Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Greetings

From the beach.

That's Cannon Beach (after all, this IS a gun blog).

It's very mellow here, so it's too hard to work up a rant.

You get gunfunnies instead:

A local boy walks into his favorite bar. He's all agitated, and he pulls a revolver out and waves it around for effect, then yells, "All right! Who in here has been screwing my wife?" There's a pause, then from the dark part of the barroom comes a measured drawl, "Son, you're gonna need more ammo!"

Have a nice day!

Victory!

Aboard: the USS Liberator, a ship of war, docked for repairs at her home port, any coast, USA.

!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#!#

Captain:(waks into the Radio Room) "Radioman, stand by to copy a message. Send the letter "V". Send to all stations, all commands."

Radioman: "Sir?"

Captain: "Sir, what, Sparks"

Radioman: "Sir, what is the rest of the message?"

Captain: "Sparks, that IS the message, "V" "

Captain: Never Mind. Sparks, take five, but before you go, set your transmitter to the frequency for Flash Traffic, all stations"

Radioman: "yes Sir."

The radioman flips a few switches, then gets up from his console and the Captain sits down.

Captain: (operating the key): Dit Dit Dit Daaah.

Radioman: (who never left his little cubby behind the Captain's bridge): "Sir, you just sent flash traffic of Victor." Our instructions are to NEVER send just a "V", because it is the agreed-upon signal for Victory in this War, Sir?"

Captain: (handing Sparks a photo-scan of a newspaper).

Radioman: "Yes, SIR! We HAVE won, Sir!"

Here's that photograph that Sparks just saw:

 

Captain: "Do you have a microphone for the ship's P/A in here, Sparks?"

Radioman: "Yes, Sir."  (flips a few switches at his console and pulls up a microphone, handing it to the Captain)

Captain: (to ship, via P/A) "Now hear THIS. This is the Captain. All work not essential to ship's combat readiness is to cease IMMEDIATELY. The Captain grants the crew 12 hours of LIBERTY ashore. The usual liberty line will now form. While you are ashore, Sailors, hoist one to the Oregon Firearms Federation, for without their tireless work in this fight, we would not have prevailed. That is ALL."

Captain (to radioman): "Can you make a tape of "V", and pipe it on the P/A for five minutes?

Radioman: "Yes SIR. Some of us have something to go home to now."

Captain: "Yes, I know that, Sparks. Your family has a farm in Scio, don't they?"

Radioman: "Yes Sir, they do. They recently re-incorporated the farm as "Liberty Farms", too, Sir"

(In the passageway, a jubilant sailor marches by, his broom at High Port. As he passes the radio room, he snaps his head to the left, passing in review and saluting Sparks, the bearer of the good news. He does NOT flinch upon seeing the Captain in the cubby, but he does lose his composure and crack a wide grin.)

Captain: (to sailor in the passageway): "Carry on, Sailor (and the Captain cracks a matching wide grin)."

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I hope you liked this little ditty. This post has a second purpose, though, and that is to remind the fraction of the Legislature that pushed to overturn gun rights in Oregon that WE aren't the "extremists", as Senator Burdick (D - Portland) was just quoted as saying, SHE is the extremist for trying to take those rights away, and for her political tricks of trying to do it while dancing in the blood of murdered children in Newtown, CT and the murdered Christmas shopper here in Oregon.

While we're at it, shame on the liberal Press for enabling these attacks on our Civil Rights. Shame on the Democratic Party for lining up to support stripping citizens of their Civil Rights.

Yes, there's a lot of joy to spread with this news, but there's also a lot of shame to note.

The rights-killing extremists WILL be back. We have just enough time for a short celebration before their next attack, I'm sure of that.

Excuse me, I think I shall go to the range and celebrate by firing the annual qualifying course for LEOSA-04 (HR-218).

Your fashion critic speaks...

Yeah, Rivrdog, fashion critic...

Have you stopped ROFLYAO yet?

Okay then.

Allow me to present my creds as a fashion critic:

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _, grandpappy was a tailor.

Notice that there's nothing current in the above line?

You're very observant.

Okay, a few years back, I watched a few episodes of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy", not so much because I wanted to be better dressed, but because I really wanted to know exactly why being queer would make one automatically into a fashion guru. I failed to find out and gave up the effort. No gender-identity slur here, but I doubt if queer guys have mojo on this subject any more than straight guys. My go-to source for men's fashion has been GQ for years, although I'll admit that I don't buy the mag, only read it in doctors' or dentists' offices, and find that most professional athletes don't have any more smarts on fashion than anyone else, except that they DO go for quality and fit in men's clothing, which is over half the fight towards looking sharp. Grooming and body carriage is the rest of it.

Men's fashion is a no-brainer, because "good" is almost always measured in conservative style; suits, sport jackets, dress shirts and ties. Shiny leather shoes and a Pocket Square or correctly-folded handkerchief being the only accessories really required. If I REALLY wanted to put on the dog, I could change my usual Timex Camper wristwatch out for my Rolex Oyster Perpetual, (willed me by my Dad, I would never buy such an expensive watch), but I get nervous with that level of spendy jewelry on.

