Flag Down for Bringing a Walker on the Field

Someone on the web created a thread asking for unpopular opinions. When I saw it, I knew it was destiny. This is what I was made for.

I did quite a bit of writing. For one thing, I pointed out that pizza doesn’t go with beer. That must have made heads explode.

Pizza is acidic and a little sweet. It often contains oregano, a bitter herb. Obviously, you don’t pair that with a bitter beverage. Soft drinks and red wine go with pizza. Tea is acceptable. Beer? Insane.

I think people who drink beer with pizza are generally low-end beer drinkers who drink to get drunk. I think they must be people who drink really bad beer, chilled to the freezing point to kill the awful taste. People who drink stuff like Bud and Coors always drink it as cold as possible, and the reason is that when it warms up even a little, it tastes like seltzer with soap and a little sugar.

I think these people are likely to eat bad pizza from Papa John’s or Domino’s, and they just want something to wash it down and give them a buzz.

Beer goes with steak and rib roasts. It goes with Mexican food and seafood. It works with cheeseburgers and fries. Forcing it to get along with pizza is ill-advised at best. And nothing is worse than smelling other people’s beer-and-pizza burps while trying to eat.

If you think beer goes with everything, go eat an apple and chase it with a beer. It’s right up there with toothpaste and orange juice.

I also said Elvis was a lousy singer. It’s true. Elvis became famous because he caused girls with weak fathers to become sexually aroused. His early performances were basically riots, with little bacchantes fighting the ushers, tearing off their own underwear, and throwing it on the stage. People forget that. Today we make fun of people who call rock and roll the devil’s music, but it’s true. Any music that makes you throw your dirty underwear at people has some connection to hell.

Women still throw their dirty underwear at entertainers. It’s gross. They throw it at Justin Timberlake, for example. They throw it at the kind of guys who look like they take it home and put it on.

They should have men in Tyvek suits gather it and put it in medical waste bags. Someone could catch something.

Sinatra also mesmerized young tramps, but he was also an excellent singer whose style was innovative and unique. Jerry Lee Lewis was a much better singer than Elvis. Sam Cooke was far better. There were a lot of excellent male singers back in Elvis’s heyday. Nat King Cole. Eddie Arnold. Jim Reeves. Ray Price. Johnny Mathis. Ray Charles.

You can go into restaurants and bars today and still hear Sinatra recordings. Elvis? Not so much. It was never about the sound. It was about the pelvis.

I complained about sports worship. I said that if I wanted to watch overpaid illiterates work, I’d turn on The View.

I said I didn’t like it when people assumed I watched sports. People come up to me and try to make small talk about men I’ve never heard of, playing games I didn’t watch. “How about that Mahomes?” Who?

I pulled that name out of the air just now because I’ve seen it in headlines. I don’t know who he plays for or what his position is.

What if I went up to random men and said, “How about that Carl Friedrich Gauss? Is he the GOAT, or what?” He’s a fascinating guy. How can they not find him interesting? We wouldn’t have electronics or, well, any kind of serious technology without his discoveries.

Some guy responded and said I must have been rooting for Taylor Swift and the Chiefs.

How thick can a person’s head be?

Me: I never watch football. It would be great if the stadium where the Super Bowl was played was obliterated by a meteor and replaced with a Buc-Ee’s.

Him: You must have been rooting for Taylor Swift and the Chiefs.

What?

This is completely typical of my experiences with sports fans. “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” They can’t believe a man who doesn’t watch sports can exist. It’s like they’re under a spell. And they are. Demons are filling their minds with absurdities.

It also bugs me when men with hurt feelings try to tell me how empty my life must be because I don’t watch sports. What possible reason could you have to be angry at me for not sharing all of your hobbies? Do I get mad at you for not knowing how to weld?

I look down on you, sure. But I don’t get angry.

Kidding.

Yeah, my life is empty. I love my wife, and I spend a lot of time having fun with her. I don’t turn the TV on as soon as I get on and ignore her while I fill the house with obnoxious crowd noises and pray I don’t lose my ill-informed, emotion-driven bets, which I didn’t tell her about. Oh, the emptiness.

I have all sorts of time for my interests, like prayer, cooking, shooting, writing, and using tools. I get to spend time with my pet. I get to sit in the recliner with my son on my chest and relax in an atmosphere of pure love.

Empty, empty, empty. It would be so much better to be outside a stadium, trying to dodge as kids try to spit on me on my way in. I’d really rather be paying $11 each for cups of extremely bad beer and then standing in a quarter-inch of other people’s urine in packed men’s rooms. I long to get caught up in post-game brawls where people fight to defend the reputations of spoiled young athletes who pay armed men to keep fans away from them.

If only I could spend 4 hours fighting traffic, trying to get home from a stadium after my team lost, avoiding eye contact with drunk road-ragers and praying I don’t get stopped at a DUI checkpoint.

To get average seats for my three-person family, I’d have to shell out almost $500. I would happily pay $100 to be allowed to stay home.

But I must have been rooting for Taylor Swift and the Chiefs.

For $500, I can get my son a brand-new CZ 457 Scout in .22LR, and he can hand it down to his son. But no, I’d rather watch grown men play a game created to amuse children. When are the duck-duck-goose playoffs?

On a related note, I said Bill Burr was an idiot. A lot of men think he’s a genius and the world’s last straight shooter. A regular guy with a platform. Hello? It’s an act, and he’s an entertainer. If he were telling the truth, they wouldn’t call it an act.

Rock Hudson made romantic comedies with women. Just saying.

He’s not smart, and he’s not one of us. Normal men, I mean. He’s just another showbiz liberal, kissing the rings on the hands that feed him.

He has crippling TDS. Right after dozens of people died in the unnecessary LA fires, he appeared with another fool, Jimmy Kimmel, and made jokes about people who criticized California’s fire preparation and response. He ridiculed them. He stupidly asserted it wasn’t possible to put fires out with ocean water. He didn’t even think about the insensitivity of doing all this while bodies were literally still warm.

California and LA officials themselves have admitted they blew it. They admitted it in Donald Trump’s presence soon after Burr made an ass of himself. Talk about jokes aging badly.

Burr says he–“HE”–doesn’t get tired of winning football games. He supports the Patriots, and he uses the words “I” and “we” when he talks about them. “I don’t get tired of winning.” “We won.”

If Bill Burr is still capable of running 40 yards, he would probably do it in a minute and a half. On the field, he would move like Joe Biden trying to find his way off a stage. You could measure his vertical leap with a feeler gauge. His most likely tool for stopping an NFL pass is his forehead. Who is “we”?

You know those videos of drunken fans rushing onto football fields, careening around at 6 mph, and then having angry players turn them into Tex-Avery-style murals? That’s what a Bill Burr NFL cameo would look like, except maybe he would keep his shirt on. They would peel him off the turf like a fruit roll-up and bury him in a map tube.

If Bill Burr played in a game, he wouldn’t sit on the bench. They’d bring in a hospital bed and a bag with a zipper on it.

Bill Burr has never “won” a game. The people who win are paid to be there. If you have to pay, you’re not part of “we.”

Ticket Taker: Ticket, please.

Bill Burr: Ticket? I have to get in! We’re playing today!

Ticket Taker: Okay, pops. Ticket and DNR.

Burr says he feels bad for days when “WE” lose. Seriously? I don’t mean to be insensitive, but if the plane carrying the New England Patriots flew into a bus carrying the Kansas City Chiefs, I would be fine. I would be very sorry to see it happen, I would feel bad for everyone who knew them, and I would probably pray for their loved ones, but 15 minutes later, I’d probably be watching Paul Harrell videos on Youtube.

If your emotional wellbeing depends on how well a bunch of total strangers play a game you stink at, you need an intervention, because your life is devoid of meaningful pursuits. Burr felt jolly and sassy after dozens of people died in fires caused by incompetence, so maybe something in his head needs to be adjusted.

Some people got annoyed with me, but that just proved I was doing it right. If they wanted me to make them happy, they should have posted a popular opinion thread.

3

I have been asking myself whether I should write about the recent addition to my family. I don’t want to give cowardly, underdeveloped Internet nuts power over my wife and son. On the other hand, we have strong prayer lives, I can easily (both physically and mentally) kill anyone who endangers us, I’m in a jurisdiction where the police will pat me on the back for it and possibly take me out for ribs, and I feel I owe something to people who have read this blog for years.

Some people have been reading since the beginning, two decades ago. I have gotten to know a few people, even if at a distance. I have prayed for them. I have met a handful. I don’t know if I can call people I’ve never met friends, but if not, some are pretty close to it.

I think this is the first photo I took after we brought him home. It was not staged. It’s amusing, and it should also serve to send a message.

I thought it was really funny. We were extremely sleep-deprived and barely knew what we were doing. We tossed him in the bassinet and started squaring the house away for bed, and a couple of minutes later, I saw I had left him near a carry piece.

Not a problem, since he was not able to rack the slide at that point.

Second photo, equally funny:

He was due to wake up at any minute, and I wanted to shoot some video. I rushed around looking for something to weigh the tripod down. I couldn’t find what I was looking for, and then I saw some bags of .45 ACP handloads. Perfect.

He is healthy. He is happy and peaceful except when it’s time to be changed, and I wear ear protection for that. He really is as cute as the picture suggests. Not all babies have curb appeal early on, and we have learned that it’s a blessing. The staff at the hospital didn’t want to let him go home. I know they give good treatment to every baby, but it was pretty obvious that being really cute bought him some extra favor. They loaded us up with stuff we weren’t supposed to get.

I thought it was a little unusual for a baby to be this cute, so I asked people if it was just my perception as a parent, and apparently he is objectively cute.

