Full-Motion Tilt-Shift

Or, The French Forces as Toy Soldiers. Have a look!

Functional Art Is Functional

Look, the international-symbolic labeling clearly says "keys and large watch." I'm just following directions.

BlogMeet Images

The ol' gang:
The ol' Giant Tenderloin and (it's piped in, you know, and they use a cast-iron pipe) The...Butler...Dog! With fries.

You should'a been there! (I'm told we narrowly missed Og and maybe Partner and/or Rich of the Garage. Next time?)

Tam: Cartoon Graphic Narrative Heroine

Tam's in Day By Day! I don't know how she fit that into last weekend -- she said she was just going to the movies with Shootin' Buddy!

BlogMeet/Gun Show In Brief, And I'm Off

...Off to the doctor, that is, bright and early, for some more blood work (to see if the thyroid meds are doing what they should) and to talk about the...interesting...routine test I had earlier (and won't have to again for a decade). So I can't write a whole lot until maybe later.

Took my motorscooter to the gun show and then to the BlogMeet, hooray! --Longest trip of the season so far.

The Indy 1500 was another good one, though the big booksellers had been sidelined in the South by truck trouble. (I missed them -- they have a lot of good firearms-type books and one of the most wide-ranging politics sections I've seem, from Chomsky and Marx to Rand and way farther right). Table layout was a little more open; it appeared they'd made the center lane a bit narrower and widened the rest. Saw quite a few interesting arms, purchased only ammo. Colt revolvers seem to be trending up, though most of what I saw on offer was collector-grade, often too pretty to shoot.

The BlogMeet was good, too -- Tam, Nathan, Mr. and Mrs. Shomes, Old Grouch, The Jack, Don, and new attendee Fast Richard. The kitchen staff at Plump's Last Shot wondered at the sudeen uptick in orders for their bacon-wrapped, deep-fried Butler Dog -- yes, that was us. (Photo and links will have to wait, sorry). Interesting conversation this time, including How Not To Invade A Small Island and The Jack's recent ka-boom...which he covers in some detail.

And The Best Part Is, He Put Scorn Quotes Around "Science-Based"

"He" is a real live, genuine college professor, with a Ph.D. (in a science, not English Lit or Education) and everything, sort of guy you'd think might be into that whole "science" thing, a fellow one might address as Dr. Lame, and he tells us that Dick Nixon's worst legacy, the poor, beat-up Environmental Protection Agency, has been reduced by intense lobbying and the horrors of Congressional oversight (you remember, that thing we elect Congressbeings to do?) to quivering like a high-bred chihuahua, hiding under the front stairs, wetting themselves. (Sound crazy? Sound disrespectful of actual victims of actual abuse? You're not the only one thinking that.)

Yes, amazingly, that "abused child" is very same agency you and I know as the gang who kicked the Sacketts out of their dream home before the foundation was dug. 'Cos the building lot -- in among others already built on -- was a "wetland." Threatened them with huge fines unless they turned it back into a scrubby vacant lot at their own expense. The EPA maintained the agency didn't have to answer for it in court, they'd made a decision and that was that: comply now or be fined and still have to comply. Eventually, the U. S. Supreme Court disagreed, at least on the "couldn't be taken to court over it" part -- and so now the happy couple, having already had to argue their way to the top, has the Court's blessing go sue...a Federal Agency with an army of attorneys and pet experts. Here's one pair of citizens experience of Dr. Lame's "Agency...too terrified to do it's job:"

“The EPA used bullying and threats of terrifying fines, and has made our life hell for the past five years. It said we could not go to court and challenge their bogus claim that our small lot had ‘wetlands’ on it. As this nightmare went on, we rubbed our eyes and started to wonder if we were living in some totalitarian country.”

Yeah, poor little EPA. Being forced to use "'science-based' studies" and actually stand up in court and defend their takings of private property, instead of relying on speculation and deeeeep intuitions about Mother Gaia.

My heart fair bleeds.

Or does that count as the unapproved discharge of an untested biologically-active fluid?

Good Morning To You

Good morning to you/We're all in our places with bright, shiny faces/good morning to you.

Brightest and shiniest of all, Tam's cat.

Rannie the cat begged bacon grease and a little of the skin from my half-a-mettwurst this morning. She's quite insistent about the grease -- I fried up three strips of bacon to divide between two adults (then realized the sands of time were about to run out on the remaining mettwurst) and by golly, she was going to get her fair share, no matter what names she had to call me! It's about as vocal as she gets, with the occasional swipe at my foot as I walk by if she thinks I haven't noticed her complaints.

Scraps of sausage skin, on the other hand, cause The Rannie to go bipedal and hold onto my hand with great and clawless delicacy, lest she miss out on any of it.

Afterward, it's time for a cat-bath. Roseholme Cottage features one of the few bacon-scented cats!

Meanwhile, Huck the Miniature Broad Ripple Biting Tiger has been prowling his domain. He spurns grease, preferring nice crunchy kibble. From a distance, moving through dappled sunlight on the oak floor, his stripes are an effective camouflage -- then when he moves closer, I find myself amazed all over again: his back is almost as high as the seat of the couch! For a housecat, he's huge. Which is why I think of him as a very tiny tiger, instead.

American Taliban

It's out there. Mostly it hangs out in Margaret Atwood's most feverish worries, dark corners of The Internet and seedy little gatherings of wild-eyed lackwits.

But every once in awhile, it tries to send me fanmail.

