What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?
Erma Bombeck
From Quote DB.
[I hope everyone had a nice turkey day. I spent it with son James, his wife Kelsey, my parents, brothers, Uncle Darrell, Aunt Alice, and brother Doug’s children Amy (and Nate and Jared), Lisa (and Kevin) and Brad.
We had way too much really good food and stuffed ourselves.—Joe]
The following text has been in one or more obscure and seldom visited directories of my computers for many years. The timestamp on the file is January 18, 1995 but most likely I put it on one of my computers shortly after it was posted in the UseNet newsgroup misc.kids. My kids were young then and I read the newsgroup regularly. Hence, this probably has been on my computers for over 20 years.
I’m posting it here because every once in a while I want to share it and I have difficulty finding it. I think this will be an easier place to find it and more likely to be permanent.
From: berkery@emsun1.crd.ge.com Wed Oct 17 05:33:39 1990
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Subject: Cold Feet
Organization: General Electric Corporate R&D CenterA few people have asked me to elaborate on that last statement in my previous posting. You know, the one about women and cold feet. So, ok, here’s yet another note from Jack’s compendium of little known scientific theories.
—————————————————————————
“Symbiotic Relationship of Metabolic Heat Generation Differences of Sexes.”
by Berke JackeryDarwin and his successors have tried to explain physiological traits in animal species as the result of adaptation to environmental effects. There is one such proof for a certain trait in the human species which is obvious to even the most casual observer. That no one has heretofore published this fact is quite amazing since it is so immediately obvious. I’m talking about COLD FEET in females of the species homo sapiens.
It is a fact that women’s metabolism levels are not sufficient to generate enough heat to keep all their extremities warm. Over the millennia they have found that the agony of de feet can be alleviated by finding a suitable male who’s heat generation capacity can satisfy their needs. Males of the same species have metabolic rates which produce an overabundance of energy in the form of radiated heat. (Often their bodies produce excesses which are not converted to energy but are expressed as large quantities of methane gas.) This uneven heat generative difference between the sexes has evolved a symbiotic relationship where those who require it will attempt to attract the services of those who can produce it. The result is that when the two get between the sheets, the female will contrive to move her icy toes (some have been measured at temperatures close to absolute zero) toward and even under some part of the male’s anatomy thereby stealing his heat.
The male however, seldom even notices this stealthy behavior since whenever any portion of the female anatomy rubs up against any portion of his, his temperature immediately rises several hundred degrees to balance the process. The procreation process of the species is likewise related to this need to exchange heat. When the female feels the need for some whole-body heat rather than a simple toe-job, or when the male on the other hand has such an excess of heat that he must have a receptive heat-sink to take it from him, the relationship requires that far more body parts be rubbed together. The symbiosis is then complete and the male – female bonding remains intact solely because of this need for an interchange of body heat.
The alternative would have been to evolve a system similar to many insects where the female gets some hapless male to satisfy her needs then summarily bites his head off thereby severing the relationship altogether. Luckily for human males, their mate still has that all-consuming need for warmth whether or not he has ever fully satisfied her. So he is kept around as long as he continues to provide some convenient spot to warm her toes.
That, at any rate is the theory, but I think it’s a very solid one. How else can you explain why women would want to sleep next to a large hairy beast that sweats and snores and farts and grinds its teeth all night. Let’s face it guys, we’re really nothing more than giant heating pads for these females. But, well, when one considers the payment for services rendered, I can live with that. I’ve got lots of excess body heat to spare.
—————————————————————————
Jack Berkery, Computer Scientist, GE Research, Schenectady NY
For several years I have been using KitchenAid mixers for Boomershoot. We have made several tons of explosives with them. They work great.
Today I bought another mixer and brought it home to my clock tower. It turns out they can be used for other things as well as explosives:
I made a big batch of lentil chocolate chip cookies this afternoon with it. It’s not Boomerite but it still did a great job.
Thursday morning I found this on the stairway to my clock tower:
Those are six taco shells carefully placed on six steps. I have no idea what the story on those were. Had they been roses I kinda sorta would have guessed what they meant. But since they look like burnt taco shells I’m baffled.
Increasing taxes won’t increase their total tax revenue. Politicians have tried this for decades. It doesn’t work. The only way to increase tax revenue is for the economy to grow… and higher tax rates do not pave this path to prosperity.
