Happy Patricia Quinn's birthday, everybody!

Raise your celebratory gallon jug of vodka in salute!

This will not be my boom stick

In moments of madness, I've occasionally considered buying a modern pump-action shotgun. They're cheap, readily available, versatile... Everything I hate about modern guns that try to woo me away from classic, blued steel firearms you can't get parts for any more.

In the current market, the cheap-ubiquitous-functional pump shotgun niche is filled by two guns: the Remington 870 and the Mossberg 500. I'm told the difference is almost entirely a matter of taste, and have always figured I'd just try both at the store and walk away with whichever felt better.

But Mossberg's new presentation combat shotgun commemorating the government employees who've been killed trying to violently police what free citizens put in their own bodies leaves a bad enough taste in my mouth to make that decision a hell of a lot easier. Remington it is.

Random Thought:

It would be an unforgivable travesty if the morningbot at Atlanta's NPR affiliate has never said "You're listening to 90.1FM WABE Atlanta; we gyre and gimble so you don't have to!"

Do not puncture a loon

I just got a poorly machine-translated spam message in my work inbox.

Zinaida Golovnya from Tobolsk (who is 27 years old and 175 centimeters tall, with blond hair and green eyes) dreams about sensitive and strong man at once. She's very exacting, kind and open-minded, and thinks it is important to be in fit as though inner beauty if more important.

This, of course, hasn't been news since 1995.

But for some reason, five extra lines were inserted between the paragraphs, in white so that they wouldn't usually be visible unless highlighted. Put together:

But their search was all in vain;
Was ratified this way
Until he can a Maiden win.
Who, sleeping, went a little pale,
And that sad muse of mine

The lines are cut randomly from poems by Blake, Emily Dickinson, and Russian modernist poet Anna Akhmatova. It's surprisingly vivid and effective for machine assembled verse. The jarring transitions between expertly beautiful meter could almost be intentional.

Go, Daddy-O!

Anybody reading this should already be aware of the Zoot Shooters, a group of action-shooting enthusiasts who like to dress up and get their Prohibition on with 1920s firepower. fearsclave shared this video of them in action:



This video shows me that I absolutely must own a full-auto Thompson. With any luck we'll manage to defeat the Hughes amendment (which has artificially multiplied the price of Thompsons about a dozenfold) in the foreseeable future, so I'll only have to sell one kidney for the ammunition.

Also, I now have a second association with this song, which was previously uncontested:



Alert viewers can spot me (complete with pre-paleo gut) placing the tray table at the beginning of the video. The enviable gentleman at center stage is Brian Viglione of the Dresden Dolls. We still refer to the straight man in any number as "the Brian".

Old gray mare...

You know that gun Zoe uses in Firefly? It's a cinematic creation called a mare's leg, made from a chopped-down lever action rifle. They're used occasionally in westerns, and in homages to westerns.

Despite their screen heritage, mare's legs are pretty useless. They're significantly less concealable than proper handguns, are harder to shoot accurately than proper rifles, require both hands to operate, and make you break your aim to cycle the mechanism. Even if keeping to the period, you'd be much better off with a .44 or .45 revolver, and when comparing with modern* handguns, there's simply no comparison. The mare's leg is a curiosity, nothing more.

But one use it has in in illustrating the screaming absurdity of US gun laws.

This is a .44-40 Winchester Model 1892:

From General interwebs

If I bought one of those and a hacksaw, and cut down the barrel and stock, I'd be committing a federal felony. A felony, meaning a very serious crime that requires vigorous government response. Clearly, by making a short version of this rifle I must be causing such an overwhelming danger to my neighbors that such an extraordinary government response is necessary, right?

From General interwebs

That right there is a J.B. Custom Mare's Leg, firing the very same .44-40 cartridge. It's identical in every way to a cut-down Winchester 1892, except that it was manufactured from the start as a pistol, not converted into one. And as a result, it's no more strictly controlled than any pistol; citizens of free states can buy them with no hassle beyond the usual silly paperwork they have to fill out for any gun.

The only rational explanation for this is that the ATF believes a rifle retains some element of rifleness, no matter how much it may be altered. It's an eminently human tendency, just like our predisposition to value the Zippo FDR was carrying when Giuseppe Zangara assassinated him over an identical non-historic Zippo. I don't know whether this particular case is homeopathy or animism**, exactly, but it's certainly no basis for a law.


[* - As in, any handgun made since 1900.]

[** - Probably this one. Quite frankly, the great majority of current support for gun control is based either on misinformation or on undiagnosed animism.]

On the limitations of XKCD

In the alt text to a recent comic, Randall Munroe makes a bold guarantee:

Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy"

I tried it with Darmok, and ended up in a loop beginning at Knowledge.