I’ve Been Dying to Say That

One of the first things I did today when I turned on the PC was to check and see if the Supreme Court had issued an opinion in the Heller case. We all knew the drama would end this morning. I had to wait a while, but they finally ruled.

People are excited because they killed the DC gun ban. I don’t know why that would be a big thrill at this point. We all expected that. And we knew the court was going to rule that the dishonest far-left “militia” argument was nonsense. So there’s no big news to report yet. We still have to root through the opinion to find out exactly how helpful it is. We knew the bums were going to lose, as Mr. Lebowski would put it. What we did not know was how badly they would lose.

I haven’t read the opinion yet. If Scalia was on his game, and he got his way, it will be a clear and decisive ruling that you have to have a damn good reason to screw with the availability and use of firearms. If not, expect a limited impact. It’s possible to get a favorable decision which doesn’t do you much good.

In the first Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court opinion, the unfortunate phrase “all deliberate speed” was used. The evils of segregation were to be remedied “with all deliberate speed.” Sounded like a victory. But for years after the decision, hostile courts seized on that phrase and essentially claimed it meant “slowly.” That’s an oversimplification, but that was how it shook out in practice. If Scalia left any wiggle room in the opinion, the bums will find it, and they’ll exploit it, and we’ll see more frivolous, overly broad gun bans.

All I know about the language of the opinion is that it contains this passage: “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Imagine what the bums will do with that, if it isn’t clarified. Their eagerness to exploit the phrase is revealed by the fact that this is the only phrase the liberal media is widely quoting today.

It’s a good day for right-thinking, law-abiding people who don’t have granola for brains. How good? We don’t know yet.

We can take solace in this fact. Today hippies everywhere are drinking their bathwater.

Oops. Oxymoron.

More

Here’s the holding, from the opinion. When a court issues an opinion, assuming the opinion was not written by Sandra Day O’Connor, the opinion will contain rules lower courts can apply. These rules are “holdings.” Scalia, brain that he is, laid out the court’s holding in this case in a prefatory section separate from the rest of the opinion.

Held:
1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53.
(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.
(b) The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.
Pp. 22–28.
(c) The Court’s interpretation is confirmed by analogous armsbearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed the Second Amendment. Pp. 28–30.
(d) The Second Amendment’s drafting history, while of dubious interpretive worth, reveals three state Second Amendment proposals that unequivocally referred to an individual right to bear arms. Pp. 30–32.
(e) Interpretation of the Second Amendment by scholars, courts and legislators, from immediately after its ratification through the late 19th century also supports the Court’s conclusion. Pp. 32–47.
(f) None of the Court’s precedents forecloses the Court’s interpretation. Neither United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553, nor Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, 264–265, refutes the individual rights interpretation. United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, does not limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes, but rather limits the type of weapon to which the right applies to those used by the militia, i.e., those in common use for lawful purposes. Pp. 47–54.
2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or
laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 54–56.
3. The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scrutiny the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition—in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute—would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional. Because Heller conceded at oral argument that the D. C. licensing law is permissible if it is not enforced arbitrarily and capriciously, the Court assumes that a license will satisfy his prayer for relief and does not address the licensing requirement. Assuming he is not disqualified from exercising Second Amendment rights, the District must permit Heller to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home. Pp. 56–64.

Judging from this part of the opinion, it’s not too good. Clearly, states will conclude they don’t have to issue carry permits. And we can expect college students to remain prime targets for rapists and murderers, because the Supreme Court says it’s okay to ban guns in schools. The bit about unusual weapons means we can look forward to more “assault weapon” bans and restrictions on magazine capacities.

States can’t ban handguns, and they can’t make ridiculous laws making it impossible to use guns effectively in our homes. That’s all I see here. Whoopee. A few people in cities ruled by hippies will be able to buy guns, and the cities will be able to force them to get permits, and the Supreme Court has issued virtually no guidance as to how restrictive permit laws can be. So DC’s permit law will be crafted in a manner that will make it nearly impossible for anyone to qualify.

Seems to me like we got screwed.

I may be wrong because I haven’t read the whole opinion, but don’t expect me to read the entire 157-page mess. I am willing to let the wonks handle that.

More

Look at this: “Petitioners and today’s dissenting Justices believe that it protects only the right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with militia service.”

