.17 HMR Rocks

I had a nice time at the range. I took the Nylon 66 and the .17 HMR. Last time I tried to shoot the Nylon 66 with a scope, the results were pretty bad, so I thought I’d try again. Things went poorly.

It seems like the zero slides around as you shoot, which is consistent with what people told me when I bought the scope. They said the receiver was attached to plastic, or something, and that it would not hold still.

I took the scope off and shot at 25 yards, just to see what the story was. I shot as well as I could see, which is about all I can ask.

I got out the mighty .17 HMR and bipod, and I shot at pasters to see where the zero was. I was shooting at 100 yards. The zero had moved pretty badly since my last outing, so I zeroed the scope and started shooting at the bullseye. Here’s the first effort, which made me pretty happy. Things started out rough, but I could be shooting worse.

The next one didn’t have crazy fliers in it.

I was starting to get a feel for the way I should pull the trigger. I had the funny sensation that I was pulling it in my head instead of at the end of my arm. And I got some improvement. There are lots of fliers, but there are also a bunch of holes in a satisfying clump. And even with the fliers, the entire group is smaller than an apple. This is 25 rounds.

It looks like the rimfire scope for the .22 was a complete waste of money…UNLESS I get a Savage .22. Yes…that would totally justify it. I must have one.

It’s too bad the scope and the Nylon 66 don’t get along, because the gun itself seems to be nice and accurate.

Range Day Again

I woke up this morning thinking it was a perfectly ordinary day. Then I remembered…Wednesday is now RANGE DAY. So my outlook has brightened considerably. I’m going to see if I can be on the firing line by 11:00 a.m., which will be a great improvement over the old Thursday range days, which started at one p.m.

I’m considering getting a new stock for the .17 HMR. The existing stock is very small and weird. Rifle-stocks.com has about two thousand models from which to choose. I’d like a thumbhole, but I don’t want a full-blown target stock. I’m thinking their “Wildcatter” model might be good. I detest laminates, but they’re supposed to be better than solid wood. So I’m leaning in that direction.

I can’t believe what they cost. By the time you add all the crap you really need, it’s over $150.

Boyd’s has stocks that will supposedly fit with no work. They look kind of creepy, however.

We have a debate coming up. I hope you will join me in praying that John McCain and Sarah Palin will crush Obama and Biden. And that we will hear the name Franklin Raines a lot. The public needs to be aware that Raines, a current Obama advisor, is the main reason we have a financial crisis right now. His socialist policy of lending to people who couldn’t make mortgage payments is what landed us in this mess.

Obama will appoint socialist judges. He will bring back the death tax. He will increase taxes in general. He’ll be indifferent to the fate of Israel. He’ll empower a lot of anti-Semitic leftists. We don’t need this guy in the White House.

More

More happy news from Jerusalem.

Hefty Annoyance Gone

I feel like I just had a giant boil lanced. I have ejected my newly extracted concrete slug from the yard. I can’t believe how heavy it is. It took effort to roll it onto my handtruck. I’m surprised I was able to lift it out of the hole yesterday. In fact, it was hard to roll the handtruck. I had to keep the handles way down, to keep the slug from rolling off, and the weight made it hard to roll on the grass.

I was going to put it in a wheelbarrow, but I realized I would have to get it two feet off the ground in order to do that. My macho-man days are behind me; I avoid lifting whenever possible. When people make fun of me for it, I make a mental note to remind them, when I’m a healthy 65-year-old with a straight back and they’re having vertebrae fused.

Want a great lesson to teach your kids? Here it is: straining your back or a joint for one second can cause you misery for eighty years. Don’t be a fool, to save yourself the minute or two it takes to get help or the right tool. Never lift anything you don’t have to. I’ve done some dumb things. I pushed a cow off of me after it fell off a ramp. I have lifted my Moto Guzzi off its side several times. I used a pec machine which, I am pretty sure, is designed to loosen and rupture shoulder ligaments. But I am reformed. I was very careful when I lifted the slug yesterday, and if I had even suspected a problem, I would have dropped it instantly.

Back in ’05, I helped someone clean up his yard after a hurricane, and he made fun of me for asking for ear plugs. Whatever. He won’t be around in twenty years, to buy me a hearing aid to hear the TV. A single exposure to loud noise can cause permanent hearing damage. Wish I had known that when I was ten. At the gun range, I wear muffs plus silicone plugs. I wear plugs when I ride motorcycles, because of wind noise.

