Cecil the Lion & Sport Hunting

...am on the blistering hot range filming until the weekend, but I wanted to say I will be talking about Cecil the Lion and sport hunting on next week'm podcast. In the meanwhile, read this:

Still, we don't need the video to realize a very important and vital lesson about the mental faculties of your average American. And that lesson is they are no longer capable of logic, reason, empiricism or sanity. Worse, they're so selfish and narcissistic, they happily put their emotions over principles and the rights of others. With no proof (at that point in time) that Dr. Palmer was guilty of violating any law people were already threatening to kill him, ruin his career, and ruin his life. Some were so far gone they said they didn't care about the legality of his kill, they just thought he should be punished for hunting. And it is this principleless, amoral, mindless mob who put their emotions over, not just an individual's rights, but reality, facts, and truth that not only makes it difficult for the legal system to

The real story is not that poor Cecil was tragically shot. It's that western civilization, specifically the younger generations, have lost their collective minds and do not have the mental faculties to be adults, let alone adults in the free world. They are effectively zombies. And there is no reasoning with them. 

Plan accordingly.

Oh Sigh...

…another weekend, another bombed match. This time a 3-Gun match. Focus, Michael…focus. Ironically, I did my best on the Noveske Standards, which are really simple and surprisingly hard. Five paper targets…first string with the carbine is head shots on each at 36 yards, 6 second par time. Second string, 6 seconds, 2 shots to the body. Next 2 strings are pistol, 6 second each run. First run is 2 body shots on each of the 5 USPSA targets; second run is 1 shot, reload, 1 shot. My understanding is that in 2 major matches, no one has shot this simple exercise clean.  One of the best runs belongs to 3-Gun champion and USPSA Grand Master James Casanova, who shot the standards down one shot.

I've cleaned the rifle portion before, but I got sloppy and dropped one of the head shots (#3, I called it) just out of the hard box. Then I went to the pistol with my G34. Did the 2 shots no problem. Checked the magazine for the next reload run. Buzzer goes off, I pull the trigger, the magazine goes sailing out of the gun like a watermelon out of a 6-year-old's mouth. I go to the reload on my belt to salvage something, and — for the first time I can remember in years…and years…and years…I miss it and knock my ONLY loaded magazine off into space. "Well, damn!" says my old friend Paul Miller Jr., who was running the timer. That sums it up.

The whole day was like that.

Okay…sometimes Karma just rolls against you, and you've got to ride it out. Got another 3-Gun match next weekend…I NEED to get my head on-board before Noveske!  I will say this…all the time I've spent on carbine has paid off. Of course, as the old television commercial said, I "traded a headache for an upset stomach." My success with the AR has come at the cost of my skills with a pistol. Luckily, I know how to fix that! Jerry the Geek, no comments! from the peanut gallery!!!

Here's a piece from Salena Zito you should read, largely because I think she's onto something:

What if fear is the origin of all the anger that voters feel toward Washington? Not just fear over economic stability in our homes and communities, but fear for our personal safety, our nation's security? When was the last time that felt stable?
...
As each awful event occurred, the Obama administration refused to state the obvious — that each was an act of terrorism based on a fundamentalist version of Islam; it even insisted that the Fort Hood massacre was “workplace violence. 

In January of this year, during his State of the Union address, President Obama declared that the greatest threat to America's future was neither terrorism nor nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran. “No challenge  poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” he said. 

Just once, we'd love a little honesty and a lot less political division from the White House…

I've said it before on the podcast…the wheels are coming off the great experiment that is America. You can feel it in the air, like, nasty ashy grit from a sputtering volcano. Bread, band-aids and bullets, my friends...

Putzing Around With ARs

That pretty much sums up yesterday. I have to get some guns ready for filming next week for AMERICA'S RIFLE. I picked up the lower I wanted to use on Wednesday, along with a "partial" parts kit. Emphasis on "partial." No big, as I had another lower parts kit just in case of stuff like this. No, let me rephrase that….another "partial" parts kit. I have a "beater" AR polymer lower from a project that never worked out the way I wanted, so I cribbed the rest of the parts I needed from that guy.

It's a Wilson lower with a Timney trigger, Hogue grip and A1 rifle buffer tube set-up. Right now I've got a Magpul PRS stock on it, but I plan to replace it with an ACE ARFX. Once I get past this filming, I plan to use this lower for a dedicated .458 SOCOM hunting gun.