Ron Paul was spot on. Economic ignorance abounds. And all the Talking Heads in the mainstream media blathering away about the Fiscal Cliff are only reinforcing his premise.
Bottom line– the Fiscal Cliff doesn’t matter. The US passed the point of no return a long time ago.
Simon Black
Guess what they’re NOT cutting in the Fiscal Cliff…
November 15, 2012
[H/T Tyler Durden.
I’m headed for a cabin in the woods this weekend. What are you doing?—Joe]
A few days ago one of the women I met online in my nine dates with six women in nine days adventure sent me an email asking information about a local gun range and instructor for a female friend of hers.
Yesterday I had my semi-annual eye exam (yes, my eyesight is quite good). I wore an Insights Training sweatshirt. As I walked in the door a female patient looked at me and said, “Insights! Are you an instructor?” “No”, I told her, “I’m just a student of theirs.”
It turns out she had worked at Weapons Safety Inc. (a gun shop and range) when Insights did a lot of their classes there and hence was quite familiar with Insights. The female optometrist asked the other patient a little about what it was like to work there and then it was back to business.
As I was waiting the female receptionist was talking to still another female patient about LASIK and told her that her ex had bad eyes and wore very thick glasses. He then had LASIK and the next year was able to win a rifle competition he had no chance of winning with his previous eyes. The woman she was talking to didn’t seem the least bit fazed.
This was all in the Seattle area. Historically Seattle is very anti-gun.
We have essentially won the culture war on guns. We need to keep taking new people to the range (I had another one scheduled for 2:00 PM today but she became ill and we are rescheduling) but short of a major screw up the worst case in the next decade or so is that progress toward our end goal is halted.
But there is another culture war that looks every bit as bad as things did for gun rights advocates 15 years ago.
We have long known something was very wrong with our country. The gun issue was/is just one symptom. TSA is a big deal. The war on drugs is a big deal. The government involvement in health care is a big deal. The welfare state is a big deal. The government involvement in education is a big deal. The national debt is a huge deal.
Looking at the bigger picture there are just so many things wrong that it is easy to want to just run away, create Galt’s Gulch, or encourage secession. 15 years ago the gun rights situation looked hopeless too. As Tam said if you arrived as a time traveler at a gun store in 1995 and told them the future of gun ownership in 2012 they would have found the time travel part the most believable part of your story.
I’m not saying “everything is going to be okay”. In fact in at least one way we have essentially a mathematical proof that it’s game over and we are just watching the clock run out. But the question is, what do we do about it?
Some people are buying gold and silver. Lots of people are buying guns and ammo. But you can’t eat gold or silver. You can eat a bullet, but one is your lifetime limit and few people consider the Smith and Wesson retirement plan the best they can do. Stockpiling food and water in the city, at best, will only get you by as long as your supplies last. And even if you join up with a like minded tribe deep in the woods it’s going to be at best a couple of generations until the latest fashion debate is about how to arrange which type of bird feather on your fur coat and there is talk of an “assault weapon ban” on crossbows with the real agenda of getting rid of all bows and arrows and maybe spears too.
I think there may be a better way. I have the big vision but I haven’t yet been able to figure out how to implement it. It’s sort of like I know I need a bridge across this dangerous ravine. I know a fair amount about different types of bridges but none of them seem to be feasible. I suppose it’s possible the “ravine” is actually the “Grand Canyon” and we simply don’t have the “technology”, money, and/or time to build such a bridge in the time we have left. But if you consider 1995 the darkest days in the gun wars and a win being clearly visible by 2003 (most people predicted the AWB probably wasn’t going to be renewed) then that only took eight years.
One way to look at that is those eight years is that they were essentially a politically delaying action until we got our culture war game on. I claim a similar situation exists today. I’m sure freedom has not yet reached it’s nadir but there is a fair amount of political action that will slow the descent. If we can get our culture game going for freedom then we might be able pull out a win before the clock runs out.
The problem is I don’t see how to win the culture war. I don’t see that we have effective weapons in this culture war. I don’t even see how to fight the culture war. People are certainly trying but we are rapidly losing.