The delivery process was a horror. They told us to go in at 4:45 a.m. on a certain day. Then after we had gotten up in the middle of the night, they told us to wait another day. Then they called us in at about 6:30 the next morning. Then they ran the air conditioner all night, and it was 53 degrees outside.

It was so cold, we put 6 blankets on my wife, and her hands still shook. I got the staff to yell at whoever ran the air conditioning, and we got them to provide two electric heaters. I slept in a winter coat with insulated gloves and two pairs of socks. The room warmed up the next morning at about the time labor got into gear. Then it got too hot.

The labor itself was terrible, which means it was normal. For medical reasons, we had to finish without an epidural.

It seemed much worse than it was, because we were both exhausted from lack of sleep and lying in a freezing room. The whole experience should have been much better.

We both had the feeling that the labor process was a crushing ordeal, but later we agreed that the main problem was that we had been deprived of sleep and subjected extreme cold. If she had gone into labor rested and warm, it would have been painful but quick and bearable, and it wouldn’t have taken us several days to get over the stress.

We are getting an acceptable amount of sleep now, although sometimes I start to doze off in a chair, and I make mistakes I wouldn’t make if I were rested.

The baby was 80th-percentile big, but he was not fat. He is heavy. He is now wearing stuff for 3-month-olds. He seems very strong. I thought newborns were like rag dolls, but he wrestles with us pretty forcefully. Yesterday he insisted on rolling onto his side. When I corrected him and put him on his back, he rolled back onto his side instantly, in spite of being swaddled. He lifts himself off his mother’s chest with his arms.

His eyes were very dark when he was born, but today, suddenly, they’re blue. I don’t know what to expect later.

He was hairy from the get-go, and the hair on his head is nearly black and pretty straight.

He feeds like a horse, so no problems there yet. He was supposed to lose weight, but I think he’s going the other way.

He seems to smile and light up when I bother him, which is a father’s duty. Web sources suggest the smile may be from gas, however. He has that to spare. He seems to like us. He appears to have fun sometimes.

For a long time, I prayed for God to give me a house of love, and now I have it, so don’t give up on your important prayers. I don’t think my son will ever have to know what it’s like to live in a dysfunctional home.

That’s about it. Don’t expect a lot of updates. We give our thanks to everyone who prayed for us.

What are They Putting in Brawndo These Days?

What planet did I wake up on today?

News outlets are disseminating video of the DNC’s suspension-of-disbelief-defying chair election. I don’t know what to say about it. I would say it’s like an SNL sketch, only not funny, but that also describes SNL.

You can see some of the antics in the video below. Particularly odd: Dr. Quintessa Hathaway making her campaign speech through song.

Yes, “Quintessa.” Like “Vanessa,” only 4 times better.

Out on a limb here, but I’m betting her doctorate isn’t in medicine, math, or science. Could it be that we have another Ed.D. to go with Bill Cosby and Dr. Jill?

BANG! Am I really this good? Nailed it. Her campaign website confirms it.

Sorry. Impressed myself there.

It could happen.

“You fight on”? What? What does that even mean? Fight what? “Your government”? The Democrats ARE the government. Okay, they lost control of all three branches temporarily, but overall, the government is a liberal institution, and while we may be getting some short-lived relief, government employees outside of the military are overwhelmingly in favor of leftist insanity.

Nothing makes less sense than a leftist who thinks he’s fighting the system.

Except maybe a person who claims retaliation for genocide is genocide. Or, you know…queers for Palestine.

You probably won’t watch the video, but if you do, check out the list of racist, sexist, realityphobic rules for committee member eligibility. Even the people reciting them don’t understand them. If I chose to side with these people, I would literally be unable to do it, because even with a law degree, I would not be able to make sense of the rules.

David Hogg ran for vice chair and apparently won. In his horrendous, self-unaware speech, he expressed his intention to end school shootings through gun control. Oddly, however, this is the same guy who thinks the police should not exist. Evidently, the way to handle crime is to disarm ourselves, give the government the job of defending us, and then disarm the government.

Many of us like to say Idiocracy has come true, but that’s not correct. The characters in Idiocracy weren’t insane. They were just stupid. The DNC is run by bona fide mental cases.

How much worse can things get before Yeshua deports us to heaven? This is becoming too weird to tolerate.

It’s a Boy, not a Soy

I don’t plan to become a family blogger because my wife and son never signed on for that, and I don’t think the world needs to know everything about them. I think I should occasionally write a few things, though.

Our son will be here shortly. Everything is arranged. My wife is ready to unload and have her body to herself. She has enjoyed being pregnant, but she will also enjoy being able to put her son down, and she really misses sleeping on her back.

She is ecstatic about the whole business because female hormones have numbed her to rational concerns about pain, sleeplessness, diaper changes, and being tethered to another person for the rest of her life. She is literally high on hormones. This is how God helps us reproduce. We would never be able to get it done if women weren’t high. They would run off and hide when their husbands offered to get them pregnant.

Women are controlled by hormones and instincts to a much greater degree than men, and this is one reason why women have historically been viewed as less rational. They actually are less rational. They have powerful, ever-changing drives that have nothing to do with reason.

Feminists deny this, to everyone’s disadvantage. The only time feminists admit women are less rational is when a woman kills her husband and claims PMS made her do it. You can’t say you won’t vote for a female president because you’re afraid PMS will drive her to launch a nuclear attack, but it’s okay to say a murderer should go free because she was bloated and irritable and nobody gave her chocolate.

If the human race went back to admitting women are less stable, things would be better for everyone. Women would have more realistic expectations of themselves, and so would men. And men would be taught how to deal with female instability and keep things harmonious. This is one of our most important jobs, but feminists get furious at the mention of it.

No wonder feminists are such happy people.

When a woman is not pregnant, her attitudes and behaviors go through changes every month. When she is pregnant, things can go completely crazy. Some women cry for no reason. Many get extremely emotional and hard to live with.

If a man knows these things are coming, because he lives in a reality-based society in which young men are taught the truth, he can help his wife stay anchored and at peace. If he has been brainwashed by feminism, he will be just as crazy as his wife. He will get caught up in her irrational swings and take them seriously. And of course, he will blame himself, because man bad, woman good.

God is more stable than men, and men are supposed to spend time with God in order to be anchored and at peace. This help is supposed to flow downhill from men into women. In a feminist society, the opposite occurs. Women’s hormones and instincts drive them crazy, and their husbands absorb and encourage the craziness.

This is how men end up wearing pink knitted hats.

God has blessed me with a very stable wife, and that is a huge blessing. I don’t wonder who I’ll be waking up next to every morning. But she is experiencing one drive which is very typical: the nesting drive.

I didn’t learn about this until I was 35, because our feminized society conceals it the way our fake news outlets conceal Trump successes and man-made-virus lab leaks. Sometimes women get very excited about cleaning up their homes in order to create pleasant “nests” for their children.

Not so much for their husbands. Oh, well.

Right now, my wife is very gung-ho about cleaning and order. She can’t put the broom down. She moves things and cleans behind them. She fills bags with trash I didn’t know we had. She bugs me about the nursery.

If I were a disgusting soy boy enabler, I would be running around like an estrogen-crazed chicken with its head cut off. “YES, HONEY! YES, HONEY! WHAT SHOULD I DO NEXT?” And I would resent her for nagging, because I would not realize she was being pushed by a biological urge she can’t suppress. Because I am an actual man who loves being with God, eats dead animals, and doesn’t pretend recycling works, I know she is in the grip of something very strong.

I don’t resent her. I go along with her drive to a reasonable degree, but I also remind her that she needs to step outside herself and realize she’s a little extreme right now. I keep reminding her that everything is being taken care of. Everything is going to be fine. This helps both of us.

As for me, I spend a lot of time soaking in God’s presence, because I am not as stable as he is. He helps me relax even though I’m about to be saddled with the responsibility for the welfare of a tiny fragile, human being who has to have everything done for him.

My best friend has a dominant daughter-in-law who is about as far out on the left as a person can get, and her husband goes along with her weird ideas. He exacerbates them, pouring gasoline on a fire that needs to be put out. What she really wants is for him to stand up and take charge, but she will never admit it to herself or him, so the storm will continue.

Thanks to God and the way he is parenting me, I’m not going to let that happen in this house. If I had had children 30 years ago, before I realized how sick our society is and how God orders families, who knows what kind of mess I would have made of things?

I’m going to be an old parent, and that’s sad, but I’m not going to be a wife’s first child, like a lot of men. God has managed to set me straight about a lot of things, so there are some problems this family will never have.

I am getting confirmation through tips people give me about the delivery process. I was told not to show my emotions, for example. A woman told me that, based on her own experience, so I don’t want to hear about my patriarchal insensitivity. She made it clear my wife needs someone to be strong during the delivery. She also predicted some nutty behaviors, and she told me things I could not have anticipated. For example, I shouldn’t bring food into the room because some women can’t stand to smell food during delivery.

Not a rational thing, but one that has to be accommodated anyway.

Imagine a feminist woman telling a man not to show emotion during delivery. It could never happen. Feminists think men are supposed to cry all the time.

Maybe that’s because men who marry feminists cry a lot.

For obvious reasons.

I am here to guide and sacrifice. I’m not the center of attention. I’m not the patient. I’m not the bride. How I feel doesn’t matter. My comfort doesn’t matter. What I spend doesn’t matter. I am here to get my family through this and get everyone back home safely.

I suspect a lot of delivery rooms contain two brides: one female, and one male.

May God utterly destroy feminism and humiliate every toxic person who teaches it until they shut up. The toll it takes is beyond calculation.

Here is a meme for anyone who plans to lecture me in comments.

I won’t be posting pictures, and I don’t think I’ll write anything about the birth. Prayers would be appreciated, though, since they’re the only things that really help.