That should send chills down your spine. Look how close we came to losing the right to bear arms. If you’re one of the many idiots who do not understand that a vote for a liberal President is a vote for judges who will destroy your rights, you need to have your face rubbed in this sentence over and over. And if you’re stupid enough to stay home as a protest or vote for Bob Barr, helping Obama get elected, you deserve to live in North Korea. All four far-left judges wanted to repeal the Second Amendment, and the only thing that saved us was the presence of that perpetual embarrassment, Kennedy.

Had Al Gore won the 2000 election, we would not have Alito or Roberts, and the individual right to bear arms would no longer exist, and every one of us would be facing the possibility of total gun confiscation, with no constitutional remedy. We would have to rely on the good judgment of our state and local governments to protect us.

It Hurts to Sit on One

You truly will not believe this. It’s like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie. A major retail company has contacted me about selling my book. I can’t tell you what kind of company, but I can tell you that you will derive endless amusement from it, if it pans out. This is the craziest thing that has ever happened to me.

Details will follow, as I become aware of them.

More

Whoops. I may have my companies confused. This may be a different outfit with a similar name. Still, the potential for amusement is there.

Even More

I spoke too soon! I now think this is a scam. When you upload a press release on Prweb, which is what I used because I’m a low-budget operation, scammers will pick it up and offer you what they claim are amazing promotion deals.

Here’s what someone on a forum has to say about these people:

I received a call from someone at the ______ wanting to sell my product. They will develop marketing; the tv comercial and the internet ads to sell. But they want a substantial investment from me upfront for all of this and they will certianly make money as well on the mark up. Is this legit? Anyone out there heard of this Company?

When my press release went out, the first response I got was from some outfit claiming it could list my book on “THREE TOP LITERARY SITES.” Whatever that means. I have no idea what the pitch was. I deleted the emails immediately. I’m not stupid.

If you’re trying to get PR for a product or book or something, learn from my mistakes. PR people are not in the business of promotion. They are in the business of lining their pockets. That’s their primary goal. They’re in the business of ripping off gullible people who have dreams and need exposure. If they help you, great, but it’s incidental. Be extremely careful whom you trust. Big-time firms with proven reputations may do great work for you. And you’ll know they’re for real, because it will be hard to get them to accept you as a client. Other than that, steer clear.

The first and most important PR job a PR firm does is the job of selling itself to you. Think about that.

I’m virtually positive that the firm I hired last year shopped me around to a network of losers and cronies, for the purpose of helping them, not me. For example, they booked me on a podcast no one has ever heard of. They booked me on a show at 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday, claiming the host sold a lot of books. Come on. Who turns on the radio at 7:30 on a Sunday? Nobody. I might as well have been interviewed on Mars.

I found that I was able to get better PR on my own, free of charge, than these “professionals” got for me. I got interviews they couldn’t–or at least didn’t–get me. Easily. They claim a lot of well-known pundits as clients. All I can say is, famous people are suckers, too.

There is a simple way to determine whether someone who expresses interest in promoting your product is for real. If they want even a penny from you, up front, and you’ve never heard of them, they’re crooks or losers. Period.

The world is cruel to dreamers. I’m sure a lot of people borrow and beg to pay for worthless promotion. There is a special place in hell for someone who takes advantage of a person who is just starting out and who is desperate for help from any quarter.

Vasectomy Scheduled

I hate letting mechanics touch my car. Because I’m cheap? No. Well. Yes. But also because they’re crooks, and when you let them near your car to fix something cheap, like tires that need to be rotated, they will often sabotage something expensive so they can fix that, too. “Look, man, there’s a big slit on your sidewall, almost like some illiterate moron with his name on his shirt put it on a hoist and hit it with a box cutter. Better get you a set of new tires.”

If it were not for this, I would take Kim du Toit’s advice and pay the bastards to do maintenance. If a twenty-dollar job really were a twenty-dollar job, I’d have no problem paying to have it done. The problem is, half the time, a twenty-dollar job is a five-hundred-dollar job.

So anyway, I decided to rotate my tires. And what a nightmare it has been. Why is it that everything I try to do with tools is a CF the first time around?