With guns we could take people to the range and the anti-gun people didn’t have anti-gun ranges to compete with us. The anti-freedom people have “free stuff” and “security” to offer. It’s all a lie in the long, or even intermediate, term but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is here and now. The media shows the sick getting treatment, the hungry being fed, and the TSA proclaiming the world is a safer place when they find eight ounces of toothpaste in grandmas carryon luggage. The hidden costs and the cancerous belief that more government is the solution to every problem are difficult to see and in the “distant” future of a few years from now.
What are the freedom games that would be the equivalent of USPSA, IDPA, Steel Challenge, and Boomershoot? Something that quickly engages people and gives almost immediate feedback would be ideal. It is a video game? But maybe the definition of “immediate” can be stretched a bit. Perhaps it is an experimental city with no taxes on income, capital gains, or sales. Or maybe it is teaching philosophy in our schools.
The way I see it we can win the culture war in the next few years or we can say George Orwell was off by two generations.
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating.
Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
Judith Martin
AKA “Miss Manners”
[I was reminded of this Saturday after making dinner for Barb L. A great number of our dates have not involved any food. It is clear that neither of us are “customary” and this is just one more data point.
For more background–her daughter insisted that Barb change her match.com description of herself to say “eclectic” rather than “eccentric”. I don’t think it would have mattered to me. If eccentric or even weird were to be an issue then the first ten minutes of the first date would have been the end of it.—Joe]
I was inspired by comments on a Facebook page (Annette Wachter’s) about considering moving to another state such as Idaho, Wyoming, or South Dakota and I added my random thought:
I’m thinking I would like to move a little further away. The moon sounds nice. Or maybe Mars. I wouldn’t need any wind doping skills on the moon but I think I want a little more gravity so my bones don’t weaken to the point I couldn’t return to earth if I really wanted to sort through the wreckage in a decade or so.
I had a rough day today. Not nearly enough sleep last night then some lawyer/divorce stuff to deal with on top of the election results. It’s time to go to bed and pull the covers over my head for a few hours. I’ll feel better in the morning.
I received a text message this morning:
Are you free sometime this weekend? I feel the need for a long, serious conversation.
My first thought was, “OH NO! What did I do this time?”
Then I realized there was the potential for another reason. I responded with:
Topic? Politics? Personal?
I guessed right. It was the election:
Politics/survival
We will have our conversation. We’ll increase our odds and probably do okay. The rest of the world? I’m skeptical. As Thomas Sowell has said via Twitter recently:
Or as Say Uncle said:
And as I have said many times, the looters are soon going to run out of places to loot. And I don’t plan on hanging around when that happens. I just hope I can get most of my possessions and all of those I care about out of harms way.
[H]ostility can only grow between liberals and conservatives, haves and have-nots, public and private workers, taxpayers and recipients. We wish Mr. Romney luck, but he’ll have his hands full merely trying to keep blood from running in the streets, never mind returning America to prosperity.
RickAckerman
November 2, 2012
Liberal/Conservative Divide Only Grows Uglier
[I think there is more than a little truth in this statement even if the assumption of a Romney victory was incorrect. With the Obama victory I don’t see prosperity being an option but blood running in the streets will probably be postponed for a few years. The thing is that I see the blood running deeper when it does start running as I suspect it must when the looters run out of places to loot.
Also mentioned in the post (in reference to this article):
It seems the matchmaking business has declined in recent years because clients seeking mates are increasingly putting political compatibility at the top of their lists. “In this neck-and-neck, ideologically fraught election season, politically active singles won’t cross party lines,” the Journal noted. “The result is a dating desert populated by reds and blues who refuse to make purple.” So much for romance these days.
I can’t say how things were 10 years ago or even 10 months ago but when I was doing the online dating thing a couple months ago I saw similar signs. There were many woman who explicated said they were conservative/liberal and wanted to find someone compatible.
Although I do hear talk these days of violence being a viable means of resolving the political differences the talk seems to be less serious than it did in the late 1990s. But it could be that it I was, and am, just more in touch with the gun rights community than with the liberals who seem to be doing most of the talking these days. In the late 1990s gun rights were under severe attack and there are now times it could be claimed that liberalism is being threatened.—Joe]
This is the doormat of the nearest neighbor to my clock tower home in the Seattle area:
This is the doormat to my clock tower:
I was a little concerned the first time Barb L. saw it but without any prompting from me she has twice mentioned how much she likes it.