Stay Close to Your Commanding Officer

I have written about the revelation God gave me about being close to him and treasuring the experience as though he were a loved one who just returned from the dead. He is a loved one who returned from the dead, so this makes sense.

I had a little bird that loved me, and he died suddenly from an infection. Afterward, I had a few dreams in which he came back to visit. In the first dream, he glowed like a light bulb, and he was overjoyed to see me. I held him and kissed him, and it gave me closure. I pressed him to my face and savored the feeling of his nearness.

Eventually, God helped me to feel similarly about him. When God helps me to feel close to him, it’s like pressing myself into a clean, soft mattress after three days without sleep. It’s like drinking from a big jug of water after spending a day digging ditches in the desert.

People who will read this will have lost loved ones. They will be able to imagine how tightly they would hold them if they came back. In a situation like that, you don’t need to speak. You just need to hold on and receive relief and new life.

Today God helped me to rest in him for quite a while. This was right after I woke up. After a certain amount of time, I took a look at my phone to see what was happening in the world.

Talk about contrast.

I saw a “news” story featuring a list of tales from people who had bad dating experiences. These days, “news” often means lists of regurgitated text messages, tweets, and Reddit posts about obscure individuals.

A woman went on one date and then texted the man to ask if he would pay for her health insurance. When he refused, she told him he was ugly and gay. A man texted a woman he barely knew over and over and called her a whore when she wasn’t interested.

I saw another piece featuring lists of bad experiences people had had with human resources employees. They cut off health insurance for a full-time employee. They backed up a boss who expected an hourly employee to be on call around the clock.

I saw a piece by a woman who must be a leftist. She said her elderly father had lost weight he could not afford to lose because of a lung disease. He had no appetite. His life was in danger.

He and her mother had always been dietary extremists (vegetarians), but while he was sick, her father felt a sudden desire to eat McDonald’s food. He started eating it several times a week, and he started putting weight back on.

His wife and the lady who wrote the piece were upset. The wife ate meals with him while “tight-lipped” and “predictably disgusted.” The daughter said, ” I have to admit, their Big Breakfast tastes surprisingly good on a Sunday morning.”

Like McDonald’s serves dog food no sane person enjoys. Why would anyone “have to admit” the food tastes good? Is eating McDonald’s food something to be ashamed of?

In what universe is McDonald’s “predictably” disgusting or disgusting at all?

McDonald’s describes the Big Breakfast as, “a warm biscuit, fluffy scrambled eggs, savory McDonald’s sausage and crispy golden Hash Browns.”

Biscuits contain flour, fat, and milk, with a couple of other minor ingredients. Sounds like the same stuff that goes into any roux made by a French chef. Eggs contain eggs, which are featured prominently in dishes served by Michelin-starred restaurants. Sausage is pork and a couple of seasonings. Pork has won Iron Chef contests. McDonald’s makes the best hash browns in the business.

The Big Breakfast is not a plate of popsicles covered with marshmallow Fluf and crumbled Pop Tarts.

Leftists bash McDonald’s all the time, as if Hitler owned the chain. Why?

I once saw a magazine story in which leftist Candice Bergen bragged that she had never eaten a McDonald’s hamburger. Who is that supposed to impress? She thought she was making people admire her, but she looked like an idiot.

Now McDonald’s is associated in the leftist spleen, not mind, with Trump, which must make things worse.

I also saw a story about a woman who gave up her daughter for adoption. The story said the daughter had sent a two-word text which was unexpected. I thought maybe she had said something uplifting. It turned out the text said, “I’m trans.”

I read about a lady who took her kid to Disney World, where bearded perverts abuse little boys by selling them princess costumes. She complained about the prices and said the best experiences were a cheap ride and seeing her daughter chase lizards outside the hotel. She said people took on debt to take their kids to Disney World. She said Disney World put on a Mickey-Mouse-themed Halloween party and charged $180 per head.

Disney used to be relatively innocent. I went a couple of times as a kid, and it was fairly harmless, and ordinary families could afford it. Now it’s like paying for heart transplant surgery, and the corporation is all about anti-white racism, alternative religions, leftism, and sexual perversion.

Mouse ears cost $35 now. They could probably be sold profitably for $5.

I read a lot of depressing things in a few minutes, and I thought about how much I hated this world. I talked to God, and I said the people here were like foreigners to me. They were so miserable. They were heartless. Their pursuits were worthy of pigs.

They were so busy trying to be their own gods and providers, they had no time for the Lord, and they didn’t receive his blessings. They missed out on the best experience there is: being with the one who loves them most and who will do the most for them. They were making up moral codes that led to disaster.

I started to tell God they were like dogs, but I stopped, because dogs are loyal and altruistic to a fault. People are not much like dogs at all. They are more like rats or monkeys. They are selfish and treacherous. An animal can’t be treacherous. Animals can’t understand the concept of betrayal.

I said people were trashy. They had no class. And God told me that classy people make sacrifices. That is the essence of class. Being nice to your neighbors who throw loud parties and steal your apples. Choosing not to correct snotty strangers in front of their kids. Holding doors for people you know will walk past you without even looking your way.

God is classy. The privilege of class is being better to other people than they are to you and not being infected by them.

I thought about my son. I realized he might have to spend a hundred years here. I felt as though I had pronounced a sentence on him.

I ran back to God and got back into his presence, and suddenly, warmth came back into me. I felt cheerful and optimistic. I wanted to forget everything I had just seen on the web.

I realized how blessed Christians who spend time with God are. We live in a different world that occupies the same space as the rat world. We don’t have to strive as much. We don’t have to play by the same rules. We can have the vexatious people removed from our lives and live in peace.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were better off in the flames with Yeshua than the men who threw them into the furnace and stayed outside. The men who threw them in were burned to death, but God’s favorites weren’t touched by fire at all.

The most important thing I will teach my son will not be to live by religious rules, and it certainly won’t be how to get ahead by playing the world’s game. It will be to love God and hold onto him like a big down pillow. If he does that, and he listens, everything else will take care of itself. A thousand will fall at his side, and ten thousand at his right hand, but it will not come near him. Even if he does everything wrong by rat standards.

I really, really hate this place. I feel like I live in a comfortable little cottage on the grounds of a hospital for the criminally insane. No matter how pleasant my life is, I will never let myself think the world is anything but a catastrophe.

There but for the Grace of God Waddles You

Why are mediocre skinny people so self-righteous?

Opray Winfrey was some sort of bigwig at Weight Watchers, which is odd, given her lifetime of disastrous failure to control her weight. I often remark on the absurdity of making Oprah Winfrey a diet guru. It’s like asking Amber Heard how to be a great wife.

I have received hundreds of emails advertising OPRAH’S WEIGHT LOSS SECRETS, but I have never received a single email selling weight loss secrets from people like Steve Buscemi or Kate Moss. Why is that?

Oprah started taking drugs to lose weight, and while this was working, she lied and denied using drugs. Then she got caught, and she was out at Weight Watchers, an organization which relies on bad diet food and willpower. Two things that don’t work very well for the vast majority of people. If you’re fat at 20, you will almost certainly be fat at 60, unless you’re one of those people who get fat not because of cravings but because you stuff yourself in spite of not having them.

Those people exist. They’re the ones who drop 70 pounds in mid-life and then say, “I just quit eating so much.”

You can use heroin regularly and never become an addict, if you’re a certain type of person. Some people drink like crazy and retain the ability to quit and never look back. We are not all the same.

I took Ritalin for ADD, and I developed an incredible tolerance. A typical dose is 10 milligrams per day, and I sometimes took 120, not for fun, but to compensate for the tolerance. A lot of Ritalin users become addicted, but I never did. When my doctor switched me to something else, I didn’t have withdrawal symptoms, and I didn’t care whether I ever saw Ritalin again. When I was in college, I drank in a manner I would call “competitive,” but I have never, ever thought, “Man, I need a drink right now.” I have never had the DT’s. I’ve never panicked because I couldn’t get a drink. There have been plenty of periods in my life during which I went over a month without a single drink, just because I didn’t feel the desire.

I have taken all sorts of opioids for pain. When they ran out, they ran out. It meant nothing to me.

I’ve never had any kind of withdrawal symptom from giving up anything.

People are different.

Oprah failed at Weight Watchers, just like many people defeat bariatric surgery. She will probably fail at Ozempic eventually. It comes with problems.

Now she’s in trouble for making some incredible, truthful remarks. Incredible in that they reveal astonishing obtuseness. She is elderly, and she says she has only recently realized thin people are thin because they don’t have intrusive thoughts about food. She sincerely believed they were better people with more character.

She’s right. This is why most thin people are thin, although others can credit cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, and disorders. It’s amazing that she didn’t realize this until she was so old.

There are definitely some people out there who have food cravings and stay thin anyway, because people are different, but let’s be honest. Most thin people are thin because they just don’t find food that interesting.

Thin people who think they like food as much as fat people are like women who think they like sex just as much as men. They’re lying to themselves and everyone else.

I’m a normal man. I can be physically attracted to someone I hate or feel contempt for. I could have extremely satisfying relations with such a person. I am instinctively tempted to be nice to unsuitable people, even though I know I will never let myself be involved with them. I can even be attracted to a cartoon or a photo of a woman who died 50 years ago! Going an hour without a sexual thought is not a possibility. Very few women are like that, but women love to lecture men as though self-control explained the differences in our behavior and thoughts.

Homosexual men commonly have over a thousand partners per year. Lesbian couples often have sexless relationships. Think about that.

My mother didn’t care whether she ate or not. She told me so. She often forgot to eat. Her weight got up to around 110 once, and she was disturbed. I never heard her say something like, “Cheesecake would really hit the spot right now.” She never got in the car to go get her favorite food. She rarely touched desserts. She never went into a kitchen and asked, “When is the food going to be ready?”

