And just when I started complaining that public radio propaganda isn’t what it used to be:
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that Iran “is a bigger problem than ISIS.”
In an interview with NPR that was released on Saturday, Kissinger explained that because Iran has a stronger footing in the Middle East, it has a greater opportunity to create an empire.
You know, if Dick Cheney lives to be as old as Henry, it’s going to be 2032…
4.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
I feel vicariously proud.
5.
Gordon, the Big Express Engine
And this is why I keep coming back!
6.
Jerzy Russian
None of this would be possible if Al Gore had not invented the internets.
7.
jl
Well gee. Fear Google huh? If you were celeb with stolen nekkid pics, should you fear Google more or less than XVALA, the great artiste?
Good that in this day and age there are a legions of internet performance artistes, also known as internet commenters, and rabid packs of ravenous hyenas, who can also create some art making deep and provocative commentary and generating edgy insights into XVALA, The Great.
Edit: :The loser is already out of ideas, so he posts some nekkid chick pix. Probably similar flameouts in the artiste history, but probably hard to find examples, because no one remembers the hapless mooks.
8.
Suzanne
LMMFAO. So awesome,
9.
bargal20
It’s my best-received art project in years.
10.
trollhattan
@srv:
Jesus Christ. And if we hadn’t invaded Iraq, Iran would be a much less influential regional power today. Did you support invading Iran, Kissinger, you utter fucktoss?
11.
jl
@bargal20: Huh what? He got some pics of you in his project?
12.
Amir Khalid
Douchecanoe is a fitting nickname for Jeff Hamilton, methinks.
@bargal20:
And you deserve congratulations.
13.
jl
@trollhattan: Old dude’s got an old school geopolitical risk and strategy consulting firm on threats from stodgy old nation-states he has to keep in the black So sure, he has go around yelling “ISIS? ISIL? We talking ISIS? ISIS? We talking ISIS!? Really?”
He’s losing his touch. In the old days, one of his buds would have a consulting firm to help ISIS make itself into an old school nation state and then get a cut of the consulting contracts flowing to ol’ KIss’s shop.
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Yeah yeah yeah. I get it now. For some reason the post just show a blue bock quote from the Wiki article when post first came up. Didn’t see the pic with Cole’s annotations. Anyway, as I said, I can be bit slow on the uptake.
Congratulations Bargal20. You are also an artiste of repute. Put that in your portfolio and get yerself a grant from some rich foundation.
19.
JCJ
Wow. The reach of balloon-juice is impressive. I doff my cap to the esteemed artiste bargal20.
20.
beltane
This post really brought home the sad truth that I can no longer get by without my reading glasses.
21.
mai naem
The GOP candidate for governor in AZ is Doug Ducey. I’ve heard him referred to as Dougie Douchebag. I would be awesomely proud of that being added to his Wikipedia bio. Just sayin’
Good evening. I remember a while ago you were going to Spring Green to see APT. How was it? My daughter is a Shakespeare fan so we went to both Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing. I would probably go to more of their performances, but I am getting too old for the drive back to Brookfield and arriving after 1:30 am.
25.
KG
@srv: honest question… Beyond the hostages at the embassy back in 1979, what threat has Iran actual posed? I mean, is there credible evidence that if they were to acquire a nuclear weapon, that they’d actually use it as anything other than deterrence of invasion? Because, last I checked, we are still the only country to actually use a nuclear weapon.
26.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@JCJ: We went to “The Doctor’s Dilemma.” The picnic was wonderful. The play was well done. OTOH, for fun, we might have been better off with “The Importance of Being Earnest.”
27.
Amir Khalid
@KG:
They say mean things about Israel, they’re thinking really hard about how to make a nuke of their own. As you know, that combination makes them A Serious Threat To America’s Bestest Friend In The Middle East.
28.
JCJ
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
That is the one I would like to see as well. A friend of mine who works in both Waukesha and Madison is going to that soon.
29.
ruemara
I shot my first gun today. Not only did I shoot a gun, I did so many stupid things next to my trainer friend’s torso, I’m a little ill. Guns should require mandatory 40 hrs of handling & safety training. Also, the .45 revolver is extremely loud. In fact, by the time we went from .22 to 9mm to .45 semi, most of the women were like, NAWP. I really wanted to try the revolver but just being 4 feet away when it fired, my ears were ringing. And I knew I wasn’t ready for the kick.