I bought a low-profile jack and some chocks at Northern Tool. I even talked to T-bird owners and found out how low the pad had to be. Then I tried to put it under the car, and it wouldn’t fit. Why? The pad was fine, but the jack itself was too high. The jacking points on the front of the car are maybe 18″ in from the side of the car, so half of the jack has to go under there. And this car is REALLY low. I didn’t realize until I got down there and looked. It’s scary to stick your arm under there when it’s on a jack.

Great. I drove my ass to Northern Tool again and bought a chintzy jack with an even lower profile. The only one they sold which had any chance of fitting under the car. Then I came back and looked at my blog comments, and people were telling me something that should have been obvious: put boards under the tires to raise the car before jacking it.

ARRGH.

I kept the jack anyway, because 1. new tool! and 2. I didn’t want to “Fred Sanford” the job up any more than necessary.

Tonight I jacked the front right tire up; the jack cleared the body by about 1/8 of an inch. I couldn’t figure out what to put the jackstand under. You will love this. In the sweat and misery of the moment, I put it under the A-arm. There was nothing else down there to put it under. I then took off the tire, using my sweet Ebay impact wrench and ungodly huge compressor.

I jacked up the rear right tire, which was much easier. I took it off. No need for a jackstand; I was only going to be a minute, putting the front tire on the rear hub. I did that, and then I lowered the rear end.

I put the front tire on and tried to jack the car up so I could pull the jackstand out. And you know what happened. When the car went up, the suspension extended. So the A-arm was still resting on the stand. There was no way to pull it out. This was one of the many moments when I have wondered whether it was my civic duty to have myself sterilized.

I stood there and looked at it for quite a while. I didn’t want to use that tiny jack to lift the car until the suspension ran out of travel. Finally, I figured out what to do. I got my big jack and jacked up the A-arm until I could pull the jackstand out. Naturally, I had to remove the tire to do this. Then I put the tire back on, lowered the car, and did the other side. This time I used my brain and put the jackstand under the rear axle.

I love the impact wrench, but I can’t figure out how to use it to tighten lug nuts. It has no torque measurement. I use it to take the lug nuts off, and I use it to tighten them most of the way. But I had to use a tire iron to finish up. It turned out my torque wrench didn’t go high enough, so I overtightened the lug nuts a bit, applying pressure to the iron with my foot. I know what I weigh, and I know how long a tire iron is, so I know I was exceeding the required torque.

I’ll bet there’s some kind of doodad you put on a impact wrench that lets you set the torque. Life would be intolerable if there were not. I’ll also bet mechanics in garages rarely bother to apply the right torque. I’ll bet the average dork in a Goodyear store blasts the nuts on there really hard, to avoid exerting himself to check the torque.

I bought the big jack because I figured bigger was better, and also because I figured I might need it if I helped my dad with his vehicles. Now I have a jack which is totally useless for my own car. Score one for Dad.

Another amusing note: I bought a $20 rubber-covered jack pad for my big jack, from Eastwood. I didn’t want to mar up the frame of my car. I had to saw it down to size with a dry cut saw, and I treated the cut end with truck bed paint to prevent rust. And now it won’t fit the only jack I have which works on my car. After blowing $20, I realized there was an economical alternative. A WASHCLOTH. Man, I feel stupid. I folded a crappy washcloth and put it on the jack, and it worked fine.

I rotated those damn tires, though. I finally did it. After paying the thieves at Maroone Ford $17.95 to not do it and say they had.

That’s the tire-rotation story. I wish to God I knew someone I could trust to do it for twenty bucks.

How to Pimp, Painlessly

If you want to help my book, here’s what you do. Don’t buy fifty copies and lose your home. Just mention the book to other people. Maybe send an email to friends who might enjoy it. You can link to the Amazon page or this press release: CLICK.

Unfortunately, the Amazon page stinks. We’re trying to fix it. And we’re trying to get rid of the old book’s page and move the reviews to the new page.

Rank was 2324 last time I looked. Thanks again.

Here’s a question. Let’s say Home Depot has a product you want, and you go to the local store, and it costs X. Then you go online, and the same product is 0.9 times X. With free shipping. So you save, gas, time, shipping charges, and aggravation.

How does Home Depot expect to get people into its stores if they do that?

