An Ode to Purple Penguins

Penguins! It had to be penguins! This from NRO:

A Nebraska school district has instructed its teachers to stop referring to students by “gendered expressions” such as “boys and girls,” and use “gender inclusive” ones such as “purple penguins” instead. 

“Don’t use phrases such as ‘boys and girls,’ ‘you guys,’ ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ and similarly gendered expressions to get kids’ attention,” instructs a training documentgiven to middle-school teachers at the Lincoln Public Schools. 

“Create classroom names and then ask all of the ‘purple penguins’ to meet on the rug,” it advises.

Hmmmmmm...far be it from me to create a "gendered space," but I would like to point out that:

1) I hate penguins

2) I hate purple

3) Neither boys nor girls are, in fact penguins

4) Neither boys nor girls are — except in a rare case emanating from Minneapolis — purple

5) I've seen more intelligent thought from a salad bar

Now that I've dealt with that crushing issue, lemme tell you why I bought a Tavor and not an AUG. First, I like AUGs. For some reason I liked the FS-2000 better, but I didn't buy it, either. I think it has to do with some indescribable element of feel. The Tavor just felt right with I shot it. I'm not a huge bull pup fan...like a lot of people, they always seemed like a nifty idea until I spent a little time with them. Every AUG I ever shot except for Cory Trapp's full auto had wretched triggers; the Tavor and the FS-2000, OTOH, had merely bad triggers. Neither "wretched" nor "bad" means "inoperable," BTW.  I'm hoping the new Geiselle gets me to "okay" on the Tavor.

I was also never crazy about the AUG's folding front vertical fore grip or the charging handle, but that's just nit-picking.

I find the Tavor comfortable and easy to run, which is why I want to use it in a class. Unless I shoot it under stress, I don't really know how it's going to perform.

Regarding interviews in the podcast, honestly it's such a pain in the butt I stopped doing them. DOWN RANGE Radio is the tail that wags the dog. Because Marshal and I kinda arbitrarily created the show, it's technically not part of what I do for OC...well, it kind of sits on top of what I do. It takes me about a day to put a podcast together. Some just flow; others are like dental work. When I added in the interviews, it also added in a lot of extra work...scheduling, the electronic hook-up, editing interviews, etc. Honestly, I just ran out of hours. Especially this time of year, when I have SHOOTING GALLERY, THE BEST DEFENSE and now SHOOTOUT LANE in production. That all may change in the future.

Time is so dear these days I'm starting to panic about upcoming SHOOTING GALLERIES, where I need to have a bunch of rifles with scopes mounted and sighted in. The various scopes and scope mounts are here, but I'm not sure when I can get to a long range range, so to speak.

In other small changes, I'm shifting from HKS Speedloaders to 5-Star for the revolvers I take on the road. I got a few 5-Stars originally for guns like the Taurus Judge and the .454 Ruger Alaskan. They're drastically overbuilt, and I like that.