I Got NOTHIN' Today.

The cold snap has gone away, and most of the snow has melted. It was quite nice yesterday afternoon and gorgeous today. The boys and I took a very-long-deferred Walkie into the canyons and let them run their widdle brains out. Then into Gitmo they went and I finally got a little work done on the cabin - which even without stucco is remaining remarkably dry.

And other than that, I got nuttin to say. Here are funny pictures instead.

Feh. My house is TWICE as big as his!

Not as cute, though...

Well, I guess Allah is Akbar, after all. This guy still seems to have his hands.

Seen at Sipsey Street: A jihadi has a bad demonstration. The good: He keeps the barrel on line pretty well while it lasts. The bad...Letting the video get on YouTube.



I'm guessing that last word has a scatological connection of some kind.

I feel safe. Murderous, but safe.

Get a load of the mousse-head at 0.40. Terrorism, my ass.

But sometimes even a taxeater remembers where his middle finger is!

Heh.

GRANGEVILL, Idaho (AP) - A northern Idaho sheriff says he is not advocating the illegal shooting of federally protected wolves by offering a hunting rifle and a shovel as the prize in a raffle called ".308 SSS Wolf Pack Raffle" in a region where SSS commonly stands for "shoot, shovel and shut up."

Idaho County Sheriff Doug Giddings tells the Lewiston Tribune that the SSS in the raffle stands for "safety, security and survival."

Um...Yeah, Bubba. And yet you're not in the news, either.

I'm reminded of an old Paul Stookey song for some reason:

Oh you give a damn, well so does he
'You think the rest of us are just fakin'?
I mean what do you need that you got to give
Less than what you're takin'?

Or maybe this:

Joan Baez is the name
I've a house by the sea
My songs come rolling in off Highway One
Just because I can't be there
Doesn't mean that I don't care
So next time, Brother, off a pig for meeeee...

Here's this righteously outraged patriot, gonna tell us all what's wrong with us...

The fact is, Amerikans, you ... don't ... care. It is not your child. It is not your family. It happened to ... THEM. And THEM. And THEM. But it didn't happen to you. Until one day ... it happens to you. And no one will care. And you will ... wonder why. You will ask, "Where is the justice?" And just like you, before it happened to you, no one will care. And the cycle will keep repeating itself. You will just learn to live with the injustice. You will just learn to live in the box that has been created for you.

...and he goes on and on about what you and you and you aren't doing to refresh the tree of liberty.

He, on the other hand, is totally cool.  Presumably he gets all paid up at the liberty tree just by telling me what's wrong with me.  Hell, Bubba - Even John Hancock did more than that, and I dunno if he ever even saw a rifle.

See?

Huh?

Sheep.

If you ever catch me talking this way, please somebody kick me.

Thank you, and have a safe flight!

Nail the coffins shut!

Who ARE these people, and why should we care?

On Wednesday, which is World AIDS Day, the stars will leave their millions of fans on various social media platforms, only to return when $1 million is raised.

“It’s really important and super-cool to use mediums that we naturally are on,” says Keys.

Additionally, other stars including Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest, Jennifer Hudson, Elijah Wood, Serena Williams, and Keys’ husband Swizz Beatz have filmed ads of themselves in coffins – dubbed their “last tweet and testament” – to represent “their digital deaths.”

“It’s so important to shock you to the point of waking up,” explains Keys, adding, "I'm an insanely self-absorbed twit. Please think I'm important."

Okay, I added that last part myself. I'm pretty sure she'd never be that honest.

I'd like to propose Nuke Hollywood for AIDS Day. Who's with me? Who's bloody with me?

"...also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers..."

This is apropos of nothing at all - I just saw it at TJIC and it was such a delightfully ironic bit of prose that it momentarily made me forget my frozen fingers. I love good writing, like I love good lasagna.

“[Chlorine trifluoride used as rocket fuel] is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic [ignites on contact - J] with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water - with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals - steel, copper, aluminium, etc. - because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”

In one of my books I speculated on the probable result to an ancient alchemist who accidentally catalyzed sodium, without quite realizing what he'd done. It wasn't a pretty story.