Her dad was the same way. He was almost 6’3″, and he was vain about his weight. Whenever he started to pass 180, he just ate less until his weight went back down.

Neither of them were highly disciplined people. My mother was killed by an addiction, which proves she didn’t have the kind of willpower a person like Oprah would need to stay thin.

My dad’s sister was highly disciplined. She ran her house like a Marine barracks. She was a teacher. She was busy all the time with things busy wives do. She was accomplished. She was as big as a whale.

Consider all the thin idiots we know of. Not post-Ozempic thin. Famous people who were thin throughout most of the last century. Charlie Sheen is thin whether or not he’s on drugs. Tom Sizemore wasn’t fat. Andy Dick is skinny. Think of all the thin musicians who can’t stay out of rehab and who keep people waiting in studios for 5 or 6 hours because they have so little character they can’t get out of bed.

I have used cocaine. I thought it was wonderful, but I still didn’t become addicted. Other people become addicted in a day. If cocaine (more accurately, the sensation of cocaine wearing off) made me feel the way it makes those people feel, I would be an addict right now. Same goes for alcohol and other drugs. I would guess I have 40th-percentile willpower. Not enough to save me.

Oprah calls the intrusive thoughts “food noise.” They exist for some people but not others. They are probably the voices of demons. Compulsive behavior comes from demons.

Self-righteous thin people who only maintain discipline in the area of food are criticizing Oprah now because she told the truth. They want to be admired for something they never earned. They’re telling the rest of humanity that people who overeat just aren’t trying. That’s a load. There are people who commit suicide because they want to be thin so badly. People get dangerous surgery that doesn’t work. They go to fat-control resorts. The idea that fat people are not willing to make sacrifices is a canard.

My mother smoked two packs a day and made fun of my dad for eating compulsively, but she died at 61, and he made it to 87. Her problem was much worse than his. He smoked when he was young, and he quit in 8 minutes. He saw a headline about the discovery that smoking caused cancer, he took one cigarette out of a full pack, he smoked it, he threw the pack away, and that was it. Not one cigarette for the remaining half-century of his life.

She tried hypnosis. She tried accupuncture. She took horrible scare classes where they showed people slides of cancerous lungs. She still couldn’t beat nicotine.

There are fat people out there who maintain perfect exercise routines. They keep their houses perfectly. They work hard. Their bills and taxes are always in order. They never drink or take drugs. They never, ever procrastinate. They have exceptional character. They’re still fat, because they face temptation weak-willed thin people don’t face and could never handle.

Look at a photo of men in prison yards. Most are not obese. These are among the weakest-willed people in society, and they have are given starchy, sugary food. Their exercise time is limited. Why aren’t they all obese? Oprah’s critics have an answer, but it makes no sense.

It’s very interesting to see how poorly human beings understand themselves in 2025, after thousands of years of trying. Centuries after the scientific method came into being. We can put a hundred billion (b, not m) transistors on a chip you can lose in your pocket, but we still have no idea how we, ourselves work.

Oprah is an unhappy and unfulfilled person. She has fame and billions, but her personal life is nothing, her career has been selfish and destructive to society, she hasn’t grown up, she doesn’t know God (in fact, she fights Yeshua), and she can’t defeat the most humiliating challenge of her existence. Now when she is finally right about something and has a revelation she should have had when she was 20, people are punishing her for it.

Do you often think about foods you miss? Do you have a hard time putting the fork down? Do you get excited when you go to your favorite restaurant? If not, you can’t put yourself in Oprah’s shoes. And you probably can’t afford them anyway.

The Gradual Return of Tohu Wawohu

What to think about President Trump’s blanket J6 pardon?

I was not pleased when Biden pardoned just about every other Biden. It has always been disturbing to see Biden prove honor and honesty mean absolutely nothing to him, and then see the left back him up as though he’s a fine man. What is it they call him? “A decent man” or something like that?

Really? The guy who abandoned his granddaughter and hung 6 stockings by the chimney for the other grandchildren? The president who called journalist Peter Doocy a stupid son of a bitch on camera? The famous plagiarist who nearly got thrown out of law school and, having learned nothing, went on to destroy his presidential campaign by committing more plagiarism?

Are habitual liars decent people?

Biden didn’t say he was reluctant to pardon his son. He said he would not do it, flat out. Then he did it. Remarkably, this actually bothered some leftists, to their credit. I guess Biden hit two of their raw nerves: white privilege and nepotism. Oops. Make that “Aryan godlike privilege.”

I completely understand why leftists don’t like wealthy frat boys who have snotty attitudes and rightly believe they can do anything to anyone and get away with it.

I thought it was wrong for Biden to pardon the J6 committee and Anthony Fauci, but it also stupid, because I don’t think any of those people were in danger of prosecution. They were just in danger of being investigated, which they should not object to if they care about their country. And a pardon won’t block investigation. Biden made investigations more likely by annoying his adversaries and obliterating the Fifth Amendment rights of all those he pardoned, meaning they will have to answer any questions the new J6 committee asks.

I thought the Biden family pardons were much worse. They’re akin to treason in that they were hostile to the legitimate and important interests of the United States. Tens of millions of dollars have suddenly appeared in the bank accounts of unelected Bidens, Biden himself has been shown a liar with regard to his claims he had nothing to do with his son’s business, and no serious, unhindered investigation has been done; no investigation with teeth. His son was allowed to walk out of Congress, defying a subpoena, while two Trump confidantes were put in prison for doing the same thing.

Bribery is a big deal. Selling access to the Vice President is a big deal. We can’t let things like that go.

The pardons were also trashy. Biden is a trashy guy. He’s not a blue blood whose family has a good reputation to protect.

So what about the J6 pardon?

I was upset about it when I found out, because Trump had said his people would go case by case. His supporters expected him to keep the violent and dangerous rioters in prison. When he let every J6 defendant go, it seemed to me that he didn’t care about police officers who were attacked. I felt that people who attacked cops should stay in prison for an appropriate length of time.

I’m also not a fan of Enrique Tarrio. While J6 was not a real insurrection to most rioters, who were more like overexcited tourists who got caught up in a moment and thought they could get away with doing what leftists had done countless times, Tarrio apparently thought the Proud Boys really were going to keep Biden from being certified. And he doesn’t seem like what I would call a quality person. He was a felon before J6.

Maybe his sentence was harsh, and perhaps it should have been shortened, but he doesn’t seem like a person who should go unpunished. What he did, if not treason, was close to it, and we should discourage things like that.

Now that more time has passed, I am not so sure Trump’s action was unreasonable.

We saw BLM (which I call Certain Black Lives Matter) and Antifa burn private and government buildings. We saw them set at least one policeman’s clothing on fire. We saw them fight cops over and over. They tried to lynch Kyle Rittenhouse. They tried to burn a government building with people inside.

Generally, they have gone unpunished. There is no Congressional BLM Domestic Terror Committee. There is no Antifa Committee.

My sense is that Trump and his people believe that when the law is selectively enforced for political reasons, as it clearly has been with regard to J6 defendants and leftist terrorists, it is unacceptable to continue to punish those who are prosecuted while ignoring the others.

Personally, I would not take that approach. I believe a person who really tries to mount a coup should go to prison. I believe a person who physically abuses a policeman who is doing his job properly should go to prison. I think we should imprison such people even if the law turns a blind eye to the offenses of those who oppose them, because we have a duty to our citizens.

I think it would make more sense to start going after leftist terrorists in order to balance the books. Unfortunately, a lot of the leftist terrorism that has been forgiven took place so long ago, statutes of limitations have passed. We could go after such people in the future, however.

Because Trump was so generous with J6 people, our government is going to look pretty odd going after anyone who commits the kinds of crimes J6ers, Antifers, and BLMers have committed. Prosecutors will have to suck it up and say, “Okay, we blew it in the past, and it may not seem fair to go after people now when we let them slide before, but we’re going to do it anyway, because the alternative is chaos.”

Trump is also pardoning people who were convicted under the FACE Act. These are people who supposedly blocked access to abortion. The rationale is that while the Act is facially neutral, it has almost never been used to prosecute people in favor of abortion.

That rationale may make more sense. After all, there aren’t many pro-abortion people who are willing to stand in front of businesses that help pregnant women and block the doors. Helping women raise their children is not murder, but abortion usually is, so people who are pro-life are much more highly motivated to do something to help the victims.

The law appears neutral, but it was clearly crafted with the intention of doing in pro-lifers, and it falls on them disproportionately. It’s a law designed to facilitate the killing of unborn babies.

This is not like other cases of disproportionate impact. For example, leftists opposed intelligence tests for public servants because blacks failed them at a higher rate. That’s a different situation. We can’t have stupid or undereducated cops. That should be obvious. And the tests were not designed to keep blacks out. They were implemented with the best of intentions. They were necessary, unlike charging Christians with felonies for crimes that would ordinarily be low-grade misdemeanors.

Disproportionate impact is fine, as long as it happens for good reasons and there is no unfairness.

Example: NBA tryouts have disproportionate impacts on whites and Asians. A smaller percentage of blacks get sent home. That’s perfectly acceptable. Changing things to assure equality of outcome would destroy basketball and harm worthy athletes with a great deal to lose.

When I was in college, Jewish friends used to joke that the thinnest book in the world was titled Famous Jewish Athletes. They never said something had to be done about the athetic world’s discrimination against Jews. It would have been foolish.

The FACE Act is a sick law, giving special protection to depraved individuals who profit from ripping babies up alive. Satan himself could have written it. We don’t have similar laws to guarantee people access to hospitals or government buildings. You can stand in front of a VA hospital and keep cripples out, and the worst likely consequence is a trespass order. Same thing, if you stand in front of an ER.

