I guess it’s par for the course…

…but still, what is it with some people?!
Following up on yesterday’s post about the thin-skinned sharpshooter who can take anyone down with a single round of .22LR, I had to ask him something. So I did, below, in plain text.

bloodthirsty warmongering Texan said…

You know, one well placed round from a single shot .22 pistol will kill a thief burglar, or attacker just as dead as it would if you totally obliterate his head with a torrent of automatic weapon fire. Or do you have a lucid argument to that?

Why does it have to be a choice between a single-shot .22 or belt-fed automatic weapon? Why not something in between? Like, say, a Model 1911 pistol with 8 rounds of .45, or 9 rounds of 10mm? As for the single round of .22, if you want to bet your life on that round’s ability to stop an attacker no matter his size or any other condition, be my guest, but as for me I’d prefer to have a little more room for error — notwithstanding those with little to no experience of firearms who ask asinine questions like “who NEEDS more than that?”

And out cometh the whiny bitch again.

I’m sick and tired of having my words taken out of context, and twisted just so you gun nuts can use them to insult me.

Geeeez, I bet you guys jerk off to gun magazines, don’t you?

If you idiots had read my post, you would have seen that I am on your side, as distasteful as that is for me.

So, it doesn’t matter what your particular favorite weapon is, you have the Constitutional right to own it as I stated plainly in my post.

If I was as obssessed with ANYTHING as you mental defectives are with guns, I would have had the good sense to commit myself.

And his reply to me:

And by the way, bloodthirsty warmongering Texan, your user name says all I need to know about you and your buddies. Why don’t you all go find a war somewhere and lease yourselves out? Maybe then you will get your bloodlust out of your system.

Cripes, what a judgmental asshole. Note he had absolutely nothing to say about what I actually said, just the handle I chose. Maybe people like that defending themselves with single-shot mouseguns against 275-lb. ex-college football players strung out on meth wouldn’t be such a bad thing. If they made it out alive maybe they’d see the utility of having as much firepower as they could manage, and if they didn’t make it out alive, well, how about we just call it survival of the fittest?

Ooooh, good stuff early in the mornin’…

“….we were diggin’ and siftin’ from five to five, sellin’ everything we found, just to stay alive…the gold flowed free like the whiskey in the bars, sinnin’ was the big thing, Lord, and Satan was his star….”
I always loved the Marshall Tucker Band, and that’s probably my favorite song of theirs.

8:37 am: “Fly away, with me tonight…take me on a one-way flight, in your lovin’ arms…and everything’s gonna be all right…”

9:35 am: “Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin’ for a train…” Not Janis, but Roger Miller. Interesting how some of those old songs are so good in multiple genres…

Hey, I just learned something new!

In addition to “Faded Love,” Willie Nelson and Ray Price also recorded a duet of “San Antonio Rose”! And a quick trip to Amazon yields this. As much as I love that old country I can’t believe I never knew those two actually recorded a duet album. I might have to pony up for that…

Oh my, another of those songs I haven’t heard in yeeeears, 10:58 pm…”Lord, it’s been ten bottles, since I tried to forget her, but the memory still lingers, lying here on the ground…if drinkin’ don’t kill me, her memory will…”

What do you say…

…to someone who’s woefully ignorant of firearms and the situations in which they’re used and lets his inner whiny bitch out when someone tries to educate him?
http://leftfieldperspectives.blogspot.com/2008/01/gun-control.html

All I said is I don’t see a NEED to own anything other than single shot rifles and pistols. And that’s my OPINION! So get off my back!

Sure it’s your opinion, Sparky, but it’s dangerously devoid of any knowledge of how defensive situations go down, in addition to ignorant. And it makes you look like a petulant ass when you tell people more knowledgeable than you to shut up.

Now, I have no love for criminals who are willfully trying to take the lives of myself and my family, and who try to steal my property. But if I can prevent them from doing so with one small caliber bullet, and I can, why would I need to blow him into an unrecognizable mass of tissue and blood? Wouldn’t that be non-essential overkill?

