11/13/2022 - BLOG COMMENTS are again allowed and are moderated to exclude only the bots, advertisements, racial / ethnic pejoratives, and embedded links. I'll attempt to honor Chicago's historical "Bughouse Square" concept of free-speech and open debate --- spanning the curve from the far-left to the far-right. /JZ
Blogging to you from the Northeastern Badlands of The County of Lake, in the state currently known as Fatmanistan, DEEP DEEP DEEP DEEP DEEP inside the heartland of the Banana Republic formerly known as the USA, WELCOME TO THE NEXT CHAPTER! WARNING! ALL FORMS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ARE ADDICTIVE; EXCESSIVE USE MAY LEAD TO MENTAL HEALTH DISORDERS, REDUCED JOB PRODUCTIVITY, INSOMNIA, SOCIAL ALIENATION, GENITAL ULCERS, BLINDNESS, POLITICAL EROTICISM, AND / OR DEVIANT FUNAMBULISM. NOTICE: NO GUNS OR AMMUNITION ARE FOR SALE VIA THIS BLOG. (No, I will not trade my Colt Python for some lubricious adventures with your trophy wife and a future first-round draft pick.) CAVEAT: This blog is not suitable for viewing while at work, while inside a public library, while inside any public or private school, or while inside any public or private restroom. Do not view this blog while driving a motor vehicle or while piloting an aircraft. Viewing this blog may be illegal inside the EU, NYC, Chicago, Seattle, and other parts of the Third World. THIS BLOG CONTAINS (albeit often very childish) ADULT-CONTENT. DISCLAIMER: This blog is a hobby, it is not a livelihood. Even though much of what I blog about relates to firearms collecting and recreational shooting, I am not an expert (by any measure) on any facet of guns, shooting, hunting, or personal defense. Entries at this blog are akin to good old-fashioned campfire chats or post hunt bourbon-fueled barroom-bluster; I offer no opinion on what you should or should not purchase, or what you should be using or doing. What does or does not work for me could be rugged-country-miles away from your tastes and your needs. All products, places, and miscellany that I review for this blog are purchased / rented / leased at retail price by me. I do not accept payment, gifts, discounts, freebies, products on loan, distilled spirits, recreational pharmaceuticals, plea-bargains, probation, parole, Papal Blessings, Presidential Pardons, or sexual favors for doing any review or blog post. TRACKING COOKIES: Google et al stick tracking cookies on everybody. If you are online, you are being spied on via one method or another, for one reason or another; 'nuff said. You may be able to minimize your online DNA residue by using Tor and Duck Duck Go. Vive la liberté! Vive all y'all! Ante omnia armari. To each of you, thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Lockable pistol case for PSA or Browning Baby



Gift idea From Lenn Kristal, President
P.O. Box 931
Aspen, Colorado USA 81612
Telephone: (970) 390 5520
Fax: (970) 797 1630
Email: sales@precisionsmallarms.com

Machined from aerospace aluminum, our two-tier, lockable pistol case has a fixed lower plate with cutouts for 12 bullets, 2 magazines and a barrel cleaning brush. The upper tier securely cradles your PSA-25, Baby Browning, Fraser, Bauer, or PSP pistol. Limited quantities. Made expressly for us by Mauro and his team at Technoframes in Bergamo, Italy.

Our Holiday Price: $135.00
  S & H: FREE!


Saturday, November 19, 2011

SnubTraining.com now has a Facebook page



Dear Fellow Snub Shooters:

I hope this note finds you well.

Should interest permit I will be posting twice a month snub training tips on our Facebook page.

If you would like to receive them, you are invited to go to our Facebook site and "Like" the page.

The page link is located at:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/SnubTrainingcom/251627074869178

Alternatively, you can request that our tips be send via e-mail if you are not currently on Facebook.

I hope you will enjoy the items and will feel free to comment on them as well.

Yours,

Michael de Bethencourt
http://www.snubtraining.com/
info@SnubTraining.com
978-667-5591

Thursday, November 17, 2011

It is time for this old Luddite to jump headlong into old technology


Yep, tomorrow I be getting me one of them highfaluting garage door opener thingies.  Out of the 86 houses built in this subdivision, only one buyer (that be me) was too cheap to include it into the construction price of the home.  Here it is 13-years later, and I am going high tech…  Lordy, may wonders never cease.  After all the years of inflation, a new unit installed is costing me only around 1/3 of what the developer wanted. 

Price was not the only reason I delayed getting a garage door opener.  For many years, burglars easily cloned the remote openers; now it is not so easy.  Some of the safety features were unreliable and easily bypassed, sometimes resulting in property damage or injury.  Sometimes the homeowners would drive away without watching their door fully close, only to have a safety switch reverse it to the full open position where it remained until they returned home.  Many folks in this neighborhood quit carrying keys to their house, leaving the connecting door to the garage unlocked, relying solely on the security of the garage door.  Other than the fact that these homes were easy picking for the local scoundrels, the homeowners were locked out of their houses during power failures.  Yeah, over the years a few moseyed over to ask “that survivor guy” if he could help them break into their own homes.  Almost universally, these folks left their second story windows unlocked, so my extension ladder provided the means.  They will wish they had not gotten into the habit of leaving the upper story windows unlocked once the area burglars wise up.

Soon, I will be in this brave new high tech world of push-button garage doors.  The kid who grew- up next-door watching me manually opening my garage door all those years said the neighborhood would just not be the same. 


Sunday, November 13, 2011

Dad was right. All in Congress are corrupt.



On the anniversary of the death of a loved one, it is hard not to think of them.  I just listened to a Sixty Minutes installment that reaffirms Dad’s contention that the halls of congress should be converted to a high security federal prison.