Son James and his wife Kelsey gave it to me for my birthday. Thanks again James and Kelsey.
I had originally planned other activities but the weather forecast said “0% chance of precipitation” for a few hours today. The forecast beyond that looks a lot like rain until the end of time.
With a few seconds of conversation Barb L. agreed to go on a hike with me and suggested a place she had been a few years earlier. I got a little winded climbing up to the top of the waterfalls but it was more than worth the effort:
It reminded me a lot of another hike I went on five years ago and told the gist of the story to Barb as we hiked. This is not Missouri.
Barb L. and I saw the movie Atlas Shrugged II Tuesday night. There were only a few people in the theater. And after the movie I ended up spending a few minutes explaining bits of it to Barb and the three guys who sat behind us. None of them had read the book.
I liked the casting better than what they did for part 1. I liked that many scenes were essentially directly from the book. But I can see that it fails to get across the points essential to appreciating Rand’s message. And reading the book just doesn’t work for many people. I know several people that just couldn’t “get into it”. Whereas son James and I were spellbound by the book. It resonated with us like few books ever have.
Because the movie doesn’t resonate as well as I wish it did I almost think the movie would be better described as a documentary of our future with the script published in 1957. Judged from that standpoint it does amazingly well.
This is sad considering (from here) “Atlas Shrugged is the ‘second most influential book for Americans today’ after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club.”
Minor changes were made to give additional context.
B: I can’t keep my balance in them so you won’t ever find me wearing high heels.
Me: That’s fine with me. You are nearly 6′ 1″ in your bare feet. Why would I want you to wear high heels?
B: Okay. I’m just letting you know.
Me: Thanks. And I’m just letting you know you won’t ever find me wearing high heels either.
I’m trying to clean out the freezer a bit, so the next thing
on the menu for the next few weeks is whatever seems to be on the bottom, back,
or mysteriously wrapped. Last night I pulled out a long package of freezer
paper, and we had cod for dinner tonight. Now, the kids don’t really like fish
(they keep telling us), but they like fish-sticks,
so any time we have fish, regardless of preparation method or species, it’s cut
into fairly regular sized things that could arguably be called “sticks,” and
voila! “Fish-sticks,” we tell them.
Not being inspired particularly by all the words on the
first few recipes I looked at, I did the classic “throw some stuff that seems right
together, and follows the spirit of how to cook that thing.” Beat up two eggs
with some salt and pepper to dredge them in before breading. Dump roughly equal
parts Panko bread crumbs, Progresso garlic seasoned crumbs (finished off both
packages) and corn meal together in a bowl for breading. Put on a frying pan
with a bunch (I’d guess nearly a cup) of left-over French-fry oil, which was
made of roughly equal parts canola oil, peanut oil, and bacon grease, with some
small amount of butter. (They were not really deep fried, but it was definitely
NOT the “minimal fat” version of frying.) Cut the cod fillets into roughly
equal hunks (er, I mean, “sticks”), egged, breaded, fried in hot mixed oil until brown and crispy in
the breading and not quite an easy flake in the meat, flip, fry until brown
& crispy on side #2, and the flake is more white than clear. VERY good. The
bacon grease in the oil really makes a huge difference, and starting with the
fillets only barely thawed (still a bit stiff) meant the outside got a hot
enough to brown without the inside getting overcooked and dry. Fish-sticks. No
matter what’s actually inside, they just need to look a certain way for the kids. In this case, what was inside was every bit as good as they appeared.
So, cooking for kids is sort of like politics.
For a lot of people, what is going on inside, the details, are not important.
Just the outside impressions and appearance is what the decision is based on. I’m
hoping when the kids grow up they really understand that cod, wild sockeye salmon,
halibut, trout, tilapia, farmed Atlantic salmon, and mackerel are really VERY
different fish. I’m also hoping that when they grow up and vote it’s not what
the politician LOOKS like or SOUNDS like that makes a difference, but what the
effects of their POLICIES are and HOW they will be enacted and enforced that is
important. Details matter. As a kid,
I don’t expect them to really know or care that much about the details of their
fish-sticks. As an adult, I DO. I suppose there are some obvious jokes to make
here WRT political parties, but I’ll refrain.
