Stupid. And Juvenile. And Really Ugly.

Some days ago I posted an entry bitching about the decline in conservative rhetoric. I was just blowing off steam, didn't expect anything to come of it because nobody ever comments on my more political posts and that's fine, you know, it's my blog and I'll say what I want but nobody's obligated to listen.

I linked to another blog to illustrate my point, but it seems that got back to the blogger - who appropriately calls himself Og - and he took offense. Well, good; it did wonders for my readership numbers for a day or two and I got a kick out of it. He made fun of my dishwashing comment, and that's okay too because everybody knows real men never wash dishes. That's why the housewares department at Kmart does so well, because real men just buy all new when the dog refuses to lick them clean any more. Even dogs have some limits.

But then it turned a bit ugly. And juvenile. And really stupid.

A friend, who for some reason called himself "Emily," took it on himself to comment on "Og's" follow-up post to defend me. (It's a little-known fact that "Emily" is actually a guy, whose real name is Agamemnon Al-EmFourteensAreReallyWhimpy Bin Mega Jihad, and he is not to be trifled with. Do NOT call him "Aggie." Seriously.) I appreciated that, though I thought it unnecessary. I happened to see "Emily's" comment, though it only lasted an hour or two, and it was truly thoughtful and profound - IE, it said nice things about me.

And I kinda wish I'd kept a screenshot of it, because then "Og" changed it to read “You’re mean! So you’re wrong!” I thought that was pretty low, myself, but since my opinion of the level of discourse at that particular blog hadn't exactly risen in the intervening time, I just chalked it up to experience and forgot about it.

Until this morning, when I noticed that somebody was linking here from yet another page at "Og's" blog. Curiosity may have killed the cat but I'm not dead yet, so I clickied and found this post demonstrating that "Og" wasn't yet ready to let it go - and that his short-term memory needs some work. Because in addition to his usual bile - of which snipes at me were only a small part - he added this comment:

I love the comments- like from Emily in the post below- who has only one note herself. “You’re mean! So you’re wrong!”

Yo, Og? You wrote that, dude. "Emily" didn't. And isn't re-writing history and then swearing to it supposed to be a...well, a Liberal thing?

"Once you define 'capitalism' as "things they don't control",..."

"...Their hatred makes perfect sense."

So said a commenter at Hit&Run's post about Hugo Chavez' big speech at Smokenhagen yesterday.

Then President Chavez brought the house down.

When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.

When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.

But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ - “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell....let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” He won a standing ovation.

Let's break this down for a moment: The fact that he was even there is perplexing. Hugo Chavez is suddenly a hero to the Warmists? How'd that happen? The only thing Venezuela under the current regime does more feverishly than try to reanimate the dry, shrunken corpse of World Socialism is pump oil and bulldoze rain forests. So if there's an obvious fit here, it's not obvious to me.

But okay; let's assume he crashed the party. He's allotted five minutes and talks for either twenty-five or forty, depending on which account you read, which if really unplanned would have had backstage organizers committing sepukku en masse. If unplanned, that alone would most certainly have made him the most unpopular man at the convention; they should have torn him down as if in the middle of the rant he'd ripped off his Chavez mask and revealed his true identity as Lee Iaccoca. Then the whole dumbass speech consists of creaky warmed-over "nasty ol' capitalism" nostrums that have lulled Cubans to sleep for generations, as if Chavez' brand of socialism had this great environmental record to brag about. By any conceivable metric this speech should have been a disaster. Instead he gets a standing O.

So yeah, I don't think we're drifting too far into tinfoil-hat territory when we suggest that, whatever that was all about, it wasn't about AGW. Which, with this crowd, pretty much only leaves one thing.

Meet the new boss! Same as the old boss!

Okay, I'm not a huge Christmas booster, but...

...this is just silly.

Youch!

Click and Little Bear just had a spat that could have ended badly for Click, and did end badly for LB. I had my back to it, so only heard what happened and saw the aftermath.

LB was getting a bit rough with Click, as he does sometimes, but this time I guess she'd had enough of it. I heard her spit, heard him yelp, and then saw her streak for her hidey-hole under the computer bench with him right behind her. She got away, of course, and while she peeked out I got up and spanked him back to his bed. It was only after the spanking that I noticed she'd laid his nose open with a claw which...I must admit would have made me mad, too.

But still, he started it, and since she's roughly the size of animals he considers food, BAD PUPPY! No chasing the cat!

I hope they patch it up; I already have problems when I let Beauty in, because she's terrible about chasing the cat and I live in fear of what what would happens should she actually catch her.

If this seems like a good idea to you...

...You might be a redneck. =/:P

The song in my head...

For once isn't one I object to.



This has been one of my favorite songs for...Jebus, has it been over 35 years? Huh. Hell, there've been times when it was practically my theme song. Or would have been, if I started having a theme song.

Post-Walky Nap Time

I've never understood why Click not only puts up with Little Bear, but actually seeks him out; he's been her favorite for quite a while despite his habit of slobbering all over her neck and sometimes making her entire head disappear inside his gaping jaws. But if she's going to snuggle with a dog, nine out of ten times it'll be LB.



Ghost, on the other hand, has resumed his winter habit of wanting to snuggle with Uncle Joel. I tell myself it isn't just because the computer bench is closest to the heater.

A Winter's Day...

In a really bright December...



Yesterday was overcast all day, damp, miserable, but not very cold. This morning dawned bright, glorious, and f-f-f-frigid. The lair's water just barely didn't freeze, which was more than I deserved since I forgot to set the faucet dripping last night. Took half the morning before I could feel the tips of my fingers - very truncated walkie, then inside till it warmed up enough for chores. Some things can only be put off so long.

W left early on a chore of his own I felt pretty bad about. He'd bought pads and rotors for his truck on my promise that I could install them, but I should learn to look at the manual before making promises. A 2WD is easy to swap out the rotors on, but a 4WD like his requires special tools and wicker-man sacrifices. So he ended up making an appointment with the shop in town, and left this morning at eight after chipping away enough ice to find the windshield.

An hour and a half or so later I was confident enough that I wouldn't freeze solid in the yard, so forayed out of my warmish lair to get a few things done: Fill the drinking water bottles, empty the lair's black-water tank, change the generator's engine oil, burn some termite-ridden timber from old concrete forms, the sort of thing you want a nice morning for. W's been wanting to adjust the angle of the old solar panel array, so we did that as soon as he got back from spending lots of money on brakes, before the wind came back up.

I've got Beauty in the lair with me now after she tagged along for the afternoon walkie. I'm not sure, but I think we might have barely escaped coming home with yet another dog yesterday - W found a notice for a pit bull that needed a home while we were in town doing laundry yesterday, (I fixed the burst water pipe in the barn, but with M gone for the winter W and I decided to leave the water turned off) and was making noises about how "Little Bear needs another friend." To tell the truth, in my less lucid moments I've had the same thought since Fritz died so suddenly. It seems really strange to actually be able to use the floor for walking with all (both) the dogs inside. Seems kind of empty, and I have to laugh at myself for that because I sure used to laugh at Landlady & T when they were sharing their little place with the Four Brontosaurs. Back then, I wondered how they put up with it. Now I sometimes have trouble putting up with not having to put up with it. Weird, huh?

But it ain't hap'nin', at least not until we get some money issues worked through. Right now it just wouldn't be responsible behavior. But down the road...well, the future will bring what it brings.