Thanks to You

I want to thank all the people who are placing orders for the Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. You drove it from 400,000-something to 3330 on Amazon today. That doesn’t mean I’m getting rich, but it means people are buying. Thank you for supporting my work. I’m happy when people show up to read my work for nothing, so imagine how I feel when I see that people are willing to pay.

Even if the book does well, the rank will surely dip and rise a few times, so you can’t read too much into it.

I always feel like I haven’t done enough for my readers. There are things in the book I wish I had been able to rewrite. Always remember, I’m happy to clarify or correct anything you don’t understand.

I don’t know if I’ll get any support from bloggers on this book; they may feel like they already pushed it in 2004. Of course, that was a vastly inferior book. If enough people bug me, I’m willing to set up a PO box so you can send your copies to be signed. I did that last time, after being asked to, and only one person sent a book! I don’t care; I can blow another 68 bucks and see what happens.

The next month or so should tell the tale. If it sells, it sells. If not, I may have to quit writing and become a mediator. I don’t want to sue people any more; that’s the one thing I’m sure of. I have plenty of confidence in my product, but in this world, that’s not the only factor that determines whether writers succeed. Really bad writers do well, and good writers starve. You have to find a way to let enough people know about your book to create a groundswell.

I’ll try to make the next book cleaner and less mean. In the meantime, do me a favor and overlook the passages that bother you.

“What’s Your Hourly Rate on a Front-End Loader?”

Yesterday Sondra was saying mean things about her sister, who is supposedly enjoying the high life on welfare. I felt I had to comment. Here is the exchange:

Is your sister hot?

comment by Steve H. Graham on 06/24 at 04:29 PM

If you like your women 6’1” and 300 pounds.

comment by Headmistress Sondrak on 06/24 at 04:32 PM

Deuce…deuce and a quarter.

comment by Steve H. Graham on 06/24 at 04:37 PM

Hold on while I rent a pallet jack.

comment by Steve H. Graham on 06/24 at 04:45 PM

Anyway, Sondra apparently felt bad, because she put this recipe up for her sister to enjoy. CLICK.

Price Increase

Amazon noticed that people were buying my book, so they started jacking up the price. Sorry about that. I don’t know of a cheaper way to get it. You can get a discount by buying from the publisher, but that kills the cheap or free shipping. Thanks again for the support.

Kind of a busy day today. Back when time permits.

The Food Apocalypse Arrives

NOTE: CLICK “DEATH BY FORK” LINK IN LEFT SIDEBAR FOR MORE INFO.

It occurs to me that I have readers now who may not know much about my cookbook. So I thought I should tell you a little about it.

I can’t remember when I had the idea. It was probably in the Nineties. A little voice in my head told me to write the world’s unhealthiest cookbook and call it “Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man.” I coined that phrase, regardless of where you may have seen it since. I thought people were getting too damned self-righteous and contentious about food. People actually get angry when you talk about meat and lard and eggs and so on, and that’s insane. A person who can get angry about the food another person eats is a controlling person with no sense of boundaries. It’s nobody’s damn business what you eat.

Aside from that, the Food Nazis are attacking our culture. We accumulated a lot of food knowledge over the centuries, and these self-appointed dictators are erasing it from our memory. Want to know the real way to make a fried egg? You fry bacon in a cast iron skillet and fry the egg in the grease. Want to know what kind of shortening real biscuits are made with? Bacon grease. Or lard. The best pie crusts are made with lard. The best fries are cooked in beef fat. People have forgotten things like that, because of the damn Food Nazis. There are many dishes that simply can’t be made well without unhealthy ingredients. There is no such thing as a good, healthy cheesecake. There is no such thing as a good, healthy brownie. There is CRAP which people PRETEND is good. But it’s not.

I get sick of hearing people who don’t know what good food is, perpetuating the tired, transparent lie that you can cook just as well with healthy ingredients. And it irritates me that they’ve managed to get their awful vegetable grease and lowfat milk and so on into products like ice cream and cookies, which exist solely to taste good. It’s like putting a Prius engine in a Ferrari. It does not work.

Obviously, you shouldn’t eat fattening food every day. But what if you do? Isn’t that your right? Of course it is. You have a right to eat what you like. What you don’t have a right to do is to tell other people what they can put in their bodies. It’s a horrifying encroachment on a person’s most basic rights. Today they tell you you can’t drive an SUV or own a gun or eat a pizza. Tomorrow, they tell you which books you can read.

