Well, &%$#@!

Got home last night to a cold house.  The furnace is kaput.  Thank God we kept our space heaters after our last house had furnace issues.  We already notified the landlord, but it's almost New Year's.  We'll see how quickly an HVAC person can come on by.

As an aside, if you have any kids, get them interested in HVAC.  Calls like this will pay the guy's mortgage.

New Shooter (kinda) report

So, I was spending time with the fam this Christmas, just so y'all know.  Included in that is my step-son, who I hadn't seen since I booted him from the Casa de Rage back in 2012.  He'd kept in touch with his mom over the years, so it wasn't like we were not talking to each other.  He flew in from the Left Coast, where he's been working and adulting for the past few years, and doing a good job on the adulting part.

We did the usual Christmas stuff.  Eat lots of good food, open presents, drink good drinks, etc.  Included in that was a trip to the range, because why not?  He had it in his head that he wanted to try a .357 Magnum revolver.  Specifically the type used by the French counter-terrorism forces, because as he puts it "They shoot them more than any other gun and they still work".  So I found an article on said counter-terrorism forces.  What kind of revolvers do they use?  Well, they have the French MR 73.  Yeah, like we'll be able to find one of those around here.  But wait, what is this?  They also use the Smith and Wesson 686.

Now THAT is doable.

So we go to the local Merchant 'o Death, and we rent a S&W 686.  Buy a box of ammo.  Run the target out to 15 feet, because while he used to shoot with me back when he was a yoot, he hasn't touched a gun since then.  I ran through some of the basics with him:  proper stance, proper grip, breathing, trigger squeeze, so on and so forth.  And he proceeded to do a pretty darn good job of poking holes in paper.  Only a few were outside the lines, and most of his shots were within the eight-inch Shoot-n-See target I'd pasted on to the paper.

And he said he had fun.  Cool.

So, we see him off the next day.  He flies home.  Saturday night, the Mrs. gets a phone call from him.  "Hey, Mom, can I talk to Dave about a gun?"

He's at a gun shop, purchasing a 22LR revolver.  A Ruger Wrangler.  That'll be his practice gun, he says.  He's already looking around for a decent price on a S&W 686, but doesn't want to wait on his dream gun to get to the range again.

One more gun owner for the win!

As an aside, I put another eight-inch shoot-n-see in the head area, ran the target out to 50 feet, and put six rounds through it.  Now I want a S&W 686 with a six inch barrel.  What a sweet shooting gun....

Ave Maria

Go read.  And more importantly, go listen to the video.

You cannot convince me that there's no God.  Not when groups of people can get together and make that music.

Oh damn, I forgot to post something today.

Mea Culpa.  I was out doing family stuff.  Also, art gallery stuff.  There's a Norman Rockwell exhibit in Spokane that the Ragin' Mother wanted to go see, so we went.  I saw one of the Saturday Evening Post covers that I think I'm going to have to buy.



Understand that I play the ukulele, and my dear wife puts up with my yowling and yodeling with much the same look as that young lady in the art up there.  So when I saw this, I just started giggling.  And then I grabbed the Ragin' Mrs and showed it to her, and she started giggling as well.

Your regularly scheduled posts should start back up on Monday.

Random Crap I Like

I enjoy watching Sumo.



I blame my dad, who took me to Sumo matches when I was a yoot.

Sitting on a porch, enjoying a cigar

In the past few nights, I've listened to coyotes howl, turkeys roosting, deer doing that nose-whistle thing they do, and I've seen elk tracks, moose tracks, and of course the random raccoon and porcupine tracks.

Every time I think about driving back to the city, I cringe a little.

Mic drop

Hat tip to Victory Girls



Best quote:  "Let me remind the Virginia Legislature that the people who hid Anne Frank were breaking the law, and the people who killed her were following it."

Damn!

Christ is Born!

Let's upset the WokeScolds

Every time a WokeScold cries, an angel gets its wings!

OK, yeah, but.....

So Boeing's Starliner's failure is being touted as some grand horrible failure that will end the world or something.

