In a meeting today*:
Josh: I couldn’t read Greg’s handwriting even if you put a gun to my head.
Joe: Has this been tested?
Caity: Joe probably has all the things we need to facilitate such a test.
…
Josh: Go ahead and pull the trigger now. I’m never going to figure it out.
From the Lincoln County Idaho Sheriff’s Office:
A few things to keep in mind if you’re visiting our area for the Eclipse.
With the Solar Eclipse almost upon us, I have seen many helpful posts and public service announcements, but I feel they fall short in several areas. I will try to cover some of those.
1. Idaho has a huge amount of public land open to exploring and enjoying, but it isn’t a garbage dump. Take out what you take in. We live here 365 days a year. The public land is our back yard. We hunt, fish, trap, and camp there and will take it as a personal insult if you screw it up.
2. With that being said, not all land is public. There is a lot of private land including ranches and farms that have been in the family for over a hundred years. If there is a No Trespassing sign at a gate or road that means you. Stay out or some gentleman wearing a cowboy hat, wearing irrigating boots, and riding a four-wheeler will let you hear it.
3. We drive trucks, tractors, combines, and swathers on the highway going about our business. They go pretty slow and won’t move faster if you sit behind us and honk. In fact, they actually go a bit slower. We live here. You don’t. Be patient and enjoy the scenery.
4. There is a very good chance you will see someone carrying a firearm. Yes, it is loaded and no I don’t have a damn permit for it. Everybody, and I mean everybody, owns a gun in Idaho and a lot of us carry one quite regularly. Don’t panic. Don’t call the police. And above all, behave and treat us and our state with respect and there won’t be a problem.
5. Our dogs. Our dogs ride in the back of our trucks and they like it. Sure a few slow learners take a tumble every once in a while, but for the most part they do just fine. Don’t pet them while they are in the truck. They will bite you. Numerous times if possible. The truck is their’s not your’s and they take their security duties seriously. Again, don’t panic and don’t call the police because they don’t give a damn and they are probably going to be busy saving some tourist who received incorrect map directions from their Tom-Tom.
6. Our wildlife will kill you and it will hurt the whole time you are dying. Elk, moose, bison, and grizzly bears take great pleasure in playing hacky sack with tourists that get too close. They are wild animals and are not trained circus acts. If you must harass our wildlife, may I suggest you go catch a badger. They are really good cuddlers.
7. Our weather will kill you and yes it will hurt the whole time. It snows here every month of the year. Our back roads become death traps when it rains or snows. Your Prius isn’t an offroad vehicle, so stay on the pavement. Don’t make our brave and skilled First Responders have to go looking for you when you go exploring.
Welcome to Idaho….enjoy the Eclipse and have a safe journey home.
Sheriff Rene Rodriguez
It’s funny because it’s (almost all) true.
A lot of people talk to their dogs and share their innermost secrets. With cats I’m not sure what they’d have to say.
A lot of times it might just be ‘you idiot, just feed me and leave me alone’.
Con Slobodchikoff
Professor at Northern Arizona University
July 23, 2017
This new technology may soon be able to translate your pet’s sounds into words
[I laughed and laughed at this. It reminded me of something daughter Xenia said to me once.—Joe]
The weather has not been kind to the quote harvest.
Barb L.
July 14, 2017
[I was looking for a QOTD and it was taking longer than usual.—Joe]
I honor my ancestors who clawed their way to the top of the food chain.
How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a head of lettuce?
Brett
June 27, 2017
[This was regarding his dietary preferences.—Joe]
I am in the process of renewing my ATF license to manufacture high explosives. For some reason I can’t find anywhere in the U.S. Constitution where the Federal government has been granted the power to regulate the manufacture and consumption of explosives entirely on my property, entirely within the state of Idaho.
So, in keeping with the current “resist” political theme of the last few months, I’m bravely sending the renewal form to the ATF with a “Freedom Forever” stamp.
I suspect no one at the ATF will perceive the irony and my resistance will be futile.
From the office today:
Greg: A woman asked me to kill a spider. I told her no. It was here first. She told me it was her or the spider.
Josh: The spider is still in his house. It has taken over the bathroom. The entire bathroom is filled with webs and it lives in the skylight.
Greg: I don’t respond well to ultimatums.
This story has been told more than once. Caity’s version is:
Josh: So, Greg was dating a woman. She found a spider in the bathroom and asked that Greg kill it. He said no. She said, it’s me or the spider.
Greg: Well, the spider was there first.
Josh: Yea, I’ve met the spider. It lives in the skylight.
Greg: I don’t do well with ultimatums.