I’m not sure Trump was right about the J6 pardon. Maybe he was. It has to be tough, sitting in prison being abused by left-leaning guards, knowing that leftists who did worse things are being ignored or, worse, rewarded with riches, fame, and admiration.

Did Trump lie? Probably not. I think he simply changed his mind. Biden made a firm commitment not to pardon his son, but when Trump said his people would go case by case, it was just a statement of intention.

I can understand why a president would rather change his mind and draw flak than let others rot in prison when their counterparts are living normal lives in the sunshine.

Not-so-Noble Savage

Looks like I will be receiving another .22 rifle, so I’m up to three 2025 guns, and it’s only January.

Go, me. I’m buying guns like Trump is signing executive orders.

Did he really change the name of the Gulf of Mexico? Can he actually do that? Can he change the name of Canada to North Detroit?

He wants to annex Canada. Fine, if we don’t let them vote. Otherwise, AOC or Bernie Sanders will be president for life, and criticizing the taste of hummus will be a felony.

Forget annexing Canada. Let’s force Canada to annex Detroit.

Canada is just a suburb of Detroit anyway.

And Minneapolis. Minnesotans are a Canadian subspecies.

I had a Savage A22. It was not threaded for a silencer. The barrel was too long. I found it difficult to find anyone near me who could alter the barrel, and I was hesitant to try doing it myself. I found out it was impossible to get Savage to provide a shorter barrel, although they make them.

I decided to get a long dial test indicator so I could try fixing the A22, and I also ordered a new Savage with a shorter threaded barrel. I figured threading the barrel would be a fun project and a way to get into barrel threading without destroying anything valuable, but I wanted a new gun anyway. I would make it my primary A22 while I fiddled with the other one.

The new Savage arrived.

It had grit in the threads that connected it to the stock, which was not situated symmetrically around the barrel. I had to use brake cleaner to clean one of the screws, and I still have to clean the other one. I don’t know what the grit consists of. It does not appear to be steel from machining. Could be buffing or grinding grit.

The trigger tested at 5-7 pounds. That’s the adjustment range. Insanely high. I may not be able to find a good solution without buying a $280 aftermarket trigger, which I am reluctant to do, given the gun’s other issues, the lack of other aftermarket parts (and OEM parts), and the availability of better guns.

The gun’s plastic dust cover was broken at the factory.

I have decided to get rid of the gun without even firing it. I plan to sell it and eat the loss. I could possibly change my mind, but this is how I feel now. I have already ordered a new Ruger 10/22 carbine to replace it.

A 10/22 is not a top-quality gun when it leaves the factory, but it is made by a manufacturer that seems to be on top of things, generally. The world loves the 10/22, so there is no end to what you can do to customize one. You can replace the barrel in 10 minutes. You can buy a drop-in trigger that far outclasses the gun and ammunition. There are all kinds of aftermarket doodads.

If you fiddle with a 10/22 long enough, you can make yourself a surprisingly good weapon. This is now my plan.

I’ve already customized a 10/22 Charger, so I know a little bit about the subject. But a Charger isn’t a rifle. Not until Trump kills the pistol brace ban and I can put a brace on mine. Then, yes, it’s a rifle.

I have a trigger on the way. I’ll receive it before the gun. When the gun arrives, I’ll test ammo and adjust the trigger. If the gun is worthy, I may get a good scope instead of settling for the old Vortex deer scope I have lying around.

I’ll get this thing to shoot 1 MOA or close to it at 50 yards, and then I’ll probably be able to resist buying another .22 until my son is old enough to shoot. I hope.

The .22 ammo testing continues. Guess I’ll post target photos along the way.

Biden’s Banana Republic Comes to a Fitting End

Joe Biden has done the predictable again, proving how petty and vindictive he is. He has pardoned General Mark Milley, the J6 committee members, and Anthony Fauci, the man who lied to us about a pandemic.

This was to be expected. It’s what you would expect in a banana republic run by a born second banana.

Biden torpedoed Pelosi and Obama, who forced him to abandon his bid to reenter the White House with a clear case of dementia, by loudly endorsing Kamala Harris instead of allowing them to install their candidate. He then torpedoed Harris, whom he dislikes, with lukewarm support of her campaign, linking her to his disastrous policies, wearing a Trump hat at an appearance, and permitting his wife to wear red–the GOP’s color–while voting in the presidential election.

Having torpedoed everyone on his own side of the spectrum, he has now moved on to conservative and centrist targets, pardoning people who screwed up our withdrawal from Afghanistan, created a tribunal to torment political adversaries guilty of minor crimes, and worked to put America under house arrest.

What’s next? Maybe during the inauguration, Biden will preemptively pardon anyone who tries to kill Trump and J.D. Vance.

Biden is a mean little man, and his wife appears to be right there with him. This is not how presidents should behave. He pardoned his many-times-guilty son in an astonishing act of self-serving corruption, and now he has shielded people with whom the United States has legitimate, important beefs.

Or has he?

All of these people just lost their 5th Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. The Republican-controlled House can subpoena them over and over as long as the GOP is in charge, and they will have to give full answers under penalty of contempt and perjury charges. They will have to implicate others they would like to protect. They will have to open their records.

Trump’s FBI can still interrogate anyone it wants to, and we know how the FBI likes to indict people for giving wrong answers, even unintentionally and even with regard to trivial questions.

Did Biden remember to pardon Fauci’s staff and all those who worked with Milley and the J6 witch hunters? If not, they’re still fair game.

Did Biden remember to pardon his other relatives? If not, Hunter can be forced to testify against all of them.

The people Biden pardoned today were not in much danger of indictment. They were just in danger of being put on display and forced to answer for themselves. Now that danger is worse, because their right to hide the truth has been greatly diminished.

No one expected the J6 committee to be indicted. No one expected Fauci or Milley to be indicted. No one except fringe nuts.

My buddy Mike says Biden is an infallible source of advice. Got a problem? Find out what Biden thinks you should do. Then do the opposite. It looks like this maxim may apply to today’s pardons.

Biden helped ruin his remaining son. Hunter is going to end up dead, in prison, or in a mental hospital. How do I know? I know because I have a relative who is an unrepentant, world-blaming addict. While trying to help her, I learned a lot of things about addicts. Things I didn’t know. Experts told me about the three places where addicts who don’t accept responsibility go.

Enablers like Biden speed addicts on their journey to destruction. The pardon is a great example. He should have cut Hunter off decades ago and publicly disavowed him. Maybe then Hunter would have had a chance. Instead of suffering and repentance, the most unpleasant thing that has happened to him is losing one of his mansions in the Democrat-caused California fires.

A lot of his artworks burned up. I wonder if that includes the ones he made from his own feces. I certainly hope so. The health hazard they posed greatly outweighed their artistic merit.

Thank goodness Michelangelo chose marble.

Biden sought to torment his political enemies and save his son, but he helped cement his son’s damnation.

The heart of pettiness is a willingness to suffer a great loss in exchange for a worthless and fleeting victory that may consist solely of harming someone else. For some people, the loss is the destruction of their own character. In the case of Biden, who has no character, it’s the loss of a second son. And his own legacy smells worse than his son’s art.

In about half an hour, we’ll have a real president again. I hope we get 4 years of better government.

MORE

Well, he outdid himself. Or maybe the thirtyish, gender-denying kids who actually run the country did. In the minutes leading up to Biden’s dismissal, he pardoned just about his entire family.

Now there’s a man who understands legacy.

I would guess that if there was any possibility they would not be investigated, it’s gone now, because Biden has piled corruption on top of corruption, to the extent where the bear he is poking has to do something.

This is now, officially, the slimiest administration of the last hundred years. Nixon will take a distant backseat to the man who pardoned his trashy family for extremely serious crimes America has a strong interest in punishing.

Surely, even leftists will be turned off by this. Some of them.

If I Liked Being Treated Like a Child, I Wouldn’t Have Guns in the First Place

More than once, I have written positive things about Savage firearms on this blog. I have a couple of Savage rifles, and a third one is coming. I have an A22, which is a semi-auto .22 rifle. I like it for a number of reasons, but it fails miserably in one regard: customer support.

I got myself a silencer, so I need a threaded muzzle for the A22. If I want to buy, say, a Smith & Wesson barrel, I can go to a website, place an order, explain nothing to anyone, and have the product sent to my house. I can also buy a barrel nut and a whole bunch of other things. If I want to buy a Savage barrel, well, I can’t. They will not sell me one. They won’t sell me the nut, either.

They won’t sell it to me. They won’t sell it to a gunsmith. They won’t sell it to God himself.

If you want to put a new barrel on a Savage A22, you have to ship your gun to Savage and pay them to do it. Okay, so it costs a little more. No big deal, right? Wrong. They will only give you the same kind of barrel the gun came with. Because…because of stupid, I guess.

The A22 comes from the factory with a variety of barrels. There is nothing dangerous about putting a different barrel on the gun. There is no good reason not to send people the barrels they like.

If Savage were willing to send parts out, people would buy more of their guns. Obviously. When people find out a manufacturer is anti-right-to-repair, they start buying from other manufacturers.

Good luck finding an aftermarket A22 barrel. The A22 is pretty far down on the popularity list, so it’s not like Shilen and Bartlein are scrambling to make barrels for it. There are lots of precision 10/22 barrels, though.

I plan to try altering the existing barrel myself, and if I somehow manage to fail, I’ll put the barrel in a dumpster and keep the rest of the gun for parts. I’m not poor. I can afford to destroy a cheap gun, especially one that is likely to cause me heartburn in the future due to poor treatment from the manufacturer.

Savage won’t send me a target trigger spring, either. And no one else makes them.