I have to BUY dirt to fill the hole the slug came out of. It’s about a cubic foot. Can you believe that? It never occurred to me to prepare for that. I should de-pot my Trinidad Scorpion plant and put it in there.

Wake up, Mainstream Media

How come we hear so little about the fact that Democrats are primarily responsible for the financial crisis which is weakening our country? Ignorant voters tend to respond to economic problems by swinging left. They need to know that swinging left is the main cause of this debacle.

Funny, because over the past 8 years, those who tried to fix Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the trigger for today’s widespread global financial meltdown — were stymied repeatedly by congressional Democrats.

More here.

Socialism is a dangerous remedy. It exacerbates the problems it purports to cure. So you get more socialism. Then more problems. Eventually, your economy tanks. By then, you may have lost so much freedom, it’s impossible to fix things by restoring capitalism.

Franklin Raines…Franklin Raines…Franklin Raines. That should be our mantra until election day.

…Are These Guys Sharing a Bottle of L’Oreal?

Look.

Those Poor Cows

Mish Weiss continues violating her vegan code by drinking dairy-based protein shakes. Somewhere, an oppressed cow is suffering the torment of sore nipples.

If any of you have tips to help cancer patients beat nausea and put on weight, please let me know, or put them in the comments at Mish’s blog.

Her white-cell count is up, which may indicate a cold or something. Say a prayer that it will pass. And don’t forget Leah. She’s still recovering from paralysis and brain damage.

Stolen from Leah’s site, a video. While you watch it, remember Joshua. Remember Gideon. Remember that before a nation can have a Solomon, it may have to have a David. Somebody willing to pick up a sling and use it.

That principle applies to people, too, as they face their own battles. Call that a heavy-handed hint.

Blogger Bane has passed away. His family has some financial problems; you might say a prayer for them. Keep an eye out for an upcoming fundraising effort.

Do me a favor and don’t post any negative stuff here.

Decor at its Best

Remember me writing about all the crap I got done on Saturday? Feast your eyes on THIS:

The picture is bad. I can’t even guess how you’re supposed to get a good photo of an object shaped like that.

Men, you need one of these on your wall. The instant it goes up, you’ll have the pleasant, illusory sensation that testosterone is coursing through your veins.

There is Nothing I and my Mighty Tools Cannot Do

I am the most amazing human being for miles around. I just pulled the last concrete slug out of the yard.

The truck loosened it up, so I went out there, took it by the chain, and rocked and lifted until up it came. The damned thing probably weighs about 125 pounds–it’s bigger than a huge turkey, and it’s nice and wet–so once the weight was subtracted from the tension, I was probably putting about three ounces of upward pull on it. But it worked.

I tried to drag it across the yard, but it’s so heavy, it digs into the grass. I decided to leave it, as a monument. No, but I am in need of a meal, and I don’t feel like putting the slug in the wheelbarrow right now.

The rebar and epoxy method works great. If the slug had not been in a bed with landscape timbers around it, I could have pulled it clear with the truck and kept going until it was in the trash pile.

What do I do with a huge slug with an iron handle? I’ll let the trash people worry about it.

I thank the reader who suggested soaking the ground around it. Although I’m sure that made it heavier.

Genius Never Made a Sound Like This

The Lord of the Tools has bad news.

Today I re-applied my scheme for getting the last concrete slug out of the yard. I glued a rebar loop to it, and I attached the loop to my dad’s old Explorer with a chain. And I applied tension. The slug broke loose to where I won’t have a problem getting it out. I may have to find a clever way to apply leverage, but it’s doable.

Problem: when I was done, the Explorer wouldn’t go into reverse! When I shifted, it made a hideous whiny sound.

I didn’t overtax the transmission. I wasn’t jerking or spinning my tires. I just pulled carefully until the slug moved. The truck should have been able to take it.

I think the problem is in the mechanism which switches the truck from 4WD to 2WD. I put it in 4WD Low to pull the slug, and then I shifted back to 2WD, and it went nuts. I can still use reverse in 4WD Low, but not in 2WD.

I’ve read that other people have had this problem because the dashboard switch was out of adjustment.

I am seriously bummed out. The whole point of this exercise was to save money, time, and aggravation. What if it costs a pile to fix the Explorer?

Damn it.

If only I had a johnson bar to pry that slug out. Hmm…I know where I can buy one. Yes…yes…clearly, I need a new tool. Right away. That will solve my problems.

Saga of a Failed Jedi Mind Trick

I’ll tell you something crazy. There are blogs I don’t read, just because their names turn me off. I can’t explain it. It’s no reflection on the blogs. It’s just one of my quirks.

