"Getting Hit On The Head Lessons"

     I replaced the Amazon Fire Stick streaming device on my bedroom TV last month.  The old one was struggling to keep up.  The slightly different menu structure of the new one led me to discover Prime Video offered Mannix in their free programs.

     The series takes heat for the number of times the lead character gets hit over the head.  I didn't remember much about it, but I thought it might be instructive to watch, since I'm writing a little PI fiction these days.

     It's instructive, all right.  While Mike Conners as "Joe Mannix" does get hit on the head enough in the first few episodes to lead to a lifetime of career-ending traumatic brain injury trouble (and takes bad beatings all over, too), that's not the only lesson to learn.  The first season writing is remarkably lazy.  It's not incompetent; story continuity's good, the characters aren't especially thin for 1960s - 70s TV.  And the actors are okay; Conners can carry off the role well even in hokey scenes, sets that wouldn't have been out of place in the campy TV Batman and contrived fight sequences (why do groups of bad guys always attack one at a time?).  But major plot points turn on coincidence and blind luck; normal police procedure is waved off when the hero and his associates even bother to wait around for law enforcement after leaving dead bodies on the scene; somehow, Mannix knows every mid-level mobster and small-time crook in LA, in depth and detail.  There's a little support for the last item, given that the first season has him working for "Intertect," a highly-computerized PI firm...in a time long before centralized, interconnected databases and high-tech piracy made the kind of snooping and probing the company apparently does even possible.  Later seasons have him striking out on his own, which is likely given the amount of grief he causes his tolerant boss at Intertect and the way his methods clash with theirs.

     The series is pulpy stuff, even by the standards of the time, and Season 1 was shot on a budget that leads to repeated use of the same interior sets, redressed (all LA apartments appear to have the same layout), but the plot holes big enough to back his various custom cars through are the real problem.  Action  and acting skills can only go so far in covering for them, and it's a real lesson in how not to keep the audience engaged when you tell a story.  Serendipity happens -- but nobody can make a living relying on it and any detective worthy of the title views it with extreme skepticism.  Just ask Philip Marlow or Sam Spade, who were working that coast long before Joe Mannix first got bopped behind the ear with a length of pipe.  Or Harry "Get off your ass and go knock on doors" Bosch, who is a lot more careful about who he lets sneak up behind him.

     Still, the jazzy theme music and fast-moving plots do have their appeal; but it's junk food, filling but not nourishing.

Adding A Table

      Recently, restaurants in our neighborhood (and across the city) have been scaling back the outdoor-dining areas they added during the pandemic.  While pre-existing outdoor areas got nice improvements (and it appears those will remain), some of the expansion areas involved renting extra space or other compromises.

      The owners were selling off picnic tables with umbrellas from a kind of beer garden two establishments set up in the parking lot of the HVAC-service company next door to them.  Tam looked into it and the prices were more than attractive -- and (possibly with the end of the month looming) they offered to deliver!

MY PHOTO, FEATURING TAMARA KEEL

      So it's ours now.  A lot slicker than the TV tray I have been setting up next to the grill (itself under the cover at left) for extra work space -- and much nicer for spending time outside this Fall.  The tangled mass of greenery looming behind it is the tomato, peppers and sage patch, which have we let grow pretty wild.

A Barber/Gunshop

     In Greensburg, Indiana, you'll find that very combination -- and no, there's no truth to the rumor that BreakFree CLP and Vitalis are the same product with different packaging,

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised -- And The Royalties Might Not Be Shared

     Gil Scott-Heron's daughter is suing her (nominal) half-brother.  It seems a DNA test shows him to not be related to the late performer -- which does tend to complicate that whole "inheritance" thing.

     From meditating on what a real revolution would look like to fighting over royalties from it in two generations.  How's that for upward mobility?

     And they say things never get better.
   