A company named Jard makes a high-end trigger for the A22. You can probably find one for about $270 if you look. About the cost of an A22. This is all that appetizing to most .22 shooters. The gun is 3 MOA at best, with a trigger made by the angels in heaven, so doubling the price of the gun to improve the trigger only makes sense for real enthusiasts who have a lot of money to spend.

The A22 has an Accu-trigger, which is a proprietary Savage thing intended to provide an easy, smooth trigger pull. Unfortunately, a lot of these guns have heavy pulls even after the triggers are adjusted to the minimum.

You can put a Savage target trigger in your A22, and it will lighten the pull, but Savage will not sell you the spring because you can’t be trusted with a complicated object like that. To get one, you would have to read off a serial number proving you own a gun that came with a target spring. You can also go to Gun Shack and buy one online, when Gun Shack has them in stock, but that’s about it.

Without a good trigger, the A22 is just an average gun, like a Ruger 10/22, but unlike the 10/22, it doesn’t come with a world of aftermarket parts for customization. Might as well buy an A22 and start customizing. You can rebarrel it. You can buy a new trigger. The sky’s the limit.

Gun manufacturers, unfortunately, tend to end up in the hands of stupid people. Marlin, Remington, and Smith & Wesson collapsed when firearms sales were peaking due to the efforts of the world’s greatest gun salesman, Barack Obama. If you can lose money in a market like that, you should be working for an hourly wage for someone who can do what you can’t.

I guess someone must have sued Savage over a part installed by an end user. They must have a weak-kneed attorney who told them to choke off the supply along with their customer goodwill.

Whatever. I’m all done with Savage.

Whose Past is on my Wall?

Sometimes I really disappoint myself. It’s already January 13, and I have only bought two rifles this year.

Technically, I’ve only bought one. I ordered one in late December and picked it up this year.

I’m pretty sure I’ve bought fewer than 2,000 rounds of ammunition.

The first rifle is a bolt-action .22. The second is a semi-auto. “What possible reason could a person have to buy two .22 rifles in one month?”, asked no reader of this blog, ever.

Last year, I made a tentative decision to cut 5.5″ off the barrel of my Savage A22 and thread the end for a silencer. I had received a .22 silencer, and it would have been cumbersome to have it hanging off a 22″ barrel. I tried to find someone near me who would do the work, but even though this is a huge 2A area, there is nobody. I think people here generally buy off the rack, receive no training, do very little customization, and shoot low-grade ammo.

I did some research, and I think I now know how to modify the barrel myself. I bought a dial test indicator to help me do the work.

I could have bought a new gun and sold the old one, but selling a gun is like selling a child, without the relief over not having to pay for college. Also, I have done a little work on the gun, and I wasn’t eager to do it over on a new one.

I guess that sounds silly. Not wanting to do a little trigger work on a new gun, but being willing to machine an old one. I wanted to learn how to thread barrels, though, so I wasn’t all that bothered by the prospect.

Another thing: it’s pretty unusual for a gun to drop in value. They go up and up and up. It’s almost always better to have an old gun than the money you could get for it.

While I was thinking about all this, I found out that Savage now sells the same gun, with a cute camo stock, with exactly the options I want. It has the short barrel and the threading. And it’s pretty cheap. Surprisingly so. I ordered one.

I figure I’ll shoot the new one and hold the old one until my son is old enough to shoot it. So several months, at least.

I am inclined to try cutting up the barrel anyway. It would be a good experience. If I blow it, I can buy a new barrel.

I should think about my son’s inheritance when I buy guns. If the rapture doesn’t come before I die, and 2A hasn’t been undone, my son or sons will get all my firearms. I should make an effort to leave some nice stuff behind.

My grandfather had some nice guns, but while he was alive, he failed to say who got what, and when he died, I got nothing decent except for a shotgun which actually belonged to my dad. My grandmother gave it to him after my grandfather died. The stuff I inherited from my grandfather is junk.

The worst example? A counterfeit shotgun.

Possibly counterfeit.

At some point after the nice guns had mysteriously vanished, I was given a list of things I could still have, and it wasn’t pretty. One thing that surprised me: no one wanted my great-grandfather’s gun. It had been mounted over a fireplace in my grandparents’ house. The story was that my grandfather tracked down the guy who owned it and bought it from him.

I remembered it as a fairly nice gun with a figured-wood stock.

I asked for it, and I received a double-barreled flintlock shotgun that looked like someone had painted the stock with something slightly nicer than Rust-Oleum. I don’t recall the valuation that was placed on it, but I know it was between $100 and $200. Trash, but for sentimental value.

I didn’t think too much about it. I decided to stick it on my wall.

Eventually, I remembered something from my childhood. I remembered playing with the ramrod from the gun my grandfather owned. It was a rifle ramrod, small enough to fit in a .40-caliber barrel. It was raw wood.

The crummy gun I received has a big, fat varnished ramrod. A shotgun ramrod. You could never get it into a rifle.

I don’t think this gun belonged to my grandfather. It looks like my memories were right. So now I have an almost-worthless gun which apparently belonged to some stranger, and when I see it on my wall, what I think about most is not my grandfather, but the mystery of what happened to the real gun.

Assuming my memories are correct.

Did the gun seller who evaluated the estate’s guns steal it and substitute the shotgun? Did one of my cousins take it home and tell the dealer to claim the shotgun was the one from the estate? I’ll never know.

At least I know why no one wanted it.

Now what do I do? Do I leave it on my wall?

I am thinking I might buy a nice antique Kentucky rifle, prettier and more valuable than anything great-great-granddad had. I have a practice of buying nicer guns than the ones that vanished. On top of that, I have real shooting training, and I make my own ammunition and modify my guns. And I have some excellent glass. I don’t think my grandfather owned a scope.

For a few grand, I can get something really nice, and it will appreciate.

If I had some of received my grandfather’s guns, most of what I would have gotten would have been mediocre. An old Smith & Wesson .357, maybe, with a 3″ barrel. Too heavy to carry; too short for targets. A Marlin lever action in an inferior caliber. A creaky old 12 gauge that can’t measure up to today’s standards. A .32 revolver only a pimp would carry on his person. An Enforcer M1 pistol, which is another item a pimp would like. Flashy, with very poor quality. The American Draco, except a Draco is a good, reliable weapon.

On the other hand, I have some pretty good stuff. Some beautiful 1911’s. A very nice Browning Challenger. A nicer Colt Woodsman than the one my grandfather had. An RPR that shoots 0.5 MOA or better. Some extremely accurate hunting rifles. An AR-15 with a White Oak Armament varmint upper. The Tikka .22 I got recently is infinitely better than anything my grandfather had. I also have some excellent revolvers.

I have a great shooting mat. Rests. I built my own roofed long-range platform which will last forever, along with a heavy-duty bench made from thick-walled 2″ square steel tubing. I fabricated my own gong stands.

I’ll be able to pass on some neat guns and related tools, and I’ll be able to teach my son(s) how to develop loads, mount scopes the proper way, and shoot at 1,000 yards. I don’t think my offspring will be upset about not getting a rusty Remington 550-1 .22 or a lever-action Marlin that shoots 4 MOA and has poor ballistics.

I only got one knife my grandfather owned, and like the shotgun, it came through my dad. One day he told my grandmother he would like to have a knife my grandfather owned, so she gave him one.

It’s a German folder with no lock. It rusts. It was nasty and rusty when I got it, because my grandfather used to cut apples with his knifes. It was dull. I fixed it up, because I’m the only grandson who has the tools for it, but I wouldn’t carry it. He carried junk knives. Street value? Probably $10.

On my own, I got Benchmade. Cold Steel made from CTS-XHP. Lionsteel made from M390. I have a handmade Entrek. Some Spydercos. Gerber is my low-end choice for jobs that might mess knives up. And I have a fancy rig for putting better-than-factory edges on knives.

I bought my son, myself, and my wife engraved Swiss Army knives in Switzerland. Now I have to hide his and mine for 8 years.

I’m not sure what to do with the shotgun. What if it turns out Gramps owned it, and it was in a closet or something when I was a kid? I don’t see any way it could be the gun with the skinny ramrod and the figured wood that I remember. The gun that had a powder horn with it, which vanished with the Marlin, the Remington, the Colt, and the revolvers. And my closeness with my relatives.

My relatives would lie if they were guilty, and they would say the same things if they were innocent. I already know what they would say if I asked about the guns and powder horn, so there is no point in bothering with them. One of the bad things about lying habitually is that it eventually teaches people that speaking to you makes things worse and is not worth the effort.

It would be great to have some heirlooms, but you can also make heirlooms. My grandfather’s dynasty fell apart, but mine can hold up, if we stick with God.

The new Savage should be here in a couple of days. The old one will be good for my son. Although a CZ 457 Scout with a 12″ length of pull would actually be better…

I’m going to stop now.

Cheap Ammo Surprise

Today I tested three types of ammunition in the Tikka T1x, using the Athlon Helos scope I mounted the other day. It is generally believed that one key to making a .22 accurate is to find ammunition it likes, so that’s what I’m doing.

Things were not totally optimal. I need to move the scope back one or two notches. The eye relief was not right, and it was hard to check the parallax. Nonetheless, things went pretty well. My dream is to shoot into half an inch at 50 yards with a .22, and I am getting closer.

I bought Eley Benchrest Outlaw ammo. Eley is one of the brands .22 competitors love. They also make something called Benchrest Precision, but it’s a lot more expensive.

I also bought CCI Sub-Sonic 40-grain lead round nose. Most people think subsonic .22 rounds are more accurate, and they definitely shoot much quieter from a suppressor.

My third choice was recommended by a guy on a forum. He said he had turned a couple of ladies loose with a .22 and some CCI Blazers, and they had shot really well. I ordered some 40-grain rounds.