One example: The Jawa Report. When I see that name, a little voice from down in my brainstem says, “STAR WARS NERDS: AVOID.” Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I picture an adult male who owns an Ewok suit.

But today I went to The Jawa Report anyway, because Sondra linked to it. There’s a pretty wild piece of Citizen Journalism there. If the piece is correct, some goof from a famous PR firm–Winner & Associates–has been posting illegal videos to harm Sarah Palin, and he wasn’t even smart enough to use a fake email address. And Kos and DU helped.

This ranks right up there with the Dan Rather phony memo thing, but it’s more complex. Get a fresh mug of coffee and turn off your phone’s ringer before you read it.

What is it with Sarah Palin? Why do people hate her so much? I shudder to say this, but PDS makes BDS seem insignificant. It’s like I keep saying: Obama is running against Palin, not McCain. She scares the hell out of the opposition.

It’s just an ELECTION, people. She’s not Darth Palin, to refer to Star Wars yet again. She’s not orbiting the earth in a Death Snow Machine, preparing to shoot abortion providers from space with her moose rifle. Get a grip, liberals. If Joe Biden disturbed me as much as Sarah Palin disturbs you, I’d be shopping for a suicide belt. I admit, I’ve entertained the thought of suicide while listening to him speak, but that’s different.

She’s not even running for President. Let’s be real, here. If McCain wins, she’ll spend the next eight years flying to funerals and hiding from terrorists in various undisclosed locations. You act like she was going to drive around the country, holding liberals down and forcing them to eat meat and carry their children to term. Why are you so edgy? Is there a marijuana shortage I haven’t heard about?

I’m feeling dehumanized, here. As a conservative, I mean. How about the rest of you? Anyone feel demonized? Look how they hate us. This is how the left treats people about ten years before they take over and the firing squads assemble. What’s next? Kristallnacht II, sponsored by Apple and Birkenstock? Thank God I live in Florida and I still have time to buy a rural compound. I better get started, sewing yellow crosses on all my T-shirts.

I congratulate…the Jawa person (?)…on this wonderful blog post. This is the kind of thing that nearly justifies the existence of the Blogosphere.

Sick Palin Humor Highlights National Disease

I don’t watch Saturday Night Live. It’s on too late. I’m not a big TV-watcher. And bad episodes have conditioned me to avoid the show. Some people have managed to live through the really bad SNL years without quitting. I haven’t been a regular watcher since the Eddie Murphy days. Probably not even then, now that I think about it.

I used to wonder how SNL could have bad seasons. They have a whole lot of money to buy writers and actors, and it’s hard to think of a job a TV writer would find more alluring. That’s me, guessing. For all I know, it’s a miserable job. I don’t know what the atmosphere on the set or among the writers is like; maybe good writers jump ship as soon as they can. Still, to an outsider, it’s difficult to understand how the SNL crew ever managed to do their job badly. But they pulled it off, many, many times.

At my advanced age, with my burgeoning Christian sentiments, I can’t imagine sitting up past eleven p.m. to watch anything, let alone a disappointing, often tedious show that reinforces all of my worst traits. So I am not a fan. Sometimes they do something really funny, and I catch it on Youtube, but that’s about it.

I wasn’t watching this weekend, when they did a sketch about Sarah Palin. I can’t find it on Youtube, either. I guess their attorneys are pulling material so fast, it doesn’t survive the weekend. I can’t give an informed critique of the sketch. But I feel like I’m on firm ground when I say they had no business joking about her husband committing incest. The Palins have kids. Those kids have friends. I’m sure many of those friends watch SNL. This is not something they needed inside their young minds. Imagine your kids’ friends, joking about your family and incest. Not wholesome. Then imagine actors joking about it on national television.

SNL is like flavored malt liquor, or clove cigarettes. It’s supposed to be for adults, but the nature of the product makes it appealing to children and to adults barely over the age of majority. It’s a little sad, if you think about it. An ensemble of not-so-young people, dedicating their lives to producing material which many grown people find too sophomoric and crude to enjoy. There is a certain dignity in doing kids’ programming, like Captain Kangaroo or Misterogers Neighborhood, because everyone knows you’re acting, and that when the cameras are off, you’re a regular grown-up. But when you’re in your thirties and forties and you’re doing SNL humor for high school and college kids, it’s a different story. You stoop to the level of the audience, in a way that infects your life. You may end up clinging to the adolescent mindset, at least in the public eye, long after you should have moved on. It’s one more example of the perversity of modern culture, in which adults take their moral cues from the benighted young. I think that explains the astoundingly broad and clumsy toilet jokes in the Austin Powers movies. Shakespeare gave us a subtle pun about a petard. Mike Myers gave us an overflowing bowl, on camera.

