Recently Phoenix was hit with a few storms, and one occurred over a Saturday afternoon. No problem. I can just hang out here, right? Sure. This however was no ordinary Saturday, it was one where we had one of these, and I simply didn’t want to go outside. Would you go outside during one of these?
Probably not. So it was one of those afternoons where I tell my kids to go somewhere else in the house and find something to put on for noise. Sadly, I didn’t have the remote. I never have the remote. Why? Because I am not normally interested in what is on TV; live sports, DIY, and Food Network being an exception. So I don’t care what is on because I’m probably just going to ignore it anyway. My wife picked a Netflix show called, GLOW.
This is my review of Unity Vibration Raspberry Kombucha Beer.
I hope you appreciate this is a free service I provide.
Prior to the storm I went to Sprouts and found this while waiting for the butcher to finish my order. I can’t watch women wrestling in the 80’s while sober; its just weird. Kombucha seemed an appropriate choice.
You heard me. Its about women wrestling—in the 80’s!
The story begins where two actresses are at their aerobics class. I paid little attention to the dialogue, but they’re both out of work and the story line takes off when one later finds out the other slept with her husband. Cue the main conflict. One is significantly more attractive in the opinion of many that recall the 80’s fondly–specifically, she’s a buxom blonde. Next they add in more conflict at the audition, where two women are questioning why are they there. They are both relived to find out it isn’t porn, but mildly disturbed it is wrestling.
The director of this whole thing is a hilarious composite of 80’s tropes between the thick glasses, the power-stache, alcoholism, and womanizing. He embodies the type of toxic masculinity that quite frankly is missing from popular culture. Yes, he’s a dick, but he’s kind of the glue that binds all these people together and frankly that’s probably why you will watch beyond episode 1.
Coming to Comicon!
Another reason is you might find “Wolf Girl” strangely compelling, as she is the only character not playing a character within a character. She’s just “Wolf Girl.” The rest of the girls are hilarious stereotypes that outside the context of 80’s culture would never be seen anywhere. Some are okay, the Valley Girl, and the British girl named, “Britannica,” for example. Others are intentionally offensive, such as the Hindu girl playing a Libyan Terrorist, the Asian girl playing a character named, “Fortune Cookie,” and a Black Actress as the character called, “Welfare Queen.”
Most of the plot revolves around the actresses learning to wrestle, finding a character to play, the blonde lady coming to terms with being a headliner for a wrestling show, having nobody else to pair in the act but with her former home-wrecker friend, and her former home-wrecker friend being unable to find a character. That is until she figures out how to counter the blonde’s character as an All-American, Apple Pie type appropriately named, “Liberty Belle.”
…I was wrong, this is coming to Comicon near you!
Naturally, her nemesis is a Soviet agent named, “Zoya the Destroyer.”
The show is filled with good one liners. Once they actually get around to performing in front of live audiences does the plot start to slow down. They could’ve stopped there, but they didn’t. If you get to this point, you’re probably just going to finish the season just to find out what happens.
So what in the hell is Kombucha? It’s a probiotic tea fancied by the crunchy vegan types at Whole Foods and Sprouts. Its meant to replace the “good” bacteria in the digestive tract. I don’t recommend it unless you simultaneously spent the weekend snorting a Z-pack and are lactose intolerant. In this situation, they simply let the bacterial cultures ferment until it comes to a high enough ABV they can reasonably market it as beer. It’s not beer. It’s an affront to humanity.
So the bottom line, this show is silly but you might like it, so check it out before they make it suck like the X-Files. This drink is also silly, and you’ll probably hate it. Try it at your peril. Unity Vibration Raspberry Kombucha: 1.1/5
True story from yesterday: I went to a grocery store near my office to pick up some Beyond Burgers (make fun all you want, they’re delicious, at least when you can find them) that have a marketing gimmick of being placed in the meat section of the store, rather than with the other veggie burgers. As usual, I couldn’t find them, but I spotted a store employee unloading some meat into the case and asked him if he knew where they were placed. “I never heard of it.What are they?” I explained that they were some of the latest generation of fake meat. “Oh, we keep all that shit over in the frozen foods section.” I told him that I had checked there, no they weren’t there, and that I usually found them right about where he was standing. He said, “Huh. lemme check with someone who might know.”
He walked around the corner and spotted a rather tall, thin woman also unloading meat into a refrigerator case. “Hey, Natasha, this guy is lookin’ for something called a ‘Beyond Burger.’ Ever heard of that?” She replied in a thick Russian accent, “I go in back and see if it is in cold room and bring back.” She disappeared into the back of the store, and I casually said, “So she’s gonna bring back Moose and Squirrel?”
Totally blank look.
He did have his revenge, though. Natasha brought them out, he looked at them and read through the ingredients, shook his head sadly, and handed them to me. I said, “Seriously, these aren’t the usual hockey pucks, they’re really good, and my wife swears that they’re almost indistinguishable from high quality hamburgers.”
“I tried some of that Boca shit a few years back. It was shit.”
“Yes, Boca is shit, but this is different. Try them.”
He grinned widely and said,”Ahh, no thanks, but hope you enjoy ’em.” Then as I walked away, he yelled to another worker, “Hey, Frank, this guy wants me to eat some burger thing made outta seaweed!”
Ahh, Chicago!
In anniversaries and birthdays today, there’s a very special one to me: it’s the 60th anniversary of the publication of Lolita. And perhaps not coincidentally, the birthday of Roman Polanski. Also photobombing congresschimp and all-around comedy relief Louie Gohmert.