For the Survivalist who has everything...

Hey! Wanna buy an aircraft carrier?

Hey, Mayberry! I found your ride! No engines, alas, and I assume the reactors have also been pulled. Crap - dunno what I'd do with a ship, but I could use a nuclear reactor and generator. Then I'd need to make some friends in Iran - or maybe one of those Mexican drug lords I keep hearing about would trade me some fuel for gunz...

Have I told you lately I hate winter?

Really, it just can't be stressed enough.

I spent about an hour this morning, writing down all the reasons I should throw back the covers, put my leg on, and go outside.  Hell, it took me nearly that long to rouse myself enough to get up and make coffee.

Yesterday it never even tried to go above freezing and it looks like doing the same today.  There was ice in the sink this morning.  I just stared at it and muttered, "In thy orizens are all my sins remembered."  I was supposed to be in the Lair before now, feeding cedar into my wood stove and drinking hot buttered rum while the snow swirled around outside my double-paned windows.  Lord, I wish Fritz were alive; then I could blame him for it.  Lazy bastard.

Gray, gray morning; for a while the snow came down so thick I couldn't see the high ridge at all.  I'm cataloging all the things I should have stocked up on: I'm okay for bulk basics but really fell down on propane (probably about 3 weeks supply) tobacco (maybe a week's worth on hand) eat-quick canned stuff and - yike! - dog food!  I get paid for shit-shoveling tomorrow, then I'll try to beg a ride to town.  If the weather stays this horrible the local cops will keep inside, then I could just drive in myself.  Thank God Landlady showed me tortillas: There's about three cases of refried beans in the pantry nobody knows what to do with.  It'll take me a while to get as sick of bean burritos as I am of fried rice.  Never thought I'd get sick of fried rice, and the chili sauce is running low.  Well, this time last week I was worried about the coffee supply and now there's enough for a couple of months without rationing.

Speaking of last week - I laughed at myself over the SAR show.  In addition to being where all the Mexican drug lords get their guns, the Small Arms Review gun show is one of the highlights of M's very existence.  He's been preparing for it for weeks.  Last year I tagged along, worked a booth for four days, slept on a cot in somebody's kitchen, then snowstorms in the hills stranded us there for another day or two.  That was a bit much for this old hermit, and this year I declined the opportunity.  But I did send a shopping list, and to my amusement it didn't contain a single gun-related thing.  Oh, I'm critically short of practice ammo in most calibers but I can't afford that, so the shopping list consisted of practical and wearable things I wear out over the course of a year. BDU trousers, a new boonie hat, half-gallon canteen with cover to replace my old faithful that's finally wearing out and starting to smell, a new keffiyeh (what the shooter-wannabes call a shemagh, and by far the most practical desert headwear ever invented - I stopped wearing a keffiyeh in the Mojave after the 9/11 thing because people are stupid, but out here I can do what I like and it's frickin' cold.) No gun stuff; I'm cool for gun stuff except for ammo.

I'm in the Scriptorium with one of those Mr. Heater things you screw onto the top of a propane bottle, that hiss like Gollum having a bad day and never actually heat a room.  I need to hang a blanket in the doorway; that'd help. I just caught a whiff of burning hair: Little Bear managed to crisp the flag on his tail. I don't think he even noticed. Ghost is begging me to go back to the lair. It's no warmer there, but he wants his blankets.

Is it March yet?

Leslie Nielson is dead?

Say it isn't so!



Well, at least he escaped a fourth "Naked Gun" movie.  Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, and it stopped being a good thing after the "Airplane" sequel, which I don't think he was even in.

But still:  Who can forget...



R. I. P.  (Sigh) 

"Guns and Weed: The Road to Freedom"

Via Claire's blog, I see a notice about an upcoming documentary: Guns and Weed: The Road to Freedom.  Which includes at least an appearance by our own MamaLiberty!  Yay!

Okay, I'm not convinced weed is a road to freedom, any more than bourbon is - though I'm pretty sure that's not what the title is really trying to say.  And heaven knows I'd never touch one of those yucky, scary gun things.  But I've got no problem with whatever anybody else does as long as they're not doing it to me and mine, and prohibition of any object is a violation of the individual liberty the country was supposedly founded to preserve.  So party on!  Just be sure of your backstop.