It can just piss right off, too. There's a lovely scene in the Howard Koch script for The War Of The Worlds:
STRANGER: [...wild plans about grabbing power in the chaos the Martian invasion has produced...] We'd bring everybody down to their knees!
PIERSON: That's your plan?
STRANGER: You, and me, and a few more of us we'd own the world.
PIERSON: I see. . .
STRANGER: (FADING OUT) Say, what's the matter? . . . Where are you going?
PIERSON: Not to your world. . . Goodbye, stranger. . .

Yeah, what he said: "Not to your world. Goodbye, stranger. And get lost!"

The most recent screed hares off on a tangent I'd never seen laid out before: the loonies are a-tellin' me in the Christian Bible -- and I'm bettin' you had best get out your King James -- right there in the lists of rules about not paradin' yourself around in wool-cotton blends or enjoying a nice lobster bisque and how to be stonin' women to death for what men do to 'em, in alllllll those rules that it really does take an actual Rabbi to figure out, there is a spot where The Lord sayeth men are expressly forbidden from legislating -- and calls for His fave punishment for those who try: stoning to death.

So the American Taliban's take on this is first to suggest that millions of people should march on Washington and put things to rights (see "Army, Bonus" for how that works-- the Occupiers generally got off easy -- and please tell me why, if you can get that many people agreeing, they can't accomplish the same thing at the ballot box?) and second to suggest folks should "kill politicians one by one until the 'government' collapses," adding a list of all the addresses for every member of Congress, with advice like, "...Congress members are soft targets..." and "Don't worry too much about getting caught, but plan to get away. After the Revolution, all those unjustly imprisoned will be released."

Bull. Shit. Ladies, gentlemen, I direct your attention to Exhibit B, a very large stone carving of the phrase "USEFUL IDIOT." And as for "the Revolution," I would like you all to examine carefully Exhibit C: the nation of Afghanistan, a country once poised on the verge of their own unique modernity, torn by internal struggle and Soviet invasion, thrust back by an assortment of home-grown forces and when the by-the-book olde-tyme-religionists ended up on top, they closed schools, locked women into purdah, clamped down hard on a free press, gutted civic institutions and blew up priceless historical artifacts. Yes, that's a mindset you can trust with your future. If you'd like another example,* the Russian Revolution followed by the Communist takeover and the purges that followed: IMO, Communism is a religion, too, and the useful idiots got what they always get: short shrift at best, more often a bullet in the back.

Y'know what? My country has way more government than I think it ought; my country appears to me to be teetering on the brink while the politicians ignore the real issues -- but I will be damned if I will help push it over. Or sit back while you try.

History tells me we will be lucky to see Republic become Empire and luckier still if it is largely benevolent; it could just as easily become ongoing, bloody civil war. I guess those fans didn't pay much attention to my Memorial Day post, didn't realize which war was our bloodiest -- and on a per-capita basis, the War Between the States is still the bloodiest even if you only count the deaths on one side or the other. We were a century trying to recover and it can be argued that some portions of the States still haven't; the warpage to the Federal government as a result of that mess may be irreversible and the American Taliban wants to do it again?

No. Hell no. Add me to your "naughty" list. I ain't a-going back into the kitchen for no man nohow, let alone livin' by any of the other old sheepherder's zillion rules for wimmen in the Old Testament, and I'm not letting you or your dupes go annoy the innocents livin' in Dickie Lugar's old house or even the Senator himself: we voted him out fair and square, the way civilized people do it.

You wanna wash something up in lamb's blood, you stick to real baby sheep. It'll give you something to do while you wait for the FBI.

I know plenty of religious folk who aren't crazy and I thank their God or Gods each and every day for 'em, 'cos I figure they are counterbalancing the kind of loons who sent me that letter.
____________________________________________
* Call that mess Exhibit D, I guess, and what's Exhibit A? The letter itself, filled to the brim with crazy, dire warnings, misread Bible quotes and blood.

Bisard Latest: IMPD Idiots, Not Crooks

That's what the FBI concluded: IMPD, the huge, streamlined, 21st-Century police force has Keystone Kops policies and procedures for handling certain types of evidence.

(All across the county, criminal defense attorneys are suddenly reviewing cases with an eye to appeal.)

So, the Feds claim, it wasn't the thin blue line being thicker than blood; it was just mental thickness? Like that's better?

Even inside IMPD, some police have a problem with that: "The families of the victims and the victims themselves have got to be just beside themselves. I mean, I don't blame them for not having any confidence in the police department. We're not making ourselves look very good here," says FOP nabob Bill Owensby.

Ipse dixit. And this doesn't even cover the most recent report of sloppy handling of the evidence.

(Dammit, most IMPD officers are honest enough, fair enough, decent enough -- but there are bad apples in that barrel and the rot will spread unless rooted out. It doesn't matter, really, if it's bumblers or malfeasers, they need to get the boot and quickly.)

Mixed (Up) Media

Headlines at a local Indy news site:Oh, mixed signals, are they?

Right. 'Cos A-U-G-E-R-I-N-G I-N is so hard to spell.

Friday Blank

...Which is what I'm drawing. So it's a good thing I'm a writer, not an artist.

The Indy 1500 Gun and Knife Show is on, starting this afternoon and running through Sunday late afternoon. You should go.

BlogMeet Sunday!

It's official:

Sunday, 3 June 2012, 3:00 p.m. at Plump's Last Shot.