That is, I hope so. I'm still having feed problems with the Wilson SOCOM upper, and, yes, that's with a couple of different brands of factory ammo.  The round starts to nose up into the chamber, then jams. I got the same response from Lancer mags, which Bill Wilson recommended to me, and several metal AR mags. First thing this morning I'm going to break to bolt down and give it a good cleaning (which seemed to show some promise yesterday afternoon). Of that doesn't work, I've seem some minor magazine mods aimed at the same problem on the Internet…hi yo Dremel!

The .458 has a Burris AR-1x optic with it's "dot in a donut" reticle that I like so much. I've always liked the idea of 45-70 performance in a lightweight AR platform. I've read how brutal the recoil is off the .458, but that has not been my experience. Yes, it recoils more than a .223, but no more than you might expect from, say, a 45-70 Ruger #1 with midrange factory ammo.

The other upper I'll be using with that lower is a JP Rifles .204 Ruger. I mounted a Burris 3-9x 50mm scope on my favorite P.E.P.R. mount, then stuck it on the Wilson lower. Can you spell "laser beam?" I'm shooting Hornady Superformance Varmint 32-grainers at a smoking 4225 fps. Shot great; no magazine/buffer-spring issues; shots like a .22 LR.

I've still got to re-sight-in my long range AR, a DoubleStar "Midnight Dragon", since I changed out to the Lucid 6-24x. Going to try to hammer it out with  box of Black Hills 69-gr Match this afternoon, where the temperature is expected to reach the boiling point of water...

If You've Got Money Burning a Hole in Your Pocket...

I thought I might address this post to the pepper community. There's always a lot of talk within that community about having a solid bolt-action rifle as a hunting gun or an adjunct to the AR-15 platform carbine, which should of course be the first long gun purchase. Somehow, that discussion invariably returns to a Mosin Nagant as the ideal choice. I once got a long lecture on how the Mosin was not only the equal of model rifles, but surpassed them in many ways, so the smart move was to buy an inexpensive Mosin and "build it up."

The person pointed me to the now huge Mosin aftermarket — stocks, bent bolts and custom knobs, accurizing, triggers, barrels, sights, magazines, scope mounts, rails, etc.

Okay, color me confused. As a fan and owner of custom rifles, I'd have to say that all the Mosin stuff is indeed cool. and you can build up really neat custom rifle.  Plus I understand the appeal of old military guns...my father spent many many happy hours building up a couple of Swedish 6.5 X 55 Mausers and one really ugly Turkish Mauser, which he kept in the 8mm Turk caliber.

But that's all about building a custom rifle, not having a good bolt gun around for hunting or back-up self-defense uses. Yes, you can still find Mosins on the cheap — $169 at Cabelas, for instance, or Classic Firearms selling them by the crate for $180 a pop per gun. Or pick one up on Gunbroker.com for maybe less. But after you spend the money to soup it up, you're approaching the $1K or above number.

If I was in the market for a good, inexpensive bolt gun, I'd have to take a long hard look at CDNN's July sale on Ruger Americans — .308s at a penny under $300, with scope mounts; a black 30-06 for roughly $280. We had one of the 30-06s in Africa a couple of years ago, and it was a workhorse gun. I would take the .308, shop around for a good scope in the $150-200 range (there are plenty from all the major manufacturers) and go from there.

Tuesday Round-Up

Well, not much to round up. Monday is always Podcast Day, plus we're pretty deep into SHOOTING GALLERY scheduling, which is a giant puzzle (or giant pizzle, as the case may be).

My Sweetie and I shot a USPSA match Sunday (she beat me, BTW) and it was Big Fun, considering  I was shooting a Ruger Match Champion 6-round .357 revolver. Yee-haw! We did us some revolver reloading practice yesterday! Especially on that 30-round plus stage! I finished within spitting distance of dead last! LOL! Funny aside…I was LMAO after I left the last target on a stage unengaged…never saw it!...and a shooter came up to me to thank me for laughing, not bitching. Glad to be a role model…of sorts. Next USPSA match, it's gonna be the Redhawk .45ACP/.45 Colt blaster…I ordered enough moon clips to get me through.