Edited to reflect that DAMN! I know my knives or my bokken or any of my swords can hurt someone, but I fucking turned to my friend with my hand on a gun with the safety off. JUST. THAT. EASY. to fucking kill someone. DAMN! People fucking around with guns like they’re my blunted show throwers.
30.
Suzanne
@mai naem: Tempe also had a candidate for City Council named Dick Foreman. Guess what happened to his campaign signs.
31.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Is being a foreskin better or worse than being a douchecanoe?
I’d like to keep this stuff straight.
32.
Ruckus
@ruemara:
It’s so easy a 3 yr old can do it. Or a nine yr old, or………
Paging our wikipedia juicer. You know what to do with this.
36.
Robert Sneddon
@ruemara: Gun discipline should be beaten into you, and I’m not exaggerating. My pistol instructors would quite happily slap anyone demonstrating bad muzzle discipline across the face. They didn’t do it very often, they didn’t have to.
I assume this was a familiarisation event, introducing newcomers to firearms and pistols in particular. Been there, done that. The rule was always more than one safety person per tyro shooter on the line at any time. It took longer to put people through the event but it was a lot safer since, contrary to rumour, the Range Safety Officer does not have eyes in the back of his head and cannot see through human bodies.
Yes they are fucking noisy. Films and TV can’t reproduce the blast and shockwaves from a Device Which Is Exploding less than a metre from your face plus the sonic boom of the projectile leaving the barrel, you can only really experience them on a range with real weapons. You get used to it.
37.
Poopyman
It’s possible probable that no one has bothered to read Douchecanoe’s Wikipedia entry except himself and a mess of BalloonJuicers. It’ll be awesome when he wakes up and checks up on it.
38.
JPL
@bargal20: Laughter is the best medicine, and thank you for your edit.
39.
raven
@Robert Sneddon: I’m hoping this knowledge gets me hearing aid from the VA! I have a week until my second test. I have been told that in-country vets are a shoe in for them but we’ll see!
40.
karen marie
Are we doing an over/under on the length of time till the change is deleted?
41.
Robert Sneddon
@raven: Hearing protection on a firing range is mandatory, in the field it’s more problematic as it might protect your hearing somewhat when shooting at people but it reduces your normal ability to hear stuff around you which can be a killer, literally. Artillery has this dialled up to ten. See the “Good Morning, Vietnam” excerpt where Robin Williams is reading out the request card from the artillery guy on the radio for an example.
…I know my knives or my bokken or any of my swords can hurt someone
So, uhh, does this mean you train in some of the ‘arts? Care to expand?
44.
Raven
@Robert Sneddon: Not in basic at Ft Campbell in 1966 it wasn’t . We had m14’s there and in Korea. We had 16s when I got to the Nam, needless to say no plugs there!
45.
SFAW
Because I have nothing useful to contribute (“So was neues” and all that): still up as of 0748 EDT.
John, it says something, that you inspire your minions so.
Gun discipline should be beaten into you, and I’m not exaggerating. My pistol instructors would quite happily slap anyone demonstrating bad muzzle discipline across the face. They didn’t do it very often, they didn’t have to.
When I was (relatively) young, one of my then-coworkers – a “old” guy, although he was probably younger than I am now – told a story of being on the rifle range in Basic, how the Range Master would always pick out one guy to make an example of. The Example was prone, weapon pointed down range (or whatever the right term is), the Range Master stood behind him, the chump turned his head to see, and got whacked upside the head (literally) with the sergeant’s pistol. Not sure how long the guy was out for.
The story made an impression on me. (Although not pistol-shaped )
@Amir Khalid: Amir’s basically got it. The claim is that two minutes after they have a working nuke, they’ll nuke Tel Aviv. That such an act would almost certainly cause the annihilation of Iran is usually either ignored, or met with “They hate Israel so much they’re all willing to commit suicide just to get in one good punch”.
52.
JR in WV
Now there are hearing protectors which automatically boost ambient sounds below a specified dB level, yet still lower the dB of ambient sounds above a specified level.
In plainer English, make soft sounds loud, and loud sounds softer. So you hear the sounds in the woods better, yet still don’t get deafened by the sounds of the weapons discharging.
I think introductory firearms should stick to .22 cal and perhaps .380 for the first several sessions. Pistols in .45 are nearly the largest caliber pistols available, and certainly the largest suitable for daily carry. They’re hard to get used to for large and strong men.