Brett’s version involves a discussion of the hotness of the woman and the attitude of the spider versus the attitude of woman. It turns out that the woman was “hot” but the attitude of the spider won out overall.
From yesterday:
Joe: Actually, I always thought it would be more fun to be a girl scout.
Caity: Because of the cookies? (She knows about my sweet tooth).
Joe: No. Because of the girls.
Today our building was evacuated for some unknown reason for a few minutes. Via text messages:
Josh: I got coffee, is the building still quarantined?
Joe: Only for you. The rest of us are at our desks.
Brett: Greg decontaminated your workstation. Land mines have been removed. You can come in now.
As seen on Gab.ai (posted by Deplorable Comrade Katrina)
The question and reply indicate a rather different perception of the situation.
I work at a grocery store, and it’s usually a comfy job. Comfy enough that I was able to sincerely hold on to my Ancap beliefs, until today. Today, a line was crossed that made me see the error of my ways.
They were doing inventory, and they needed us, or more specifically, me alone to push all the items in every shelf in the entire store all the way back, and then dust the shelf off.
At first it didn’t seem all that bad, but then I realized I was the only one doing it, and I would have to spend the rest of my shift on this. After only about five minutes, I felt like I was going crazy.
Push, spray, dust, move down, push, spray dust, move down, push spray, dust, move down, push, spray dust, move slightly to the left, and repeat.
I had to do that at least 30 times to only get one side of one aisle done. Took me at least half an hour to do that, and there were still 20 more aisles left in the store. The repetitive motion, the maddeningly slow progress, and being alone for the entire 8 hour shift (including an hour of overtime) was exhausting in every way imaginable.
By the time I was done, I was infuriated, not just with the fact that I had to do this, but because of how little I got out of it. $9.30 / hour of that insanity? What kind of heartless monster would tell someone in severe poverty doing this kind of work, to just “pull himself up by his bootstraps”? A sociopath, that’s who.
I finally understood what socialists have been talking about all this time.
“If only I were in a socialist country,” I thought, “the shelves would be completely empty and I could have finished this in like, an hour.”
How_To_Liberty
May 23, 2017
I used to be an Ancap, but my job made me turn to socialism.
[Via a tweet by Michael Z Williamson.
I have nothing to add.—Joe]
10 shots in 3 seconds from a 6 caliber magazine revolver.
That is a ghost gun.
ren
April 18, 2017
Post to “…gunman fired 10 shots before stopping to reload his six-shot revolver…”
[Mocking the ignorance of the anti-gun crowd can be quite entertaining. Just don’t forget that it is mostly entertainment. Taking a new shooter to the range is more productive in the long term.—Joe]
We all make typos. Butt-dials happen. Interruptions occu….
I found the world’s reaction to the partial information broadcast far and wide fascinating at many levels. At 12:06 AM Wednesday morning, the 31st of June, The Real Donald Trump (the God Emperor and President of the united States) sent a tweet. As with so many things said or typed at odd hours of the night, and from our president, it wasn’t phrased with quite the perfect polish and eloquence some might have hoped. Continue reading
I think we should get rid of waiting periods to buy guns. But… before you buy a gun, you have to prove that you had sexual intercourse with another person. Have you seen these shooter guys? Lonely looking bunch. If you can’t find someone to f— ya, then no gun! Guns don’t kill people — virgins do!
Jim Jefferies
May 2017
Jim Jefferies explains that ‘guns don’t kill people — virgins do’
[This got a smile out of me.
I suppose it makes as much sense as the waiting periods and background checks. Still, it is as pointless and unconstitutional as all of the other infringements they throw at us.—Joe]
I’ve said before that it would be cool to design an IPSC stage in which there are no “shoot” targets (only “no shoots”). Maybe even, everyone goes home without firing a shot that day, because that’s more “real life” than anything else you could set up.
The most unrealistic thing about a Practical Shooting match, then, is that you go to one knowing for a fact that shots will be fired, and you are thus prepared for it. In real life on the other hand, you never have that advance notice, there are no rules, no scratch lines on the ground, no range Nazis to correct your “mistakes”, no timers, no “walk throughs” prior to shooting your stage, and probably not even any safe places to shoot at all.
In that most realistic sense then, I’m in an IPSC match right now, as I type– I’m carrying a gun and assessing the environment, seeing no immediate threats. I’ve been in this particular “IPSC Match” for over 20 years already and have yet to draw my pistol, much less take a shot. This isn’t merely similar to real life; it IS real life. I only draw and fire my gun when I’ve decided to pause the “IPSC Match” for a while, and find a safe place to shoot.