A thoughtful (and controversial, I suspect) piece from Mark Steyn, on "senseless" violence:

I'm afraid the makeshift memorials of flags and other patriotic memorabilia that have sprung up on the edge of the police tape depress the hell out of me. A no doubt sincere veneration for the military apparently can only express itself with a feeble passivity that is a large part of the problem. This isn't a time for the bumper-sticker bromides of "We salute our heroes/Thank you for your service/We support our troops". Among the dead are men who waged a bloody and hard-fought battle to retake Fallujah ...only to come home and die unarmed in a crappy shopping mall at the hands of a halfwit fanatic whose family had been under the leisurely money-no-object scrutiny of the bloated security apparatus for years. 

A Chinese-made teddy bear from Wal-Mart is not an appropriate reaction. Righteous anger is. And there's not a lot of evidence of that. At that parking-lot memorial, the public seems to discern that such anger is no longer an approved sensibility - whereas a teary generalized sadness gets plenty of media coverage. This is the same media, by the way, that, after a couple of perfunctory questions about Chattanooga, asked Josh Earnest for more details about the "father-daughter weekend" President Obama is currently enjoying in New York. Golly, you'd almost get the impression they're really not that sad at all.

BTW, if you haven't seen or heard of news anchor Tomi Lahren's Chattanooga rant, you can and should watch it here.

Ed Head's Review of the Ruger Precision Rifle for DRTV

I think he likes it:

Once upon a time Ruger’s CEO Mike Fifer and a handful of his employees attended a long-range precision rifle school at FTW Ranch in Texas and came away from the experience determined to invent a better mousetrap – in this case a better precision rifle. A team of five design and production engineers was assembled at Ruger and they spent the next year sitting around the same table with their computers and a blank piece of paper then returned to FTW after the NRA annual meeting with a handful of writers to introduce their new rifle, the Ruger Precision Rifle (RPR).

Second half coming soon! Can't wait to get mine. funny, I was talking to a friend of mine who is a top instructor, and he said exactly the same thing.

The Militia Reconstituted

"And the idea of having lots of armed citizens everywhere makes sense. When you face a diffuse, widely-distributed threat, you need a diffuse, widely-distributed defense. You can’t do that with police and military because there aren’t enough of them. But you can do it with ordinary citizens. And there’s one group of responders that will always be on the scene of any attack — the citizens who are already there. If they’re able to respond, things are much better than if they’re not."

Prof. Glenn Reynolds

InstaPundit

The Game Changer

It's a Ruger Precision Rifle…available in .308, 6.5 Creedmoor, .243…

Here's the game-changing part:

Suggest MSRP: $1399.00

Mine (.308) is on order. Here's the AMERICAN RIFLEMAN review. I have a precision rifle class in early October, so we'll see what it will do in that context. You'll see the full report on DRTV and on SHOOTING GALLERY 2016.

Lift a Rock and What Runs Out?

So it turns out that, yes, they really are coming for our guns, and no, they don't think we any any right to bear arms.

Four American heroes are dead because the government forbade them a not just an American right defined the Bill of Rights, but the most basic human right of self-defense, the right to defend your own life.

It's probably not the best week for NEWSWEEK to come out with their "grand bargain," e.g., we give up whatever causes author Kurt Eichenwald and his smarmy pack of pimps and whores to go all gooey inside and they'll let us keep…something.

Here's his big closer line:

It is up to the rational middle—the vast majority of Americans—to tell the fanatics that the grown-ups are taking over.

No Kurt…the "grown-ups" are dead on the ground in Chattanooga. 

You and the other arrested development adolescents and blood dancers like Bloomberg, Watts, Giffords, Kelly and the rest of the cockroaches that come out when you lift the rock are directly responsible for that blood.

The "rational middle" says we are at war; arm the military. Now. The "rational middle" knows we're on our own, and we demand the right to protect ourselves and our families. The "rational middle" know that gun-free zones kill. They are the legacy of fools like yourself, Mr. Eichenwald. You think that little sticker on the door protects you? You think your progressive buddies will do anything except stand and watch (well, maybe video if it's not too much trouble) when you're beaten to death on a subway car or shot down by a "lone gunman," "workplace violence," "man-caused disaster," the Confederate flag, Islamic terrorists?

The "rational middle" has listened to all your arguments, Mr. Eichenwald, and upon reflection, I'd like to quote former CNN anchor Lynne Russell:

"If you don’t want to carry please don’t. Then, shut the f--k up about it. Make your own decisions."