I was informed today that the carrot cake I received for my birthday on Sunday does not qualify as desert because it doesn’t have chocolate in it. In fact because of the carrots and raisins it should be considered mostly a vegetable with fruit. That sounds entirely reasonable to me so I’m eating the second half of the cake tonight for supper.
What I don’t understand is why I gained two pounds after eating most of the first half Sunday and Monday nights.
At this
time of year I normally hunt in Klickitat County, WA, for deer. Lots of big black-tail / mule deer, and perhaps the occasional
hybrid. My luck at finding them is usually pretty good, though my luck in
finding ones with respectable racks is utterly pathetic – I can manage to find
a 200 lb + mule deer with ears that stick out further than his barely legal
three point rack, which is only three points by the grace of God and an eye-guard
that is about 1.1 inches long, or one that looks like what you’d expect of a mule
deer that cross-bred with a white-tail, with huge ears and all its tiny little points
coming off of one narrow beam, and the other broken off to about 1/3 size. Oh,
well, meat’s meat.
Drove down Friday, looked thing over. Several does frisking
about, and no more than the normal noise from the property across the way (it’s
mostly 20-acre lots in that area, and some government land, with about a dozen scattered
hunting camps and a handful of year-round residents within a mile or two). Light
rain that day kept the dust down, and made the brush a LOT quieter. Lots of
acorns on the trees, I noticed – very different from last year, when there were
almost no acorns, and more hunters than deer. Parked the RV (AKA a minivan with
a seat out and an army cot in the back), got to sleep early, listening to the rain fall.
Got up, weather looked good, headed down for a spot I picked
the day before, partway down in and overlooking a clear-ish spot across a saddle
in the ridge. It has decent visibility, lots of deer trails through there. I
kick up a couple of does while sneaking down there in the dark. Wait for enough
light. See nothing. I hear shooting up behind me on the ridge. Several single
shots, widely spaced in time – either people are doing pretty well, or they can’t
shoot for squat. No way to know at the moment. I’m not seeing anything, except
a couple of does that are heading away from the shooting west of me. Eventually
I quit waiting and get moving, and slowly hunt around in a big loop to see what
can be scared up. Nadda but a couple of does. Light wind keeps eddying around,
so hunting “upwind” is impossible.
About 90% of the way around the loop I run into an old
friend of mine – he’s in his 80s now, was a gunner on a troop transport in
WWII, but still getting out (new just this year is a handicap hunter sign for
his rig, so he can shoot sitting in the cab, or have one of us younger “companion
hunters” do things for him. He said his
son, a spry lad of only sixty, had gone on a big loop up and around similar to
the path I’d taken, but farther out, across to the far side of a large draw and
down through it. So I figure I can go find a good stand up on this side of the draw and see if he
spooks anything my way. I wander off into the thickets. Lots of low brush, large
patches of ten-foot high Oregon white oak, and lots of old pines blown down
like pick-up-sticks (the remains from after a fire swept through the area about
a decade ago). Easy to hide in, lots of forage, and a cast-iron bitch to get
things out of.
I creep along thorough the brush, keeping eyes and ears
open, picking the occasional acorn and popping it into my pockets, which are by
now bulging with them. I find a decent spot with a clear view across the draw
– the far side is about 450 yards away. Visibility closer isn’t great because
of all the oak stands. I stand up on a fallen log to get a better view. Lots of
acorns in reach from there, too. I watch across the draw, watch closer in, pick
acorns absently. Listen to the chipmunks, magpies, and woodpeckers. Wind swirls
around. Nothing moving but birds and leaves. Pretty, but no sign of hunter
orange coming down the far side of things yet. I take off my pack and drop it quietly
to the ground, still standing on the log. A few more acorn are in reach, and
they end up in my pocket.
Then I hear a noise – just barely loud enough to hear, and I
still can’t remember what sort of noise it was, but it WASN’T any of the things
I’d been listening to all morning. I jerk my head to the right toward that
marginally registering sound, and there, plain as day because I know the exact direction to look, I see the “Y” shape of a
deer staring straight at me, mule-deer ears and nose. Just the head – from the
neck down it was hidden in the heavy brush. Not fifty yards away. With a rack.