Best Ad Slogan This Year

     "Awesome is a color.  We wear it every day."  --That's the tagline for tactical-geekette Espionage Cosmetics, and who's gonna argue when the CEO and Marketing Director's a Marine?  The colors are kinda super and I'm inclined to spend my makeup money with any firm that calls its principals "...the undefeated babes of baddass"

If I Win The Lottery

     ...Especially if I win one of the really big prizes (for which the odds are so lousy that my not buying a ticket doesn't materially reduce my chances of winning -- someone could give me a ticket, or I could find one), at the big-deal winner's press conference, when they turn the mikes on me I'm going to be so tempted -- so terribly, terribly tempted -- to say just one thing:

     "Twenty thousand dollars to the first reporter who punches another reporter in the throat!"

     Man, there is way more than $20,000.00 in entertainment value in the first fifteen seconds alone.

     (Yeah, I'd feel real bad about it later.  Just awful.  But how many times have they shoved a mike and a camera in some grieving person's face, standing at the scene of some horrible calamity, and droned, "How do you feel?" milking the moment for cheap sensation.  It kinda begs payback.  It feels like a punch in the throat, is how it feels, okay?)

Hooray For Kershaw!

     True to their word, two springs and a full set of machine screws for my Kershaw "Needs Work" daily carry knives arrived Monday.  As soon as I'd found a pair of Torx T6 drivers (note to self, buy a couple more good quality T6 bits), it was a matter of moments to restore both knives to full function.

     Total cost to me, the price of writing a quick note.  Now that's service!  Kershaw makes a quality product and supports it well; I'm happy to recommend them to you

*  *  *

     I was asked by another blogger if I found the tips of these blades fragile.  They're certainly not screwdrivers or prybars; the blade shape and profile are such that the very end of the tip is quite fine.  The blade becomes much more substantial around 3/8" back.   If you were planning on using a pair to scale a wall, you will need to drive them in deeply (this use probably voids the warranty, BTW).  As knives, they're just right for me; the slender shape of the tip spares me having to carry a penknife for fine work.  When I have been inadvertently rough on the blade end, I was able to bend it back with a vise and a bit of effort, which is impressive resilience for a blade that holds an edge as well as these do.  (The little Japanese carpenter's knives I carry as a backup and for precision wire stripping take a slightly keener edge -- and snap like glass under bending stress.)  YMMV; there are plenty of choices and you should fit your knife to how you'll use it.

     As the old adage has it, "Two is one and one is none."  The reason I keep using the plural is my daily carry knives are pairs: one in my pocket, one stored at home in case of loss or damage.  I carry two knives (of different sizes) plus a Leatherman "Wave."  The first rule of having a knife when you need one is to have a knife.

Carry

or

"The Best" is the Enemy of Good Enough

     (ETA: some people read this post as an indictment of people with high-end gear.  It isn't; what irks me is when people confuse equipment with training.  Buy the best you can afford -- and learn how to use it.  No hardware will make you any better than your skill set. Your skills are the only part of the equation uniquely your own.  Anyone with a clean record and the bucks can own a good gun -- only a few can shoot it well.)

     Tam was looking at some forum where the guys had been posting nicely-composed pictures of Their Gun, Their Knife. Their Wristwatch and sometimes a fat sheaf of high-denomination banknotes.

     All of it was high-end stuff.  Shiny.  Most of it pristine.

     H'mmm.  Pretty.  Very pretty.  And yet--

     Here's my reaction:

      That's a $129* gun -- buy three, they're small -- a $35 knife and a $100 wristwatch on its fifth or sixth band, along with about $6.45 American in change.  Every morning, the watch goes on my wrist, the knife goes in my right front pocket -- and the gun stays at home shuttled between bedside and safe, as I carry something smaller and simpler these days (Colt "Pony" .380).

     The knife is in and out of my pocket dozens of times a day.  It gets used a lot and it's been resharpened many times -- by the power-sharpener folks at gun shows, I'm not after a scary-sharp woodworking edge.  My hand knows exactly where it it and I have it out and opened with about as much thought or effort as pushing one's glasses back up.  I've run thousands of rounds through Star BM and BKM 9mm handguns, punching paper and trying to knock bowling pins over.  I even used it when I took a handgun class.

    It's nice to have nice things.  It's fun to have really top-shelf things.

     It's even better to have things you know very, very well; things that you use every day, know how they feel, know what they'll do and know how to make 'em do it.

