When I lived in the Midwest, I hated tree squirrels.

As far as they were concerned, they owned the yard and I was just there to present new, entertaining bird feeders that - no matter how apparently foolproof - could not stop them. This was suburban Detroit, so I couldn't shoot them with anything louder than an air rifle. And as I learned, shooting them didn't keep them out of the feeders because they had more squirrels than I had time.

Something like this did, just occasionally, inhabit my fantasies...



As Evyl Robot learned, lots of people who don't like squirrels have YouTube accounts.

These kids today...

Oy, how I wish I'd brought my camera.

Today, being Tuesday, is a normal shit-shoveling day. And I was sitting at the 'pooter this morning, waiting for it to warm up a bit before I took the boys to Gitmo and went and did my thing when I got a call from J, one of the people I shovel shit for. He told me both he and H would be away, and that I should just give Comet the Colt a miss.

He said that for good and prudent reasons: Comet the Colt, who used to be afraid of his own shadow, is growing up. There's some testosterone flowing down in that massive plumbing, and when he's with people he wants to play. And by play I mean fight. For some weeks, J has been concerned that I'm going to get hurt.

Now, I ain't 'fraid of no colt. If I'm on my game Comet can't hurt me. But it is difficult to do two things at one time: Shovel shit and watch to make sure that Comet isn't rearing up behind me to kick my spine out through my sternum. Which he has tried. So I figured I'd just see what kind of mood he was in before I entered his enclosure, and sure enough when I did he was full of piss and vinegar. I'll admit that I have occasional visions of ending up like that guy in the last few episodes of Deadwood, laying there staring at the sky with my head caved in and nobody around to know. Uncle Murphy knows where I live. So I decided to come back to him later.

After cleaning up behind the mares, I had another job to do. J's been concerned, after last summer's wildfire scare, about all the junk wood near his fence line. He offered to pay me to clean it up and get it away somewhere. So I brought the trailer with me, and after the mares I went out and started filling it with junk. Some of it is useful for stovewood, but most is just shattered wood that got bulldozed out there years ago when J hired somebody to clear his ridge for building, and it's been laying there half-buried with dirt ever since. It's an enormous mess, I've been working on it off and on for weeks and I didn't charge him enough. But I'd been doing that for maybe forty-five minutes when H came home and moved Comet into the round pen for me. And she wanted to show me his new trick.

There are horses that like to play with toys, and horses that don't. Comet has always been one of that first kind. So a week or so ago, while he was in the round pen, she introduced him to this big inflated "yoga" ball. And she wanted me to see how he behaves with it, because he's a trip.

She threw the ball into the pen. He took one look and went nuts. He reared, he bucked, he did that thing broncs do where they hop up and down all stiff-legged. He butted it. He kicked it. He loved that ball.

And then he landed one hoof right on top of it, and it deflated in a big puddle of plastic. Show over.

She says she has ordered him one that's made for horses, somewhat more durable. I hope it is.

Hey, I take my celebrations where I can find them.

The weather forecast promised thick clouds and snow for today. So naturally it's gorgeous: No smallest cloud in the sky, mild weather, not a breath of wind.

Good thing, too. I needed to collect wood.

Having done that, it was time to play. I'm celebrating today, because I finished a gig that finally allows me to pay off M for the case of AK ammo he picked up for me, for which I was subsequently unable to pay. Which meant I could only go and sadly look at it from time to time.

Well, I don't actually have the money yet, so I haven't opened the case. But I know it's coming, and that means I can be a little less parsimonious about popping caps. To the range, go!

Synchronize your watches, For The Children!

H/T to Balko, who wins today's Internets with the best headline.

Whew! Dodged that one!

So I see this article titled, "Analyst Predicts Fisker's Demise," and my eyes see that as "Fiskars," and for a second there I thought I'd missed out.

Because I want one of these:

And really don't know what I'd do with one of these.

A few years ago M got this kewl little hatchet, which he never uses and I sort of appropriated for splitting kindling. For what it is, it's a great tool.