It occurs to me...

...that except for some M41A snark I never actually posted anything about the SAR show, which dominated all the activities of a week ago. Careless of me. Okay, lemme 'splain.

No, is too much. Lemme sum up. If you've ever been to a Crossroads of the West show, you've seen 5/6 of this show. All the same vendors are there, and so are their clones and cousins. The main event was the SAR (Small Arms Review) building. The SAR building offerings can be roughly divided into three categories:

1. AR15/M16 bling, with enough picatinny rail to reach to Mars and back again. Apparently it really is impossible to have too much rail farm on your carbine.

2. Machine guns & machine gun parts for those willing to jump through NFA hoops. If you want a parts kit for that someday MG42 project, this is the place. The amounts of money that changed hands at these booths is still boggling my tiny mind.

3. "Militaria," about which the less said the better - especially since I spent three days manning such a booth and now know far more about how to differentiate one piece of moldy European web gear from another than I ever, ever wanted to know. To my shock, lots of people find this information truly riveting.

Hint for future attendees: The way to the heart of a real serious military rifle/machine gun/militaria buff absolutely does not involve walking around in baggy pants down to your ankles with a TEC9 hanging around your neck. Just sayin'. Oh, they'll notice. They just won't make encouraging remarks.

The bad part...

...is that the newsies apparently think this was a good thing to do...

Have fun stormin' the castle!

I'm just going to sit back, cackle evilly, and let others prove my point now...

Is it just me...

...or are conservatives getting harder to take lately?

Once I actually self-identified as a conservative. Stop laughing. No, I didn't buy all the bullshit, but they just seemed more...grown-up, somehow, than liberals. Overall, anyway. At least I definitely bought into the "lesser evil" thing. Sure, both democrats and republicans would have grass growing in the streets within my lifetime, but the repubs would do it cheaper. You know? (Apologies to El Neal, from whom that was stolen.)

All that died right around '94, when I got my nose rubbed in what should have been the inescapable fact that a politician is a politician no matter what letter's printed behind his name. Compost, the lot of them.

But even so, I could still generally get along with conservatives better than with libs. Till lately. Yes, it's true that all the war-drum beating since '01 gets on my nerves. A week ago I had dinner across the table from a (truly impressive) gun collector who started going on about the "solution" to Afghanistan - it involved genocide, and I got up without (well, much of) a word and went in the kitchen and started washing dishes rather than start an argument at my hosts' table. Not long ago I blogged about a horrible "warrior" song, and got called all sorts of names - "milquetoast" was the mildest I recall - and strictly lectured about how if the military weren't out there keeping me safe from Achmed and Mohammad and their dogs, goats and children I wouldn't have any freedom at all. But I can overlook much of that - it's a single issue, and aside from all the blood seeping under my door we can agree to disagree on it.

But...I don't know, it just seems like lately conservative conversation has become much more vituperative and...well, stupid. They sound like liberals. This came to mind when I followed a link from Tam's blog and found myself in the middle of this, for lack of a less polite term, conversation concerning Sarah Palin. Some commenter made the mistake of posting an opinion less than entirely worshipful of Her Moosehunteriness, not really dumping on her at all, and suddenly the air was full of flying monkeys. The moderator posted his IP address, ferdogsake. It was just...really ugly. And juvenile. And stupid.

It seems to happen a lot lately. I may have to give up on this "intertubz" thing and go back to reading books. More expensive, but I can pick my company more carefully.

Poooor baby...

Via W, the story of one of the more hapless "czars:"

It was October 2008 when Hank Paulson announced that the government rescue operation, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), would be run by his aide, Neel Kashkari. The choice was met with considerable surprise. Who was Neel Kashkari? He was too young, too inexperienced and had ties to Wall Street, detractors said. To some, the appointment seemed all wrong. Critics described Paulson as a “Dr. Evil” figure who brainwashed Congress into giving him unprecedented financial authority so that Kashkari, his “Mini-Me,” could distribute it to Wall Street friends.

Overnight, Kashkari became the face of the biggest, and one of the most controversial, market interventions in American history. Even he questioned their chances of success.

The Friday evening he was named, he slumped over a bowl of chips in Bethesda with a childhood friend. He held his head in hands and said: “Dude, tell me something funny.”

“Man, what’s going on, Neel?”

“I’ve been tapped to put TARP together. I gotta set up these seven teams and build this thing from scratch — by Monday morning.”

So Paulson - who this idiot still counts as a friend - threw him under the bus, which very predictably chewed him under its wheels. So sorry. Poor little man. And it apparently still hasn't occurred to him that when somebody says, "Hey Neel! Think you could throw a $700B program together this weekend? You'll be presenting it to Congress on Monday, so you'd better get cracking," the correct answer is "Take this ridiculous job and shove it!" No - the designated scapegoat from the git-go, a fact no doubt clear to every vertebrate creature inside the beltway but him - he just bellyaches because the hours were long and congressvermin were mean to him.

It really pisses me off that this tapeworm will actually end up okay.

Oi, what a day!

Poor M. He came home to some really bad sh*t.

He's spent all summer building his very cool but enormously expensive concrete dome, installing a solar-powered pump in his well, a cistern, and a boatload of buried water pipe. He's pretty close to broke, but that was okay because a deal he'd been involved with for months was going to result in a check *any* *day* *now.*

It's been going to result in a check any day now for months. W and I were...well, not convinced. So no sooner do we get home from our entertaining but disastrous trip to the city, but he finally gets word that the fellow who owes him money is in bankruptcy and every dime he allegedly owns is in escrow. M is, to use a legal term, screwed.

Since he was planning to winter in the city anyway, this causes him to move his timetable forward to, like, yesterday. He spent the evening before packing, got some sleep, and woke up to the sound of water slowly flushing 'cross his chamber floor.

Now, a word about the barn apartment. Technically, it's heated. We installed a "free" furnace a friend had given us, which is capable of generating sufficiently gigantic numbers of BTUs to melt the entire structure into big tin puddles. What we didn't know at the time is that the fan on the "free" furnace pulls like 50 amps, which means it's impossible to run the thing for more than a few minutes at a time before the entire gulch's power system gets the vapors and collapses on its fainting couch. So in reality, the barn apartment is not heated. Last night it got really, really cold. A pipe burst under the sink in the barn apartment (I'm guessing he didn't set the faucet on "drip" - vitally important) and water was freaking everywhere. We closed the valve, emptied the water heater, sopped up water, sighed heavily. (Guess who gets to fix that.) Then after things settled down he went to the dome to put tools away. Got to the site, attempted to throw the pickup in reverse to back up to the dome, and...the clutch pedal went to the floor. He walked back to my place with the news, and we hiked to the truck together.

"Yup," I said, "hydraulic trouble. Either the master or the slave cylinder has taken a dump. Nothing we can do here. Sorry, dude, you've a ride to the shop in your future."

So we hiked back to get the Jeep and a tow strap. But it's winter, and in winter the Jeep's battery goes on vacation to Cabo San Lucas. Wowwowwooowwoooooowtictictictic...


I told him the "bad luck with machines" force was strong with him today, and asked him to please stay away from the power system.

