QoD - Campaign Ad Edition

Just once I'd like to see one of these commercials where you actually hear the script get crumpled up and the voice-over dude yell "No! That's retarded! I refuse to read it!"

Partisan, Schmartisan. This is funny.

Though that bit about GW and "low taxes" - you might want to to raise the shade of somebody who was in the Whiskey Rebellion and get his take on that. But I'm quibbling. Still funny.

Hey, remember Officer Bubbles?

He was the brainiac who busted somebody for blowing bubbles at him. On video. While maintaining an ill-considered Facebook page. Yeah, that Officer Bubbles.

Guess who's suing YouTube?

Josephs received the nickname after a video showed him telling a young female protester that she could be arrested for blowing bubbles.

“If the bubble touches me, you're going to be arrested for assault," he told her. “It's a deliberate act on your behalf, I'm going to arrest you.”

The officer is suing the website over cartoons which he claims depict an officer resembling him abusing police power. Cartoons have surfaced showing a policeman arresting such people as Santa Claus and Barack Obama.

Way to let them sleeping dogs lie, Bubbles. Rotsa Ruck.

Good News - Bad News...

Good News - Today I cleaned out my Mr. Heater and - unlike last year - it works just fine!

Bad News - Today I felt the need to fire up my Mr. Heater.

Oh, we're SO into the Silly Season...

So there's this guy named Joe Miller. Okay so far? And Joe Miller is running for some political office somewhere. Nothing wrong with that, I mean, who isn't? And Joe Miller, like the approximately 300,000,000 other political candidates currently infesting the United States, isn't exactly a household name. Because nobody cares who the hell Joe Miller is. Do you name your cockroaches?

Naturally, what Joe Miller figured he needed, since he was so damned important and all, was a security team. The way you get to be important, in these United States, is to be followed around by a couple of beefy guys in ill-fitting blazers and earpieces. With luck, they'll hurt somebody and you'll get some national ink.

A few days ago, Joe Miller's fifteen minutes began. First, he hired out a school meeting hall and had himself a "Town Hall Meeting." That's something important people do; I've considered it myself. Alas, Mr. Miller failed the First Law of Public Gatherings: Tell your security goons not to rough up newsies, even if they're acting like A-holes. Because - and many generations of American politicians will back me up on this - newsies frenzy like sharks. And you're the chum, Chum.

So today I learn from - well, basically everywhere - that Miller's security goons have some 'splainin' to do to their superiors in the U.S. Army, in which they are in Active Duty status. This may or may not prove to be a problem for them, depending on whether their candidate is a Democrat and/or likely to win the election factors nobody seems very clear on.

Quoting Radley Balko here:

Hmm. Inflated sense of privilege. Inability to admit a mistake. Doubling down as it becomes increasingly clear he screwed up. Miller's looking more and more like a U.S. Senator by the hour.

But that's not the funny part. The funny part is that Joe Miller, like every other politician not taking campaign funds from La Raza, is "in favor of doing something about border security." His idea as to a good example of this suggests that he's unaware of the SECOND Law of Public Gatherings: Ban Recording Devices.



Yeah, Baby. If East Germany could, we could. Of course, East Germany wasn't being coy about the objective of its border security policy, which was to keep people in...

I'm gonna go ahead and guess he's praying for his fifteen minutes to be over, real real soon. With luck, footage of Christine O'Donnell sacrificing an infant in her latest black sabbat will emerge immediately.

Naturally they thought they were cops...

They wore masks, kicked in the door, and shot somebody for no good reason.

Three men posing as agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives kicked their way into a home in Whistler, killed a 31-year-old man and held four others at gunpoint early Wednesday, Prichard police said.

Of course as Uncle points out, the tip-off should have been the lack of dead dogs...

Don't criticize the ignorance of others until you know what they're talking about.

Um...

Boys and girls, do you know what happened in 1773 - that people in the Tea Party movement might find relevant?

Well, don't tell Daily Kos.  They're having fun feeling smarter than Palin.

This gun even sounds ugly.

It's literally ugly in the dark, since that's where I first saw it, and my instant reaction was, "Dear God, what is THAT?"

M got roped into selling some guns for a friend - the only person I've ever met who actually may have too many guns, because he's quite out of places to put them all and that includes several CONEX containers - and while he was rummaging around in a backpack for the wheelgun he'd brought for me to look at, this...thing...came out.

"Dear God, what is THAT?"

M looked a little embarrassed and a lot disdainful.  This is a guy who can give an hour's disquisition on Finnish machine guns at the drop of any hat, and will. This is a guy who knows the type of Wehrmacht stamp on that historic Hi-Power. The pistol should have dissolved in his presence.

