Really, these ‘reboots’ and unwanted sequels in The Terminator franchise are getting rather lame. BUT…once in while, there’s a nugget. Such as this:
To be honest, I was a little underwhelmed with the gun room. My own is a bit more…densely populated…than that one. But…I guess they needed to save money for all the CGI.
But the summation of why he has all these guns ‘around’? Spot on.
Literally the front page of todays local newspaper:
I have no problem with anyone being a Socialist…or a Communist. Or a Democrat, Muslim, Nationalist, Racist, Sexist, or any other affiliation or belief. After all, you are a sovereign individual and can believe whatever you want. I have no right to tell anyone what to believe in the privacy of their own skull. It’s when you try to impose those beliefs on those who don’t share them…..well, thats when the violence starts. You wanna be a Socialist, go be a Socialist. Get all your Socialist buddies, set up your Socialist commune, and live your Socialist lives. Just don’t force me to live by how you think I should live. And that goes for politics, religion, etc. Ron Paul summed it up nicely as such….
So, no…I don’t think you should shoot people for being Socialists. I think you should shoot people for trying to force Socialism onto people who don’t want it.
Perhaps I haven’t looked as intently as I should, but doesn’t it seem like that among all the canned vegetables out there in the supermarket there is a notable lack of canned onions?
Oh, you can buy a bottle of itty bitty cocktail onions. And you can buy onion powder, onion salt, onion rings, freeze dried onion, dehydrated onion, and that sort of thing…but…no actual canned onions. I can walk down the vegetable aisle and find canned potatoes, canned tomatoes, canned peas, canned green beans, canned corn, canned beets, canned everything…but not onions.
When the apocalypse comes, I need to be able to put some onion on my cheeseburger.
Now, I’m not exactly sure why there seems to be a lack of canned full-sized onions out there but I have some theories. I wonder if, since a whole onion is layers and layers of material, onions are unsuitable for canning because bacteria or air can be trapped inbetween those layers? But…the pressure canning should bring the temperature up high enough to kill anything in the onion, right? Or perhaps the onion loses its flavor as it leeches out into the water used to fill the canning jar, leaving you with a flavorless vegetable.
I suppose I should just break out the All American and some canning jars and see what happens if I try canning a whole onion. But, it is an interesting mystery to me.
So, while I suspect my post-apocalypse cheeseburgers and stir fries will be devoid of onion slices, I can still make my various sauces and whatnot with the dried chopped onions the folks at the LDS cannery so generously make available.
And, for your own edification and amusement, a fairly comprehensive treatise on how to store onions…note that while pickling is mentioned, regular canning is glossed over almost to the point of being not even mentioned.
‘Tis a sad state of affairs I find myself in. I used to make fun of people who bought guns and never took them out to shoot. And, now, I have become that which I ridiculed. I have, at the moment, no less than a dozen guns that I have not yet taken to the range and function checked. That’s alot of guns sitting around in an existential state of limbo… can’t pack ’em away if I don’t know for a fact that they work just fine.
Im going to try and get my act together and pack up some range gear and head out tomorrow. I’m hoping the weather will be at least somewhat amenable.
What to shoot? I desperately want to get the .44 Redhawk and .44 Marlin on paper so I can clean ’em up, oil ’em down, and tuck ’em away. I also very much want to shoot the new Ruger 9mm carbine and see if it lives up to the hype. And, I think theres at least a couple 9mm’s that need to get a few hundred rounds through them before they get packed away for the Deep Sleep.
Fortunately, because of my enjoyment of shooting guns this will be more like fun than work. But…it does need to get done. I’ve been remiss in keeping up on regular range trips.
As somewhat regular readers know, one of my culinary staples around here is ‘the meat tray‘. Succinctly, the local Albertsons takes four meat products that are either slow movers or closing in on their ‘must use by’ dates and bundles ’em up in a tray and sells it for $20. It’s almost always a 3# tube of ground beef, some cut of chicken, sausage of some kind, and some pork. One tray, and a modest amount of cooking talent, can cover a weeks’ worth of dining.