Put the jump box on the Jeep, get it running, let it warm up, drive to the pickup. For a wonder nothing bad happens while we tow the pickup the 15 miles through windy, up-and-down "roads" and out to the shop in town. Drive back, wait for the estimate. Good news, I was right: The clutch slave cylinder crapped out. Bad news: It's inside the transaxle. $850, please. For a guy with maybe $500 to his name, this could have gone better.

Oddly, M is now more determined than ever to get the hell out of here. I just don't understand his attitude: Clearly he is resisting the will of the Desert Gods, who wish him to stay. He borrows money for the repair. Incredibly, the guys at the local shop ("Our motto: It'll take at least a week") agree to fix the truck that very day, and then actually do. But by now it's like six in the evening, far too late to head for the city.

Yeah, says me. M, on the other hand, is glancing fearfully about for falling asteroids: He wants GONE.

And - sigh - gone he is. Hope he made it. I'll miss him through the winter; he's a good friend. Though, I confess, I won't miss his high energy levels. It's hibernatin' time.

Conversation at a build site, pt. 2

"If meth cookers take over my house while I'm gone, ask them to get some decent guns before you kill them all, okay?"

"No sweat. Want anything special?"

Hell, no.

Somebody out there seems to think the only alternative to a psychotic moron is a...psychotic moron. I suggest that he look up "false dichotomy."

Oh, dear...

Via W, this bit of morning inspiration...

I am indeed inspired. To do what, exactly, I'm not sure. Projectile vomiting, perhaps...

"I wanna introduce you to a personal friend of mine...

"This is an M41A pulse rifle. Ten millimeter with over-and-under thirty millimeter pump action grenade launcher. "

Well, of course when the movie was made no such weapon existed. So, naturally, gun geeks being what they are, it became necessary to invent one...



Nobody I know of has ever come up with a functional caseless round, so "10 millimeter explosive tip caseless" doesn't quite apply. And they had to chamber the under-barrel grenade launcher for 12-gauge instead. But it does have a functioning LED round counter, so bring on the slime-dripping aliens! Remember about the high-pressure spews of acid blood.

Also good for zombies.

The one on the wall is the only one there is, though I'm told it is a firing model. Vaporware being what it is, that likely means it's the only one there will ever be. But who knows? The company is taking advance orders. You can contact these folks about it.

Oh, and if that doesn't get the job done, you can always nuke the site from orbit.

No, I didn't ask how much. If you have to ask...

What's wrong with this picture?

Yeah, maybe just a little separation anxiety going on here...

I'm up to two sets of neighbors who are on record as requesting that I "do something" about my dogs. While I was away, Ghost and Little Bear showed up at D&L's once, and that it didn't happen more often wasn't for lack of trying. LB apparently made quite a spectacle of himself at S&L's over the weekend, and just a few minutes ago I had to go recover them from J&H's after they chased M's pickup for miles. It's a good thing the neighbors like them. Something, apparently, Must Be Done.

Aargh.

Home!

No problems at all. A little packed snow on the road in the mountains, but the plows had clearly been busy. Really light traffic most of the way.

The boys and Click have settled down from their meltdown now. I came home to a nice warm lair, since W left the heater on for them. There's mouse blood and guts all over the floor, thick mud that the boys tracked on my bed, and a week's worth of dust on the dishes I left in the strainer. All's well.

Ahhhhh.....

Whoo Hoo!

They've moved the road closures away from our route, so we're throwing stuff in the truck and going for it! Yay! Adventure! Danger! HOME!

Part of being prepared...

...is being in control - or at least giving yourself the illusion of being in control - of your circumstances. Today, I'm totally unprepared.

Just got word that the road between me and home is still closed. I'm sitting here in a lovely living room, comfortable, warm, well-fed, surrounded by expensive toys - that is to say expensive guns, furniture, objects of art, and a survivalist's wet dream of a food-and-fuel-laden concrete bunker - and whining and wishing to hell a few snowflakes weren't keeping me from my cold, grungy, low-budget, much-more-secure hideaway. I miss my own digs.

"What kind of supreme being would condone such irony?"

Yike! Still in Phoenix...

After seven hours on the road!

We got caught in the storm, in M's faithful but not terribly snow-loving pickup. We got into the mountains and the snow got a bit rough, trucks fishtailing all over the place, visibility not to be found, but we soldiered on until stopped by a highway patrolman who inquired if we had snow chains. I hoped that perhaps he wanted to borrow some, but no - he turned us right around when we replied in the negative.

While discussing options for alternate routes, we ran into a snow-bound traffic jam. A bit of recon showed us a jackknifed truck blocking the road ahead. Long story short: we're broke, we didn't want to spend the last of our pooled cash just to get stranded in some motel for a day or more, so we're back where we started.

This trip has officially turned into too much fun. Wah! I wanna go home!

For W..

...Who claims never to have heard a Tom T. Hall song other than (gurg) Sneaky Snake.

Oh man, oh man, oh man... Pt. ... Oh, who knows?

Before dawn on Day 3 (4, for us) of the SAR show. Too much to remember, because it's all jumbled together in my head. Days that start around 5 in the morning and end whenever my hosts can beat their dozen or so guests to their beds, like 10 or 11. I and two other guys are dossing on cots in their kitchen and happy to have the sleeping space. Guns...Oh, geez, there are guns (and gun makers, and gun collectors) the likes of which most people have never heard of, let alone seen, and they might actually be happier for that.

I'm gonna need time to sort it all out in my mind before I can describe some of it; it's pretty overwhelming for a used-up boony rat. But yes, I'm alive and - except for having blisters in places most people don't have places - quite well. And except for the occasional impulse toward mass murder if that's what it takes to get these people to shut up so I can get some sleep, having fun. I thought I'd have some eye candy to post this morning, but for some reason the pics I emailed myself didn't show. And oh, that's a shame. Scary monsters and pretty girls.

More - probably much more - ASAP.

This will, I hope...

...be my last word on Fritz. Though probably not.

Years ago, before they established the Gulch, Landlady and her husband T used to do a lot of desert four-wheeling. On one occasion, 'way back in the boonies, they came upon a litter of four tiny German Shepherd pups that someone unspeakable had dumped there. The puppies were in terrible shape; all of them near death from dehydration and hunger. L&T bundled them into the Jeep and rushed them back to a vet in the city. One died immediately, but the others survived. When they were healthy enough, L&T found homes for them all. That apparently worked out well for two of them, but they needed to take one back when the home didn't work out. That one, as you've probably guessed, turned out to be Fritz.

M repeated that story yesterday morning while we were burying him. D&L came with their backhoe to dig the grave, and then W and I brought Fritz from the barn in the Jeep, which I believe is the same Jeep in which he was rescued not enough years ago. Fritz always had a deep love for that thing: Sometimes visitors would come by and ask, "Why is that dog sitting in your Jeep?" The answer was always "Just in case." He always hated to think he might miss getting a ride.

And somebody speculated - a question I'd never thought to ask - if the reason he loved the yellow Jeep so much was because he remembered it rescuing him from death. I don't know if that's so; hell, I don't even know for sure if it's the same Jeep. But it's a great thought. Anyway, there's no question Fritz loved riding in the Jeep, so even though M's pickup was a more logical choice I insisted on hoisting him in for one last ride.

Gad, I'm gonna miss that big, dumb goof. Ghost, Little Bear, Beauty and I went for a long walk this morning, the young dogs usually flanking and walking point, usually not even in sight. Magnus and Fritz had always stayed close to me, but they're both gone now. Sometimes it felt like I was walking alone.