"Oh, it's a Hi Point." Then he rapidly changed the subject.

It was so ... I was almost afraid to touch it at first. But...well, you know. Izza gun. It made a hollow, rattling noise as I picked it up, or when I moved it to any new angle. I'd thought, till that moment, that I'd seen cheap and cheezy. But this... It was fascinatingly ugly. If forced to go on Jihad with this gun, any Mujahideen would shave his head and become a nun instead. I would allow a rattlesnake to bite me on the throat, rather than undergo the humiliation of shooting it with this gun. No machine tool should have survived the embarrassment of being involved in its construction. It's just ...

Wow.

Slow down advancing your technology. We're having a hard time bugging it.

*ring*

Hello?

Hi, is this the phone company?

Yeah. Who's this?

This is the government. We need you to sort of slow down on the infrastructure enhancements.

Why is that?

See, we have a lot on our plate right now. We can't just start shoving experts and coders to keep up with you. How do you expect us to catch Bin what'shisface or McVeigh II if you guys keep moving the back door? Frankly, we're a bit of a loss as to how to listen in on your subscribers through your labyrinth of constantly changing series of tubes.

Oh, you mean you need us to cater to your incompetence.

Exactly.

I've found my candidate!

Of course I'd have to move to NY to vote for him.  The chances of this happening rival those of my being annointed by acclamation Grand Dragon of the Black Muslims.

But still - If I were in NY I'd vote for this guy, just to be annoying. Introducing, for your political pleasure, Jimmie McMillan of the The Rent is Too Damn High Party.

Also, I'm totally cutting my beard that way. Haven't seen one of those since the 'sixties.





ETA: Of course it's still barely possible that the incumbents have a chance:

Battery Minder Update...

Well, this morning the solid green "charging" light became a blinking green "maintenance (floating)" light, so I dug out my multimeter to see where we were.

Hm. Could be better. It read 12.84 when I first disconnected the minder, and swiftly dropped into the 12.7 range. After the battery has had a chance to rest, I've a feeling it's not going to be too pretty. This may take several applications.

Who's been spying on me?

Seen at TJIC.  Click for embiggenment.

On the subject of off-grid electrical component prices...

As I mentioned a few days ago I sort of let the magic smoke out of my Lair's inverter. This was both a matter of bad timing (I really thought I was ready to bring all the cabin's electrical on-line) and good timing (I was about to celebrate by buying a pistol.) But it has also provided an education in what things cost.

Virtually everything in The Secret Lair's electrical system is scrounged. The solar panels came from an old cattle-watering station. The batteries are "reconditioned" from the Landlady's old set, as is the charge controller. The inverter and (oops) breaker box came from old RVs.

I'm still looking for another breaker box, but the loss of the inverter got Landlady reaching for her Blackberry. An appallingly brief session of Amazon-fu gave her a line on a brand-new unit, half-again bigger than the old one (which was showing signs of not wanting to run power tools anyway) for less than a hundred bucks. Cool!

For a short time on Saturday night I thought I would be asking Landlady to cancel the order, because SurvivalDave told me he had an inverter he didn't use and was willing to sell me. It had been around, unused, for about five years. When I told him what I was paying for the new one, he got very quiet. I'm afraid he's stuck with his $500 1000-watt inverter.

But everything is coming down. Solar panel manufacturers are toying with one dollar a watt. Batteries are still high (battery technology is the great disappointment in everything off-grid) but inverters and charge controllers are far less expensive than they were when Landlady and T installed their first attempt at a system.

In more ways than one, it's a pretty darned good time to leave the grid.

Ranting Joel is On the Loose!

Okay, This is going to be a philosophical and political rant. So those of you who are bored by such things, please feel free to click down. I won't be offended.

I just read another earnest gun writer, telling me all about my "second amendment rights." I hate that. It makes me angry. I know I'm being touchy on this point, but NOBODY GIVES ME MY RIGHTS. Not even dead white guys in wigs.

It's not about the second amendment. That's the first thing that stops me from reading further in 90% of the pro-gunowner articles I ever read. The writer insists that we have the right to keep and bear arms because the second amendment gives it to us, or (if he's a little more on the ball) at least confirms the constitutional right.

But it's not a constitutional right. Or at least if it is, that right is completely redundant. It's not about the second amendment, and it's not about the constitution.

It's about being a mature creature.

Every mature creature on earth carries its means of self-defense with it at all times. Some are only weapons in the final crisis, or if an attacker more-or-less commits suicide as with a porcupine or a stonefish. But no matter how inoffensive the creature, it has some means of defense. It may not work, but it's by god there.