I recently bought a pistol in .45, and found that the recoil hurt my damaged (advanced arthritis) shoulders the next day. I was disappointed as I really enjoyed shooting a friend’s .45 at very professional ranges on vacation trips to visit. Fortunately the manufacturer provides an relatively inexpensive additional slide/magazine package that allows the same pistol to be shot using .22 rounds by replacing the barrel, recoil springs and associated caliber sized parts.
I also hope an altered shooting posture with more bent elbows will help take stress off my shoulders while using the .45. We’ll see. I’ve not shot it again so far, but plan to soon. Will definitely use a .22 first to experiment with changing posture. Wish me luck.
53.
big ole hound
@KG: Very true, the old ones want to be left alone and the young ones want to leave. Problem is that the old guys won’t let the youngsters leave.
It’s been changed. Good thing for screen shots, eh?
56.
big ole hound
@Robert Sneddon: Not in my Navy. 3″ and 5″ long guns make mucho noise and no plugs were ever mentioned in 1962. Your ears rung for a while after shellings but the noise is projected away from those loading or aiming.
57.
Rosalita
Balloon-Juice, come for the pets, stay for the laughing and pointing…
Not sure about the suicidal tendencies, though I wouldn’t really want them to have the opportunity. Neither do a lot of other folks.
The US State Department sums it rather succinctly. From my own naive and uninformed recollection of the 1979 revolution and all that has followed, Iran could potentially be a stabilizing player in the region. Unfortunately, the crew running the show at the moment has other interests.
Makes me wonder whether ISIS is a genuine threat to them or not. (Dear Henry Kissinger: Please fuck off. Kthxbai, BFO)
bargirl20’s changes have been removed, unsurprisingly.
I wonder if I stole his show, and put together a series of photographs showing his work being burned in a waste dump, if he would appreciate it as art.
And he will too, as long as he can keep getting spare body parts from teenagers.
61.
Ruckus
@big ole hound:
The noise isn’t projected away as much from the person who has to do hang fire watch, outside the turret, OBA and charged fire hose, ten yrs after you.
I can no longer get by without my reading glasses.
Firefox + Image Zoom add-on is your zero-cost friend.
63.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@beltane: No worries, that screencap was shrunk a bit much, it would have made more since to ‘cap an image of a more narrow browser window so it fit on BJ’s columns better.
64.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Amir Khalid: I will never in my entire life understand the Iran hate. It’s completely irrational to say Iran is enemy #1 because Israel but then be bestest buddiest with ISIS-funders Saudi Arabia.
You know what? It has fuck all to do with Israel.
SA sells us cheap oil. Lots of it. We are up their butt. They are also a British-set up regime, so British elites and Americans elites are happy.
Iran had the fucking temerity to put in their OWN leaders and cut out the British. TWICE. That’s what this is all about, a fucking temper tantrum going back to the British-backed CIA coup in the 1950s. The Anglo-American elites in the US (the CIA under the Dulles’ was full of your wealthy, English educated, American scions of robber barrons types) have never, ever, EVER forgiven them for it.
If Iran could get away with it, who knows? Maybe America’s servile working class might demand their own leaders, too!
65.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@ruemara: But if you waltz around with your toy knives in public, they’ll put you away.
2nd Amendment TW00f! and the NRA are the watery tart of American politics.
I literally grew up with long guns — my Grandfather was a Depression-era amateur gunsmith, a serious gun collector, a Civil War buff who cast his own bullets and milled some of his own black powder, lathe-turned his own working miniature bronze cannon, a hunter who reloaded shot shells, built his own duck boats and decoys. He started the local NRA chapter back when that was considered a patriotic thing to do, and taught marksmanship to a couple generations of boys around my father’s age.
I actually got a Daisy “Red Ryder” 200-shot BB gun for my fifth birthday, wasn’t allowed to touch it unless my father was next to me. Got a cut-down .22 rifle for eighth; ditto. Got a single-shot 20-gauge shotgun at ten; was first allowed to have a shell for it at 12 (I carried it in the field, empty, for two years until the old man was satisfied with my gun handling). Then the Army and Field Artillery, then a couple decades of hunting with the old man in his declining years.
The upshot of all that training was pretty simple:
Always handle a gun as if it’s loaded and the safety off, as if it was continually shooting — in practice, this means that you’re almost always pointing the thing nearly straight up or nearly straight down.