There might be light blogging...

...Over the next several days. I had a chance to go to the SAR show in Phoenix with a friend, a chance I regretfully turned down when Fritz turned so sick. And when M & W urged me to rethink that decision after yesterday's burial, my first rather irrational reaction was that the last thing I wanted to do was take advantage of my buddy's death by going to the city and having fun at a humongous gun show.

But...well, that's stupid. Fritz is dead, and sitting around mourning won't help him.

This promises to be a lot of fun, actually. Normally my tolerance for gun shows lasts no more than a couple of hours; once I've seen all the repetitive tables, I'm ready to go home. I'm signing on for three whole days of it plus, which wouldn't normally be an attraction. But my friend has other friends who are exhibitors, and need help setting up and manning tables. That means that not only do I get to go to this famous show for the first time in my life, but actually rub elbows with some gun nuts who make me look like Paul Helmke. So yeah - there's only one variable I need to check, as to whether the Landlady is coming this weekend, which as far as I now know she isn't. Failing that, I'm a-goin'.

I'll bring the 'pooter with me, but don't know how much chance I'll get to use it. We're leaving tomorrow, and I don't believe I'll get back to the Gulch before Tuesday.

Gonna miss my boys, especially now that we are only three. That's a point against.

Fritz, R.I.P.

After a sudden relapse over the weekend and one really bad day, Fritz passed away in his sleep yesterday afternoon. I still don't know what was wrong with him. After a week of praying it wasn't cancer or something else incurable, I woke up this morning praying it was: Then I wouldn't have failed him so badly. I had intended to rush him to the vet this morning, but I should have bundled him up and driven him to a 24/7 clinic a couple of hundred miles away. I didn't even think about it until it was too late. I should have done that Saturday.

I was ready for Magnus to go; he was old and had a brain tumor. But Fritz was a complete shock. It wasn't his time yet. And he seemed to be doing better. Maybe my own state of denial killed him.

Fritz was a big, dumb, goofy retarded five-year-old in a fur coat. Of all the dogs he was the only one who really cared, from one minute to the next, what I thought of him. He could be a handful; he was excitable, and when he got worked up he could be like a hundred-pound self-propelled chainsaw gone berserk. And yet he loved his people, including me, without the slightest reservation.

Landlady still says she blames me for the cop incident, and I've never denied that she's right. Fritz was my KopKruncher, the only dog I ever had who'd try to take a bite out of a cop just because he saw that I didn't like him. I haven't committed a violent act since I was a teenager, but as god is my witness if that guy had drawn on my dog I'd have dropped him in the yard, the consequences be damned.

I loved him, and I failed him, and he died. I guess that's all I have to say now.

Okay, I don't personally pay much attention to the holiday...

...but it is, on occasion, hilarious.



Happy Turkey Day, Y'all!

Why I'll never be a photographer...

So we're all sitting around the Interim Lair last night, wishing it wasn't so bloody cold. LB is camped on my bed. Click jumps down from her loft, curls up next to LB's belly, then reaches up, grabs his head in both paws and starts industriously cleaning his head. And I'm all "Awww!" And I grab my camera, and I fiddle with the settings trying to find one that involves the flash. Finally get it worked out, frame the shot, hold down the "shutter" button......And Click gets bored and walks away.

Thankful for Hope and CHANGE!

From the "Why did you ask me this" department...

ME: (Clicks "SEND MESSAGE")

THUNDERBIRD: "Do you want to send PLAIN TEXT to (address of recipient)?"

ME: No. I want you to translate it into Hutu first.

Quote of the Day

"When pols or athletes do a painfully bad guest spot on a sitcom, people clap pedantically like Retard Jimmy just hit a layup. The reaction to actors pretending they're critical thinkers should be similar." - Anon

Got another comment this morning...

On a post from back in July. This post gets a disproportionate amount of attention, possibly because when you type "Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs" into a search engine it comes up on the first page.

This comment was less abusive than the last, which I appreciate very much. I think we may be overthinking the metaphor just a little, but it was a thoughtful comment and deserves a respectful reply.

Mutt....interesting addition to the analogy. I thought you might be an unemployeed sheepdog, since you definately aren't in denial with the other sheep, but you didn't even mention a family you would protect, like most hidden sheepdogs. I think you're just a low-level wolf, not dominant enought to initiate the aggression. or maybe you've been castrated by all the societal conditioning you mentioned. you need to ask yourself. what kind of life do you pursue? do you take advantage of others, the sheep, or do you work to improve others. or do you just provide a service. then you might be a mutt.

First of all, I am not now and never have been a member of the military or of any law enforcement agency whatever. I do not wish to be herded, and I really wish self-appointed "sheepdogs" would stop trying. Also, I reflexively dislike the "sheep" metaphor, though I don't deny that a massive proportion, possibly a majority, of "good, law-abiding citizens" fit the description of sheeplike caricatures appalled at the notion of employing violence in their own defense - I merely suggest that this is a function of nurture rather than nature. IOW, I suspect that the metaphor's "sheep" are created by the constant, womb-to-tomb drumbeat of "call 911 and wait for the nice police officer" rather than actually being born that way as the "sheepdog" apologists insist.

On the use of violence in self-defense - I have observed every sort of vertebrate creature with which I come in contact, from mice and rats through literal sheep, larger game animals, and up to every sort of predatory beast. Every Single One Of Them has this in common: As juveniles, they are weak, helpless, and dependent on others for survival. The mark of an adult creature is that it takes the responsibility of its own survival on itself. The tiniest adult mouse will turn and attack an attacker, given time. It may not - it probably won't - do so successfully, but it will do so. Because that's what adult creatures do.

All except humans. Humans in our culture, anyway. In our culture, it is demanded of us that we stand back from our own defense, "give them what they want," and plead to be defended by those designated by the State for such duty.

The facts that our "defenders" do a piss-poor job of it, that they cost far more than they contribute, that they are minions of a despicable predatory State, and that they have a dreadful habit of turning predator themselves actually have very little to do with my objection to the concept. Those are really just side issues. My principal objection to the concept is that it is insulting. It is infantilizing. It is unnatural and destructive. Whether or not humans are some higher form of beast is a religious question I'm unequipped to hold an opinion on, but we are most certainly beasts. We have flesh and bone and beating hearts as they do. And while our teeth and claws may be inferior to the least of theirs, our tool-making ability elevated us to the top of the chain long, long ago. We are beasts, with all the attributes of beasts and more besides, and yet we are conditioned from the cradle to believe - or at least to pretend to believe - that unless we are endowed at birth with some rare and mystical "warrior spirit" we are incompetent to even contemplate our own defense and sustenance.

Well...That's...Bullshit.

What's worse, while that view works against the interests of every man and woman on the planet not in a position of authority, it very clearly serves the interests of one group alone - those who connive to positions of rulership over us. Every street cop, every bastard sheriff, every bureaucrat and politician and every loathsome, petty little tapeworm in any position of authority anywhere, those are the people whose interests we serve when we acquiesce to that world view - when we agree to sit back, do our jobs, pay our taxes and let the big boys do the thinking.