I’m not sure who is insulted more, by that kind of humor. Is it the audience, because it suggests they’re too stupid to understand anything smarter, or is it the writer, because it demonstrates that he believes he lacks the talent to write intelligent material?

I read about the incest sketch. It appears that the intent was to mock provincial East Coast journalists, who assume the worst about the backward folks in Jesusland. Still, wouldn’t it have been better to avoid the subject? Even if they were trying to defend Sarah Palin, in their own way, they probably ended up adding to the layer of slime which had already accumulated on her and her family, thanks to leftist slanders.

We ought to declare the Animal House/Porky’s era dead, once and for all. We should make an effort, as a nation, to get past adolescence. You can be funny without cruelty or obscenity. You can do it without driving a wedge between the generations. Writers shouldn’t be looking for ways to inject shock into their work. They should be looking for ways to remove it. I think about this a lot, with regard to my own work. When I see people like Sandra Bernhard and the SNL bunch blowing it, I think about things I’ve written, and I cringe. I’ve been trying to improve, but when you’ve become jaded by repeated exposure to obscenity and cruelty, it takes time to wear off. It affects your ability to perceive your own crassness. There are things I wrote last year that I would not publish today.

I let myself be duped by a corrupt popular culture that convinced me that in order to do well, I had to pull out the stops. That was stupid. Artists thrive on restrictions. They make you work harder, and you end up producing things that make your audience work harder, and they are rewarded for it.

The other night, I watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for a while. There are two romances in the film. One is between two career martial artists, and the other is between a governor’s daughter and a thief. The first involves only glances, touches, and loaded remarks. The other involves a lot of groping and simulated sex. And which is more powerful? The first. The thwarted lovers who can only express their feelings obliquely burn up the screen. That’s what happens when an artist makes his audience do some of the work. An artist who deals in the obvious and the sensational is a sort of slut. He hits the audience with everything he has, right away, because he doubts he has the ability to hold their interest if he restrains himself.

God bless Sarah Palin and her family. They should not have to endure this, simply because a comedy writer in Manhattan hasn’t gotten it together yet.

My Eyes Deceive Me

I’m having a nice Sabbath. Took a few hours out to go to Man Camp and watch the Dolphins…WIN? Very confusing. Is that supposed to happen? Must be a great day for them. They probably felt like they would never win again.

I couldn’t resist taking a few minutes to see if my plan to remove the last concrete slug from the yard had worked. I hooked up the chain and took off. Problem: the epoxy had not set up. I must have mixed it badly. The slug moved about three inches before the rebar popped out. One leg popped out right away, but the second one held out longer, and the crook in the rebar kept the chain attached.

The rebar was asymmetrical after it came out; one leg was longer than the other. I ground a few inches off the long end, hit the other end with a MAPP torch to get the bulk of the epoxy residue off, cleaned up the holes with the hammer drill, vacuumed out the debris, mixed more epoxy, put it in the holes, and re-inserted the rebar.

Should be ready to yank tomorrow. This method works. You just have to do it right. I also took a mattock and dug out some dirt on the chain side of the slug. That will help it come out.

I shouldn’t have taken time to fool with this on the Sabbath. Temptation overcame me. But I’m back.

One fun thing about Man Camp is that Pat, who lives next door to Val, always has a new toy to look at. Two weeks ago, it was a camper and a pickup. This week, it was a scooter. Someone sold him a reasonably nice one for $200. I took it for a spin. When the speedometer hit 65, I got a little nervous. Then I realized it was 65 kilometers per hour.

I’m not a green freak, but I think scooters are a good idea for people who live close to the places where they run errands.

Scooters are strange. You don’t do anything with your feet, so all your motorcycle instincts get screwed up. I told Pat to get himself to MSF class (Motorcycle Safety Foundation). You may think you don’t need training to ride a scooter safely, but that’s not true. It’s a small motorcycle. The same problems apply, and you can’t learn how to avoid them from experience. Some of the safety stuff is not intuitive. Someone has to teach you.