Never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to immediately shoot.
Never shoot at anything you don’t intend to kill.
Keep your fingers away from the trigger unless you intend to shoot within seconds.
Before practice-shooting, walk downrange and around the target, and think seriously about where wild shots with a range of a mile or more are going to end up. Conclude that most places are damned poor choices for practice-shooting, and seek a better site.
People who shoot road signs, etc. are beneath contempt.
If you find yourself looking down a companion’s muzzle, immediately but politely proffer some excuse to end the outing, and never go hunting or shooting with that person again; same thing if they are drinking.
Alcohol / guns: choose one.
These days I try to stay as far as I can from people with guns, because 80% of those I see are apparently completely witless, and have no respect for the danger presented by the weapon.
A decade or so ago I thought I’d shoot some skeet and trap at the local Izaak Walton to brush up my eye — but abandoned the idea soon after starting, because the other men on the range and in the clubhouse stopped observing muzzle discipline as soon as they unloaded. Scares the pee out of me to be looking at the business end of a shotgun barrel, and it should have scared those nimrods but didn’t.
An excellent piece of performance art. I still think the next one should be for the owner Cory Allen’s Contemporary Art, who somehow kept a straight face while saying “we don’t condone hacking or exploiting anyone,” and “it’s really more about how we exploit ourselves.” (“We”???)
But it’s hard to improve on the fact that his gallery’s name abbreviates to CACA.
Luthe
And once again, Balloon Juice elevates the level of public discourse…
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
bargal20 wins!
Cheers,
Scott.
srv
It’s a wikibot.
And just when I started complaining that public radio propaganda isn’t what it used to be:
You know, if Dick Cheney lives to be as old as Henry, it’s going to be 2032…
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
I feel vicariously proud.
Gordon, the Big Express Engine
And this is why I keep coming back!
Jerzy Russian
None of this would be possible if Al Gore had not invented the internets.
jl
Well gee. Fear Google huh? If you were celeb with stolen nekkid pics, should you fear Google more or less than XVALA, the great artiste?
Good that in this day and age there are a legions of internet performance artistes, also known as internet commenters, and rabid packs of ravenous hyenas, who can also create some art making deep and provocative commentary and generating edgy insights into XVALA, The Great.
Edit: :The loser is already out of ideas, so he posts some nekkid chick pix. Probably similar flameouts in the artiste history, but probably hard to find examples, because no one remembers the hapless mooks.
Suzanne
LMMFAO. So awesome,
bargal20
It’s my best-received art project in years.
trollhattan
@srv:
Jesus Christ. And if we hadn’t invaded Iraq, Iran would be a much less influential regional power today. Did you support invading Iran, Kissinger, you utter fucktoss?
jl
@bargal20: Huh what? He got some pics of you in his project?
Amir Khalid
Douchecanoe is a fitting nickname for Jeff Hamilton, methinks.
@bargal20:
And you deserve congratulations.
jl
@trollhattan: Old dude’s got an old school geopolitical risk and strategy consulting firm on threats from stodgy old nation-states he has to keep in the black So sure, he has go around yelling “ISIS? ISIL? We talking ISIS? ISIS? We talking ISIS!? Really?”
He’s losing his touch. In the old days, one of his buds would have a consulting firm to help ISIS make itself into an old school nation state and then get a cut of the consulting contracts flowing to ol’ KIss’s shop.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@jl: See #2.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who apologizes in advance if he’s being dense.)
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@jl: Dude, Bargal20’s art work was the performance piece of changing the Wiki article.
cckids
@srv:
That is so, so profoundly depressing.
Betty Cracker
@bargal20: Bravo!
jl
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Yeah yeah yeah. I get it now. For some reason the post just show a blue bock quote from the Wiki article when post first came up. Didn’t see the pic with Cole’s annotations. Anyway, as I said, I can be bit slow on the uptake.
Congratulations Bargal20. You are also an artiste of repute. Put that in your portfolio and get yerself a grant from some rich foundation.
JCJ
Wow. The reach of balloon-juice is impressive. I doff my cap to the esteemed artiste bargal20.
beltane
This post really brought home the sad truth that I can no longer get by without my reading glasses.
mai naem
The GOP candidate for governor in AZ is Doug Ducey. I’ve heard him referred to as Dougie Douchebag. I would be awesomely proud of that being added to his Wikipedia bio. Just sayin’
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@mai naem: So do it.
beltane
With a name like Doug Ducey an edit job is not necessary.