A small rack (of course), but it’s got a least one clear fork. I’m standing,
balancing on a log, body one way, and it’s off directly to my right. Well, that’s
kind of awkward.
I figure he must have been there this whole time, so slow motions
shouldn’t spook him. I turn slowly until I can get the rifle up into a good
scoping / shooting position. I look. Damn! Only 3 power on the scope, and I can’t
see if there is an eye-guard! I crank the scope to 9X, and look again. Can’t
quite be sure… then the light falling on him changes ever so slightly, and I
can see it! ONE eye-guard! Given the brush and stuff, I figure I’ve got about a
2” square target to hit, off-hand, standing straight up balancing on a log, at
fifty yards. Can’t move to a more stable position because lower would hide him
totally in the brush. Aim too high, miss. Too low, take his jaw off and he runs
and dies miles away or it gets deflected by heavy brush. Left or right, running
injured or clean miss. Just gotta stand tall and deliver. Sure, no pressure. Aim
carefully, breathe in, breathe out, double check the eye-guard to make sure it’s
long enough, breathe, squeeze. BLAM!
I work the action keeping my eyes on where he was. I see no
movement. I walk up carefully. Motionless on a grassy patch amidst the brush. Right
antler blown away. Brains and blood leaking out through the large hole just
above his right eye. I do a double-take, and I don’t see the eye-guard! ARRRG!
Oh, wait. False alarm – just didn’t see if from that angle. WHEW! I measure the
eye-guard; one and a quarter inches – legally counts as a point (1” minimum). Now
I just have to get him OUT of the deep weeds. He’s down amidst the log-sized
pick-up sticks, and a live weight in the neighborhood of 200 pounds – small enough
to be tender and tasty, big enough to be a pain in the ass hauling him out. Then
I hear a shot from up across the draw. Looks like the other guy I know is now
going to be busy with his own deer for a while, so I’m on my own. I gut him
out, drag him uphill as best I can about a hundred yards to where I think it
might be possible to get a vehicle sort’a close. I flag a nearby tree with
engineer tape, and boogie back to the “RV” to see how well a Honda Odyssey is
at off-roading. Turns out, pretty good, if you are careful. Nothing that Ry
would have flinched at, but it’s mostly my wife’s, not my car, and there are
lots of logs and large volcanic rocks around, so….
Anyway, got the deer whacked up, then double-check the regs just
to make sure I wasn’t missing something – last year there was a Fish-n-Feather
check-point examining all hunters at a choke-point in the road out of the area for
the first few days of the season, so I want to make sure I’m all totally legal.
Hmmm… must transport with proof that it was male, either “naturally attached
penis and testicles” (nope, can’t do that, cut off while gutting) or BOTH
antlers “naturally attached to the head”. AH, shit-meister! I must have spent
two hours looking for that blasted second antler. Finally found it about 45 or
50 feet away in the brush – a small, brown, forking, stick-like-looking antler
hides VERY well in the brush and fallen oak leaves, let me tell you.
Finally, I got everything cleaned up, packed up, and back on
road, and just then the rain started. So it all worked out, in the end, pretty
well.
A few of things of note:
1) There was no
obvious exit wound from the bullet. A 165 gr slug from a 30-06 at 50 yards
still has well north of 2000 ft-lb of energy, and while the skull was
dramatically broken up and brain bits here and there, but the bullet didn’t
seem to have come out the far side, and there no obvious bullet fragments left
in the cranial cavity, which was mostly filled with partially coagulated blood and
bone fragments by the time I examined it more closely. Not clear exactly how all
the energy was expended, or what happened to the bullet; totally exploded and
the fragments fell out with the brain, or ricochet out essentially through the
same hole and all the brain pulping was done by bone fragments, or just what.
File it under “weird terminal ballistics event.” and “bone is STRONG.”
2) It was obvious he was totally dead from the hole and
brains-on-the-ground thing when I got close to him, so I slit his throat to
bleed him out. Squirt, squirt, squirt. His heart was still pumping! Weird.
3) The kids both thought the carcass pieces I brought home
were interesting. The daughter though it was gross, but she couldn’t take her
eyes off it, so it turned into an impromptu biology and physiology lesson, comparing
front and back leg structures, pointing out tendons versus ligaments, ball
joints vs hinge joints, bone vs cartilage, what a whole muscle looks like when
not wrapped in plastic as the market, fat deposits, what a heart and liver REALLY look like, etc.