Also, I patrol the meat aisle once (or twice) a day looking for stuff marked down 50% that can go in my freezer. Yesterday was a case of the stars lining up just so:
Meat Tray at 50% off. No matter how you cut it, ten bucks for a meat tray is a good deal. So, time to cook. Needed some canned tomatoes so I trotted to the basement and pulled these off the shelf:
Canned tomatoes that have been sitting in the classic ‘cool, dry place’ since 2015. Two years past the ‘best buy’ date. Status? Just fine. Tomato products, because of their acidity, are notorious for having can failure in medium- to long-term storage. This also happens with any other food product with high acidity…pineapple, for example. (By the way, to my way of thinking, five-to-ten years is pretty much where I catalog things as ‘medium-term storage’. More than ten is what I consider long-term storage.) So, as a precaution, I check the cans for any bulging or that sort of thing and give the contents a careful eyeing. But…thats a good practice for any canned food.
This is what that whole store-what-you-eat-and-eat-what-you-store thing looks like.
It’s the beginning of the year so this is probably a good time for me to go inventory the stored food and replace whats been consumed over the year. Just refilled one of the rice buckets the other day, so i need to pick up at least anouther couple 25# bags of rice. The deep freeze, especially, got a workout this previous year and I need to top it off. Too bad those 50% deals on the meat trays are so scarce.
Minding my own business the other day and I stumbled into a Ruger 77/22 Hornet that had been rechambered to KHornet. Price….oh, you’re gonna hate me…..$250.
Im a Ruger guy, and I love me some Ruger 77, but the KHornet was useless to me…except for turning it into something slightly more useful. So…a little poking around, some creative pricing, and I flipped it for a lot more than I paid for it. Now, what to do with that money. Well, let’s go check ArmsList and see if anyone local is in the mood to take a beating. Sure enough….found one of these, a BX-25 mag, with a gun case and a Chineseium red dot scope for $150. And no paperwork. So I got back all my money that was outlaid for the KHornet, picked up another 10/22, and had a few bucks left over.
That’s how it’s done guys. Started the week with $250…ended the week with $250 and a 10/22 and some cash.
I’ll probably tear off all that furniture and put the barreled receiver into one of the several normal 10/22 stocks I have laying about. If I need a .22 AR simulator I’ll just drop my CMMG kit in one of my ARs.
This was 10/22 #8. Two more and I’m done on 10/22’s.
The media really is the most blatant example of the self-licking ice cream cone when it comes to the end of the world. Anyone remember a few weeks ago when, after the US turned an Iranian general into aerosol form, the media was telling us World War III was about to start? And how it was a foolish military event that would precipitate the Middle East plunging into chaos and the draft would be reinstated and we’d all die at the hands of Iranian sleeper squads and…and…and…:::crickets:::. The Iranians lobbed some missiles to save face in the eyes of their neighbors and…thats been about it.
But, oh the wailing and gnashing of teeth that the media engaged in.
And now, the Chinese have, somehow, got a virus going on that’s going to sweep the planet and we’re all going to catch it. OMG!!!11!!!11111!
:::yawn::: I’ve been to this dance before. Let’s see….SARS, Bird Flu, Ebola, and at least a few other strains of flu. And in every single case there was no impact bigger than what a heavy snowfall would cause in a major city. No barricades, no cities being cordoned off, no martial law, no empty grocery shelves.
Just think how traffic-free the commute will be afterwards
Look, I’m not a medical professional. I’m not even a medical hobbyist or amateur. But what I am is someone who has heard ‘the sky is falling’ from the media so many times that it’s hard no t to be jaded. Especially when, according to MSNBC, we were all supposed to be radioactive debris from Iranian nuclear bombs a few weeks ago. Sure, maybe this time the media is right but….good grief, what are the odds of that? People with a more medical background, like Aesop or Reltney may tell me I’m wrong and that I should be taking this a tad more seriously than I am but…I dunno…
Look, I’ve already got enough food, fuel, water, power, ammo, etc. to let me lock the door and sit here for a few months if I really needed to. So even if the media actually rolled a seven this time, I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine. Especially since it looks like hand washing and regular flu precautions (not licking doorknobs, etc) seems to be the way to stop the spread. Wash my hands? Not let people sneeze into my mouth? I can do that.