JCJ
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Good evening. I remember a while ago you were going to Spring Green to see APT. How was it? My daughter is a Shakespeare fan so we went to both Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing. I would probably go to more of their performances, but I am getting too old for the drive back to Brookfield and arriving after 1:30 am.
KG
@srv: honest question… Beyond the hostages at the embassy back in 1979, what threat has Iran actual posed? I mean, is there credible evidence that if they were to acquire a nuclear weapon, that they’d actually use it as anything other than deterrence of invasion? Because, last I checked, we are still the only country to actually use a nuclear weapon.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@JCJ: We went to “The Doctor’s Dilemma.” The picnic was wonderful. The play was well done. OTOH, for fun, we might have been better off with “The Importance of Being Earnest.”
Amir Khalid
@KG:
They say mean things about Israel, they’re thinking really hard about how to make a nuke of their own. As you know, that combination makes them A Serious Threat To America’s Bestest Friend In The Middle East.
JCJ
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
That is the one I would like to see as well. A friend of mine who works in both Waukesha and Madison is going to that soon.
ruemara
I shot my first gun today. Not only did I shoot a gun, I did so many stupid things next to my trainer friend’s torso, I’m a little ill. Guns should require mandatory 40 hrs of handling & safety training. Also, the .45 revolver is extremely loud. In fact, by the time we went from .22 to 9mm to .45 semi, most of the women were like, NAWP. I really wanted to try the revolver but just being 4 feet away when it fired, my ears were ringing. And I knew I wasn’t ready for the kick.
Edited to reflect that DAMN! I know my knives or my bokken or any of my swords can hurt someone, but I fucking turned to my friend with my hand on a gun with the safety off. JUST. THAT. EASY. to fucking kill someone. DAMN! People fucking around with guns like they’re my blunted show throwers.
Suzanne
@mai naem: Tempe also had a candidate for City Council named Dick Foreman. Guess what happened to his campaign signs.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Is being a foreskin better or worse than being a douchecanoe?
I’d like to keep this stuff straight.
Ruckus
@ruemara:
It’s so easy a 3 yr old can do it. Or a nine yr old, or………
Arclite
That’s the hardest I’ve laughed in a while. Probably since watching this video a few days after Robin died.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Suzanne: The funniest political sign I’ve ever seen was in Fresno, I was in high school at the time, “Lawless for Sheriff”.
MomSense
@trollhattan:
Paging our wikipedia juicer. You know what to do with this.
Robert Sneddon
@ruemara: Gun discipline should be beaten into you, and I’m not exaggerating. My pistol instructors would quite happily slap anyone demonstrating bad muzzle discipline across the face. They didn’t do it very often, they didn’t have to.
I assume this was a familiarisation event, introducing newcomers to firearms and pistols in particular. Been there, done that. The rule was always more than one safety person per tyro shooter on the line at any time. It took longer to put people through the event but it was a lot safer since, contrary to rumour, the Range Safety Officer does not have eyes in the back of his head and cannot see through human bodies.
Yes they are fucking noisy. Films and TV can’t reproduce the blast and shockwaves from a Device Which Is Exploding less than a metre from your face plus the sonic boom of the projectile leaving the barrel, you can only really experience them on a range with real weapons. You get used to it.
Poopyman
It’s
possibleprobable that no one has bothered to read Douchecanoe’s Wikipedia entry except himself and a mess of BalloonJuicers. It’ll be awesome when he wakes up and checks up on it.JPL
@bargal20: Laughter is the best medicine, and thank you for your edit.
raven
@Robert Sneddon: I’m hoping this knowledge gets me hearing aid from the VA! I have a week until my second test. I have been told that in-country vets are a shoe in for them but we’ll see!
karen marie
Are we doing an over/under on the length of time till the change is deleted?
Robert Sneddon
@raven: Hearing protection on a firing range is mandatory, in the field it’s more problematic as it might protect your hearing somewhat when shooting at people but it reduces your normal ability to hear stuff around you which can be a killer, literally. Artillery has this dialled up to ten. See the “Good Morning, Vietnam” excerpt where Robin Williams is reading out the request card from the artillery guy on the radio for an example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWWDKZ-kydE
BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: When I was taught to shoot as a teen my father mandated ear protection at the range.
henqiguai
@ruemara (#29):
So, uhh, does this mean you train in some of the ‘arts? Care to expand?