They also thought the ribs looked awfully fatty, but agreed that they tasted good
broiled with a little salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
3.a) The only things that got left on the scene was a spine,
feet, hunks of fat, guts, and hide. I need to get better at skinning them out
so it’s worth getting tanned.
4) The kids ALSO thought that learning how to prepare the
bag of acorns I brought back sounded like fun, particularly for the 4th
grader, who did a big unit on Native Americans last year in school, many of
whom ate acorns as a significant part of their diet. We’ll also be planting
some of them as a science experiment (Oregon white oak are native to the area).
4.a) Last year, very few acorns, very few deer. Normally,
lots of acorns, lots of deer. File data for future reference; check the acorn
crop in September – no acorns, find another place to hunt.
5) Does seem to spook and run easily. Bucks, especially
older ones, are masters of immobility and camouflage, and don’t want to jump
until you darn near step on them. Means you have to have REALLY good eyes, good
binoculars, or have a couple of guys that are willing to spend a LOT of time
stomping around trying to kick them up.
6) I am amazed, again, at the fact that even though guns are LOUD, especially high-powered rifles, I never remember hearing the shot go off, or the recoil as it applies to my shoulder. I remember watching the target, working the action, basic body position, getting the sight back on target, listening for and hearing sounds immediately after the shot (even quiet sounds), but never the sound of the gunshot itself.
When I go into prepper mode (which I occasionally do), some colleague will say, “Oh. I’ll just come to your house.” After I push back the bile, I usually say something tasteful like, “Bring your daughter.”
Thomas
October 9, 2012
Comment to Guest Post: Four Alternative Stores Of Value
[Similar thoughts have come to my mind as well but I had never found the words to express them so well.
If I put a bunch of effort and money into making life possible for myself and my family in an extreme hardship situation and you just assumed you could mooch off of me if you ever needed to then if such circumstance came about you are going to be surprised at the price you pay for a handful of lentils and cup of clean water.—Joe]
This is basically rehashing what I already said on Twitter but there is some new material.
Saturday morning I got a call from son James. It was to tell me that his wife, Kelsey, is pregnant. I was sort of expecting something “soon” when I made this post but didn’t officially know anything.
As I replied to Barron on Twitter, “Now the clock is ticking.” We have about 10, maybe 15, years to make full auto firearms readily accessible and to drive the Brady Campaign into bankruptcy and/or total politically oblivion.
I think it’s doable. Won’t you help make my dream come true? It’s for the children.
Via Kevin:
This really resonated with me. I know an avowed Marxist who is a professor of business. The last few times I spent time with him I wanted to leave the restaurant because of the way he bullied the staff. I was extremely uncomfortable with his demanding to be in control of things that were against the restaurant policy. And that same demanding “in charge” attitude extended other things as well. He asked that I not carry a gun when in his presence. He apparently didn’t know that at least two others and possibly three were also carrying as well. I told him, “No. I prefer to carry.” My soon to be ex-wife asked him to drop it and he did so I didn’t have to tell him what I really thought and blister the ears of others.
His superior attitude, even with confronted with the logical inconsistences and obvious falsities of his beliefs, was nearly intolerable. Even the simplest to confirm facts would be dismissed with, “I don’t believe your facts.” And finally, just, “We’ll just have to disagree because I feel this way.” in direct conflict with his own supplied facts. He even insisted that basing decisions on emotions, “is just as valid as facts and logic.”
He seemed proud of the corruption of his city politicians (Chicago). He told stories of all the graft and was proud of his vote for Democrats. He laughed at the fence around the graveyard, “To keep the dead from voting.”
I’ve had extended conversations with others who view themselves as “intellectuals” and they all view themselves as superior to others and I wouldn’t trust them to think themselves to a draw in a game of tic-tac-toe. It’s the “intellectuals” of the anti-rights crowd that are confused that everyone doesn’t see the superiority of their view and demand guns be banned regardless of the increases in violent crime when the victims are disarmed. Facts are irrelevant because they believe they are smart when in fact they have merely subscribed to a religion that rewards its followers with the belief they are superior to others.