I told Pat he needed a helmet and gloves. Val thought I was nuts. Riding a bike without a helmet is pretty safe, because bikes are much more maneuverable, and you don’t ride in traffic, and you don’t go as fast. But you need one on a scooter. As for gloves, what do you do when you fall off a motorcycle? You put your hands down. At anything over five miles per hour, that means kiss your palms goodbye.

I think a scooter would be a great thing to have, for grocery missions and so on. But I don’t have Pat’s knack for finding cheap used stuff. Oh well.

Drinking Disgusting Canned Shakes

More good news about Mish Weiss, the young IDF soldier who is fighting leukemia in Jerusalem. Even though she’s a vegan, Leah Friedman has convinced her to drink Ensure, which is a liquid meal substitute that helps people gain weight. I don’t know what the objection to Ensure is; maybe it has animal-derived B12 in it. When Mish gets better, I think we should all chip in and ship her and her family some prime steaks for a barbecue. I know we can convert her! Hmm…might be tough to locate prime kosher beef.

Unless things have changed since I lived there, the beef situation in Israel is not rosy. When I left Israel and flew to Athens, my top priority was locating beef. Athens was full of New York-style diners, and food was very cheap. I sat myself down at the first place I could find and had a cheeseburger platter, with a second cheeseburger on the side. I probably paid a dollar-fifty (Reagan dollars) for that meal.

Mish is having problems with nausea. I wonder if they have fresh ginger over there. Japanese longliners chew it instead of taking seasickness pills.

Says Leah, on Mish’s blog: “Thank you so very much for the prayers, they work!”

They most certainly do. Thanks, everybody. As Aaron is fond of saying, God is near to all who call on Him. The rest of the verse: “to all who call upon him in truth.”

Things continue to go well here. I still feel as though an invisible but oppressive layer of clouds had lifted. I attribute sensations of oppression to supernatural opposition, and I’m not the only one. I hope the change lasts, and that I can help my family find what I’ve found.

My psalm-memorizing campaign goes well, although to be honest, I’ve only been re-memorizing psalms I committed to memory long ago. I have 1, 23, and 63 under control. I may get ambitious and shoot for 37 next.

Things are Getting DONE

It’s amazing, what I got done today. I will bore you with a list.

Hung my grandfather’s gun rack on the wall. Lots of drilling and patching. Glued the felt on the gun supports back in place.

Round-Upped every plant on the property that even looked at me funny.

Put a latch on the patio TV cabinet doors.

Mulched.

Removed a worthless oak tree.

Prepared a concrete slug for its date with the tow chain. I decided to let it cure overnight instead of trusting the epoxy packaging. I don’t want to have to glue that rebar in there a second time.

It may not sound like a lot, but it was more work than you would imagine. I also had to clean up a lot, put tools away, and so on. And I made a heavy-duty Home Depot run to prepare for all this.

Tools used:

1. Impact Driver
2. Hammer drill
3. Vise
4. Vise Grips
5. Level
6. Screwdriver
7. Shop-Vac
8. Tow chain
9. Proxxon
10. Shovel
12. Angle grinder
13. Claw hammer
14. Punch

I love having tools. Every time a problem came up, I had the right item to fix it. If you don’t have an impact driver and a hammer drill, you should qualify for handicapped parking, because you are helpless.

I want go fondle my shiny new tow chain.

I’m thrilled with the stuff I got done. These were nagging jobs I thought I’d never get around to. Sometimes I think one sign that you have problems you need to take up with God is that you can’t finish things you need to get done. You make plans, but somehow, things don’t work out. Today I got some things off my back, which had been bothering me for eons.

I feel as if some kind of blockage in my life has broken loose.

I think I’m also going to get a new cage for Marv. His cage is very nice, but he has been getting territorial about it, and I think the answer is to make the birds switch cages every day. The problem with that is that Marv’s cage is smaller than Maynard’s, so Maynard gets the shaft. His wingspan is bigger. Marv’s cage isn’t really adequate for him.

I can’t even guess what I’ll do with Marv’s cage. Ebay or Craig’s List, I suppose. I wish I knew a bird that needed a better cage. Actually, I do, but his owner would never go for it.

Some people think height is more important than square footage in a bird cage. I disagree completely. Narrow cages get dirty faster; there is less room for the poop. And wide cages let birds move around more, and you can put more toys in them.

I’m going to put together some kind of hinged perch for the patio, so these little goofs will have a proper place to hang out, instead of sitting on the back of a chair.

It was a beautiful day, and tomorrow is Sunday, so I get to relax, attend to my religious obligations, and pay a visit to Man Camp.

Not bad.