Raven
@Robert Sneddon: Not in basic at Ft Campbell in 1966 it wasn’t . We had m14’s there and in Korea. We had 16s when I got to the Nam, needless to say no plugs there!
SFAW
Because I have nothing useful to contribute (“So was neues” and all that): still up as of 0748 EDT.
John, it says something, that you inspire your minions so.
SFAW
@Robert Sneddon:
When I was (relatively) young, one of my then-coworkers – a “old” guy, although he was probably younger than I am now – told a story of being on the rifle range in Basic, how the Range Master would always pick out one guy to make an example of. The Example was prone, weapon pointed down range (or whatever the right term is), the Range Master stood behind him, the chump turned his head to see, and got whacked upside the head (literally) with the sergeant’s pistol. Not sure how long the guy was out for.
The story made an impression on me. (Although not pistol-shaped )
WereBear
@beltane: Yep. Those folding reading glasses had to become part of that stuff I lug around every day.
Congrats to Bargal20! And hopes for longevity of edit.
tybee
@bargal20:
brilliant.
Cermet
@srv: Ok, Kiss-ass-inger, exactly who in the FUCK (!!) isn’t a bigger threat to the US than ISIS????? What a total anal outflow that evil fucker is.
debbie
16 to McCain’s 97? Cruz better get cracking on the talk show circuit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/upshot/looking-for-john-mccain-try-a-sunday-morning-show.html?ref=television&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0
Lurking Canadian
@Amir Khalid: Amir’s basically got it. The claim is that two minutes after they have a working nuke, they’ll nuke Tel Aviv. That such an act would almost certainly cause the annihilation of Iran is usually either ignored, or met with “They hate Israel so much they’re all willing to commit suicide just to get in one good punch”.
JR in WV
Now there are hearing protectors which automatically boost ambient sounds below a specified dB level, yet still lower the dB of ambient sounds above a specified level.
In plainer English, make soft sounds loud, and loud sounds softer. So you hear the sounds in the woods better, yet still don’t get deafened by the sounds of the weapons discharging.
I think introductory firearms should stick to .22 cal and perhaps .380 for the first several sessions. Pistols in .45 are nearly the largest caliber pistols available, and certainly the largest suitable for daily carry. They’re hard to get used to for large and strong men.
I recently bought a pistol in .45, and found that the recoil hurt my damaged (advanced arthritis) shoulders the next day. I was disappointed as I really enjoyed shooting a friend’s .45 at very professional ranges on vacation trips to visit. Fortunately the manufacturer provides an relatively inexpensive additional slide/magazine package that allows the same pistol to be shot using .22 rounds by replacing the barrel, recoil springs and associated caliber sized parts.
I also hope an altered shooting posture with more bent elbows will help take stress off my shoulders while using the .45. We’ll see. I’ve not shot it again so far, but plan to soon. Will definitely use a .22 first to experiment with changing posture. Wish me luck.
big ole hound
@KG: Very true, the old ones want to be left alone and the young ones want to leave. Problem is that the old guys won’t let the youngsters leave.
Southern Beale
Sadly, it’s gone now.
Svensker
@Poopyman:
It’s been changed. Good thing for screen shots, eh?
big ole hound
@Robert Sneddon: Not in my Navy. 3″ and 5″ long guns make mucho noise and no plugs were ever mentioned in 1962. Your ears rung for a while after shellings but the noise is projected away from those loading or aiming.
Rosalita
Balloon-Juice, come for the pets, stay for the laughing and pointing…
BruceFromOhio
@Lurking Canadian: @Amir Khalid:
Not sure about the suicidal tendencies, though I wouldn’t really want them to have the opportunity. Neither do a lot of other folks.
The US State Department sums it rather succinctly. From my own naive and uninformed recollection of the 1979 revolution and all that has followed, Iran could potentially be a stabilizing player in the region. Unfortunately, the crew running the show at the moment has other interests.
Makes me wonder whether ISIS is a genuine threat to them or not. (Dear Henry Kissinger: Please fuck off. Kthxbai, BFO)
bargirl20’s changes have been removed, unsurprisingly.
I wonder if I stole his show, and put together a series of photographs showing his work being burned in a waste dump, if he would appreciate it as art.