Once in a while, just for the experience, you should eat really good food, and sometimes that means food that’s loaded with fat or sugar or white flour or salt. And I can help you do that.

Even though all this is true, the food isn’t really the point of the book. The point was to have an excuse to write humor essays. I really let loose. I had a ball. I wrote a macaroni and cheese recipe in the voice of Hunter S. Thompson. I wrote doughnut recipes in the voices of Al Franken and Bill O’Reilly. I wrote a French fry recipe in the voice of Christopher Walken. Here’s a taste.

Soon we’re in Steve’s living room, and I’m sipping my Campari—which is a little strong, but I say nothing, because Christopher Walken is a gracious guest—while a couple of my boys hold Steve’s head under the water of his fifty-gallon fish tank.

Steve has tetras. Tetras and those other little—what do you call them?—dwarf cichlids. Little pansy fish that don’t even fight. I realize it is a matter of taste, but me, I always went for the heavy artillery. Oscars. Piranha. Small sharks. Some people feed their carnivorous fish goldfish. I fed mine Yorkies.

I cannot abide a small defiant dog that looks like a Slinky.

I give him a few minutes of that—in, out, gasp for breath, in, out, gasp for breath—while I check out his CD collection. I’m an LP man myself. Gotta have vinyl. Gotta. But he has some good stuff there. Hot Fives and Sevens, remastered. Sweet. Needs a little Bobby Vinton, of course, but maybe his tastes haven’t matured to the extent where he can fully appreciate the subtleties of “My Little Neon Rose.”

When the time is right, I have my boys pull his head out and sit him on the sofa and get him a towel and some Bosco. He has Bosco in his cupboard. I respect that. That bought him some points. I’m a Bosco man myself. Some guys like Ovaltine. That’s okay, I guess. I shot a guy in the face for drinking Ovaltine. Once. But I was young. Full of hormones. Exuberant. I would never do that now. Today I would be satisfied with slamming his head on the counter a couple times.

So I sit next to Steve and put my arm around him, and I ask if the Bosco is to his liking. And of course, it is. I showed my boys the right way to mix it. None of that business with the dark smear around the bottom of the glass, with spoon marks in it. The key to a good Bosco is thoroughness. The KEY, amigo.

I have a rule. If I see streaks of undissolved syrup in my Bosco, I got to snap somebody’s pinky toe. I don’t care whose. Finding the culpable toe is not my department. They can draw straws if they want. But somebody’s toe is going to snap. When they hear that snapping sound, it really drives the message home. Call it a mnemonic device. Snap two or three pinky toes at one shot, and you’ll be drinking well-mixed Bosco for a good five years before you have to snap another one.

“Steve,” I said, “it’s not that I don’t like your work. Truly, I am nothing if not a patron of the arts. Especially my first true love, which is the dance. I think you know my history.” And I got up and gave him my best Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. Lovely man, Bojangles. Got that monicker because he ate a lot of fried chicken. I prefer Popeye’s. But let’s not reopen that can of Pandora’s worms.

That’s the kind of thing I wrote. I’m thrilled with it. This is what I wanted to publish, back when I was only able to sell the Nigerian spam book and the caveman book. I wrote those books because I had to. I wrote this one because I wanted to.

If you bought the self-published version of this book, I thank you, but I have to tell you, you still need the big-time version. It’s longer. It has more recipes. The recipes are better. And the writing is better. The first version doesn’t compare.

I hope you’ll give it a try. I believe in this book more than I believed in anything I put on bookstore shelves in the past.

Just for reference purposes, I’ll close with a list of the chapters.