     Even (maybe especially, go ask 'em) a $400 Sebenza is made to be used.  If you just have it and hold it and show it off, all that tells me is that you live under a roof and you had about $400 to spend.  If/when you need it, will you have it?  Will you be able to reach it and get it open without having to fumble?

     Buy good gear -- please!  But learn how to use it -- and then actually use it.  You may lose the knife or the gun or the watch.  You can buy another.  You won't lose the knowhow.
_______________________________________
* That is, $129  (or a bit more, as that's the aluminum-alloy frame version) and plentiful back when I bought it.  Price is up and supply is down, which is the other reason it's become a bedside gun.

Overheard, Underhanded

Tam (on headset to her WoW buddies): "...My upgraded bow is super-tactikewl powerful now!"

Roberta X (listening in): [Begins whistling Help Me Make It Through The Night.]

Tam: [glares]

Roberta X: "Um, wrong kind of 'bow,' then?"

Work Rules

Free To...

Free to whatever.

Seems there has been some drama and back-and-forth about a female gun-blogger getting herself injured doing hand-to-hand training. Folks are saying it's a good idea, or a bad idea or--

Hey, you know what it is? It's somebody else's idea. It neither picks my pocket nor does it break my leg. I'm not even gonna say, "be careful out there." Make up your own mind about how careful you want to be. The only way most people learn is when reality walks up and whacks 'em; and, knowingly or not, we pick our own lessons. Some leave scars.

Edited to add -- Unk and I know the difference between "I wouldn't do that" and "You shouldn't do that" but this world has way too many folks who don't.

(Me, I might want not-hitting-people lessons. I have a temper and when I lose it, I'm a damn' savage. I'd blame bad examples but I think that's a cheap cop-out. Get me mad and I will step right into your personal space and it goes downhill from there. Since generally in the past I would get my rear kicked even in a hair-pulling match, I try to avoid losing my temper; and I avoid situations where I might. You know what I have learned about self-defense? How to work to dodge the necessity for it and how to recognize when I might have to. The next time someone points a firearm at me and asks for my purse, at least I'll have ended up there aware of the risk I was running. But I would prefer not to. I'm neither a wimp nor a Xena wannabe and I do not want to be a hybrid pirate/ninja, I just want to walk through this life in minimal blood and drama, ideally none at all: no highs, no lows, no standing up in court -- but I'm not takin' an early exit at the hands of a thug or lunatic. YMMV.)

Archer

Archer, the TV series. The recent, animated TV series. Yep, a cartoon; but you probably don't want the kids watching it until they're 21. Or 35. Maybe 42?

Tam got pointed at it and asked me last night to, "See if it's on that Rock On -- that Widgidoo? The purple thing next to the big TeeWee?"

"The Roku?"*

"Whatever."

Of course it is, and popularly priced,* to boot. I bought the first episode just to check it out, and watching it, we laughed until our eyes watered. I bought the whole first season and we kept watching (each episode is an action-packed twenty minutes long), giggling, guffawing and sometimes having to backtrack to catch a missed line or punchline. ("Oh, we'll watch just one more." Five episodes later...!)

It's a spy spoof to end all spy spoofs. The weaponry is authentic ("Hey, that's a Deagle! Hey, who uses a Broomhandle Mauser for an assassination?" And so on) and even -- sometimes! -- runs out of bullets. The people are a bit larger-than-authentic, but the office dynamics will be only too familiar. Out of the office -- you've seen a Bond film or two, haven't you? Like that, only better. And animated. --Oh, and with Jeff Cooper's attitude towards the .25 ACP.

Archer. Even IMDB likes it. VFTP-recommended, TAORX-approved!
____________________________________
* Best of all, if you go to Tam's Amazon link to buy it, her next rent check probably won't bounce! And then I can buy the really good coffee and drink it until my eyes start buzzin'. Real loud. Oooooo! Yeah.

Products You Don't Know You Need

The Taxidermied Jimmy Hoffa Coat Rack: He's kind of crouched back with both hands up, so you can hang coats and hats on both hands and his head. C'mon, prove to me that wouldn't sell. (You know you want one.) Aha, so that's where he's got to!