Blazer is CCI’s cheap line, so you would expect it to be inaccurate. I paid 6.4 cents per round before tax, and that’s pretty low.

Sadly, it turns out you get what you pay for. On the high end, I mean. The Eleys gave me an average of 0.468″, or 1.28 MOA, at 35 yards. This included a flyer, but the flyer was not bad. I shot 4 10-round groups, and two were under 0.4″ Without the flyer, I was at 0.382″, or 1.04 MOA. I didn’t feel like I caused the flyer, but maybe I did. If so, Eley Benchrest Outlaw is very impressive.

The groups looked stringy, which made me unhappy and gave me the impression the Eleys were shooting worse than they were.

The Sub-sonics did not make me happy. I got a serious flyer which opened a group up to 0.840″. Without the flyer, I would have been at 0.515″ for an average, or 1.41 MOA. I don’t know if this stuff is prone to flyers or not. I am inclined not to trust it.

I forgot to shoot the last group. I wonder how it would have changed things.

The Blazers were great. They shot very pretty groups. Prettier than the other brands. I felt as though I were shooting better with Blazers, although the dial caliper told a different story. I averaged 0.555″, or 1.51 MOA. I may have had a flyer I caused, but it’s hard to tell, because the groups were still small. If you take out the worst group, I would be at 0.517″ or 1.41 MOA.

It looks like Blazers would be excellent for squirrels. They will hit harder than subsonics. The question is whether I can conclude anything about their reliability from 40 shots.

No .22 ammunition is truly reliable, as far as I know, but some are better than others.

I need to keep practicing. I laid off for a long time, so I need to get consistent, not just to shoot squirrels, but to test ammunition. I shot the Eley first today, and I was learning things the whole time. Maybe it would have shot even better had I shot it last.

People say CCI’s 38-grain Blazers are terrible, so I’m not going to bother with those.

I’m going to move the scope back and do some more shooting. Things are already looking really bad for the rodents.

“My, How Fat Your Crows Are!”

As noted yesterday, my Athlon 2-12 scope arrived, and I did what was probably a lot of unnecessary work getting it mounted just right. The Tikka Tx1 is ready for action, so today I sighted it in at 35 yards. Sort of. I didn’t use a proper bench, and I didn’t lie prone. I did what I could with a plastic tripod while sitting on my back porch. This works well enough for 2-MOA work, and it was definitely good enough to get the scope close to where it needed to be.

This photo shows what happened once the scope and rifle were just about right. I started shooting at the right, and I went clockwise and then shot at the center of the target. I adjusted the scope a couple of times between 5-shot groups.

I used CCI 36-grain HP ammo, which is fantastic for shooting coons and little hogs but not ideal for squirrels. You really need something good if you want to be consistent with squirrels at 50 yards.

So how did I do? Good enough to make me happy at this stage. The smallest group is 0.50″, and the biggest two are 0.875″. That gives me a range of about 1.35 to 2.38 MOA.

If I can manage to stay within an inch at 35 yards, which will mean practicing a lot and getting good at resting the gun in dubious circumstances, I should have no trouble at all killing squirrels with the gun just the way it is, with cheap ammo. I am going to try other types of ammunition, and I should be able to do significantly better.

I loosened the trigger once during this shoot, and the POI moved considerably, which is why I moved the turrets. I feel I should reduce the pull to the absolute minimum and count on common sense instead of the trigger to keep me safe.

I am fine off a sturdy bench or a platform, but I am not happy with my steadiness in other circumstances. I don’t know how much I can do about it. I can carry a plastic tripod when I shoot. When shooting from the house, I can lie down on the floor and eject my shells under the bed. I’m going to read up and see if there is any good advice out there beyond, “Stay really still.”

The POA seemed to be wobbling around in an area bigger than the groups I shot.

I like this scope a great deal. The glass is more than clear enough for me. It focuses pretty well at 35 yards. I was able to see the bullet holes. The reticle illumination is bright.

The reticle has a dot over the zero point. That makes it a little difficult to position the shots precisely. I guess I can sight the scope with the dot just under the POA, making it easier to line things up. Not sure if that’s a good idea.

Fooling with rifles in a systematic way shows how great shotguns are for squirrels. I can hit a squirrel a hundred feet up in a tree, no problem. Hitting squirrels on the ground that far away, consistently, with killing shots, is way harder.

If I can manage it, I’ll use my bench tomorrow.

I hope I’m not wrong about the distance at which I’m shooting. I used a Leica laser rangefinder. I have to say that 35 yards in the pasture looks longer than it does in the yard. On the other hand, the yard contains buildings and objects, and we all know how furniture makes a room look smaller.

This is a great squirrel gun. It’s not too heavy. The short barrel allows for a silencer without making the gun too long. The trigger is excellent. I am hoping to hunt with subsonics, and they make the gun extremely quiet.

Now lets just hope it’s still better than my cheap guns when I try my rifles side by side.

Who Was She Writing About?

Yesterday I learned that the wife of my first cousin by marriage had died. I didn’t even know her name. I couldn’t pick her out of a lineup. I’m not even sure this is the wife I met. I saw a photo, and the face doesn’t look familiar.

My dad and I took my cousin and his wife fishing in the Bahamas. I guess this would have been 30 years ago. I remember the wife as a chunky lady with a round face, but the lady in the photo I saw has a prominent chin. I wonder if this was my cousin’s second or third wife.

I would guess I have seen the cousin fewer than 10 times in my life. On very rare occasions, our families got together when I was a kid. My cousin’s stepmother, my dad’s sister, died in 2014, and my dad insisted I accompany him to Tennessee for the funeral. I must have seen the cousin and his wife, but I have no memories to prove it.

To me, this underscores the difference between my mother’s family and my dad’s family. When I say “my family,” I mean my mother’s family, although bad behavior involving my grandparents’ estates has led most of them to distance themselves from me. When I discuss my mother’s family without mentioning my dad’s family, I generally don’t give my dad’s family a thought.

My dad picked up on this unintentionally. Often, he referred to my mother’s father as my father.

My cousin’s wife died last year. Cousin or ex-stepcousin? I don’t know how that works. The notice I saw didn’t mention a cause.

No one called me. No one emailed. I wouldn’t expect them to. I’m not offended. If I had stood in line behind this guy at Walmart this week, I would have had no idea who he was.

My dad’s older sister was a cruel sociopath, and my dad also had sociopathic tendencies. She was abusive to him when he was a kid. She stabbed him in the head with a pencil. He was sitting on the floor making noises and pretending his hand was an airplane, and she stabbed him. She must have been trying to murder him.

The pencil didn’t go through his skull, but as an adult, he liked to show people the deep hole it left.

My aunt was obese and brassy. She was not charming. Her first marriage produced one child. I don’t know if she was at my aunt’s funeral. Can’t recall. I was just counting the minutes until I could leave. It was boring, sitting among strangers, facing an ash container that looked like a styrofoam beer cooler, listening to them talk about their abusive parents as though they were wonderful people.

My uncle had 4 kids of his own, so I guess he needed help. I don’t know why else he would have married my aunt. They didn’t seem to feel anything for each other except annoyance.

My aunt’s child was a daughter. Maybe this is why my aunt hated my uncle’s daughter, who was kind, gentle, and honest. She used to beat her for no reason. She used to give her own child candy and let her eat it in front of her husband’s daughter.

I was Googling my cousin when I found out his wife had died. For some reason, I started thinking about his first name, which is a strange one. I wanted to know if anyone else had that name.

I also came across my uncle’s obituary, written by the kids. He died 11 months ago.

I’ll tell you what. I wish I had known the guy in the obituary. But truthfully, I was not worthy.

Scholar. War hero with a Purple Heart. Educator. Beloved dad. I never met that guy!

He was awful. He didn’t have the spine to protect his kids from his wife. I don’t think he cared. They made the kids work and buy their own clothes. They worked them hard. After the kids were grown, they sat their parents down and told them exactly what they thought of them.

I thought about him again today, because norovirus is spreading in America.

My uncle was a big baby who thought only of himself. He loved to travel, fish, and hunt. He loved to freeload in order to make these things happen. His son was a pilot, so when my uncle and his wife flew, they only had to pay the taxes on their tickets. Freeloading. They didn’t care much for my dad, but he had vacation properties and a yacht, so my uncle arranged to visit from time to time.

They came to visit us over Christmas one year. I wanted no part of it. Back then, I was still close to my mother’s family, so I wanted to be with them, as usual. My dad’s two sisters and their entire tribes packed themselves into his three-bedroom house. The nicer sister and her husband were also freeloaders.

We shared common dishes. Christmas. People started throwing up. Turned out my uncle had norovirus, and he didn’t tell anyone. He knew we would have told him to stay home.

Making matters worse, norovirus is only spread via feces. If you’ve had norovirus, you touched someone else’s poop. My uncle hadn’t been washing his hands after using the toilet.

He was a biologist. A professor. It wasn’t like he had no idea how germs worked.

Every single person who was present threw up and had diarrhea for several days, except for my mother, who was spared. Maybe the viruses couldn’t take the nicotine.

When I found out my uncle was making us all sick, I left and slept somewhere else. Didn’t work. I still ended up using the toilet every 20 minutes.

I’m pretty sure my other aunt’s daughter Judy thinks I’m a jerk because I left abruptly. My mother was angry with me. I loved my mother, but common sense was not her long suit. She was overly emotional.

I didn’t care about ruining our puking family Christmas. I knew my aunts and uncles a little. The others were like strangers. It wasn’t like I had any concerns about future resentment or lost connections. There was no possibility we would go on to have relationships.

I don’t owe anyone an apology for isolating myself from a disease. It seems like women put closeness above staying healthy, however.