Boeing's new Starliner spacecraft landed in the New Mexico desert on Sunday morning — days after the NASA mission failed because the capsule's clock was improperly set, and the capsule ended up in the wrong orbit.

Yes, things didn't go quite right, but the spacecraft landed.  It was recovered.  Folks, space flight is hard.  It's not easy to do what we're trying to do.  And in case anyone wants a little context, the crew of the Apollo 1 mission died.  We've had two Space Shuttles disintegrate; one on take off, and one on landing.  The Ruskies had space craft blow the fuck up with people inside.

So we got a spacecraft that made orbit, landed and was recovered but didn't quite accomplish what people had hoped?  Dude, I'll take it.  Learn from the mistakes and move on to bigger and better things.  Finally.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

The oldies are the good ones.

Light posting for a bit

via GIPHY

I'm sure you understand.

A little secular Christmas music

It doesn't deal with religion, so I can play it before Christmas.  It's not cheating! 

Busy day

And I was busy yesterday, so I apologize for a light posting this morning. 

I haven't posted much on the shampeachment debacle, because there's not much I can say without cursing to the point of my post just being a string of expletives punctuated by a random word like "the" or "and".  And the House, having rammed through their shampeachment because it was so urgent (And somber! And serious!  And sober!  And sad!) have now decided that they're not going to send the Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate because they don't think the Senate is going to be "fair".

In a "fair" world, every single fucking one of those anti-American Democrat bastards would be hung from lamp-posts up and down the National Mall for their crimes against the Constitution.  But we don't live in a just world. 

I agree

Get the hell out of Afghanistan now.

The Taliban rules the countryside. The drug warlords are laughing at us. Our corrupt “allies” are raking in our cash, with trillions of our dollars spraying out of a massive spigot that the beneficiaries don’t want to cut off. But worse, our troops are dying in drips and drabs. Hell, a year ago one of my friends got shot there by somebody pretending to be our ally right up until the moment that turd decided to blast the infidels with a weapon we probably bought him. I do not presume to speak for my friend and I have no idea where he stands on the politics – like all our great soldiers, he’ll go where ordered and do his utmost – but I’m retired and I know where I stand.

I'm still wondering:  What is the objective for our troops in Afghanistan?  Anyone?  Can anyone of you, or anybody from the government that keeps wasting our blood and money in that barbarian shithole, tell me what our objective is in Afghanistan?

I don't think we actually have one.  I think at this point we're just going through the motions.

Afghanistan is a third-world shithole of the worst order.  It's not even a real country.  It's a geographical region filled with nine different tribes of people who all hate each other, but they're surrounded by mountains so the rest of the world calls them a "country".  They'll never be a functioning country, because they'll never have a functioning society as long as it's just nine musloid tribes all fighting each other, and that ain't gonna change any time soon.

You really can't trust any of the tribes, because they don't think like we do.  They don't have the same concept of "Honor" or "Integrity" that we do.  You can't function with them because they don't have the same mindset about business dealings that we do.  And quite frankly, unless we're willing to flatten the country, destroy their barbaric society, erase their quaint habits (like raping little boys for fun, stoning women to death, etc) then they're going to continue being a third-world shithole of the worst sort no matter how much blood or money we spend trying to change them.

Get out.  Get out now.  And if the terrorists come back, just bomb their houses into craters, and flatten their families into dust.  Stop wasting America's best on a country that doesn't deserve it.

I got nothing this morning

I do feel better than I did yesterday, so at least there's that.  I don't know what is going on with my gut, but yesterday was bad for that as well.  Today is much better, although as I was stumbling towards the commode after waking up I ripped out a good long fart that released so much gas I could feel myself deflating.  I'm pretty sure that's not normal.  On the plus side, I no longer have to use a scraper to get the paint off that section of the hallway.