(Also the scaled-down Empire State/King Kong/Fay Wray/Biplanes coat rack. Sure, it's difficult to dust -- but flip the switch and he roars and grabs at the airplanes!)

Tacktical Baseball Bat: For keeping by the door, in black, flat dark earth, Digicam and even a 3/4-weight one in Pepto-pink "for the l'il lady," with high-tech nubby rubber grips and plenty of rails for lights, pistol bayonet(s) and general ouchliness.

Cat Handcuffs: Sure, they're wrong, but I could use 'em. Huck nearly pitched me face-first into a wok of breakfasty goodness (fried wild rice & quinoa, with cabbage, onion, celery, carrot, radish, spicy black & green olives, Emmentaler and plenty of bacon and eggs) as he and Rannie were underfooting this morning, her in hopes of a dab of bacon grease and him just 'cos the other cat was there. (Yes, Huck spurns bacon grease. Where oh where have we gone wrong?)

Chainsaw Bayonet Bayonet: Take it to the next next level! Sure, you got your Sharkhop XV Anti-zombie M4gery with a real chainsaw on it -- but what if you run outta ammo and gasoline before running out of Zeds? Add a blade to that thing! (Also good for splatter-free poking at stuff you don't wanna get all that close to.)

Overheard

Minding my own business, eating a quiet lunch. Couple of guys in the adjacent booth are swapping stories:

"So, when my security clearance came through and the very first place they sent me was Site R[edacted]. 'It's an interesting place,' my boss said, "you'll like it.'

"We always entered at the [redacted]. That meant a long elevator ride with an armed escort in an elevator car with only two buttons, and he's the only one allowed to push them. I keep thinking we're almost there but it keeps going and going! When it finally does stop, it opens into this anteroom where another soldier is waiting, his gun at the ready. He really is ready to fire. As soon as we step out, he says, 'Halt!' and then, 'Escort, advance.'

"The soldier I'm with starts to walk towards him, so I do, too. The other soldier says, 'Civilian, HALT! Escort, advance,' and his finger is on the trigger. I stopped!

"He waits until the guy who brought me down is next to him, out of his line of fire, then asks him, without ever taking his eyes off me, 'Sergeant, are you under any form of duress?'

"Meanwhile, there I stand, thinking, 'I am one word away from being killed. '

"A month later, we had to go out there again. By then they'd hired another tech to be my assistant and I sent him instead of me. 'You'll like it,' I told him, 'it's an interesting place....'"

Man, the things you hear at lunch.

Misheard

So, I'm blearily watching something about WW II airplanes on the Hitlitary Channel, or whatever they call it, and on comes a promo for a new show; I was looking down, concentrating on my sammich* at the time and what I heard was, "Great, uh, Stank Battles!"

Just like the cats used to have?

Turned out it's something entirely different. But I'm sure that will be be good, too. Still, for just a few seconds there....

(Oh, yeah, I'm sick -- awake for an hour or two at a stretch, suffering chills and walking into things and then I...doze...right...off....)
__________________________
* A Jimmy-John's "unwich," at my door in ten freakin' minnits. Western Science and Business is so wonderful!

Cool Organizing Thingie

The people who make 'em call the line "Grid-It." For an obvious reason: various sized thin slabs covered in a handy grid of stretch straps. I'm tempted to pick up a couple to see how they work out.

Whattaya think?

National EAS Test: OOOPS!

So, FEMA and the FCC threw a party EAS Test and the clown never showed up -- or maybe the clowns were running it.

FEMA, having, perhaps, bumped up against hard reality more often than any Federal agency except the National Weather Service, warned going in, it's a test. They were looking for unsuspected weaknesses.

Found 'em. Here in de Hoosier Hardtland, we got the tricky part just fine: the blind-sent data bursts chortled along and the text it's supposed to make pop up on local station TV screens did just that. But the easy part, the 1920s-technology where a fellow in a far distant city speaks and it goes to broadcast stations and we all hear it? Failed. Thirty seconds of between-stations static is what we got -- and early word in the biz is, that's exactly what Uncle Sam sent to the big AM station that serves our area.