That might make a little sense in situations where people care about each other and aren’t together simply because relatives want free Florida vacations.

Avoiding days of diarrhea and vomiting is not rude, and even if it were, I would still have done it. If I were sick, I would expect others to avoid me.

Maybe the problem was that I was smarter and more rational than everyone else there, and I had a better conception of the connection between present behavior and future regurgitation. I really hated norovirus. I was familiar with it.

My dad’s older sister never liked it when I stood up for myself. I think this was because it bothered her to see a young relative she couldn’t abuse and boss. She must have felt like a horse that couldn’t reach an apple through a fence.

All around her, in her own home, she had had kids who ran and fetched when she barked, and they were used to feeling her knuckles on their heads. Here I was, out of range. Acting like I had rights.

I suspect she resented my mother, my sister, and me because we stood in the inheritance path. She thought my dad was much richer than he was, and he let her believe it. Even though he didn’t like her, he enjoyed being seen as a financial guru and being asked for advice.

I never understood why he liked spending his time impressing people he didn’t like much.

My dad’s relatives liked inheriting money and stuff. When my grandmother started to decline, my dad sent money and helped arrange to finance her care. When she died, my aunts backed up to her place and emptied it with no notice to us. My mother was incensed on behalf of my sister and me. She was always appalled by my dad’s people’s selfishness and greed.

Of course, she didn’t live to see what her own daughter and sister did with her parents’ estates.

My dad’s bunch picked some heirlooms for my sister and me. A Baccarat angel and a Lladro horse my dad had given my grandmother. Street value about $75, combined.

They’re both gone now. I threw the angel out because it looked like an idol to me, and I accidentally broke the horse after my sister abandoned it. It wasn’t like these were things we had seen on fondly-remembered visits to my grandmother’s apartment. I don’t miss these things. I didn’t know the angel or horse existed until my dad presented me with them and told me to choose one.

Why did he do that? He paid for them.

The thing on my mind today is the contrast between my uncle and the guy in the obituary. He was lazy. He was selfish. He always seemed gutless to me, so the idea of him fighting bravely and competently in Korea befuddles me. Maybe it’s not completely true. He probably got on the other soldiers’ nerves and let them down.

They didn’t write the obituary.

We love praising combat veterans, like they’re Yeshua himself. They can do no wrong. We don’t look after their families well, and we warehouse the crippled ones in substandard facilities, but we tend to act like anyone who has seen combat is an inspiring figure. A lot of vets use their exalted status to shut other people up. “You weren’t in ‘Nam with me and my buddies, face-down, in the muck!”

It’s not true. Lots of combat veterans–even true heroes–are horrible, trashy people. I knew a Korea vet who thought it was funny to steal other soldiers’ helmets. He said that when he got tired of his heavy helmet, he would dump it. Later, when he needed a helmet, he stole someone else’s. Serving in combat doesn’t automatically make you a role model.

There are too many stories about my uncle to tell.

My grandmother hated him, but because they lived near each other, he and my aunt had to drive her around. She used to sit in the backseat and watch the gas gauge. He would refuse to stop and get gas because he didn’t like being told what to do, so more than once, he ran out of gas with her in the car and ended up walking to gas stations. He kept a gas can in the car for this reason. She used to call him a fool.

On a Bahamas trip, his wife fell on our boat and caught her ring on something. It ripped the skin on her finger wide open. We had to go to the nearest island where there was medical help, in very rough seas.

While we were en route, with the seas pounding and things falling on the deck in the saloon, while my aunt held her bleeding hand in a paper towel, he told her to get up and get him a Coors Light.

Why the glowing obituary?

I wonder if Mormonism is the reason.

I don’t know a lot of Mormons, but my impression of them is that they have an inferiority complex about their non-Christian cult. The feeling I get is that they want people to think they’re the real Christians. They want to convey a false image of success and blessings in order to convince actual Christians we’re wrong.

“Look how much money we make.” “Look at our beautiful families.” “Check out our family photos.” They seem to be aggressive about it.

They say you should never fish with fewer than two Mormons, because if you fish with one, he’ll drink all your liquor.

My uncle’s daughter is a Mormon spiritual advisor of some kind. Women listen to her. She seriously believes American Indians are really Jews. She believes every wacky thing Mormonism teaches. Maybe she wrote the obituary.

I said she was honest, but many people who are otherwise honest lie in obituaries.

My aunt and uncle were miserable, and so were their kids. My aunt and uncle were immature. They were not good people. They were sometimes embarrassing. They hurt their children.

They didn’t actually believe in Mormonism. They were both atheists. They went to hell. Their local shaman or whatever told them not to worry about losing their faith, if they had ever had it. He said they should stick around for the social life.

I wrote a nice obituary about my dad. I did not say he was an alcoholic. I did not say he beat his wife when he was younger. I left a lot of stuff out. On the other hand, I did not craft a deceptive blurb intended to make people think he was an exemplary human being everyone should envy. That would have been wrong. The unnecessary damage he did to his family was immense.

Lying about the dead in order to make people admire them is sinful. Other people need to learn from bad examples.

Why should we make each other feel bad about our lives by pumping up the resumes of dead scoundrels?

I sound like I’m calling my dad a scoundrel now, which was not my intention. Well, he was. But he changed. During the last months of his life, he was wonderful, but the past can’t be erased.

When we laud each other unrealistically, we discourage people. We make them feel as though they are particularly wicked or unsuccessful. We destroy their hope. Everybody is a failure. Everybody is despicable. Pretending otherwise is harmful, not helpful.

My uncle was a jerk. My aunt was a wicked stepmother. If they ever did anything good for anyone else, I am not aware of it. If they ever expressed concern for people with problems, I don’t remember it. They didn’t even take us to dinner when they showed up to freeload.

I should make it clear I didn’t hate my aunt and uncle. There were times in my life when I got along well with them. But they were what they were. The person who wrote the obituary erected a monument to an illusion.

Doing the Unnecessary in the Pursuit of the Unimportant is no Vice

Today I had some fun doing something which may well have been unnecessary and even detrimental.

Nothing new there, now that I think about it.

What do you do when you want to kill squirrels at 50 yards or less?

A) Buy a cheap Ruger 10/22, a $75 scope, and a box of Mini-mags and fire at will, accepting the fact that you will miss a lot.

B) Buy a shotgun and a box of 6 shot and get the job over with.

C) Buy an expensive bolt-action rifle, put a silencer on it, and top it with a 2-12x42mm first focal plane scope with an illuminated mrad reticle, and then spend a king’s ransom on an assortment of expensive ammunition to find out what works best?

If you didn’t pick C, you’re not me.

Actually, I’ve done B and C.

I got myself a Tikka T1x rifle, and today I put an Athlon Helos milrad scope on it.

If you were going to put a scope on a rifle, what would you do?

A) Install the rail without checking the torque, install the ring bases without checking the torque, install the caps without checking the torque or lapping the rings, level the scope via wild guess, and start plugging squirrels?

B) Use a torque wrench to install the mount and bases, spend two hours lapping the rings, spend another 20 minutes cleaning lapping compound off everything, install the caps with a torque wrench, and level the scope by shoving a machinist’s parallel between it and the base?

I didn’t do A, if that’s what you’re wondering.

I don’t know how much of this stuff is really necessary. Shooters are like golfers. If a golfer hits a hole-in-one while wearing one red sock, he’ll wear one red sock for the rest of his life. No one is really positive installing scopes carefully makes a difference, but some shooters think it does, so a lot of them do it. And apparently, and lot don’t, and they make fun of the others.

I consulted some people, and most of them said lapping was stupid and was only needed for terrible rings. On the other hand, there are shooters on the web who think anyone who doesn’t lap is an idiot.

I decided the preponderance of the evidence slightly favored the lappers.

“Lapping” means polishing with fine grit. In the case of scopes, it grinds irregularities out of the inner surfaces of rings.

A scope is a straight tube except when the Chinese have an off day, and it has to be held in two metal rings that should be 100% concentric and free of bumps and so on. The theory is that if the rings don’t line up, or if the inside surfaces are irregular, the high points will mar your scope, you may put bending forces on the scope which will affect the function, and the rings won’t hold on very well.

When I took my precision rifle course, I was taught to lap rings. I think. Anyway, someone somewhere told me to do it, so I have done it a few times. I have a kit.

The kit consists mainly of a hard steel bar the diameter of a scope tube. You put lapping compound (an abrasive) inside the rings, you clamp the bar inside them, and you move it back and forth until compound grinds the rings round and true.

When you lap, you remove the bar from the rings once in a while to see if you’ve ground out enough metal to get something like 80% contact with the bar. When you do this, it’s hard to keep the compound from getting into the threads on the ring bases.

The problem with this, other than the mess, is that the caps are supposed to be torqued to certain values. The grit in the threads produces friction, so it seems to me you could end up with caps that aren’t tight enough. The grit could give you a high torque reading when the screws aren’t really in far enough. I think.

I used a sonic cleaner and brake cleaner to get the compound out. Did I succeed? No way to know. The grit may have embedded itself in the threads.

Another thing: I had to take the scope bases off the rail to clean them. So who’s to say the rings register exactly the same way every time they’re put on the rail? I hope they do, but what if they don’t? Maybe I did more harm than good.

People say to buy really good rings in order to avoid lapping, but that doesn’t help if the rail isn’t perfect. If lapping is necessary because rails can’t be trusted, then expensive rings can’t fix the problem.

Whatever. Now the scope is mounted. I really like it. It has tons of eye relief, so I had a lot of leeway when I decided where to put it. The reticle is bright. The glass is pretty good. The diopter thing works with my vision issues without glasses. It should be great.

The big problem now is that my list of excuses for not hitting squirrels just got a lot shorter.