What has it brought us, this belief that these people are somehow more qualified to make decisions than we are? How many wars have we started? How many genocides have we committed? How many little old ladies have you tazed lately? They keep telling us all about how safe they're keeping us, but the reality is somewhat different. Look, I'm not the least bit afraid of the so-called "wolves" that are supposed to be such a threat, but the "sheepdogs" scare the hell out of me. If I beat off a robber, maybe causing him to become a bit leaky in the process, what's the next thing I have to fear? Not other robbers, no: Next the "sheepdogs" will want their piece of me. And if - may FSM forbid! - I should do the same to a "sheepdog" here to enforce some unwelcome edict of my distant masters, my life is guaranteed to be over in a most unpleasant way. Tell me again how this is an improvement? Explain to me, please, the benefit of having these people around at all! I really want to know!

Sorry - that wasn't supposed to be a rant. Dialing down now.

Look, the closest thing to a "perfect world" I can imagine wouldn't be terribly neat or tidy. It wouldn't be a utopia; I can't even imagine a utopia. There would be predators, and there would be prey. Sometimes the innocent weak would suffer unjustly. Sometimes the innocent strong would go too far, and cease to be innocent. That's human nature; we're messy creatures, not at all suited to utopia. But those who wished to live in peace would have the opportunity to enforce that peace themselves, and I doubt very much that they'd do a worse job of it than our self-proclaimed protectors do now. And even if they did, they still wouldn't have the capacity to spread misery on the unholy scale presently caused by our would-be masters, may their scrotums rot off.

JW, thank you for your comment. To summarize my answer: I am neither an "unemployed sheepdog" nor a "castrated wolf." I live my life quietly and as inoffensively as possible to those who do not molest my peace. I strive to be of benefit to my neighbors, and they both attest that I am a benefit and reciprocate in kind. I have no interest in either molesting or "improving" any other person. I wish only to live my life, enjoy my friends, and be left the hell alone by everyone else. Where and how, precisely, does this present a problem?

On Fritz...

Still no word on what might be ailing Fritz, but the meds are having a pleasant effect. He's been much more active, though not nearly to young-dog levels. His appetite has returned nicely, which tells me his temperature is probably under control. We've had to cut short the past several morning Walkies because he just couldn't do it, but today he came along for a good one and behaved as if he was quite happy about it. He's still on light duty and heavy doses of canned food w/meds, of course, but I've caught him eating dry food for the first time in quite a while. So I have hope that what ails him is just a bad infection, as opposed to something fatal. But I'll be on pins and needles until I hear back from the vet.

The Lair's Roof

With much help from M, (IE, he did nearly all the work: All I did was cut panels and carry stuff) the Secret Lair now has a genuine waterproof roof! Yay!

Yes I know the stovepipe's too short, gorram it. A bit of retrofitting is called for there. But the hard part is done; it's just a matter of sliding in a new (ruinously expensive) double-wall pipe or fitting an extension to the top of the one I've got: Not sure which will work yet.

The interior is slowly, slowly making progress; I've got most of the wiring pulled (not that there's a way to power it) and I now at least possess all the insulation I need. Indoor plumbing of any sort will certainly not happen before Spring.

It All Comes Down to Bacon. Of Course.

From West of the West via Tam:

How to choose your religion, in one easy flow chart!

Really? Yah think?

Concerning those swiped emails...

"It is right before the Copenhagen debate, I'm sure that is not a coincidence," Trenberth said in a telephone interview from Colorado.

The Cultists of Climate Change claim that the emails were selectively leaked, exposing only the embarrassing ones. Well, but that would be the point, wouldn't it? I don't care what these "scientists" had for lunch, or whether their boss thinks they are past the deadline to submit form J1903. But if they're cooking data in the interest of the NWO, I'm kinda glad to hear about that.

Yes, of course the hackers who exposed these files have an agenda. Why should they be different?

There's a pretty good summary of the kerfuffle here.

Gorram it!

Had a pretty good day right up to the point where I stopped working. Then it all went to hell.

Landlady came over and shared coffee and breakfast. Tried to take the dogs for their morning walky, but Fritz made it halfway down the driveway and then just sat down. Thought I was going to have to carry him home. But that was all right with him; as soon as the visitors rolled out M and I went up to this old utility building S has on his ridge and started tearing out wall and ceiling insulation, rolling it up, stowing it in the Jeep's trailer, carrying it to the new Lair, unloading, going back...the dogs got more Jeep rides in one day than they normally get in a week, and it left them quite happy.

We finished up, pulled off the fiberglass-impregnated clothes, started it all in the washing machine. I was starved and tried to start lunch, only to find that:

A. I'm nearly out of drinking water, which reminded me that the hose threads had stripped out of the little pump we use for filling bottles from the barrels, and there's now no really good way to fill bottles, and I should have fixed it a week ago but forgot;

B. Though I just filled my propane bottles, I have NO PROPANE PRESSURE AT THE STOVE! It was working fine this morning, or at least as fine as it ever does. Truth is I've suspected my propane regulator has been going south for quite some time, and I think that today it just spontaneously grew tired of life. Which is going to make cooking food a bit more difficult until I (sigh) spend big bux on another.

Hating life, signing off.

Concerning Fritz...

Yesterday got really busy, sorry. Landlady is here for the weekend and so are some other stakeholders. M got our weekender neighbor S to help reality-check some plumbing issues on the Dome. W had arranged to return four of our new batteries to the manufacturer. B the stakeholder brought a digital hydrometer which we all had to play with once we'd disconnected and removed the misbehaving batteries. Then once we'd delivered the batteries for shipping, B rented a truck and we helped move some heavy stuff out of their storage unit and onto the truck. Then we partied for a bit, and then M, B and I went to the cabin and finished the roof (pix to follow.) Then we went home and move some heavy stuff out of the barn and into B's rented truck. Then we went to town and shared a loverly meal and didn't get home till well after seven. Busy day, in a series of busy days.

I didn't want to say anything about Fritz here until I'd taken him to the vet and discussed the findings with Landlady. He's her dog, after all, and I didn't know whether to call and worry her before I knew something more concrete, or to keep it to myself until then. I chose the latter which may have been the wrong choice, but it's the one I made.

Anyway: Our story so far. Fritz has become more and more listless over the past several days. He was pretty clearly dropping weight. His joints were bothering him, which worried me because if the glucosamine stopped working I wouldn't know what to do. Then he had a disastrous fall, for no apparent reason, off a bed he's slept on 10,000 times. Then while walking with him I began to notice that he seemed ... asymmetrical somehow. One side of his ribcage stuck out more than the other, but when I felt along him I couldn't detect anything and it didn't seem to cause him any discomfort. That changed overnight into a cereal-bowl-sized lump on his side, and simultaneously he - and you'd have to know the dogs to understand how shocking this was - started turning his nose up at snackies. The dogs are conditioned to go nuts at Snacky Time: It just isn't natural for him not to want to eat his canned food and everybody else's too. It scared the hell out of me.

So two days ago W and I took him to the vet. He has dropped 15 pounds since his ear surgery. He had a 103+ fever, and the lump on his side was a blood-filled hematoma. The vet wanted to know if he could have been kicked by a large animal: As inactive as he's been, that isn't possible. He's never off the property without me, and we haven't encountered any horses or elk. If, as the vet believes, the hematoma was caused by an injury, the only thing I've got is that he injured himself when he fell off the bed. The vet sent samples off for blood work, and we won't know anything from that for at least a week. He used the "Big-C" word.