Anything different at Zero’s humble abode? Nope. Not a thing. No last minute grocery hoarding, no 55-gallon drum of Purell, no pallet of bleach wipes, no hazmat suit. Business as usual with the only noticeable change being even less desire than normal to engage in air travel. And at a reported(!) 5% mortality rate, I’m just not concerned. Wake me when Capt. Trips gets released..then I’ll get busy.
You guys remember this post from last month about the guy that was cutting up his deer, slipped with the knife, and almost bled out? Well, with that in mind /gundeals on Reddit turned me onto this deal.
Ordered. More than one.
Well, first thing you gotta do is set the mood. So….theme music.
And now, the backstory.
You youngun’s might not remember, but back in the day when you wanted a .223 ‘assault rifle’ you pretty much had two choices – a genuine Colt AR-15 or, if you were on a budget, a Ruger Mini-14. Now, back then you could get your Mini-14 in a couple special flavors. Most notably, the ‘GB’ model. The GB, it is said, stood for ‘government bayonet’ in that it was the ‘government’ (military/police) model and featured a bayonet mount.
Mini-14 GB model.
There was also a model of GB that featured a rather interesting folding stock. You can see it in pretty much any episode of the A-Team.
The movie was actually pretty good.
Unlike the TV show, where they dumped a couple mags every episode and never hit anybody.
The folding stock was…interesting. Like all folding stocks it was , at best, merely adequate as a stock but the cool factor was off the charts.
When the ‘Assault Weapons’ ban of 1994 rolled around, Bill Ruger, the guy in charge at Ruger, famously opined that no honest man needs more than ten rounds in his gun.
In addition to not being willing to sell mags holding more than 10 rounds to anyone except Only Ones, Billy Ruger also pulled the folding stock Mini-14 from ‘civilian’ sales. Fortunately, Bill Ruger died before the Assault Weapons ban sunsetted in 2004 and at that point the company was now making smart decisions that didn’t alienate its core customer base. Thus, not only were magazines flowing freely again, Ruger even introduced guns that would have probably never come out if Bill Ruger was still breathing.
But…the folding stock fo the Mini-14 was absent.
To the best of my knowledge, Ruger never reintroduced the folding stock for the Mini-14. I suppose they might have done some for contract sales to an agency somewhere but these days the odds of some agency saying “No, no…lets skip the AR-pattern guns and instead buy a more expensive gun with 1940’s ergonomics, a proprietary magazine, and a history of questionable accuracy” seem mighty slim.
But nature, and the free market, abhor a vacuum. And so some enterprising outfit not only is bringing back the folder, but Ruger, according to the article, even gave them their moulds to do it. Read about it here.
I picked up a couple Mini-14’s last year, including a GB model. And while the Mini-14 is, basically, a range toy for me I still desperately want one of these stocks to slap on it for no real practical reason except…dammit…it’s cool.
So, the folks who are supposed to be developing it still don’t have it on their website but SHOT show is this month and I expect it to be introduced there and then available for pre-order. But…I will get one, yes.
And, of course, everyone who thinks that they are being clever will post some sort of comment about ‘a plan comes together’ or ‘pity the fool’. Yeah..not actually clever.
Hadn’t had a zombie dream in a while. Short version was that it was a house full of zombies and I had a pistol gripped shotgun which was, in the dream, a really lousy choice. Ammo capacity was way too low, reloading was way too cumbersome, and fast followups were abysmal. In the dream I wound up tossing the shotgun and ran to grab my M4 which, as it turned out, only had one 30-rd mag in it. Opening a bedroom door to find a dozen zombies suddenly intent on exiting that room…well…a fast-firing carbine would really have been preferred. Now, I know zombies aren’t real and that dreams don’t necessarily have any bearing on reality. But…there was some interesting food for thought in there.
Speaking of zombies, I am several seasons behind on both versions of The Walking Dead. I just haven’t had the time or, really, interest. Real life intrudes. However, I was in Barnes and Noble the other day (yes, an actual bookstore still exists) and they had the Manhattan-phone-book-sized compendiums of TWD comics (or graphic novels, I suppose). Tempted to buy them but Zero ain’t paying $60 for a picture book that doesn’t have naked women and dirty words in it. Honestly, I’d rather take the same $60 and pick up 400 rounds of 115 FMJ 9mm for when the zombies really do show up.