who are so old that we're still used to wood stocks, web slings and iron sights.

But back to the rifle. The light is an excellent light made by PentagonLight, however they are no longer in business because a federal court found that they infringed on Surefire's patents. Pity, because I really like this light, and now I'm hosed if I ever need replacement parts for it. I'd also love a click-on/click-off push-button tail cap for it, but I'm not seeing one of those popping up any time soon now.
The optic is a Aimpoint Comp ML3, and I love it, although I wish that I'd gotten the one with the 2 MOA dot instead of the 4 MOA. Either work well, but it's a personal preference thing. It's backed-up by an A.R.M.S. 40L pop-up rear sight, because Murphy (the law, not the dog) can be a real ass-biter when things are moving fast.

It's mounted on a LaRue Tactical mount, and I love their quality products AND their customer service. They don't just send instructions with their product--they send you ball caps and bumper stickers and bottle openers and dry rub BBQ spice!

Oh, and the rifle itself: Assembled by me using Rock River matched upper and lower receivers, internal components from my "spares" box, and a 14.5" heavy barrel tipped with a permanently-affixed muzzle brake that brings it up to the legal 16.5". Basically it was an impulse project--when Obama got elected, I grabbed the receiver components in the rush along with everyone else, and used them and a bunch of extra parts that I had on hand to just build the rifle up for the hell of it. But darn it--I like it.

And the best part about projects like this: Lots of trucks come to deliver stuff. And that makes Murphy happy.

"Send more UPS guys. The last one was delicious!"