The fortunes of the anti-haters we love to - er, hate.

Codrea's got a great article in the Gun Rights Examiner, spotlighting a publication I know nothing but plan to learn more about, The Social Contract.

It all concerns our ol' buddy Morris Dees of the Substantially Profitable Lie Center.

A key observation that nicely illustrates SPLC hypocrisy when it comes to money, from an article by contributor Patrick Cleburne, notes “the $PLC now has an account in the notorious tax haven and money-laundering location of the Cayman Islands!” and that SPLC receive $2.9 million from “[t]he Picower Foundation, set up by Jeffry Picower, reliably reported to have been the biggest beneficiary of the Madoff scam.” Cleburne suggests:

Madoff left many destitute elderly in his wake. The SPLC should return its Picower money to the Madoff trustee for their benefit.

Don’t hold your breath.

By odd coincidence, Mike at Sipsey Street has a similar post today, linking to this photo spread of Dees' palatial Alabama home.

I've got a little list! They never will be missed!

Go ahead and bitch about airport probulations!  Big Sis Napolitano wants to get Storm Saxon on your ass!

The terminology contained within the reported memo is indeed troubling. It labels any person who “interferes” with TSA airport security screening procedure protocol and operations by actively objecting to the established screening process, “including but not limited to the anticipated national opt-out day” as a “domestic extremist.” The label is then broadened to include “any person, group or alternative media source” that actively objects to, causes others to object to, supports and/or elicits support for anyone who engages in such travel disruptions at U.S. airports in response to the enhanced security procedures.

For individuals who engaged in such activity at screening points, it instructs TSA operations to obtain the identities of those individuals and other applicable information and submit the same electronically to the Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division, the Extremism and Radicalization branch of the Office of Intelligence & Analysis (IA) division of the Department of Homeland Security.

And to nobody's surprise, she's also got a treat in store for those of us domestic extremists who thought we'd just give air travel a miss:

“[Kids snookered by DHS spooks with fake bombs][Terrorists] are going to continue to probe the system and try to find a way through,” Napolitano said in an interview that aired Monday night on "Charlie Rose."

“I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?”

Oh, I don't know, Janet. How 'bout ceasing to treat us like helpless little sheep with a "pat-down" fetish and getting the hell out of our way? Even more outré, how about ceasing to make so many pointless foreign enemies for us? How about getting your TSA goons back into the vital national burger-flipping industry where they belong?

Naw, you're right. That's crazy talk.

Two From Claire

Just in time for Freedomista Christmas, two new books from Claire Wolfe have been released. They're both compilations of previously-published material, but whether or not you're familiar with her work they're both worth your time and nickel.

Hardyville Tales is a collection of the last, and arguably best, of the Backwoods Home Hardyville columns.  Claire wrote Hardyville columns – not really stories - for over a decade at various sites and publications, but toward the end she began assembling her characters in longer, multi-episode stories.  With the exception of Rebelfire this is the only fiction she has produced to date.  Unlike your typical “freedom fic,” the Hardyville characters aren't lantern-jawed heroes with all the answers.  You won't find long treatises by Captain Liberty here – a Hardyville freedomista with his mind made up is more likely to get drunk and crash his pickup through a bad guy's storefront than win him over with tightly reasoned logic, and in hindsight that may not always be the best choice of action.  Indeed the Hardyvillians themselves don't always agree on the right course or even necessarily get along all that well.  Which is part of what makes me love them, because neither do we.  Though I certainly wouldn't be afraid to let kids near the book, these aren't childrens' tales.  The Young Curmudgeon definitely isn't Peter Rabbit, even at Peter's naughtiest, and people do get hurt sometimes.  But there's one thing all Hardyvillians, even Dora the Yalie, agree on: Don't frickin' Tread On Us.  Just don't.