Scamp Dog
@karen marie: Well, nobody did, but I checked the edits, and it was up for 14 hours and a few minutes. Well done, Bargal20!
patrick II
@cckids:
And he will too, as long as he can keep getting spare body parts from teenagers.
Ruckus
@big ole hound:
The noise isn’t projected away as much from the person who has to do hang fire watch, outside the turret, OBA and charged fire hose, ten yrs after you.
Ask me how I know.
Joel Hanes
@beltane:
I can no longer get by without my reading glasses.
Firefox + Image Zoom add-on is your zero-cost friend.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@beltane: No worries, that screencap was shrunk a bit much, it would have made more since to ‘cap an image of a more narrow browser window so it fit on BJ’s columns better.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Amir Khalid: I will never in my entire life understand the Iran hate. It’s completely irrational to say Iran is enemy #1 because Israel but then be bestest buddiest with ISIS-funders Saudi Arabia.
You know what? It has fuck all to do with Israel.
SA sells us cheap oil. Lots of it. We are up their butt. They are also a British-set up regime, so British elites and Americans elites are happy.
Iran had the fucking temerity to put in their OWN leaders and cut out the British. TWICE. That’s what this is all about, a fucking temper tantrum going back to the British-backed CIA coup in the 1950s. The Anglo-American elites in the US (the CIA under the Dulles’ was full of your wealthy, English educated, American scions of robber barrons types) have never, ever, EVER forgiven them for it.
If Iran could get away with it, who knows? Maybe America’s servile working class might demand their own leaders, too!
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@ruemara: But if you waltz around with your toy knives in public, they’ll put you away.
2nd Amendment TW00f! and the NRA are the watery tart of American politics.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Cermet: The Koch brothers?
ETA: NM, misread your comment. Need more coffee.
Joel Hanes
Gun discipline
I literally grew up with long guns — my Grandfather was a Depression-era amateur gunsmith, a serious gun collector, a Civil War buff who cast his own bullets and milled some of his own black powder, lathe-turned his own working miniature bronze cannon, a hunter who reloaded shot shells, built his own duck boats and decoys. He started the local NRA chapter back when that was considered a patriotic thing to do, and taught marksmanship to a couple generations of boys around my father’s age.
I actually got a Daisy “Red Ryder” 200-shot BB gun for my fifth birthday, wasn’t allowed to touch it unless my father was next to me. Got a cut-down .22 rifle for eighth; ditto. Got a single-shot 20-gauge shotgun at ten; was first allowed to have a shell for it at 12 (I carried it in the field, empty, for two years until the old man was satisfied with my gun handling). Then the Army and Field Artillery, then a couple decades of hunting with the old man in his declining years.
The upshot of all that training was pretty simple:
Always handle a gun as if it’s loaded and the safety off, as if it was continually shooting — in practice, this means that you’re almost always pointing the thing nearly straight up or nearly straight down.
Never point a gun at anything you don’t intend to immediately shoot.
Never shoot at anything you don’t intend to kill.
Keep your fingers away from the trigger unless you intend to shoot within seconds.
Before practice-shooting, walk downrange and around the target, and think seriously about where wild shots with a range of a mile or more are going to end up. Conclude that most places are damned poor choices for practice-shooting, and seek a better site.
People who shoot road signs, etc. are beneath contempt.
If you find yourself looking down a companion’s muzzle, immediately but politely proffer some excuse to end the outing, and never go hunting or shooting with that person again; same thing if they are drinking.
Alcohol / guns: choose one.
These days I try to stay as far as I can from people with guns, because 80% of those I see are apparently completely witless, and have no respect for the danger presented by the weapon.
A decade or so ago I thought I’d shoot some skeet and trap at the local Izaak Walton to brush up my eye — but abandoned the idea soon after starting, because the other men on the range and in the clubhouse stopped observing muzzle discipline as soon as they unloaded. Scares the pee out of me to be looking at the business end of a shotgun barrel, and it should have scared those nimrods but didn’t.
karen marie
@Scamp Dog: Next time!
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
An excellent piece of performance art. I still think the next one should be for the owner Cory Allen’s Contemporary Art, who somehow kept a straight face while saying “we don’t condone hacking or exploiting anyone,” and “it’s really more about how we exploit ourselves.” (“We”???)
But it’s hard to improve on the fact that his gallery’s name abbreviates to CACA.
WaterGirl
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: CACA: made me laugh!