Now, look at women's fashion. Or don't look, unless you want a reason to visit the psychiatrist's couch, because it makes NO sense at all in most cases. Here's the perfect example of current fashion, in today's fishwrap, front page of the "Living" section:

Okay then. Heidi Klum, supposed fashion expert, is wearing a psychedelic-print jumpsuit layered over with an ill-fitting* blazer of double-breasted cut. Her protege, Michelle Lesniak Franklin, the winner of some sort of reality-show on fashion (I've never watched it), has clothed herself in an alternatively-designed (uneven-hemmed) sheath skirt topped by a see-through sleeveless blouse, nicely showing off all her tats but not her tatas, which are smothered in a Wagnerian metal-looking brassiere. The very latest in PDX millinery adorns her head, and it seems to be either the bottom cut out of a steel-mesh wastebasket or a BBQ grilling accessory designed to grill fish on. Her hose are nominally normal, but she appears to be wearing them over her shoes, which are kludge-modern and otherwise unremarkable.

If readers know about the modern Portland scene though, they will have to consider these ensembles rather conservative, and thereby, tasteful within their range, because the young-uns do, in fact, "keep Portland weird".

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* Dispite being tailored to her form, I consider this blazer to be "ill-fitting" because it is cut as double-breasted, which means it's supposed to have overlapping breast sections, but this one is cut away so that it has to be fastened with some sort of string arrangement to stay closed. That closure arrangement on a blazer is a strict fashion faux-pas for men, and since the blazer started out as a menswear concept, menswear rules for wearing it ought to apply.

My pothead Congressman

Yep, you read it correctly: MY pothead Congressman. U.S. Rep Earl Blumenauer, (D) East Portland, just came all out (or was that all in?) for Federal MJ legalization. He gets Maroon of the Month for that.

Before all you Libertarians jump all over me, I'm coming around to the idea of legalizing weed by states, but not by the dot.gov. Simple, really. The government can't afford to be in the business of encouraging stoners, simply because unlike fine whisky drinkers like me, they are a motley lot.

Seriously, let's get real. NO Government has any business legalizing ANY sort of intoxicant until and unless it can detect and control intoxicated behavior where such behavior is legally and practically inappropriate. The Government can do that, more or less, with alcohol, but has NOT learned how to do it with weed. Hell, the Government can't even control intoxication by prescription drugs, which it DOES control at the front end, but does NOT control at the user end.

Now comes pot and it's millions of users.

Society is getting further and further behind the power curve on protecting itself from people doing complex, dangerous tasks while impaired by intoxication.

Earl Blumenauer wants to make it worse.

Oh, well, I'm represented by a pot puffer. It could be worse. I could be represented by an actual socialist.

Oh wait...

On a lighter note...

If you can't find a Christmas present for that special nerd on your list at this site, you're hopeless.

Oh, and check out this t-shirt model's vid at 1:49 to 2:03..."My God missy, is that a Colt's Dragoon?"

Tuesday Trespass Two

Now I sit me down to blog

The day is done, I'll have a nog

The first one warms, the second heats

My wit looks writ by Sir John Keats....

(original poem by your blogger, may be reproduced with attribution)

Actually, that should have read "...by Rabbie Burns", but then I wouldn't have busted a rhyme, would've I?

Ah, yes, Whisky Blogging, here's to it....experience is the Great Teacher, but tonight, Teacher's is the great teacher.

The wind's died off, the rain is simple showers, and the rain gage reads north of 4" for the storm, but it WAS quite the Fall blow, and now, freshet. We don't even have a name to call the storm by...

The Rivrsis lives on the Coast Fork of the Willamette River, some 140 miles South of here (upstream), and her Rivr is dam-controlled just two miles above her property, but still, the control reservoir got too full, so this is the result: it will have to be lowered, at near max flow rate, for almost all of next week. Her property will partly flood, but it does so frequently. Note that the reservoir filled ten feet in 24 hours, and is forecast to fill ten more! Acre-feet in this lake have increased from 30,000 to over 70,000. Yep, that's a bunch of rain.

From weather to politics, without so much as a by-your-leave. Too bad.

The conservative blatherers are full of the blame-game now. Hindsight is always 20-20 for this crowd, and this election is no different. All of us conz failed to appreciate the potential voting impact of the entitlement society, so appropriately called "moochers" by Ayn Rand, and my sobriquet is "the gimme-gimme class", or just "gimmes". Hell, some of these oh-so-prescient conservatives would lump ME in the Gimme class, because at age 69, I exist on two Government pensions plus Sociable Securidad. They would be wrong, I earned all these pension dollars, and loaned them to the two gummints involved, and the same with my Sociable Screwiness Account, which had over $200K of MY direct contributions over 46 years in it when I retired, and with interest, probably close to a $Million. At that rate, my piddly little $18.5K/yr draw on it should be good for my lifetime, several times over. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I have long-range precision rifles...hands off MY money!