Chapter 1 – Ribs
Chapter 2 – How to Smoke Your [Boston] Butt
Chapter 3 – BBQ Beans, Texas Toast, & the Inevitable Blazing Saddles Reference
Chapter 4 – Breakfast as a Mind-Altering Drug
Chapter 5 – Chicken-Fried Rib Eye on a Huge Biscuit
Chapter 6 – Grease Burgers
Chapter 7 – Cornbread and Navy Beans
Chapter 8 – Turducken: Flight of the Hindenbird
Chapter 9 – Aged Prime Steak Cooked on a Propane Griddle
Chapter 10 – Champagne Chicken With Fettuccine in Cream Sauce
Chapter 11 – Smoked Pork and Andouille Jambalaya
Chapter 12 – Pizzeria-Style Baked Ziti With Sausage
Chapter 13 – Stuffed Hog With Apricot Glaze
Chapter 14 – Unauthentic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Chili
Chapter 15 – Super-Giant Fried Patacon Tacos
Chapter 16 – Deep-Fried Chinese-Style Honey-Garlic Chicken
Chapter 17 – Rotis and Jamaican-Style Goat Curry
Chapter 18 – Doro Wat – Ethiopian Chicken Stew
Chapter 19 – Hash Brown Casserole with Cheddar and Sour Cream
Chapter 20 – Dreadfully Fattening Macaroni and Cheese
Chapter 21 – Twice-Fried Fries Cooked in Beef Fat
Chapter 22 – Perfect 10-Minute Street Pizza
Chapter 23 – Peach Cobbler
Chapter 24 – Yeast-Raised Fried Doughnuts With Coconut/Banana Sauce
Chapter 25 – Coconut Flan
Chapter 26 – 540-Calorie Brownies
Chapter 27 – Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Hot Fudge Dessert/PMS Remedy
Chapter 28 – Blueberry Butter Cheesecake
Chapter 29 – Baklava With Cheesecake Filling
Chapter 30 – Red Lager and Room-Temperature Brewed Ale
Chapter 31 – Five Greasy Pieces: Quick Recipes for the Hopeless

Bon appetit.

One More Tool I Must Have

I saw something very cool at Northern Tool today, while buying a jack I don’t need. FOR TEN DOLLARS MORE THAN THE INTERNET PRICE. They had a tiny sandblaster. The brand name is “Badger.” It has a little jar on it that holds about a pint of sand. I’m wondering if this would be a handy thing to have.

On the one hand, I’ve been intimidated by sandblasting, because I don’t want to buy a cabinet. On the other, who cares about a pint of media ending up in their yard?

I wonder how big a job this thing will handle.

I bought a Northern Tool T-shirt. It says “Borrowing is for the weak.” They had a poster I liked. It said, “There is no shame in not owning tools, just like there is no shame in holding your wife’s purse for a minute.”

You Need Many Copies

I bought a new low-profile jack because my old one won’t fit under the car. I came home from Northern Tool, looked at my comments, and saw two people suggesting I put something under the tires to raise the car. Now I feel like a complete moron. But I can take that jack back.

In other news, THE COOKBOOK IS OFFICIALLY SHIPPING. So if you’ve been putting off buying it, the wait is over. I hope you enjoy it. It’s a thousand times better than the first one.

Crap

I have all these tools now. Compressor, floor jack, welder, hoist…you name it. I should be able to do anything, right? Wrong. Yesterday I couldn’t even rotate my damn tires.

I’m not happy. I bought a low-profile jack at Northern Tool, and I even asked T-bird owners how low it had to go to get under my car. But yesterday the silly thing would not fit under the jacking points. I was sitting out there with my pretty, mint-condition impact wrench and my urethane hose and my Helm manual, ready to go, and I had to pack it in and put everything back in the garage.

Can you believe it? I have no idea how other T-bird owners rotate their tires. I guess I’m going to have to go to a damn garage and pay twenty dollars. I could do it with the T-bird jack, but it’s horrible.

As long as I had the compressor pumped up, I decided to put the needle scaler on the hose and take a look at the iron railing on the back steps. The iron goes straight down into the concrete, and water accumulation has nearly rusted it through. In addition, there are layers of rust and old paint on the iron. I hit it with the scaler for a few minutes, and the crap really flew. Problem: it won’t fit into all the corners and bends. I’m not sure what to use in the tight places. And it doesn’t get all the rust off. It just polishes it down so it’s pretty rust.

I should saw the iron off at the concrete, weld new pieces onto the bottom, drill out the concrete so the old iron is gone, shove the new bits in, and fill it with epoxy. Or maybe I should fabricate a whole new railing.

I could get a sandblaster, but I’d have to leave the sand wherever it landed. No cabinet.

I thought I had a fifty-foot hose, but apparently, it’s a hundred feet. I must have forgotten. It’s pretty sweet. It goes all the way through the house and out the back door.