I have been constantly amazed at how partisan the media in this country is, and I see it driving straight off a cliff as more and more information from the IG report comes available.  Every time you think it can't get any worse, it gets worse.  And of course people aren't being held to account for the crime that were committed, and the slander and lies that were spewed.  Does anyone actually think that the criminals at the FBI who forged documents will be held accountable?  Does anyone think that the people who ruined the lives of various Trump associates on trumped up charges will be held accountable?  Does anyone think that the multiple criminal acts will be punished?

Hell no, we don't think that will happen.  Which is why Civil War 2 is coming, because a government that protects criminals and punishes the law abiding makes a war inevitable.  When the law becomes tyranny, resistance becomes mandatory.

Anyways, it's off to another fun day at the salt mines.  BACK ON YOUR HEADS!

(Y'all have heard that joke, right?)

Ouch

I woke up this morning with a screaming headache, centered right at the base of my skull.  The Mrs. rubbed my back down with an analgesic, but even that didn't work.  I had to take pills to get the pain to go away.

I hate taking pills.  I really, really hate taking pills.  I eat gummy vitamins just so that I don't have to swallow any pills.  But today, I took some pills. 

The worst part is I don't even know why this happened.  This "age" thing isn't turning out quite like I was promised.  I have random pains that just crop up.  I'm losing my hair, but I still can't grow a beard (Thanks Dad, for that little genetic quirk!)  And now headaches out of nowhere that are damn near incapacitating.

What the hell?

Alexandria Bigtits McDonkeyChompers is the gift that keeps on giving

Kinda like herpes.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has stepped in it again, this time on Twitter, by posting a whining complaint about all the healthcare options she has, or something, and slamming Obamacare by accident. "Members of Congress also have to buy their plans off the exchange. They are Gold plans that are partially subsidized. That means I get to "choose" btwn 66 complex financial products. This is absurd. No person should go without healthcare, & no one should go through this, either."

Bigtits McDonkeyChompers has always been a couple cards short of a full deck, but ever since her handler had to leave after getting his caught with his hand in the cookie jar, she's devolved into almost a parody of Marxist rhetoric combined with ignorance and arrogance.  She's making six figures and whining about having to pick from sixty-six different Gold health care plans.

She's so out of touch with this country that I really don't think she'll ever be able to get in touch.  She doesn't even speak the same language, metaphorically speaking.  She's clueless. 

Washington Swamp Dwellers crying is good for America.

The Swamp Dwellers at the Bureau of Land Management won't be able to rub shoulders with lobbyists any more.  Bo-freaking-hoo.

Opponents of the Trump administration’s plan to break up the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the country’s public lands bureau are warning of a brain drain, saying many staffers who are being reassigned are opting to quit rather than move out West.
U.S. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt defended the move Friday.  

Opponents have projected that the number of Bureau of Land Management staffers agreeing to move from headquarters could be as low as 15%, which Bernhardt said was “not consistent with what I’ve seen.”

I just took an informal poll of every Active Duty servicemember I've ever served with, and they all told me that they don't give a shit what some sniveling little swamp-dwelling bitch thinks about moving.  They could lose every employee they have in the move, and I'd say the entire bureau would still be greatly improved.

You do not need the entire department of any US government agency consolidated in D.C.  In this day and age, I don't even need to be at my unit in order to do my job - I should know, as I've worked from home, from vacation, from other TDY trips, etc.  I can do my job from anywhere.  I'd prefer to do my job from the middle of an isolated mountain with an enclosed and heated cigar smoking area, but the Army hasn't seen fit to provide me with that yet. 

Still, the point remains that the only reason to keep all these people in Washington D.C. is to make sure they can rub elbows with all the right rich and politically connected people who they really answer to, instead of answering to we the People.  We Normal Americans, who are quite honestly sick of their bullshit.  I hope none of them make the move.  I hope it's a clean sweep and we get all new people from the heartland of America moving in to those jobs.  Let the Swamp Dwellers stay in the swamp and stab each other in the back for the reduced numbers of gummint jobs that remain.

Third Sunday of Advent

Not all Advent music is cheerful.  This is a season of preparation, after all.