When you don't know what the disease is, you treat the symptoms. Fritz got big shots of antibiotics and steroids, and I came home with handfuls of pills. Now we're in wait-and-watch mode. The good news is that he got his appetite at least partially back yesterday and plowed through an entire can of dog food. I'll be spoiling him rotten with that stuff for a while.

I don't even have Magnus' headstone planted yet. I can't lose Fritz so soon.

Maybe no update today...

Good (not perfect, but good) day on the roof front, bad day on the dog front. W and I have to take somebody to the vet, so I haven't got time to play on the computer and expect to get back late. Tomorrow for sure.

A little too independent for his own good...

Yeah, I was eating breakfast this morning when my cell phone rang, a not very usual occurrence. It was L, my neighbor from maybe a mile and a half away as the crow flies. "We've got Little Bear and Beauty over here," she tells me. She doesn't sound real pleased.

I was wolfing the last of my egg when W comes over. "L called, I'm gonna go get Beauty and Little Bear," he says. I said okay, I'd been about to go myself but if you wanna that's fine with me.

Now, LB has shown up at D&L's before, but on those occasions it has been in the company of Ghost when they went chasing one of our trucks. In this case all the trucks were sitting in the frozen yard, right where they belong. No, this time Beauty and LB just decided they'd waiting long enough for their morning walky. This Would Not Do. And it is true that Beauty and LB have gotten to be a rather mischievous team. Out here, mischief can get you hurt or killed.

W came back with the two miscreants and a rather stern request from L that we do something about our dogs. We couldn't think of anything to do but confine them during the times when they're most likely to get each other in trouble. So this afternoon while buying flashing for the stovepipe, I also bought some stake-out augers and cables. I drove my auger into the ground, connected LB to it, and went into the barn to take a shower, wondering what havoc would have ensued during my absence.

When I returned, LB was...Well, he was...

Progress is happening!

M came by this morning and said, "I'm hung up on plumbing. You wanna go put up the ceiling box and roof the cabin?"

"Why the hell not?" said I. And so that's what we've been doing.

Last Saturday, D helped me build the ceiling box for the stovepipe, but it's been sitting ever since while we put walls up in M's Dome. We're back for lunch at the moment, but have to run to town right after because the people who sold me the stovepipe kit also sold me the wrong @#$% flashing. But the box is installed and there's stovepipe sticking out through the roof.

Full disclosure: The reason I need help with what would otherwise seem a simple task is that the cabin's roof (I really must post pix at some point) is truly, massively pitched, I have one leg which means one ankle that bends and one foot that gives me feedback, and - oh, yeah - I'm terrified of heights anyway and at the top the bugger's about 20 feet off the ground.

It'll be really great to get the roofing on the poor thing so it will stop filling with water when it rains. :-(

What a revelation!

Who knew you could thwart pirates by shooting them?

NAIROBI, Kenya - Somali pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama on Wednesday for the second time in seven months and were thwarted by private guards on board the U.S.-flagged ship who fired off guns and a high-decibel noise device.

Of course, more enlightened voices were immediately raised in shocked protest. Defend yourself against armed pirates...with guns? How horrid! How...unmutual!

"Shipping companies are still pretty much overwhelmingly opposed to the idea of armed guards," Middleton said. "Lots of private security companies employ people who don't have maritime experience. Also, there's the idea that it's the responsibility of states and navies to provide security. I would think it's a step backward if we start privatizing security of the shipping trade."

Backward from what, exactly? Acting like mature creatures, rather than helpless, mewling infants?

They're three or four guys in a skiff, for god's sake! You've got a great big cargo ship, which is a far superior shooting platform! Last time piracy on the high seas was a big problem, in the 18^th century, do you know what made it go away? Cannon, that's what. Great, big expensive deck cannon. Not owned by navies, but by private shipping companies that didn't want to give their property to pissant coastal pirates. It's really very simple.

Take some freaking responsibility for yourself! Daddy's not here to protect you.

Heavy Thoughts - Why I Live Out Here

Earlier this morning, on a prepping forum where I spend too much leisure time, somebody posted a poll titled "Do you actually want SHTF?" I read through the answers, some of which were quite thoughtful. Then I added my own Deep Thoughts.

I voted "none of the above."

When I was an angry young man I dreamed of it. Fantasized about it; it was in all my plans. Would have done anything I could to bring it about, and if I didn't survive the doing I'd still have believed I'd left the world ultimately a better place. Angry young men can be stupid that way. Having studied a bit of history since then, and acquired more than a few gray whiskers, I realize that at best it wouldn't bring an improvement. A real, catastrophic breakdown might or might not toss out the Czar, but if it did it would bring the Bolsheviks and they're way worse.

No, the things I hate and fear in this world will be with me till I die. The best I can do is learn how not to fear them.

I can't make the world a better place; it's not in my power. But I'm still free to work on myself. And another thread of my youth was a sense of deep inadequacy whenever I thought of my ancestors, and how they, unlike myself, were not dependent for every tiny thing on the grocery store and the centralized infrastructure. The thought of dying of cold or hunger because the trucks and the electrons stopped moving always used to disgust me. I wasn't disgusted with the trucks or the electrons, which were out of my power. I was disgusted with myself, for being so dependent on masters I hated and forces I couldn't control.

When I got a little older I put all that out of my mind for decades. It seemed, at the time, the path of maturity. I became Mr. Suburban Man, but it never brought me peace. And older still, I decided that one part of that stupid, angry young man was right all along. I no longer give a damn whether this system endures or not, or what form its theoretical breakdown might take. I no longer debate calderas or asteroids vs. hyperinflation or civil breakdown. Instead I wrestle with balky solar batteries and help like-minded neighbors build their houses in the desert. I don't worry about the world outside me, because I can't do anything about it and wouldn't know what to do if I could. I work on myself.

So now, for me, prepping isn't about some end-of-the-world fantasy. It's about the way I've chosen to live now.

"Apparently they took it to one of the banks he runs now..."

H/T to the LRC Blog

Heh, Pt. 2

At some point when you've lots of time on your hands and want a giggle at someone else's expense, check this out.

I kept looking for the cues that this was a spoof site. But as far as I can tell this person is as serious as a heart attack but (unintentionally, no doubt) funnier than that.

Sample, from the Department of Made-Up Statistics:

Conservatives like to portray America as the land of “rugged individualism” where people would rather go it alone than ever depend on government for anything. And surveys show that a large majority of Americans believe that people should take individual responsibility for their lives. But these surveys also reveal that surprisingly large numbers of people believe that the government should take the lead and be responsible for dealing with a wide variety of social and economic problems. 71% of Americans believe that the government has an important or essential responsibility for seeing to it that anyone who wants a job can have one. 63% believe that the government has an important or essential responsibility to provide citizens with adequate housing; and 78% of us think that the government has an important or essential responsibility to provide citizens with good medical care.6 Similarly large majorities strongly support the notion that it is the responsibility of the public sector to “guarantee a quality public education,” “protect the environment,” and “ensure equal opportunity for everyone.”7 Clearly when we stop to think about what government can do for us in specific areas, we don’t believe that we should be going it alone without any help from the government.

Heh

Got this from a friend...

Who said I could blog it. Just a day in the life of a citizen, citizens.

I'm visiting a friend in Tucson, Arizona, this week and this morning we set out toward downtown for an arts event. We hadn't gone very far. We were stopped at a stoplight at an enormous intersection of a parkway and the I-10 freeway. The light turned green, but traffic didn't move.