Bios of the America heroes lost in Chattanooga:

• Lance Cpl. Squire "Skip" Wells

• Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, 2 Purples Hearts, 2 tours in Iraq

• Sgt. Carson Holmquist, 2 tours, Afghanistan

• Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, 3 deployments, 2 in Iraq

Lance Cpl. Wells was texting his girlfriend when the attack happen. His last post was, "ACTIVE SHOOTER." God bless them.

Take Down Your Damned Signs!

Enough.

Some of my dearest friends are Marines, and I know tonight that not only are they heart-broken, but they are blind fury angry. As well they should be.

There are things to talk about tomorrow.

Be armed.

Between Hither & Yon

…am gong through another one of those phases where I actually have to be a television producer. Today was (and tomorrow will be) all day meetings, with telephone calls mortared between the meetings. There was one point today during a long Skype call where I looked longingly at my Ruger Match Champion revolver and the 200 rounds of .38 Special I'd fished out and put on my desk with the idea of starting to tune up on little revolvers before I go to the boomers.

Sadly, look was all I did. I'm sure most of you know the drill.

Anyhow, there is a GREAT article on LuckyGunner.com, where I buy bunches of ammo, on 11 self-defense myths that never seen to die, as articulated by some of the greatest trainers in the business (many of whom I'm honored to call my friends). Rob Pincus' comments on timed drills are especially insightful.

I have GOT to get off the phone/computer to put together that .458 SOCOM…period, since I gotta film it in a couple of weeks. I'd like to at least sight it in, since I finally have the ammo.

Maybe I should take a shower…meetings are hard work!

BTW, The Mikes, Marty and I are thinking about shooting up a television studio on next season THE BEST DEFENSE…is that some kind of subliminal messaging?

Oh yeah, I'm very excited about "PEACE IN OUR TIME!" I pray for my friends in Tel Aviv...

The Sheep Continue to Look Up

Kitty Genovese

First, read this. All of it. It references the brutal murder of Kevin Joseph Sutherland on the D.C. Metro on the Fourth of July, what we once called Independence Day. Here's the "nut graf" from the first article, where Ms. Marianne Seregi, the editor of the Washington Post magazines, tells her own story about being mugged on the Metro and her conclusions on that mugging:

Yes, it’s hypocritical. I wish people would have helped me, and I’m not sure I could have mustered the courage to do the same. 

I don’t want to be someone so passive and self-preserving that I allow a stranger to be killed right in front of me. I don’t want to protect myself at all costs. But fear is a powerful emotion. And just because we think we are brave doesn’t mean that we are.

Think about that…"I don't want to protect myself at all costs."

What do you suppose that means? Here's what I think…on the very worst day of your life, through some nasty quirk in Fate the only person you may be able to turn to is Ms. Marianne Seregi, who will be dribbling urine down her leg while worrying whether it might be too politically incorrect to defend herself — much less help you out!

You've heard this before from me, but let me emphasize:

YOU * ARE * ON * YOUR * OWN!

This from Lisa De Pasquale at Breitbart, titled "The Good, the Bad and the Beta Male:"

In less than 15 years, we’ve gone from “let’s roll” to “let’s not get involved.”

What we must do is reject the disease of political correctness and — male, female, or any one of the Ten Billion Names for Gender…this isn't a gender issue — step up and be responsible for our own safety, the safety of our families and those in our care. 

A Little Light Sunday Reading

Since I'm on a "some thoughts" roll…this is from a member at Red State, titled "Some thoughts on the coming collapse of the United States of America:"

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” 

— Herbert Stein, American Enterprise Institute

With the combination of ever-growing government growing ever-worse, and the plague of “diversity” eating away at our once great and now shattered society, I don’t think we’ll have these problems very much longer. I don’t think America can go on like this. Therefore, sooner or later, it will stop. I hope I’m somewhere else when it happens, because I don’t think it will be pretty. 

Is there an answer to any of this? Can the “raveled sleeve” of our country be “knit back up?” I don’t know. I am open to suggestions. Absent that, good luck to all of us, because we’ll probably need it.

Read the whole thing, and think about it. Yes, I'm professionally paranoid…next week we're doing scenarios for the next season of THE BEST DEFENSE, after all. Still, it's hard not to feel like Sarah Conner  at the end of Terminator…there is a storm coming.