I'll confess I was a little disappointed by the selections at first.  I've been a Hardyville fan since discovering them in the late '90's, and was hoping to re-read some of the earlier columns which can be hard to find.  But that's a personal thing, and doesn't take away from the value of the book.  These later, longer storylines are less talky than some of those earlier columns, contain actual plots, and while they may not be vintage Claire they definitely show her at her best.  At her best, Claire is a very delightful writer indeed.  And she has added introductory material, some of it new, that will explain what the hell is going on for readers unfamiliar with the setting and characters.  If you're into Christmas, this would be a truly great stocking-stuffer.

The Bad Attitude Guide to Good Citizenship is a book I truly never expected to see.  When Loompanics, which used to publish most of Claire's books, went under, I was afraid the books would go out of print.  But Paladin Press picked up her more recent titles, and the story I heard is that somebody there came up with the idea for this book more-or-less without even consulting Claire.  The title, for example, was definitely not Claire's choice.  To my knowledge she has never given much thought toward “good citizenship.”  Heh.

The Guide is a compilation of articles from her long-running “Enemy at the Gate” column in SWAT Magazine, and most of them are very current and topical.  These are more classic Claire fare, as tightly-reasoned articles have always been her main thing.  But one of the things that has always separated Claire from the rest of the polemic-spewing pack is that her writing is often at least vaguely prescriptive – she doesn't just bitch about the issue du jour - she has ideas about what to do about it, or at least how to live with it without completely abandoning your principles.  So the book is divided into five sections.  The first three concern themselves with the problem:

1.How the Servants Rule
2.Perverting the Law in the Name of the Law
3.Lies Your Politicians Tell You (And the Media Repeat)

But then the final two sections and Afterword concern themselves more with what to actually do about it:

4.Get Yourself a Bad Attitude
5.To Do Or Not To Do – That Is The Question
Afterward – To Politics And Beyond

I'll admit I haven't paid that much attention to Claire's SWAT columns because they're not on-line and – well, it's SWAT Magazine.  Close proximity to the magazine itself gives me hives.  So I was particularly happy to receive this book because it contains a lot of material I hadn't seen.  Claire has not conceded one single point nor compromised one single principle in writing her long-running column, and I know it has caused occasional friction with the publishers.  Rich Lucibella and Denny Hansen – the publisher and editor of SWAT – are not bad guys, not at all.  But they do have kind of a gung-ho blind spot when it comes to law'n'order in general, and cops in particular.  I've always been surprised they give Claire as much rope as they do, because she can have a – well, a Bad Attitude – about such things.  Just to give an example without giving the book away, here's a more-or-less random sampling of titles, one from each section:

Who Do They Think They Are, Anyway?
When Government Steals Our Stuff
The “Gun Show Loophole,” And Other Big Lies
They Say We Should Be Civil
Terrify The Politician Of Your Choice

If you like TUAK, you'll love this book.  Order them here.

Joel's Butter Biscuits

I got a couple of requests for my butter biscuits, and thought I'd better comply.  There's really nothing special about them, they're just regular baking powder biscuits with a whole bunch of butter instead of shortening.  But they're darned good.

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1 boatload butter

Preheat oven to 450⁰

In large bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt.  With pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.  Stir in milk, quickly mix just until mixture forms soft dough that leaves side of bowl.

Turn dough onto lightly floured surface.  Knead lightly to mix thoroughly.  Don't knead the dough more than you need to or the biscuits'll be tough and won't flake right.  Roll out dough about 1/2 inch thick.

With the cup you normally use for bourbon, cut out biscuits.  Place biscuits into seasoned cast iron skillet or dutch oven.  Biscuits should fill the bottom, lightly touching.  Press trimmings together and roll out until skillet is filled.

Bake 12 to 15 minutes until golden.  Serve with more butter, heated til soft.  If you've got white gravy, go nuts.

Guaranteed to make you look like a genius.

"That's sweet! And...kinda creepy."

So said Landlady about the latest antics of Click the Cat.

The other evening I'm down at Landlady's Meadow House.  We'd just come back from town, celebrating her new gas appliances, and now we had a drink and enjoyed the warm in what had been her very very cold, unheated embryonic house.  Ghost was there, of course, he being her dog.  I brought Little Bear with me.  And within minutes of our arrival, Click the Cat meowed to get in.