Into the intersection, against the light, came screaming two motorcycle cops, lights and sirens blazing. They paused in the middle. Behind them came a police pickup truck, lights and sirens also blazing. And behind that another motorcycle cop, ditto. Then they all kept moving right along.

They weren't moving fast enough for it to be a chase, so my blood pressure started rising, wondering what sort of oriental poobah of a politician they were escorting.

... When into the interesection came a semi truck with its long, narrow cargo wrapped in a decorated tarp. And behind it came a smaller, but similarly tarped and decorated truck.

In big words on the side were: "Arizona's Gift: The Capitol Christmas Tree 2009."

http://www.capitolchristmastree2009.org/funfacts.php

Every year, it seems, some state is sucker lucky enough to be chosen to provide a tree as a "gift" to Congress. This year, it's an 85-foot blue spruce from the mountains of northern Arizona. (Yes, much to the surprise of people who've never been here, Arizona has extensively forested mountains.)

Geographically astute readers will recognize that Tucson is nowhere near northern Arizona and isn't on any logical route from northern Arizona to Washington, DC. Yep, you guessed it; the tree is being escorted around the state for 10 days at taxpayer expense before heading cross-country for another 10 days at further taxpayer expense.

And this just a day or two after a report noting that Arizona is second only to California in its state of governmental economic disaster.

The link above says the full convoy contains 12 vehicles, so we clearly didn't see every bit of the grandiose waste. But we did see this parade tie up traffic in an already traffic-snarled city and can only imagine what it's going to do (and how much it's going to cost in both dollars and annoyance) when it reaches Phoenix.

Your hard-earned dollars at work, Arizonans!

Oh well, at least we can say that not one of those cops, at that moment, was tasing anybody or accidentally setting anybody's house on fire by throwing a flash-bang onto a bed. Nor were they out committing highway robbery against innocent motorists, nor arresting anybody for contempt of cop.

So all in all, I guess it was a good day.

Also, in downtown Tucson, in the very center of the highest-rent area of banking and business, there's a big, impressive-but-friendly business with fancy logos, signage and super-slick posters in its big bronze-tinted windows. The "business" is "HUDNextDoor." And yes, it's the federal department of Housing and Urban development, selling itself like crazy. Exactly what it's selling, I don't want to guess. But it's clearly selling it at a high price to thee and me.

I see why you prefer to live as a hermit, off in places where your mind doesn't get bonked by things like this.

[REDACTED]

P.S. The Capitol Tree website claims "the tree is being privately funded and donations are being sought."

Uh huh. Yeah. I'll just bet private donors paid for all those siren-bearing cops and that no governmental money or force was used to tie up all that traffic or to pay for governor Jan Brewer's trip to DC to stand next to Nancy Pelosi while she lights the thing up.

If you had to choose...

...between being hated or being ignored - you can only have one, but you must have one - which would you choose?

Once upon a time there was this uber-troll - it's the only fair designation - who went by the nym Gunkid. If you spend time on gun forums, you've heard of him. Gunkid's actual name was known to the community, but I don't remember or care what it is. Gunkid's claim to fame was that he could disrupt even the most draconian moderation: He could bring any forum anywhere to its knees during his stay. I've watched mods frantically ban one Gunkid sockpuppet after another, several times a day. Gunkid was a lunatic: He made outrageous, idiotic claims about guns and suppressors and SHTF scenarios (If you've ever heard of a 'tactical wheelbarrow,' that's a Gunkid reference.) and just tied up the boards for days. It was a hoot. You couldn't really say your forum had arrived until it had suffered its first Gunkid infestation. And it would, too - that ol' boy got around.

Moderators hated him. I suspect most posters had a sneaking, almost guilty affection for him. I know I did. I mean, c'mon - he's disrupting what is essentially a recreational distraction from work - on the boss's computer - when you're being paid to work but aren't doing it. It's hard to get too self-righteous.

When Gunkid was around - wherever "around" happened to be - it was all about Gunkid. And I guess that was the whole point, because nobody made it any secret that they were laughing at him. And I don't recall him ever posting anything that wasn't laughable. He would have to have been every bit as delusional as he came across, which is too delusional to function more than a few minutes in society, not to understand that he was a laughingstock. And I often wondered at first; what was the point of that? I'd have hidden under my bed for a month if I ever got a reception like that and knew I deserved it, but he sought it out. He did it incessantly.

The point, I suppose, was that people were paying attention to him. He didn't know how to be respected in the way he wished he deserved, so he settled for becoming this ridiculous internet legend because at least then he wasn't being ignored. He couldn't make a positive difference, so he settled for being a disruptive influence and seemed to find it just as good.

Gunkid has come to mind several times in the past few days. I think he's helping me to understand the motivations of politicians and bureaucrats. I mean, here's Pelosi & Co. busily finding ways to shove their "health care" takeover down our collective throat. The simplest economic logic demands, and recent history in one place after another proves, that it will be a disaster. But they're doing it anyway. And it doesn't matter how many times this proposal or that is voted down - it doesn't matter how many near-riots they cause in how many "town hall" meetings: Their minds are made up. This is the way it's going to be.

Not because it's the right thing to do. Not because it makes any sense on any level. No - they're doing it because they can, and because it will by god have an effect on the lives of everybody here. For good or ill people will remember their names, boy.

I finally understand. Nancy Pelosi is Gunkid in a skirt.

...which is a mental picture I could have done without this early in the morning. I'm gonna go walk the dogs now.

QoD

"To me, hope lies on the path where individuals accept the cost of duplicating what the state’s managers promise but can’t deliver. By traveling this path, we may preserve a remnant of civil society while the rest of the herd and its elected parasites bleed themselves dry." - David Calderwood

Bumper Sticker Quote

Joe Biden's security vehicles have killed more people than my gun. - Anon

H/T (and pic) @ War On Guns.

Success!

The shotcrete crew actually arrived early, having left the city at something like four in the morning and apparently mounted JATO bottles to their truck. That was pretty weird, but when the first concrete truck arrived dead on time, we knew something very, very strange was happening. Things were going right. We really don't know how to deal with that.



And they spoke not a word (of English, anyway,) but went straight to their work. Spraying all the way around the bottom of the dome, then mounting scaffolds and going around again. These guys mostly do swimming pools. Nobody out here has a swimming pool, but if you think of M's Dome as a sort of upside-down, inside-out swimming pool, then these were the right people for the job. Certainly the unfamiliar geometry didn't seem to bother them. I love it when a crew knows what it's doing and just does it.


In accordance with the instructions from the manufacturer, M had turned the inside of the dome into a maze of braces and chains to take out as much flexibility as possible and support the burlap and mesh against the very considerable weight of the wet concrete.


This became essential at the beginning of the second pass, which was high enough to exert some real force on the steel, which promptly started flexing. For a few minutes, until we rearranged things, braces were falling like dominoes. But no damage was done.



I really wondered how the burlap was going to react to all that wet concrete on top. I know it's been done before and works, but...well, it just didn't seem natural. But it works great! The concrete permeated the cloth but never once blew through it.


And then...right at this point...they ran out of concrete. It took three hours to get another truck, and I went home. But sometime right around dark M showed up at my lair with a bottle of good rum and a shit-eating grin, looking for somebody with whom to toast Successful Completion! It works! The dome is now comprised of concrete, not just burlap and steel. Yes!