My neighbor J has one of those big Fiskar axes and thinks it's the greatest thing evar. Me, I use an old axe head I found laying out in the boonies, and it holds a good edge and works fine so I'll probably never replace it. Always wanted one of those fancy ones, though...

Holy Mackerel, Andy!

Okay, so here's Round Four in the on-going soap opera, "Teach Joel How to Bake Bread"

I've been using a recipe for white bread found in an old Good Housekeeping cookbook, and slavish adherence to measured portions has not been my friend. In the previous three cases, the dough came out way, way too dry. This time I went crazy with the warm milk: The book calls for 2.75 cups, and I used 3.5 cups plus the liquid in the proofed yeast.

The result was bread dough that actually behaved like bread dough - a much better texture than before. I also took precautions against low temperatures, cranking up the wood stove until I was down to a t-shirt, rising the dough in the warmed oven with a pot of hot water to help maintain warmth and humidity.

Before the first rise...

Holy Mackerel, Andy! After the first rise.

I punched down the risen dough, divided it in two, and put it back in the (re-warmed) oven for its second rise...

Yike. I've a feeling I just used up all my yeast's good karma.

Into the oven for baking...

Well, they look better. In this case, I apparently had some uneven temperature in the oven, because one of these loaves could have cooked a little longer.

This time I ended up with loaves that were plenty wide and not high at all. Probably things would have worked out better if I had some bread pans - I do have one, and wish I'd used it yesterday as a "control loaf." As I feared, the bread barely rose at all during baking so it may not have made any difference.

Texture is far better than before, but still denser than I want. I'll keep working on it.

Well, at least he's honest about being dishonest...

H/T to Borepatch.

And once again, thanks to some asshole...

...I get ready for what might turn out to be a bad day.

In the name of philosophical purity, I usually think Thomas Hobbes was wrong about everything - including what he had for breakfast the day he wrote his drivel.

And sometimes, in the name of honesty, I think he wasn't all that wrong.  Some guys just won't rule themselves.  And that's why I'm gonna spend my day festooned with this shit.

In the bathroom of the Lair there's a big bag of dog food.  And on the bag there's a picture of a Golden Retriever.  And I sat on the throne this morning and looked at that damned picture, and that got me to thinking about Magnus.

Magnus and I only lived together for a year and a half.  Every morning he was the first thing I saw when I woke up, because he always knew when I was waking up and he was always there, waiting for me to greet the day properly by giving him lovin'.  And every waking moment of every day of that year and a half I knew someday soon I'd have to kill him.  Because he had a brain tumor, and someday he's stop shaking off the convulsions, and they'd really start to cripple him, and then we'd have to give him mercy.

Now, I loved that dog like a combination idiot son and idiot brother. And I knew I was going to kill him, and that I wouldn't hesitate because when I killed him it would be the kindest, most loving thing I could do - and I wouldn't do it a moment before that became true. And when the time came, we killed him. Landlady was there, and Claire, and me. I still miss that dog, but I don't regret killing him, because I loved him and it was time.

And this morning I was thinking about that, and I went out of the bathroom, and I checked my rifle magazines, and one wasn't full, and I got my ammo can and I filled the magazine. And I thought that today I might have to kill more dogs, and that it wouldn't be in the same spirit as the time I killed Magnus. Oh, I don't hate the dogs.  I'd let them live if I could. But I can't. I've got friends and neighbors and animals of my own, and none of them did a thing to deserve these dogs.  So today I'll walk around locked and loaded, and part of me will hope I find the ferals and part of me will hope I don't.

And if I meet the asshole who started all this, I won't hurt him.  But he's the only one I'll want to hurt. Just for proving Thomas Hobbes wasn't completely wrong.

Sarcasm: We Haz Sum

Hee...

From now on our police will have the means to turn the hum drum work of small town policing into an exciting war mission. When they bust some friends playing poker they will no longer be the annoying busybodies and pompous party poopers ruining a good time – they will be fighting an organized crime gambling ring! When they bust consenting adults buying and selling marijuana flowers they will no longer be the hypocritical enforcers of the state’s alcohol monopoly – they will be soldiers on the front line of the drug war, just as important as any DEA agent in Mexico. And of course they will be worshiped as war heroes when they use their vastly superior numbers and arms and armor and armored vehicles to crack down on these unarmed scoundrels who offer no resistance, very brave war heroes whose courage will be unmatched and unquestioned.

