Warring Calibers

     Oh, to heck with it -- I'm gonna invent the .39 Gored Ox, which will actually be 9.9 mm and have terminal ballistics at the mean value for all the rounds between .38 Special and .45 ACP.*  Just 'cos.  And so there can be even more moaning and whizzing in the wind.

     Is gun.  Is not safe.  All of those rounds hurt.  None of them is a sure, 100% one-shot stopper, so, you know -- try to avoid having to do that.  And train well and thoroughly in how, when and why, so if you have to use it, you'll do it right.

     There's a reason for that little cluster of handgun calibers and ballistics from around 3/8" to a bit over 7/16" and it mostly has to do with controllability, not "stopping power."  Might be a lesson in that.
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* Possibly not the .44 Magnum, 'cos I have been hit on the palm with a softball bat already.  Ow.  

Another Gun Store Robbed

     Last night, L. E. Firearms got the standard smash-and-grab, this time with a stolen van though the storefront.  But -- for once! -- the bad guys didn't get far.  The criminals managed to wreck a second vehicle, used for their getaway.  Five men were arrested and it appears many of the guns were recovered. 

     I don't know if this is the same bunch who've hit other gun stores over the past year or so, but one can hope.  The trick of running a stolen vehicle through the front of the store is a common method.

     (In other news, sales of heavy duty bollards have shown a surprising uptick....)

Top Of The Workweek

     ...And right now, we're at the point where it's going click...click...click and up and up.  Fun, right?  So they tell me.

     The TV is running down the hall,* too low for me to easily hear (which, distressingly, is not all that low) and as a result, the back of my mind is sticking together any meaning it can from what filters through.  So far, the stalwart young male anchor has invited viewers to, "Enjoy a World's Fair foot-long, or just become a Maraschino businessman," followed by a an automobile dealer touting their "weatherproof sackbomb."  H'mm, it's not the right world but it seems to be an interesting one.  Oh, be right back; the network news report just told me, "Commenting on Obama's toes, the Toenail Party said to trim them."  Politics has taken a sudden turn and not for the better!
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* Oh, dear.  We'd better catch it, then, before the cat does.

Pommy Eggs, What?

     Sunday brunch started out as Eggs Pomodoro, but what I had for meat was a nice Surry Sausage and the cheese topping was Swiss.  So the nice Italian dish went a bit Brittuncular* and there you go:

     From the pan to the plate:

     It picked up some cheese, paprika and mixed pepper along the way.  Tasty!
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* From the pen of an irked Roman commentator: Brittunculi, "wretched little Britons." Yeah, well, they outlasted Rome, didn't they?

Sunday? Sunny?

     Why yes.  Yes, to both.  And me with leaves in the yard, too; so there's a plan.

     Breakfast first, and high hopes for it (watch this space!), then a soak in the tub while the day warms as much as it's going to.  And then, then?  Some form of more-or-less useful labor outdoors, and laundry as well. 

A WENN Christmas

     An outstanding Christmas episode of the AMC gem, "Remember WENN," a series set at a small radio station in Pittsburgh the 1940s.  Video quality is nothing much, but the clever writing and wonderful audio make up for it:

     I thought it was one of the best shows on television -- and it vanished with barely a trace after a few seasons.

     (Cynics will point out that I may be a wee bit prejudiced towards liking this series; after all, the young heroine is a writer, she's from Indiana, and she's working in radio during the Golden Age.  They're probably right.)

It's 1965 All Over Again

     If you ask me, the staff of NASA's Orion program owes Elon Musk a drink.  Once all but shelved, the closer SpaceX's Dragon capsule comes to man rating, the more interest NASA's brass has had in Orion. 

     NASA has launched an unmanned Orion spacecraft, successfully so far, and though it is often compared to the Apollo capsule, the thing is at least as much a "Big Gemini," and NASA's manned space program has reset the clocks to the 1965-66 time frame.  

     Maybe this time they can arrange to stay where they go.

     N.B.: Tam thinks I'm three years off.  She's got a point.

The More I See Of People, The More I Love My Cats

    Or did I want the Mencken line about how, "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats," maybe?

     The latest series of jabs in the mutual strawman-wrestling match among leftie "Social Justice Warriors" on one side and a loose association of right-wing/"Men's Rights" types on the other has reached truly elementary-school levels of behavior.  Not content with doxxing and (at least threatened) SWATting, which, while despicable, are at least mostly in the category "things grown-ups do," the contestants have moved on to name-calling (the boys have gleefully and predictably adopted the SJW appellation for them, "shitlord") and a string of crude rape jokes on Facebook, starting with, "What's the difference between jam and jelly?" and proceeding downhill from there.  What's next?  --Probably a careful campaign of writing calumnies on washroom walls, followed by hair-pulling, the passing of mean notes and possibly even tactical spitballs.