The range mentality has gotten so insane that I’ve seen multiple gun demonstration videos in which the shooter loads five of six, in a percussion revolver (which is stupid right there if you understand how a percussion revolver differs from a cartridge gun), fiddle farts around trying to lower the hammer on the empty but inadvertently lowers it on a live chamber instead and has to fiddle fart with the gun some more to be sure it’s “safe”, walks five feet to the firing line, confident that he’s “being safe”, and then looks down and shuffles around a bit to make sure his feet are right on the scratch line. Stuff like that.
Don’t even try to talk to me about it. I’m just…not…listening…anymore. I’ve hear it all before anyway. Hell I wrote some of those the rules, literally– I was once the president of a Practical Shooting club.
Go ahead and call me crazy though. I’m accustomed to it, as you may well imagine.
The odor of these was not so much skunk-like as garlicky, the epitome and concentrate of all the back doors of all the bad Greek restaurants in all the world. And finally he surpassed himself with something that had a dimethylamino group attached to a mercaptan sulfur, and whose odor can’t, with all the resources of the English language, even be described. It also drew flies.
John D. Clark
1972
I G N I T I O N !: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants
[In addition to the strong propensity for experimental rocket fuels to produce craters, metal debris falling from the sky, and dissolved and/or scrambled body parts many of the fuels also smelled extremely bad. But not all. One left behind the smell of lemons.—Joe]
[Arthur suddenly laughs uproariously]
Gloria: What’s so funny now?
Arthur: Sometimes I just think funny things.
Arthur
1981
Played by Dudley Moore in the movie Arthur.
[Today I was reminded of this by co-worker Josh when he burst into laughter.
Barb does this too, perhaps even more frequently than Josh. And they, unlike Arthur, are not drunk when this happen.
They both spontaneously, without any apparent external input, burst into laughter.
I like that.—Joe]
If your propellants flow into the chamber and ignite immediately, you’re in business. But if they flow in, collect in a puddle, and then ignite, you have an explosion which generally demolishes the engine and its immediate surroundings. The accepted euphemism for this sequence of events is a “hard start.”
John D. Clark
1972
I G N I T I O N !: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants
[As I told Barb after she asked me why I was laughing, “The research of rocket propellants was a risky business. Sometimes the author doesn’t treat the subject entirely seriously.”—Joe]
As I found this in my \temp directory when I was cleaning up things I don’t know where it came from. I don’t recall visiting thepeoplescube.com until today when I went looking for it:
I find image fitting.
From this morning:
Barb: I’m lollygagging.
Joe: I don’t understand why you would want to gag lollies.
<silence>
<more silence>
<still more silence>
Barb: I love you anyway.
I presume she was using a more modern definition of lollygag than that at the beginning of the 20th Century. I suppose I should confirm that.
They’re coming to grab your guns. They’re your friends, family, loved ones. Even strangers will do it, if you let them. Some reporters have been known to do it, too, if you invite them.
With your permission, these people will take your gun, gently, from your hands into theirs. Shoot, they will. Learn, they must.
They will touch your gun all over. And another one. And another one. And other one. So many makes, so many models!
Questions will be asked, probed. They’ll load your gun, but certainly won’t loathe your gun. They’ll ooh, ahh, ogle, and be in awe of your gun(s).
It goes unsaid, but for those who don’t know: you will teach them to keep it pointed in a safe direction.
They might even “borrow” your ammunition. And leave behind the brass.
Though your ammo will be spent, you’ll oftentimes expect no reimbursement.
When the moment, or day, or shooting weekend is over, they’ll express gratitude, then return your tool, graciously.
You’ll clean the instrument, without minding at all.
…
Not only is an armed society a polite society, it’s a gunsharing, caring society.
If you’re a righteous gun owner, you’re essentially part of the gunsharing community. Gunsharing is a voluntary, legal activity in which one person owns and shares their gun(s) with one or more people, whilst providing gun safety teaching, free of charge. This is done out of compassion, because gun owners care about sharing their knowledge, skills, and tools.
After gunsharing, fellow gun users will want to grab your gun. Because it’s so much fun. Safe, too.
Gunsharing is it’s own little sharing economy of sorts.
This post goes out to all the men and women, who, over the years, have allowed me to familiarize myself with their magnificent tools. Thank you. And you. And you. And you.
Readers, what kind of guns have you legally borrowed from other righteous gun owners? I’m bracing myself for a looooong list. Let’s hear it. Tell the gun grabbers just how far – and how safely – one gun goes.
#GunSharingCaring
Oh, look… the hashtag’s registered at Twubs. How nice.