Again, no segue: over to Eye Candy, click here. Yep, dress for success, and those ladies look VERY successful.

Sort-of segue: On to some more eye-candy, but it comes with a steering wheel. Danica Patrick is single again, having ditched her hub of seven years. Rumors will fly now about who she "trades paint" with...

Okay! Enough. time to go down and rustle up some grits.

 

Zipper Failure, again

Another case of Zipper Failure takes down GEN David Petraeus, whose most recent assignment was to run the CIA.

I guess if the fact of your extra-marital relationship gets out, you probably can't be trusted with the rest of our Nation's highest secrets, so a replacement is in order for that command.

Zipper Failure, the hardware/software malfunction best known for tripping up senior officers. Note to all: if the zipper is correctly positioned according to the Manual of (short) Arms, you don't trip on your Richard and you can keep your command.

Is it just me thinking too long on the subject, or does there seem to have been an excess of this excess lately?

Thursday Potpourri

Item: The Right comes up on the wrong side of this idea, that all OTC (Over The Counter) drugs are a better deal than prescription (R/X) drugs of the identical formulation. Example: Omeprazole, aka, Prilosec. It's been out for decades, and it's been OTC for at least a decade, but the price is still on the order of a dollar per pill, when by now, it ought to be down to a dime or less. There are other examples. What is going to happen with this FDA ruling is that some widely-prescribed drugs that are losing their patents (patents timing out) and would have become very inexpensive for sufferers to use, will now NOT get cheap, and their OTC prices will be maintained at artificially high levels. So, just moving a drug out of the R/X class and into the OTC class is not a guarantee of saving anyone any money, and in fact, some of these patent-expired drugs will show steep price rises when they hit the OTC counters. Mostly, the drug companies benefit from this, not the patients. Oh, and that thing in the article about having to go to see the doc every time a R/X is adjusted? BullTweet! You CALL your doctor's charge nurse, and the nurse handles that. I do that all the time and there is never a bill for it.

Item: The case against Roger Clemens. If you know baseball, and I'm a fan, you know that there was a sea change in top-line pitchers about 10-15 years ago. The very best pitchers, like Clemens, USED to be "location" pitchers. They could consistently put the ball within a couple of inches of where they wanted it, and scouting told them where they wanted it. Now, the best pitchers are "power" pitchers, who have the ability to throw 95 mph fastballs and sliders, at ordinary accuracy, for 6 innings or better. "Location" pitchers are now closers, who only have to throw for two innings at most, never more than 35-40 pitches total. That just the evolution of the game, but Clemens was caught up in it. As the best "location" pitcher on the mound, the game passed him by because he couldn't toss the screamers time after time. He tried to pump himself into better shape via chemicals, so as to prolong his career at the top of the heap. I can't blame him for that, and the idiotic doping trial is just that, idiotic.

Item: Afghanistan. I had occasion, night before last, to listen to a local college Professor expound on the 'Stan. Very knowledgeable guy, Prof. Grant Farr of Portland State University, spent a lot of time over there, including through the Soviet occupation. His take, in a nutshell, is that Obama's Grand Plan won't work. Why it won't work is that Obama doesn't understand the nature of the country. First of all, Afghanistan is NOT a "country" in any real understanding of the term. It's a region of three main tribal groups, each having major problems with the other, and each being unlikely to ever cede ANY authority to the others within it's own tribal influence area. If that wasn't bad enough, our whole "nation building" exercise in the 'Stan is based on building a modern national Army which can hold it's own, and hold the Nation together. The major problem is that there is 70% total illiteracy in the 'Stan, and of the Army recruits, maybe one in ten can read and write, but probably not. You simply can't raise a modern Army from recruits who can't read or write, and expecially from those who not only can't read or write, but don't want to learn to do so, lest they be labeled as blasphemous by their local imams, who DO read and write, and want to hold that over their parishoners' heads. It all adds up to FAIL, just as it added up to FAIL for every major nation which has tried in the past century (we are the third world power in the past 100 years to try to "civilize" the 'Stan).

Item: STFU, Christie. Yep, others look at Tubby and see the same potential horror story I've seen.

Final Item: I realize that Zoos are places where humans may learn about other animal species, but you have to have just a LITTLE smarts before you go. Consider NOT dressing your little tyke to look like a baby zebra (prey animal) and parking him in front of the lion's den...

Wednesday WTF

OK, snowy day, so I'm relaxing and playing/learning with my smartass phone. I download a Smarty-Barcode Scanner for it.

Next, I get a coupon for a decent price on soda pop from the gudwife, and scan it, thinking I might be able to do better than Walgreen's price.

Guess what comes up?

A car part!

For a 60's or 70's Triumph TR-6 or TR-250, a right-hand trunk hinge!

Strange, very strange

Oops, mea culpa

...for an oxymoron: "corrupt mayors"

ca va sans dire, as the French would say...