If a criminal can be stopped by wounding them with one shot from a small caliber weapon, why would we need to use a multiple shot weapon using armour piercing shells? Unless a burglar is trying to break into my house with a tank, I think a .22 or a .38 is sufficient for protection.

Sweet-bleedin’ Jeebus, PSH in abundance here! One small-caliber bullet. Unrecognizable mass of tissue and blood. Whatever, dude. Personally, I’d prefer at least six of something at least 0.357 inches in diameter, with a speed of about 1450 feet per second. As it happens, I have eight on hand in my nightstand, each with a diameter of 0.451 inches and a speed of about 825 feet per second. If you would like to take that as a definition of “small-caliber” (I am betting you wouldn’t, though), then that’s cool, but as for that single-shot bullshit, I like to leave as much margin for error as I can get away with. Which, in my case, is where those other seven 0.451-inch diameter projectiles come in. Whiny bitches’ qualms about “non-essential overkill” (more like non-existent) be damned.

(h/t SayUncle)

Hey, the only Garth Brooks song I am not tired of…

here: “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old),” his first hit record, from 1990. But, if I NEVER hear “Friends In Low Places” again, it’ll be way the hell too soon…

Ooooh, more Hag right after that! “That red bandana tied around your auburn hair, you look like you oughta be somebody’s wife somewhere…” I was surprised to see Pat Green & Cory Morrow cover that song on their Songs We Wish We’d Written cd, for as far as I can tell it’s not one of Hag’s better-known records. They did a great rendition of it, too.

Random Musical Musings: Conway Twitty & Merle Haggard

Earlier this morning these guys played Conway Twitty’s 1981 No. 1 hit “Tight-Fittin’ Jeans.” I’ve always loved that song, thought it was one of his best, but more and more in the last few years, I wonder. If the woman in the song wanted so badly to be a “good ole boy’s girl,” then just why in the hell didn’t she go after one? It sounds to me as if she was settling for less than what she really wanted. I suppose more than a few would offer various reasons for that, but in the end, do they really matter? I am guessing the answer is no, if it’s to the point that the married woman in question is bar-hopping alone. Maybe I am over-analyzing that song, or maybe I am just hopelessly old-fashioned.
(Ooooh, old-school Johnny Cash, 9:27 am: “Big River,” 1958. Oh, HELL YEAH! Right after it, one of my favorite Waylon Jennings records, “I’m A Ramblin’ Man,” 1974.)

On my drive home last night, I was jamming to the Hag. I downloaded the Down every Road box set onto my iPod, and as I was parking the truck “Ramblin’ Fever” was playing. C’mon, sing along, you know the words…
“I caught this ramblin’ fever long ago, when I first heard that lonesome whistle blow,
If someone said I ever gave a damn, they damn sure told you wrong,
I’ve had ramblin’ fever all along…”
There’s no telling how many times I’ve heard that song in the last ten years, and still I am not tired of it; I can say the same of pretty much anything else in the Hag’s catalog. Sometimes I wonder how I’d feel if I had come of age when all those songs were hit records and were getting played several times a day — or if Hag had been treated by radio as Garth Brooks was when he came along, i.e., “every time we play 12-in-a-row, you will hear Merle Haggard,” as one of the radio stations did with Mr. Brooks in the town where I was raised. Or WAS Hag treated that way? Comments?
Oh, speak of the devil! 9:46 am: “Aaaalways wanting you, but never having you…makes it hard to face tomorrow, ’cause I know I’ll wake up wanting you again….” another of those songs I still haven’t gotten tired of…

Spontaneous Trigger Time

Yesterday I was sitting around the house with absolutely nothing to do, so I thought I’d pull out the Dan Wesson Razorback and get myself some trigger time. It’d been a while since I’d taken that pistol for a drive and I didn’t have any handloads readily available, so I swung by the local Academy to pick up a couple of boxes of the only 10mm they had in stock, the 200-grain Blazers loaded to 1060 fps. It’d been about a month since I was behind the sights of a gun and it felt damn good to be back out there, even if I was settling on ammo that wasn’t loaded to its full potential — although, to be fair, the Blazers are a fun way to kill time and just shy of 500 ft-lbs of muzzle energy it’s pretty respectable. And it could have been worse…I could have had the little Walther PPK the guy next to me had, that was jamming on every third pull of the trigger. As it was, though, the Razorback ran like a champ, and I was more accurate with it than I thought I’d be considering it’d been so long since I’d shot it. I really ought to see what it’d do with some of those 155-grain Hornady XTPs backed up with Accurate No. 9…