     I don't have a dog in this fight.  Both sides lost me early on -- well, the "Nerf the world for everyone except the pale males" SJWs never had me, 'cos I know what a NO DOGS OR IRISH sign looks like and they aren't any prettier when applied to whatever the current $DESPISED_CLASS happens to be, Jews or African-Americans or crudely-caricatured "Japs" or white men -- and their childish rudeness to one another (and all us bystanders) has sealed the deal.  If it was a real dogfight, I'd happily turn a firehose on 'em or spray them down with pepper spray and count it a good deed.  Instead, I have some people to unfriend, a few of them with genuine regret.  Let me know when you're ready to sit at the grownup table again, okay?

     After WW I's* "Christmas Truce" of 1914, the commands on both sides issued orders to try to keep it from ever happening again, including holiday artillery barrages.  It wasn't entirely successful until poison gas came into use and convinced soldiers on both sides that the other lot were inhuman monsters.  Drop the present-day "shitlords" and SJWs into the same 1914 Christmas Eve and they'd've happily machine-gunned one another and then slit the throats of any survivors while humming "Silent Night" in smug satisfaction, probably harmonizing with their own lice.

     Via Claire Wolfe:

     Stuff that in your pipe.  Or wherever.
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* In my darker moments, I'm convinced that war actually marked the end of Western Civilization.  It was a civilization with a lot of warts but it was, largely, civil, and great strides were being made (a few of them, like Prohibition, in reverse).  We've been messing about in the ruins ever since, pretending things were going to be okay again, fiddling around with treating our fellow humans as if they were, at least, human and tinkering up high tech, but something important and brave died in the trenches and on the battlefields of WW I, coughing its lungs out, eyes ruined, broken, hurt and wondering why.

The Theatre Of Small Convenience

     ...And he does mean "convenience:"

     Wonderfully odd!

I Do Work On A Starship

     There's a new story up at I Work On A Starship:

     It was only a drill.  It felt all too real.  The starship didn't buck and shudder but it certainly sounded as if we were returning to what we still try to claim is "normal space."  To judge from the pops, groans and subsonics, it was a middling-rough transition, something like a high-speed elevator rumbling to a stop while a troupe of luggage-testing primates hammered brand-name suitcases into the sides.

     Want to know what happens next?  Read on!

Come On, Ibuprofen!

     Woke up and fed the cats with a slowly dawning realization that it was a darned good day...for my left ear and surroundings to hurt like hell.

     You don't want to take the good OTC pain meds -- any of them* -- on an empty stomach, so I hurried through breakfast listing to port, got a bite of my bacon & egg sandwich down and gulped Vitamin I, followed by the rest of breakfast.  Now it's just tick-tick-tick until it kicks in, which it had darned well better.

     There's aspirin for afters, if needed.  The third choice, we're out of.  I need to fix that.
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* Acetaminophen/paracetamol is about the gentlest but you still probably shouldn't, even though many of us do.

To Not Be A Slug

     I've been spending way too much non-productive time at the computer.  Fun though the Book of Face can be, I've got to cut down -- and if I haven't friended you, it's because most of my interest there is interaction with people in jobs like mine: we're a small group and getting smaller.

     Managed to rake up the leaves from the front yard yesterday afternoon and bag all but two piles; they were on the dark side of the house by the time I finished and there was only one bag left.  Weather permitting, I'll start in on the back yard this week.  Until it gets too cold for my bargain-priced farmhouse light to run, there's plenty of illumination over most of the back yard.

     There's lots to do in the house as well, this being prime shedding season for the cats, Huck especially; he's got fairly long fur for a shorthair and appears to be growing in a winter coat.  And there are plenty of books to shelve.

     At the computer, I need to spend more time writing fiction and less time looking at cute or sad videos, and way less time on politics: most of the time, all the political stuff does is get you riled up with nothing to do about it.  My conservative and liberal friends spend a fair amount of time being deeply irked by various "them" and sundry issues of supposedly worldshaking import and what good does it do?  What good to they do?  --Not much, if any.  That's no way to live; better to do what you can to make the world more like the way you'd have it and let the rest of that stuff go hang.  If you're not going to write your Congressthing, go wave signs, raise money, make a speech or live in a commune of occupation (etc.), unclench and go do something you will put some sweat into. 

     I'm also gonna rip some new music into my iPod, darn it!  I hadn't done so for a long time even before I misplaced it.  In fact, I think I'll do that now.

     --Oh, I should have another short story posted soon, too.  Held it back thinking to sell it but I was convinced by reviewers that the cast of character is too big for the length.  I can't help it -- the USAS Lupine is a very large starship and it takes a lot of hands to keep it running.