In other regions, the voice message was garbled, "echoey," or had a lot of noise. Early word is the entire state of Oregon received.... nothing at all! In some cases, stations that thought they were ready learned otherwise; but that was far less common than high-level failures at the originationg points serving entire regions,

You will, however be relieved to learn that in New York City, where "remain home, remain calm" is about the only possible emergency information that won't result in panic and gridlock, the system appears to have worked fine.*

Before we go off in a chorus of "Ha-HA!" like the kid in The Simpsons, I have to point out that nearly all the state-level systems (which are tested monthly) worked A-OK. If FEMA sent out noise or garble, they faithfully relayed it to a puzzled public, in exactly the same way they relay the clear and understandable monthly test message and weather alerts. Sure, you're online with Twitter, Facebook, blogs or news or listening to an iThing, but if you do have a TV or radio on and there's a typical state or local emergency -- tornadoes or locusts, tidal waves or wildfires -- the message will get to you.

However, if the Postal Service goes belly-up or Washington, D.C. goes down like Atlantis, I would not expect the EAS to carry the warning. At least not until they figure out what went wrong and go about the painful process of fixing it.

You might take some comfort that on 11 September 2001, when a national-level emergency did take place, the news was disseminated rapidly. Not by the government but by the various companies that run for-profit networks all day, every day: ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox/CNN etc. all jumped on the story as it happened -- and even pushed their scheduled commercials aside to do it. There wasn't any question of the message making it to you; it had been reaching you 24/7/365 to hawk soap flakes and cornflakes already and when the stakes suddenly got much higher, it was already in place, working.

Funny, that. (Oh, Adam Smiiiiiiiiiith....?)
___________________________________________
* I'd like to mention that in the two most recent actual emergencies to afflict New York City, the World Trade Center attack and the 2003 Northeast blackout, NYC residents did extremely well, stepping up to the situation and doing what needed done, a far cry from the kind of chaos predicted in fiction.

Tactical Microphone

Tam, on flashlights: "Sure, there are some good lights coming out of the Far East these days, but people don't understand -- the Surefire is my constant companion light, in my turse, my winter coat pocket, in my car. I've demo'd these things by pounding nails with them on -- incandescent versions!"

RX: "So, it's a go-to light, always ready-- Hey! They sell E-V 635 microphones by hammering nails with them, too. I wonder--"

Wonder no longer. There is, of course, a tactical black version of the 635 -- with an uprated rare-earth magnet, no less! And in all seriousness, if you need a mic that simply will work, that's the one. Probably still the go-to microphone of combat/riot journalism: it's a mic, a billy club and even an emergency earphone! (The latter trick terrifies the overcautious, and you really should turn the volume down before plugging into the headphone jack of your iThing, but it works a treat).

Into The Shelters!

Readers, even simple suburbanites now have The Stick Bomb! You have been warned....

Easily the kewlest thing I have seen today.

A Round For Eternity

Yep, now you can be a round after you're dead.

Sort of -- there's an outfit in Mobile, AL that'll pack cremated human remains into shotgun shells, rifle cartridges, even (if I'm reading the form correctly) handgun ammunition. And why not? I've claimed (as a joke!) for some time that when I go, I wanted to be cremated* and have my ashes blown into the faces of a select list of idiots and oh, man, if it was shotgun shells-- But I'm dreamin'.

An interesting idea, and it's got to be more affordable and practical than having one's ashes shot from a cannon all at one go. An afternoon spent target shooting or taking down clay pigeons for one's funeral sounds to me like an improvement over the usual arrangement.
___________________________________________________
* Actually, my plan, which I really ought to formalize one of these days, is a low-bidder cremation with the ashes dumped at the base of a radio tower if possible and if not, hey, whatever; city picks up the trash once a week and a wink is as good as a nod to a blind mule, mmmmkay? No service, no cards, no flowers, no faffing about -- in the unlikely event people would want to mark the occasion, they should go have dinner together or sing a few verses of "Ding, dong, the witch is dead," but I ain't settin' it up for 'em ahead of time. With no children or close siblings, there's nobody to take any cold comfort in the usual procedure. It'll just be a PITA for whatever distant relative gets stuck with it, so why not try'n make it as little trouble as possible?