Is it possible to have enough tools to guarantee that you can do nearly anything you’ll need to do? I don’t know. But I am determined to find out.

Full of Caffeine

Busy day today. Obligations. Connections. Whatnot. That’s why I haven’t been around.

I just put an FFL in the mail for the guy in Texas with the 27-2. Got a couple of emails from Jim, regarding pistol upgrades and care. He says not to store the gun in a holster, because it will mess up the finish. I never really thought about that, but I’ll follow his advice. I don’t have a holster, anyway.

I’ll probably want new grips, primarily in order to avoid beating up the originals. Generally, on a range gun, I’d want something rubbery. But this gun is too pretty for that. I’m thinking I should find something in walnut or rosewood. I haven’t decided.

Kim du Toit is filling my head with dreams of a Model 65, which is another Smith & Wesson .357. I will not listen. I will not. I will not.

Maybe I will. Damn it.

It’s an L frame, which means .357 rounds will wear it out. So maybe I’ll be able to resist it.

I feel horrible today. I barely slept. Last night I kept wondering why I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t drink coffee yesterday, and I only had one glass of tea. Then it occurred to me…I had eaten one item without knowing the ingredients. And sure enough, it turns out you have to be careful about protein bars. They’re putting caffeine in them now. They could say so on the label, couldn’t they? I’m really mad.

Mike will be in town this week. Hopefully I’ll be able to drag him to the range. He still has not bought a gun. Every time I hear from him, he’s looking at a different model. His current idea? The Sig 229. Looks like a Glock clone. I know nothing about it. Seems like a boring gun to me. My guess? Near-Glock performance at a Sig price. I’m sure I’ll get lots of comments for saying that.

You can get a Glock for like 600 bucks. Let’s see what a Sig costs. Yeah, this is what I figured. Cheapest web price: $778. Oh my God. You can buy a Glock now for $480. Less than I paid in 1991. I very much doubt the Sig is $300 better. And it’s even uglier than the Glock. And the Glock holds two more rounds. FAIL. FAIL. FAIL.

Anyway, Mike must suffer until he buys something.

New Baby on the Way

I am out of control. And I have another blogger to blame. Jim from SOTW called me today and told me he had found a Smith & Wesson 27-2 with a 5″ barrel, in 95%+ condition, for a very nice price. How was I supposed to turn that down? I called the guy in Texas who was selling the gun, and it will be in my sweaty paws next week.

The Internet is a good place to buy most things, including new guns. But for used guns, excluding milsurps, it’s not that great. Gunbroker’s prices are completely crazy. Seems like they’re 15% over market, all the time. If you search their completed listings, you’ll see the same guns over and over, re-listed because no one was willing to pay the ridiculous reserve prices. Some shops advertise on their own websites. Generally the prices are bad. Seems like Gunsamerica has better prices; maybe it’s my imagination.

Jim did me a big favor. It’s tough to find nice guns around here, and I can’t inspect the guns I find on the web. Because I know Jim knows what he’s doing, I don’t have to worry that I bought a piece of crap.

I plan to shoot the 27-2; I have no use for safe queens. I’m thinking maybe I should put a better grip on it. That would preserve the factory grip and give me something nicer to shoot with.

I can take one gun off my buy list now.

I suppose you can’t pick one gun and buy it and then pick another and buy it, and so on. I suppose what you do is, you make a list, and then you buy as good deals become available. That’s what happened this time.

I can’t wait to shoot it! Dang, I better buy some .357 brass. I have given up on scrounging it. Thank God it’s not a semi-auto. When I’m done shooting, instead of crawling around the range like a bum looking for cigarette butts, I’ll just pop the cylinder out and remove the cases.

What if this gun shoots better than my beautiful 686+? I’ll never get over it.

Thanks, Jim. I owe you one.

Cyber Squatters Must Hang

Here is some wonderful advice for people who accidentally lose domain names. Do not pay to get them back.

I had a domain name I didn’t care about. It expired. Later on, I thought maybe I should renew it. Godaddy told me to pay some horrendous figure–$89, I think–to get it out of domain name purgatory or whatever. I told them to forget it. The name was auctioned, and some fool bought it. They sent me an email, threatening to build a commercial site on the domain, which would rob all my traffic, and offering to sell it back to me for $500. My response? “Enjoy your new domain.”