 

A Few Thoughts on the Flag Lowering Ceremony in South Carolina

My people, to borrow the phraseology of our former thug of an Attorney General, didn't march under Lee's battle flag. They marched for the rectangular version of the Army of Tennessee, not the first time McBane marched to some version of St. Andrew's Cross. The Army of Tennessee died in 1864 on the bloody ground around Franklin, south of Nashville, for the vain glory of a fool.

My people didn't keep slaves; they were slaves….unwilling indentures, losers in the English pogram against the Scot Highlanders after the disastrous battle of Culloden Moor. Exiled to the Colonies, forbidden the wearing of the plaid and the possession of weapons upon pain of death. But they won their freedom with the gun and the knife, allied with the doomed Cherokee and fought their long, losing retreat across the Blue Ridge into the fertile soil of west Tennessee and northeast Mississippi.

And when their adopted home of Tennessee called, those plain dirt farmers answered that call. Ron Maxwell, the director of the movie Gettysburg, gave this talk years back in response to a call by academics (natch) for Obama to not lay a wreath, as tradition called for, on the grave of Confederate dead. It is worth your time to read the whole thing:

We cannot wish our ancestors away, nor should we. In the act of designing and erecting these monuments and statues they are telling us what was important to them in their time. By leaving for us, their progeny, a record in stone, they are expressly calling upon us, their grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren to remember. 

Shall we do as the professors who signed the letter to our president asked him to do — shall we heap scorn upon these monuments and chastise those who will not? Should we do as their doctrinaire kin in Afghanistan did? Shall we, like the Taliban, destroy our statues with dynamite because they offend a prevailing dogma? Shall we disinter the bones of our ancestors like the radical Jacobins of the French Revolution did, scattering their unearthed remains to the winds — first to be reviled, then ever to be forgotten?

Once I had a writing contract that allowed me to stay in a home near the Franklin battlefield. I got up right about dawn and went for a long walk along a two-land country road. The sun was just peaking up when I started, but a fog rolled up from the hollers, and pretty soon everything was grey and cold. I stood for a long time in that fog, listening, I guess, for gunfire and shouting and the mayhem of battle. But there was nothing but the muffled quiet.

The great songwriter Rodney Crowell once wrote this:

The Civil War hit Franklin

Harder than the rest of Tennessee

But a 100 years ain’t nothing

The South will rise again and set them free

The winds of old blow lightly

Over the valley with a neverending dream

While the rusty tinroof barnyards

Crumble at the old grey farmer's feet

But it’s gone like the life of a childWhen he turns his back on your mind

And tomorrow has no home sweet homes

Look what they've done to mine

It's faded into time

Some Days Just Get Lost...

Yesterday I was supposed to go to Pennsylvania to shoot sporting clays with my friends at Streamlight. Seems easy enough, doesn't it? Well, factor in the United "computer problem," 3500 grounded planes, air travel in shambles for the whole day and you have Michael B at Denver International at 2AM looking for his shotgun.

Pennsylvania?

Been easier to get to the moon.

So I took the surprise day to round up some office furniture I needed, since I'm still too damned tired to do any shooting. Tomorrow, maybe, on the Redhawk .45 ACP/.45 Colt. I think the next project I'm going to finish up is the .458 SOCOM AR, since I can now get a little bit of ammo and the reloading
components. The Wilson upper is good; I just need to finish the lower and get an Ace stock. I also want to start working with the 6.5 Creedmoor a bit. I've got a little bit of factory match to start with.

BTW, serious congrats to Scott McRee of McRee's Precision, who built my wonderful FNH-based .308, for nailing multiple titles at his first .50 Caliber World Championships at Whittington last week. He shot on Team Thunder Ammo 1, which took top team honors. He also earned Rookie of the Year, 2nd place in Hunter Class for Score and 5th in Hunter Class for Group. That is DARNED good shooting, even for a long range master like Scott McRee! Congrats, Scott! And if you're looking for a world class rifle, check out McRee's.

God Hates Selfies

This is my favorite headline of the week…from the UK:

Man who was struck and killed by lightning in Brecon Beacons 'was carrying a selfie stick'

Well, there you are!

It's become pretty much impossible to write satire as the United States continues to slips terrifying closer to the Great Toilet Bowl of History. I was going to do a funny thing about how those of us who who self-identify as llamas are increasingly skeptical of sheep…not to mention those damned alpacas, but that was before a "top" American Indian scholar was revealed to be…wait for it…wait for it…pasty white like me. No, that's not true…my great grandmother on my father's side was a blood Cherokee who made me memorize the names of my people who died on the Trail of Tears and who gave me the best advice anyone ever gave me: "Don't trust white men."