A bunch of TUAK readers have dogs. Dogs can be the goofiest, friendliest critters on the planet. But from mastiffs to chihuahuas, they've got teeth in those bonecracker jaws and if you push them far enough they'll be happy to demonstrate.

It's a little-known fact that most cats are natural-born long range snipers, and many have achieved high levels of expertise.

Seriously, have you ever been bitten by a cat for real? I lost the use of my left thumb for almost three months, and you better believe I let him go right away 'cause it was the only way to get him to.


Even rabbits have teeth, and will cheerfully bite you with them. That's not counting the claws at the end of those piledriver rear legs. Of course they'd much rather run away, but...

Not all these defenses really do much good. A mouse will sometimes attack a stalking cat, but the cat's still gonna eat the mouse. Still, there they are. It's the one visible sign that tells an adult from an infant. Weapons.

Humans kinda got shortchanged in the natural weapon department. We have hands that can strongly grasp, but no claws to speak of. Our teeth and jaws are a joke. We can't run worth a damn. Yet we're at the very tippy-top of any food chain you care to mention, because we've got one enormous advantage. Some animals are tool-users, but only humans are tool-makers.

And by this we conquer.

Now, at the risk of being accused of speciesism, I really have no problem being a member of the baddest-assed species on the planet. But I'm not going to pretend I'm some ethereal, luminous creature, not akin to the beasts. Because what I am is a beast with a reasoning brain, a sense of history, and opposable thumbs. My ability to make and use tools is meant to be a weapon, and I'm not going to pretend it isn't. That doesn't make me dangerous to my neighbors.

But that's not good enough for some of our would-be rulers. They want us to put aside all that atavism, lay down our natural weapons and get with our inner wimp.



Once we have embraced the little guy and made him our own, we will be safe from all threats! For where there are no weapons, there can be no harm.

What's that you say? Some might not want to go along with the program, and choose instead to harm our soft spongy flesh? Wherever shall we run, should we find ourselves in danger?

Why, to Mister Policeman, of course! You sillies!



No no, dears. He's not saying that to you. That's just for the bad men.

(AHEM) Back, political rant! Back! Into your cage, right now. Gooboy. Here's a treat.

Filter out about 60% of what I just rattled off there, and you might be able to detect that I was trying to make a point about where our rights come from. We don't get our basic, natural rights from some guys in tight pants back in the olden days. We don't get them from the clowns in Washington, or state capitols, or even from Sarah Palin. We get them from our paid-up adult membership in the baddest-ass species on the planet. Nobody can give them to us.

And nobody can take them away. We can just forget where we mislaid them.

And now for something completely different...

Courtesy of Breda, my day got a little brighter with this introduction to AbeBooks' Weird Book Room.

Yes, you too can enjoy such titles (I don't seriously suggest you read the actual books) as:

• The Recently Deflowered Girl
• Spacebloom: A Guide to Cosmic Flora
• Forensic Examination of Rubber Stamps
• The Radiation Recipe Book
• Teach Your Wife to Be a Widow (Seriously, this is not a good idea)
• Lumberjack Songs with Yodel Arrangements
• All About Scabs
• Knitted Historical Figures
• Boy George Fashion and Makeup Book
• At Your Cervix: A Gynecologist Tells All
• The Man Who Left His Wife and Had a Nifty Time
• The Armpit of Desire
• Atlas of the Fleas of England and Ireland

And many, many (many many) more!

Seriously, just when I get to thinking I've got too much time on my hands...

New Battery Gadget!

Thanks to the generosity of a contributor who will probably choose to remain anonymous, we have a new battery maintenance gadget here at the gulch!

It's called a BatteryMINDer, and it will allegedly desulfate sulfated batteries with limits. Since we happen to be up to our kiesters in those things, we can certainly test the limits of its capacity. I've currently got it connected to the fourth battery in my projected battery bank for the cabin, and I'll let you know how it works.

It's so...Quiet!

Me: "If we get any other applicants to the gulch, and they start making noises about building a concrete house..."

Landlady: "Throw them out?"

Me: "On their ear. That's my vote, anyway. Or at a minimum, I'm busy that day."

L: "For the rest of your life."

Me: "And beyond."

Well, Landlady had a good week. Got all the electrical working, lights in the ceiling, got the eave on the front of the house sealed up with T&G (after chasing a pigeon out the night before), refrigerator and microwave moved into the kitchen, big sofa in the living room, windows caulked, vents installed in the utility closet, some plywood installed in the attic, a few other things.

This morning the retaining walls at M's Dome got substantially higher, and we poured a lot of concrete to fill them. I think my back is broken, but we need to get that done. Winter's coming, and there's a lot to do before the Dome is weatherproof. We really shouldn't leave it in its current state for another wet winter.