That was a week or two ago. I just checked Godaddy. The name is available for ten bucks.

I think I’ll renew the name and send an email to the squatters. I’ll say I made a terrible mistake and that the name is worth ten thousand dollars to me. Then I can laugh while they whois the name and find out it’s taken.

Good Monday Topics

First item today: TC sent me a link to a story about Christianity in China. The Chinese have repressed Christianity, going so far as to commit widespread atrocities. But it looks like it hasn’t worked. It never does. About five percent of the Chinese people are Christians. That’s a lot, in a nation five times the size of the US. And their numbers are growing.

More exciting: the Chinese churches teach the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s extremely important. A lot of the older churches behave almost as though the Holy Spirit were an embarrassment, and that is what has torn the heart out of them and made them so disappointing to believers.

On a personal note, I was struck by the realization that once again, God was answering my own prayers, on a giant scale. The evangelization of places like China is something I include on my prayer list regularly. Looking at this story, it occurred to me that God must be guiding millions upon millions of Christians to pray for the same things, because over and over, I see my global-scale prayers answered. I don’t think God looks down and says, “Steve wants to save China, so I better do it.” I think He must be guiding huge numbers of people to pray for big-ticket items, like change in China, and answers to our energy problems, and victory over militant Islam.

Why mention it? Because it might encourage people to pray for things they think are too big for God to grant. Don’t assume you’re the only one on the job.

I’ve been very pessimistic about China. On the whole, China is our enemy. And if China ever has enough wealth and power to cause us real problems, we’ll be in big trouble. It represents a fourth of the world’s population. You don’t want an enemy that big, with a sound economy propelling it. The rise of Christianity in China is very encouraging, because it could lead to better relations and a profitable alliance. At the very least, it will weaken China’s efforts to harm us.

On the gun front, I got a comment from someone putting down the M1 carbine. As if to confirm what I said this weekend about the dangers of criticizing other people’s guns, people are firing back! They’re seriously annoyed! The commenter compared the M1 to a .22 rifle and essentially described it as worthless.

I’m not stupid; I know the M1 carbine isn’t a battle rifle. But it looks like it would be tremendous fun to shoot. It has a cartridge big enough to be considered a real rifle round, making it more fun than a .22, and it should be much more pleasant to shoot than a K31 or M1 Garand or Moisin Nagant or Mauser.

I don’t know, but my guess is, it would be an easy and fairly inexpensive reload. And each gun has history. Some have been through World War Two AND Arab-Israeli conflicts, on the proper side.

If I get one, I want a Rock-Ola, an IBM, or maybe a National Postal Meter. Simply because those are funny names to put on a gun.

Yesterday, I mentioned the fact that joining the Garand Collectors’ Association would enable me to buy Civilian Marksmanship Program surplus rifles. In a comment, a reader says he thinks a carry permit will get me in the door, with no club affiliation. If I read the CMP’s site correctly, this is not true. To buy their guns, you have to prove you’re actively involved in marksmanship, and they’ll accept a carry permit as evidence. But you still have to join an affiliated organization. Correct me if I’m wrong.

I’m still debating the purchase of a Golani, which is a Century Arms parts-bin copy of the Israeli Galil. As I understand it, this is basically an AK with some real improvements. The big knocks are a. parts gun, and b. heavy. I like the idea of buying Israeli products, even if they’re assembled somewhere else. I like the idea of a military-style rifle with cheaper, lighter ammunition than the stuff I’m used to. And I think the gun will appreciate, simply because they’re not available often. But it’s not a real Galil.

Last note on guns: pray that the Supreme Court will get it right and expand our Second Amendment rights to the greatest extent possible, without alarming Congress to the point where they can get a majority and amend the Constitution. I have to tell you, there is nothing like the sensation of walking around in stores and malls with a loaded gun. This is the power the framers wanted us to feel. Let’s not let effete wimps and hippies on our coasts take it away from us. I hope everyone at the BATF and the Brady Center has indigestion for the coming month.

Speaking of the BATF, I’m holding my breath until I get the go-ahead to cruffle. Once that happens, look out.

Once again, I apologize for falling behind on email. I’ll try to fix it up today. I have been distracted by BS, but things have cleared up.