I don't. Never have. Well, except maybe Don Worsham, who is out mowing his lawn.

I strongly recommend you listen to tomorrow's podcast on our SHOOTING GALLERY New Zealand adventure. It's gonna rock, and the podcast will fill you in.

Woke up this morning at 3:30AM all jet-lagged to hell, so I made a list of firearms projects I wanted to accomplish before winter. I'd better get started!

The Hunt of a Lifetime

Always dreamed of hunting a red stag...this one worked out real well. A 91 yard shot after a VERY hard day of hiking up a mountain chasing the old boy. Complete report on this week's podcast, but I wanted to give you a quick load-out:

• Rifle: Ruger GUNSITE Scout, .308 with the following modifications from Cylinder and Slide Shop:

--XS full-length rail
--Timney Trigger
-- DPMS/Jerry Miculek muzzle brake

• Magazines: Ruger 5-round polymer
• Scope: Swarovski Z3 3-9X 36mm
• Rings: Burris Zee-Rings
• Sling: Galco Safari Ching Sling
• Bipod: Harris 6-9 inch swivel
• Cheek Piece: FTW Ranch/SAAM
• Ammo: Hornady Superformance 150-gr GMX; BTW, this round is listed at 2939 fps, but for the sake of my charts I went with 2750 fps out of the shorter Scout barrel
• Rangefinder: Leupold RX-800i (I think this has been discontinued)
• Binos: Steiner Military and Marine 8X30
• Bino Harness: Bushnell Deluxe
• Knife: Blade-Tech Pro Hunter

Otherwise, pretty straightforward — belt from Wilderness Tactical, suspenders from VTAC,  outerwear from Cabelas (the Silent Suede is killer!!!), base layers and socks a mix of expedition stuff I've used over the years, pants are plain old boring Wrangler Upland Hunting pants.

I cannot speak highly enough of the boots! I used the Lowa Renegade GTX Gore-Tex boot, and it is one of the finest boots I've ever owned. I used the Lowa Desert Boot exclusively in Africa, and the Renegade is my go-to boot in Colorado. For hard, rocky hiking in NZ, the boot was perfect. Even in the driving rain, my feet were never wet.

Our guide was Shane Johnson at Four Seasons Safaris outside of Christchurch. He was just wonderful. Shane came highly recommended by my friend Tim Fallon at FTW Ranch. The accommodations were perfect the food was great and the company beyond compare.

THE FINE PRINT: Let me clarify a couple of points before you even ask...Ruger has been and remains a sponsor, as does Hornady. I have more rounds through my Scout than any other bolt action I've ever owned, and the majority of those rounds are Hornady Superformance. Burris and XS have been sponsors at various times. The Steiners were a gift when we visited Steiner in Germany with Joe Mantegna a couple of years back...probably the best cheap binos in the world. The Pro-Hunter is a gift from my dear friend Tim Wegner, the founder of Blade-Tech...it has my name on it.

Otherwise, I got this stuff the same way you might get it...I agonized over the choices and finally bought what I thought I needed. It all worked! The great photos were taken by our DP, Brook Aiken. You'll get to see the whole thing on SHOOTING GALLERY 2016!!!!

Paging Auntie Em! Bring the Gun Cleaner, Too!

Oh, but anyway, Toto, we're home. Home! And this is my room, and you're all here. And I'm not gonna leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all, and - oh, Auntie Em - there's no place like home!

Dorothy, last lines

The Wizard of Oz

Yes indeedy, Toto! We are indeed home from Kiwi-Land with stories of great derring-do to tell, massive meats to eats and slain beasites of all wont to adorn the wall of the Bunker's great room. We also got the World's greatest vegetarian cookbook and a potholder in a sheep motif. Living large, we are!

I'll be updating this post over the course of the day, and of course Wednesday's podcast will be Radio Free Kiwi!

Quick note...amazing how much my country has diminished in the week I've been gone! I left at least a semblance of America, once the greatest country on earth, and returned to Gautamala On The Potomic, a country deeply concerned about "General Lee" salt and pepper shakers, obsessed with the mass production of groom-groom and bride-bride wedding cake toppers and reeling from the worst sturgeon attack in the nation's history.