My own progress was ... well, kind of retrograde. I blew up my inverter, installed a toilet in the wrong place, and when M and I went to dig out the septic field trenches we had tractor issues. I think we're going to be chasing "issues" on that tractor for quite some time, but I've been here before: the vital systems are basically in good shape, so if we keep with it we'll run out of issues caused by bad maintenance and we'll have a very useful and possibly even profitable tool.

I thought I was going to be able to announce the introduction of a new addition to Joel's Gunz, and that would have made Joel a happy boy. I've been wanting a big-bore revolver for some time to replace the .45 I use for EDC, and one of M's friends has a slightly beat-up stainless Taurus .44 Special that would have fit the bill nicely. But the price went up $100 past what I was told to expect on the same week I learned I needed a new $100 inverter, and adding a new gun and caliber would mean expenses for leather and ammo and reloading stuff, so ... not so much. That's a want, not a need. The .45 has done just fine for several years, and it's gonna have to keep doing fine for a while yet. Some day my wheelgun will come.

We had supper at S&L's last night, and Ghost elected to spend the night with them. They just headed back to the city, so Ghost is back home now and the boys and I are camped in the nice quiet scriptorium. I love my friends, I really do; wouldn't trade them for the world. But one thing that has been confirmed since Claire moved back to the Pacific Northwet is that I truly am a hermit at heart. I enjoyed her being here, but honestly I enjoy being here alone even more. And now, after my busy week with Landlady, the prospect of five days alone is ... well ... awfully nice.

And ... we're three for three.

It's gotten to be a running joke. In M's Dome, the toilet drain was set too close to the bathroom wall. In the Meadow House, the toilet drain was set too close to the bathroom wall.

Ha ha! I laughed at them with scorn, for my cabin's design meant I could install the drain pipe after the position of the bathroom wall was well and truly known, meaning that there was no way the toilet wouldn't fit in the space once I'd installed the drain. No way.

Today I installed the toilet. Like most everything else in the cabin it's salvaged, which meant I mounted the throne on the drain flange and then went outside to replace all the weathered and broken gaskets and plumbing bits inside the tank.

Then I mounted the tank onto the toilet.

Which is about an inch too close to the wall.

Bother.

Well, but ... Mine's easier to fix, though!

Awww...Crap.

And I was in such a good mood.

Had a little ... well, not even little, an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny ... disaster yesterday afternoon. After rigging the solar panels and my newly sorta-kinda refurbished storage batteries together with the charge controller, it was time to bring the cabin's whole electrical system on line. The only missing piece was a breaker box, which given that the maximum output of the inverter was (operative word here is was, alas) 1000 watts, was pretty much redundant but still - you gotta have circuit breakers. So yesterday morning I salvaged a tiny little breaker box out of an abandoned RV that M uses to keep some of his stuff out of the weather while he builds.

The design of the breaker box was pretty odd. I should have taken that as a cautionary sign - I really wasn't sure how things were supposed to be wired in there, and shouldn't have proceeded until I WAS sure. But I pushed ahead.

Got everything wired up. Connected the breaker box to the inverter. Threw the switch on the inverter, officially connecting the electrical supply to the cabin wiring.

Frantically threw the switch back off, as the inverter emitted a heart-stopping BANG and a column of acrid smoke.

I've looked at every single connection I wired into that breaker box, and would be ready to swear on a stack of holy books that there was no short circuit in there. But hard evidence insists that I threw a dead short across the inverter. I suppose I should be encouraged to learn that my battery bank is now capable of sending one hell of a lot of electricity into unfortunate places.

Sigh. I need a new inverter. And a breaker box that was designed in the last fifty years. There will be a brief pause in the program while I acquire those things.

That's the bad news. The good news, as Landlady pointed out while handing me a beer, is that the cabin didn't burn down.

You think the Constitution is wrong, Congressman? I think you don't know what's in it.

Okay, I'm just doing this for snark, because I'm not a constitution-worshiper myself and I don't even know who this guy is so his opinion is pretty much completely meaningless to me.

But Congressman, when you say "I don't think corporations should have the same equality as a regular voter in this district," a statement at least worth discussing, you're not anywhere near anything that's in the constitution, which does not mention corporations. Okay? Corporations are a legal fiction - formed by the government, which would be you - specifically for the purpose of creating immortal paper people. You may as well give them the vote.

When you say "I think the constitution is wrong," though, you admit to at least a willingness to violate that inconvenient oath thing. You know - the one you publicly took?

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

He never seemed to catch the magnitude of his error in saying that in open debate. But based on the "applause" his audience didn't seem in any doubt. 8^)