Having gotten in, she was anything but happy.  She kept following me around, raising hell.  There was nothing obvious for her to be upset about, except that our usual schedule was shot to hell and we weren't all bedded down in the Interim Lair like usual for that time of the evening.  But Ghost had been spending the past several nights away, and Click never got upset about that.  When I was working at the house, Click never came looking for me.  I began to wonder...

After a bit, I called Little Bear.  We went out the door and up the ridge.  Click followed LB closely as if herding him.  As soon as he was safely back in the lair, she curled up and didn't have an apparent care in the world.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, and I was invited to the neighbors for food.  Afterward I went back to the Meadow House for a drink with Landlady, leaving LB locked in the Lair.  Click didn't show up.

Last night, same thing.  S&L came over to Landlady's house.  I was there, Ghost was there, LB was not there.  He was safe in the Lair.  Click didn't show up.

This morning Landlady went back to the city.  After shit-shoveling, since she's currently the only one with fully functional plumbing, I exploited the market distortion and brought a week's worth of dirty dishes down the ridge to wash them at her house.  Ghost and LB were with me.  Click showed up, raising hell.

She was upset about Little Bear not being where he belongs!  If he's at home or in Gitmo, she's perfectly content.  She occasionally makes moves to go on Walkies, but intelligently won't leave the junipers and then meows piteously until she's out of earshot.  She never gets upset when I go away, or when Ghost does.  But let LB leave, and she becomes a Jewish mother.

Sheesh.

C-c-c-cold!

The good news: Landlady's new furnace works great.  Meadow House quite livable.

The bad news:  Landlady's house has no water.  Neither does the barn.  Neither, of course, does the Interim Lair.

I saw early that I had no water, and didn't give it much thought.  Temperature got down into single digits last night - the dogs' water froze - and I'd have been shocked to have water.  But it didn't occur to me to ask if water was flowing anywhere else.

The most common culprit, when everything freezes up, is the outflow pipe from the cistern.  But since the electrical system upgrade it has become practical to run heat tape there all the time, and I do.  The pressure pump has never frozen, because it's inside the powerhouse and there was always lots of battery waste heat to keep that above freezing.

Not so any more, it seems.  There's signs the pump is frozen.  I took the propane heater out of the Scriptorium and put it in the powerhouse, and must now go see what damage, if any was done.

Just got a text msg from Landlady down at the MH saying she's starting to get a drip from her faucet, so hopefully we found the culprit.  Also hopefully the pump and/or piping isn't damaged.

Have I told you lately I hate winter?

ETA: Yup, it was the pressure pump.  The pump itself was frozen, along with the outlet pipe.  A couple of hours with a propane heater blasting at it loosened things up, and Landlady and I went to town and bought a heartbreakingly expensive heat tape that will now become a permanent part of the installation.  I love you, upgraded electric system!

Winter comes to the gulch...

...And for once its timing is impeccable!

Al the Propane Guy came to the Meadow House right on time, late yesterday morning. Now, AthePG's -er-idiom is that he always shows up on time and equipped to do the job. But then he always finds some reason why he just can't, until you correct some safety- or code-related deficiency in your installation. Yesterday he tried. He really did. But he wasn't used to dealing with Landlady, whose idiom is that she dots her I's. So he ended up installing propane and hooking up the water heater, kitchen stove and - happy day! - the new blue-flame furnace.

And just in time, too.  Because this morning when I rose, I was greeted by:

Only an inch or two, but it's the first snow we've had so far this season.  A couple of hours after sunrise the clouds rolled back, and it turned into a very lovely day.

I told her that if the oven worked, I'd help her celebrate by baking a batch of my good butter biscuits for breakfast.  It did, so that's just what we did.  Then we spent the morning finishing up the insulation under her roof.  Next, a second more conventional layer will go just over where the ceiling will be, but in the meantime she's finally got a place where sane people might be happy to spend a weekend.

And now, I'm going over to the neighbors to enjoy a lovely, free turkey dinner!  Hope you're enjoying your holiday, because I sure am.