Now the wind's been blowing all night, so if you'll forgive me I have to go help wet down a whole bunch of concrete before it cracks and falls away. :-()

Today's the day!

Today, if the good lord's willing etc., we (watch someone else) shotcrete M's Dome. Trucks arriving from far away in the city...all sorts of things await to go wrong with that...we're on the ragged edge of the time of the season when you should be doing things like this...will the cement truck driver(s) get lost again?...ohgodohgod...

M is, as has become traditional, a total nervous wreck. I sincerely hope I'm completely sure that everything will be just fine. Whatever happens, we'll be right there watching it, our toes curling in our boots, ready to jump in with braces when the burlap collapses under the weight of the concrete applaud with glee when the whole operation goes forward without hitch one, because damn didn't M cover all the bases and leave nothing whatever to possibly go wrong!

Okay, I'm a nervous wreck too and it isn't even my house. We'll just have to endure this day and see how it all turns out. Report with pix follows.

Pop Quiz:

Two vehicles owned by the federal government and being driven by secret service employees strike and kill a pedestrian at a crosswalk in Washington DC. Both vehicles strike the pedestrian.

Blood alcohol and drug tests are administered to:
A. The drivers
B. The victim

Propane heater preventive maintenance, lesson learned.

Last winter was a cold one here at the secret lair, Mk I. I was (still am, lazy ass) in rather improvised quarters and got my heat where I could. For part of the winter I heated the barn's scriptorium with a small Mr. Heater, scavenging a hose from my campstove and connecting it to a 20-lb propane bottle. At the time I didn't give any thought to the advisability of doing this; it could be done, so I just went ahead and did it without reflecting that I get into the biggest problems when I do that.

This fall, just prior to the first good cold snap, I dragged out the Mr. Heater and found that it didn't work at all. Didn't even try; didn't behave as if propane or heat were in any way connected with its function of being a large, clumsy paperweight. Oh, dear.

A (very) little belated research pointed out the reason for this. In fact, it's right in the instructions which I didn't have but could have easily downloaded. It seems that the oil to be found in any propane bottle other than the little 1-lb "You won't get through the night with this" camping bottles chingers up the works of a Mr. Heater in fairly short order. Once it's had time to congeal nicely over the warm season, you're done.

So in connecting one of these handy space heaters to a remote propane bottle, you need more than the dedicated hose. You also need one of these filters. Learn from my expensive mistake.

Now HERE'S a surprise...

Pfizer abandons site of infamous Kelo eminent domain taking

Well, we all knew that was going to end well, didn't we?

Magnus' Headstone Arrived

M got back from his trip to the city, and the landlady sent up Magnus headstone. Not a very good likeness, but I like the epitaph she settled on. It's very him.

Yes, believe it or not I am working on the secret lair. Though I admit that for some time I just sort of patted it on the head in passing, I'm finally getting back to work on the interior. As soon as I've got the wire run, I'll be packing the walls with insulation. Got lots of plastic for vapor barrier, and I'll put up the siding as needed to hold it in place.

There are, of course, a number of impediments: I have everything I need for the roof and to install the wood stove except two things: the services of Clark Kent to move the stove and its pedestal into place, and some dreaming clue what I'm supposed to do then. But that'll work itself out...I'm sure. Eventually. Before the next ice age, for sure. There's also the matter of the interior wall for the bathroom, which I should probably at least frame in before doing all that other interior stuff. But I'm out of framing lumber, and besides I find logical procedure such a bore. Don't you?

Just a chunk of bad concrete

It used to have pride of place in my study, in a little glass case that showed it off like some expensive crystal figure. I remember thinking often what a lousy job of mixing it represented; it was soft, porous as hell. Rotten as the purpose that had caused it to be poured.

It was a piece of the Berlin Wall, a gift from a friend who had received it, along with several others, from that East German branch of her family that the West German branch hadn't seen in several decades. After the wall came down, twenty years ago today, all the family got together in Berlin and my friend came back with a suitcase full of these broken chunks. I imagine they were a dime a dozen in Berlin for a while: It was a pretty big wall.

Good riddance. Most of the tyrants of the corrupt communist regimes of eastern Europe survived; some even flourished in different guises. Only a few went to a different kind of wall, that that's a damned shame. But whatever our species' failings in the matter of maintaining the freedoms of its individuals, at least we have this to our credit. That damned wall is no more.

Welcome to our guests!

So yesterday the visits to this little backwater blog suddenly went, by my modest standards, through the roof. It seems my comments concerning a certain pro-military song were not appreciated by another blogger, one who apparently enjoys a lot more traffic than I get. Well, disagreements happen: The thing with being politically, er, unaffiliated is that you get chances to piss off conservatives and liberals alike. It's part of the fun.

So yeah - Hi, guys! I'm the milquetoast. Welcome!

Then this morning somebody linked the "modern policing" post to reddit.com, and that's already doing alarming things to the normally somnolent stats. Whom have I offended this time, he wondered, rubbing his hands together with glee.

Anyway, if any of my visitors has clicked to the homepage and read this, Welcome! Stick around for a while. Take your shoes off. Whatever impressions you may have gained from the post that led you here, I guarantee it's worse than that. :-)

Comment on the subject of sheepdogs...

Several months ago I posted a rant on the subject of that "wolves, sheepdogs and sheep" analogy police apologists love to fantasize about. It's a subject I bloviate about from time to time, and having done so last July I didn't give it any more thought.

Well, I've had some email trouble which W just cleared up for me, and going through the cascade of old emails I came upon this one, which was posted just three days ago:

So what you're saying is that you're ignorant? It's a shame since all these sheepdogs have fought for your freedom and protected your little fuzzy white ass while you've been asleep. Danger does not present itself momentarily and then disappear, it is a constant state. Stop assuming your ass is safe as long the wolves and sheepdogs are harassing you. The minute the sheepdogs give up on you sheep, then all sheep, including yourself, are going to get skinned and killed. Stop being so ignorant and start appreciating the men and women who have provided you with the comfort and food in which you survive with. You are no mutt, there is no such thing. You are a sheep and the least you could do is be a good sheep and keep your mouth shut.

Just wanted to make sure it got the attention it deserved. I sure wish people who write things like this would have the courage to use their names. I was going to fisk it, but what's the point? I'll just be a good sheep and keep my mouth shut.

Except to say..."He don't know me too good, do he?" :-P

Benevolence at Work: Pay Up or Go To Jail

H.R. 3962 would require health insurers to sell coverage on a guaranteed issue, mostly community-rated basis and attempt to improve the quality of the risk pool by requiring most people to have health coverage. Individuals who failed either to meet the proposed coverage ownership requirements or pay penalties could go to prison for up to 5 years. MORE

"No man's life, liberty or property is safe when the legislature is in session."

M's Dome, Belated Update

The front wall took M a while to finish, but he did a beautiful job - especially considering he'd never stuck two blocks together before building it. S came over and helped lay the foundation row, but M was on his own for the rest. I helped only a little to speed things up while he filled the bond beam layers and doorframe with concrete. Lately he's been spending his time laying out the electrical and other things that need to penetrate the dome. The shotcrete people are due today to look over the job, and with any luck (IE, if they don't flake out and if the weather holds) the dome will be covered with concrete before the end of next week.