I love that Texas music, especially Roberl Earl Keen…

here: “Well, I went out last Sunday, with my little Mary Ann, she said, please stay till Monday, and she grabbed me by the can…She laid a big one on me, surprised me with her tongue…but her surprise was waitin’ there between my cheek ‘n’ guuuuum…..”

Oooh, MORE good stuff! 10:39 pm: Willie Nelson, “Stay A Little Longer,” 1978. Quite different from the original, but still a KILLER record, with the trademark harmonica, acoustic & electric guitar, too…

And another GREAT cover, 11:27 pm: “Sometimes, I think it’s a shame, when I get feelin’ better, when I’m feelin’ no pain…” I first heard Deryl Dodd’s cover of this old Gordon Lightfoot song on Dallas-Ft. Worth’s 99.5 the Wolf in late 2000-early 2001. He had been off the scene for a few years, and that was his comeback hit of sorts — at least as far as the Texas scene goes, because as far as I know the record never garnered any significant nationwide airplay. It was a shame, too, because I always thought Deryl Dodd was a real Texas talent. No wonder the establishment pukes didn’t appreciate him…

11:57 pm: the last song on KILT’s Texas Roadhouse for the evening, the title track to Miranda Lambert’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend cd. People just thought Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats” was edgy…and I was among them, until I was reminded of this song.

Another one of those "Hell yeah!" moments…

here, another one of those old songs I ain’t heard in way too long…
“There ain’t no good in an evil-hearted woman, and I ain’t cut out to be no Jesse James…and you don’t go writin’ hot checks, down in Mississippi, and there ain’t no good chain gang…”

A bit of lunacy for your Sunday morning…

…from the Houston Chronicle:

It was a lofty idea: Formulate a British “statement of values” defining what it means to be British, much the way a document like the Declaration of Independence sets out the ideals that help explain what it means to be American.

Because of the peculiarities of its long history, Britain has in modern times never felt the need for such a statement. But in an era of decentralized government and citizens who tend to define themselves less by their similarities than by differences of region, ethnicity or religion, the government felt that the time was ripe for one.

The proposal, part of a package of British-pride-boosting measures announced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government last summer, raised a host of questions. What does it mean to be British? How do you express it in a country that believes self-promotion to be embarrassing? And how do you deal with a defining trait of the people you are trying to define: their habit of making fun of worthy government proposals?

I can’t find the words to describe this. I mean, seriously, it just defies comment, but I’m gonna give it my best shot…
This is what once-mighty England has come to? A government program to make people proud of their nation? How ironic it is, too, that the author of this piece compares this government program to our Declaration of Independence, since it was England that we were declaring our independence from. And Britons still have their lives, of course, but if they even had liberty, they lost it long ago, along with the pursuit of happiness. Which, of course, would explain why the government felt the need for such a campaign. I mean, if they were free to do whatever they chose, don’t you think they’d be a little more proud to be Britons? I think it’s worth asking why one doesn’t need to do this sort of thing in America, or in Texas. (Incidentally, I think it’s also worth asking why the reporter indirectly characterized this asshattery as “worthy.”) For some reason the words of Johnny Cash’s “Ragged Old Flag” come to mind…
“…And she’s gettin’ threadbare, and she’s wearin’ thin,
But she’s in good shape, for the shape she’s in…”

For what our country’s come to, I think there’s still some truth to that observation…

http://www.youtube.com/v/N7Wt4XlXUrc&rel=1

“…You know, when I was in school, we used to sing it somethin’ like this, listen here…oh, beautiful, foooor, spacious skies, for amber waves of grain…”