H/T to Unc.

And amid a flurry of text messages, we're back to "FERAL."

A pack of pit bulls just killed a neighbor's cow. The ones I saw were very like pit bulls.

My dog-o-meter dropped from "feral" to "stray" last week, and now it has returned to "feral." Not to mention "shoot on sight."

For the dog-lovers among us, sorry about that. The local puppy mill is still the most likely culprit. Years of legal maneuvering having accomplished nothing, now we're getting property damage and cattle mutilations from runaways.

Bother - I'd just stopped carrying a rifle everywhere I went, and now this.

UPDATE: Well, one bit of uncertainty is put to rest: It's definitely the puppy mill. Maybe now, after years of trying to get him to, the guy will finally shut down. Meanwhile the whole neighborhood is running around with rifles. If I had some blaze orange vests for the boys, I think I'd make them wear them now.

Oh, and according to the eye witness there were NINE DOGS in the pack that got the cow. I'm not only carrying the rifle, I'm carrying the bag'o'mags.

The sort of thing I get up to at three in the morning

CAUTION: The following content almost certainly will not help you get through any part of your day. You Have Been Warned.

When living close to the edge, everything becomes about resource management. You've got this much stuff, and to get through a day you have to expend some of your stuff.  If the amount of stuff you have is greater than the amount of stuff you must expend in a day, then you're okay - for that day. If the opposite is true, you have a problem to be solved. So: Let S represent Stuff. I possess S in the amount of x, and must expend it in the amount of y.

S^x > S^y = Cool!

S^x < S^y = Ah, Shit

Of course this equation can be scaled for any desired time period, because only an idiot would plan essential resources one day at a time if he had a choice. But you get the idea.

Oh, well if Hillary said it, it must be true.

See, I've been ridiculing the whole "global warming" thing because if Inconvenient Al said it it must be a lie. But this is completely different.

Faulting the world for not doing enough to fight climate change, the United States on Thursday announced the formation of a coalition to cut short-lived pollutants that speed up warming and harm health.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the coalition of the United States, Bangladesh, Canada, Mexico, Sweden and Ghana will launch a global drive to curb black carbon (soot), methane and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).

The chief US diplomat said such pollutants survive only a short time in the atmosphere -- unlike long-lasting carbon dioxide, the main climate change culprit -- but account for more than a third of global warming.

"We know that in the principal effort necessary to reduce the effects of carbon dioxide, the world has not yet done enough," Clinton told an audience at the State Department that included envoys from the coalition countries.

I now fear the dreaded short-lived pollutants, and vow to do my part. I'm going to cork Little Bear's ass as soon as I log off here. It Takes A huge government program Village!

Sit back, close your eyes and inhale the irony of this.

Made in the USA: Georgia factory exports chopsticks to China

The best part, the cherry on top, is the very first part of the very first sentence.

Hope and change, baby. Hope and change.

Y'know, when people first started talking about this thing called the "world wide web..."

...it was most frequently in the context of denouncing it for the ease with which it brought this other thing called "porn" into the household.

Naturally, I just had to try some of that. But I must have been going to the wrong places on the "web," because what I found was mostly advertisements for porn. There were plenty of those.

I can only conclude that there are still lots of people out there like me. Looking over TUAK's stats, by far the most-viewed post in the blog's history is this one. By FAR. In a million years, you'll never guess the search term that brings people there.

Or maybe you will, but I'll give you a hint anyway. It has nothing to do with cats or firearms. :P

I dunno how you're gonna get missiles on them if they're that small.

From the "it would be really bad if Bush had done this" department, this:

As America’s drone war begins a new surge in Pakistan, the U.S. House and Senate have both approved the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization Act bill, a bill which would pressure the FAA to weaken rules currently in place on domestic drone authority, and allow American skies to be filled with tens of thousands of drones.
If the new bill becomes law, up to 30,000 drones could by flying in U.S. airspace by decade’s end. The Senate passed the bill by a 75-20 margin. Civil liberties groups have spoken out on the measure, stating the new legislation offers no restrictions on drone surveillance operations by police and federal agencies and could put us on track toward a “surveillance society.”