Dad, it has been five years since you died and during that time our government never once failed to live down to your expectations.  Rest in peace; you were right.

Friday, November 11, 2011

C.E. “Ed” Harris series of articles begins at The Revolver Liberation Alliance



CLICK HERE NOW for the first of this series!  My goodness, you will not want to miss this stuff.  I have long been in awe of Ed Harris.  He is the real-deal when it comes to guns and ammo knowledge.  If there ever is to be a Hall of Fame for gun writers (if there is one, I cannot find it), it will have to include Ed Harris somewhere near the top.  Aside from his NRA magazine articles, Ed was a pioneer in writing expert online guns and ammo prose dating back to the computer Bulletin Board System (BBS) days.

Support Veteran Owned Businesses


Click HERE to visit the Veteran Owned Businesses Directory Blog.  Launched on Veterans Day 2008, VeteranOwnedBusiness.com is the leading free, comprehensive, user-friendly directory of businesses owned by military veterans, active duty military, reservists and service disabled veterans of the United States Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard, and National Guard.  Americans in the United States and abroad have an easy way to proudly search for products and services that are unique in the fact that they are all made by, sold by or serviced by United States military veterans!


Thursday, November 10, 2011

Today we had our first snow of the 2011 - 2012 season


It is all gone now, but for a short while today we bore witness to the strange sight of snow hanging from my still flowering petunias and marigolds.  There were several periods of wind driven snow and sleet throughout the day.  In a way, it was fun.  I spent some time outside and did some pre-season readiness-work on the snowblowers.  

We have yet to have a hard freeze in these parts; the very few frost mornings that we had so far were mild enough for many of my annuals to survive.  Tonight the air temperature will drop to 26F and finish the job of killing off all that remains of what was once a beautiful springtime.


Tuesday, November 8, 2011

The Great Recession has been most depressing


It has been a difficult year for me to find the motivation to blog.  Family, friends, and neighbors are just barely scraping by.  My wife and I have helped until it hurts, but we cannot sacrificially put ourselves into poverty in order to help everyone else; what we have must last us until the end of our days.  It is hard to say “NO!” to those in need but we will be lucky if changes in the laws, price inflation, and higher taxes do not prematurely eat away our financial means.  The political ideal of “redistribution of wealth” has become the reality of “redistribution of poverty.”  The promises our politicians made to us were broken.  Our federal, state, and local governments failed us.  Lesson learned, “NEVER trust the government to fix anything, especially with YOUR money.”

The neighbor behind me lost his house to foreclosure a year or so back.  My eastside next-door neighbor lost his house to foreclosure this July past.  Just last night my westside next-door neighbor sauntered over to tell me that he was filing for bankruptcy in an attempt to keep his house.  He is still current on his mortgage payments, but only due to his sacrificing payments to other bills.  He is an honorable guy who is at the end of his financial rope.  The property taxes have doubled since he bought the house around six years ago, which is now worth only forty percent of what he paid for it.  Even though he has family health insurance, his daughter’s winning battle with leukemia had substantial out of pocket fees and co pays.  He earns good money but the needs of his family of five added up to more than his means and I am here to tell you that they are for the most part a frugal bunch.  His truck is sixteen years old and his family van is nine years old.  In any case, his lawyer is working to either consolidate his credit card and medical debts into a low interest repayment plan or outright make them go away.  I hope it all works out for him. 

On top of the aforementioned folks, we have several vacant homes going to seed in our small neighborhood and yet another neighboring house is in the foreclosure process.  Ironically, another neighbor is hoping to sell his house so he can get the hell out of the USA and move his family back to his native country.  So goes the American Dream. 

I took a case of canned food from my survival rack over to a recent well-publicized food drive held by my granddaughter’s soccer league.  WOW!  It was surprising how little food other folks were willing to part with.  From probably over a hundred parents and grandparents attending the matches, my wife saw one box of corn flakes and two bags of potato chips in the donation pavilion.  Are we all becoming too cynical?  Are we all getting to a point of “every man for himself?”  Are we all so financially tapped-out that we just cannot spare a brother a dime?  It is so very troubling.  Then again, there has been an overabundance of food drives in this area so maybe everyone has donated elsewhere. 


Friday, November 4, 2011

My ever-faithful LW Seecamp .380


This little firearm is with me the most.  I suppose it is high time that I take it to the range, blow out the carry ammo, and then clean it up and reload for another period of sweat and toil around the house and yard.  It is the perfect piece for me to carry when hot, heavy, chores make carrying a more formidable firearm an impediment. 


*AGGREGATOR* -NEWS-WEATHER-SPORTS-OPINION-SCIENCE-TECH-RELIGION-POLITICS-GUNS-HUMOR-ENTERTAINMENT-

This Blog's most viewed posts during the past week

This Blog's most viewed posts during the past month

This Blog's most viewed posts during the past year

This Blog's Most Popular Posts of All Time


Be they Republican, Democrat, third party, fourth party or beyond, make each candidate earn it. Vote NO MORE GUN LAWS!

'We the Politicians of the United States, in Order to avoid a more perfect Union, manipulate Justice, destroy domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common offense, promote general Warfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our Progeny, do blaspheme and eviscerate this Constitution of the United States of America." ("Zack," circa 1966 -1970)
Please consider RECURRING UNIVERSAL BACKGROUND CHECKS of ALL FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL POLITICIANS (including but not limited to school records, acquaintances, employment history, Social Media, financial, drug, and psychiatric screenings). Please consider TERM LIMITS; political power corrupts.