Too late to worry about that, but there's still plenty of time to think of all the ways a guy could have fun with this. I mean, even if it were shining big bright lights in my bedroom window at omigod-thirty, I'd never do anything to a police chopper because it'd probably land on somebody who didn't offend me. But a drone? Fair game, baby!

If I were a ham, I'd already be looking at frequencies and thinking directional jammer. But I'm not: I'm a shooter, and the only thing that comes to mind is...

PULL!

Hey, who told winter it could intrude?

I've been having this idyllic non-winter, when suddenly...

Y'know, rain is okay and snow is okay, but sleet is just half-hearted snow. And sleet, interspersed with rain, is what I got all morning yesterday. Yeesh. Finally, in the afternoon, it settled down to some serious wind-driven snow which is somehow not nearly as objectionable. It never really got very cold. It was just gray and wet and miserable, like the desert isn't supposed to be.

And by nightfall it was getting me down. Well, that and the fact that I spent most of the day reading The Source, by James Michener. Easily the most depressing book I've ever read, and I've read the screenplay to Stalingrad. Every evil the Jews ever brought on themselves or suffered from others, all distilled in the history of one fictional archaeological dig. Yeah, great choice there, Joel.

So come the evening, I made cookies. Hell, even I can do that.

And I felt better. Fatter, anyway.

Then! Ha! Just as the sun went down, the dark heavy clouds that had oppressed the day all day long suddenly parted like a curtain. Just in time for the nighttime temperatures to crash. Hat trick, Uncle Murphy! Mazel Tov!

So this morning there is literally not one single cloud to be seen in the sky, but hoarfrost everywhere. I ain't goin' out there.

Wait. Ron Paul's a whacko, okay, I got that. But...

... I'm supposed to take this douche seriously?

One of the things I will talk about that no President has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said, “Well, that’s okay. Contraception’s okay.”

It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also [inaudible], but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act.

Hey, Rick? I'm gonna talk about something that no president likes to talk about, too. Like which version of the constitution - which contains the president's rather limited job description - you're using to justify becoming the nation's archbishop.

Is that the King James constitution? The Douay constitution? Pretty sure it's not the Good News constitution...

I just got the news...

While I was clicking on the post below, my inbox beeped at me. I got an email from an old internet friend, longtime freedom-lover and delightful activist Iliolo Jones. Her husband Douglas has been fighting cancer for many months, and died a week ago.

Iliolo, I've followed your Caringbridge journal for some time, though I don't think I've ever had anything to say on it. I'm so sorry for your loss, and honor the way you stuck with him.

Rest in peace, or safe journey, or ... well, whatever happens next I wish the best of it to you.

Okay, who did this?

Was this something you actually put time into? Or does YouTube have an app for that?

I ... GUESS I'm flattered...

Trying to Perform One Complete and Complex Thought, and Remember it...

Just something I scrawled in my notebook this morning, while waiting for the power to come up. I'll check back later and see if it's gibberish.

Whenever you meet somebody who wants to tell you about your "duty" to something you didn't specifically sign up for, be aware that you're dealing with someone who cannot be trusted. It doesn't matter if all his other viewpoints coincide exactly with yours. He is a liar and a thief, and the thing he's trying to steal is you. Do Not Trust This Man. Nobody decides what your duty is but you.

Do you want to know where my country is? My country is located an inch or two under my sternum, and it consists of myself and the people I really care about, and I could count those people on the fingers of my hands. Those are the people I would die for, maybe for reasons I wouldn't even choose to discuss with them. That's my country. America is just the place I happen to live. I don't have anything against America, the place or the people. In fact I kind of like them. But I despise every aspect of America's government. As for those who somehow equate America with its government, as though whatever the government happens to want must necessarily be what every American wants, to those people I don't have anything to say at all. That attitude is so unamerican, it's clear somebody hasn't been paying attention.