“I humbly apologize to Representative Chang, her husband, Mr. Gray, and to the broader Asian American community for those disparaging remarks. In the divisive age we find ourselves in, I should not contribute further to that divisiveness. I have reached out to Representative Chang to meet with her so that I may apologize to her in person. I pray she and the Asian American community can find it in their hearts to forgive me.”
Of course, an hour later, she wanted to slur Chang again.
If you’re like me, the Outrage Machine is a source of amusement. SP is not as amused as I am and gets angry about this stuff, but she’ll outgrow that. Or maybe not. Today’s hilarity is, as is has been for the past two years, TDS at its finest, as The Donald had the temerity to say kind things in memory of Aretha Franklin. HOW DARE HE!!!!!
When Trump says Aretha “worked for him many times,” he says with the arrogance of a slave owner…
SP’s point, which is 110% true, is that Trump does so much actual stupid shit, and gets away with it because his opponents are busy screaming incoherently and reflexively about unimportant or (in this case) non-existent shit.
“A small college can’t just keep adding majors,” President Jose Bowen said in a statement to the Baltimore Sun. “Sometimes we need to move resources from one to another and subtract too… We believe [scrapping programs in math and physics] is an opportunity for existing programs to come together in new configurations that speak in exciting ways to Goucher College’s ideals of social responsibility, environmental sustainability, and international studies.”
The woman was one of four victims who spoke at the sentencing for Powell who was convicted in March of 60 counts, including 24 counts of aggravated sexual assault, in connection with forcing his way into motel rooms and forcing the couples to have sex at gunpoint, then locking the men in bathrooms and sexually assaulting the women.
The challengers argue the law infringes on free speech because it requires them to publish information about political ad buyers. The newspapers also say the law includes onerous requirements for them to make data on ad buyers available to election officials on request.
“Russian meddling” now seems to be the new universal excuse for Team Blue to use the constitution as toilet paper. In a just world, there would be a long row of woodchippers in Annapolis to reduce waiting time.
Old Guy Music! And a bit less avant garde than last week’s selection. This week, we have Detroit’s finest guitarist, Kenny Burrell, accompanied by my favorite jazz bassist and drummer. This is some fucking great playing.
ZARDOZ SPEAK TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. HAVING RAISED YOU FROM BRUTALITY, TO SNARK AT THE BRUTALS WHO ARE LEGION…IT IS TIME AGAIN FOR ZARDOZ TO REMIND YOU OF HOW DEBASED THE BRUTALS ARE. HE WILL DO THIS THROUGH THE LINKS! GO FORTH AND READ! ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN.
ZARDOZ WONDER HOW ONE SAYS “HILLARY CLINTON” IN BAMBARA? HOWEVER, ZARDOZ MUST SUPPORT ANY CANDIDATE THAT IS NAMED Soumaila. ZARDOZ WONDERS HOW HE FEELS ABOUT ROADZ?
THAT THERE EXISTS SUCH A BRUTAL AS “BANANA GIRL” INDICTS ALL BRUTALS, EVERYWHERE. EXTERMINATORS, MOUNT UP!
TARGET “BANANA GIRL”
ZARDOZ IS QUITE SURE THIS WILL NOT BE SOLD AS SOME SORT OF “FIGHTING GALACTIC TRUMP”. NOSIREE! … ZARDOZ IS EXPERIMENTING WITH SARCASM. DID IT WORK?
ZARDOZ SEES THAT EVEN THOUGH THE BRUTALS OF AIRSTRIP ONE ARE DENIED THE GIFT OF THE GUN, THEY ARE WORKING ON THEIR CLEANSING SKILLS. ZARDOZ IS PLEASED.
Despite what The Cure may tell you, it is Friday that always comes too late. I’m done with this week. Been done for a while. So done. Time to crack open the office bottle and work my way through that until I can call it the weekend. I took my wife out to dinner last night because my mother is a saint and offered to watch the kids for a night. We ended up going all two miles down to the beach, where we had a nice dinner next to eight stereotypical Alabamans. How stereotypical? They shouted, “Roll Tide!” before doing a round of shots. I’m sure there are a lot of nice people in Alabama.
Florida Man had a rough day yesterday when his GTA LARP was interrupted by police.
Dubois was charged with two counts of Grand Theft Motor Vehicle, one count of Attempted Grand Theft Motor Vehicle, three counts of Burglary to a Conveyance, two counts of Burglary to an Occupied Dwelling, three counts of Leaving the Scene of a Crash with Property Damage, one count of Burglary/Battery, one count of Battery, two counts of Possession of a Controlled Substance, and three felony warrants for Violation of Probation- Grand Theft Motor Vehicle.
Don’t get me wrong. Some regulations should be eliminated because they’re just too costly relative to the protections they provide. But many regulations protect you and me from being harmed, fleeced, shafted, injured, or sickened by corporate products and services. And they’re worth it.
Yet Trump is taking a meat axe to all regulations. In so doing, he’s creating a new form of trickle-down economics—where the benefits go to corporate executives and major investors, while the costs and risks land on the rest of us.
Socialist It Girl bans media from town hall meeting
“We wanted to help create a space where community members felt comfortable and open to express themselves without the distraction of cameras and press. These were the first set of events where the press has been excluded,” said Trent. “This is an outlier and will not be the norm. We’re still adjusting our logistics to fit Alexandria’s national profile.”
Translation: Every time she goes on camera, her numbers go down
I love these breathless takes about the disappearance of the young lady from Iowa, especially the source that is citing from the FBI profiler playbook. At this point everyone who has ever read a single police thriller knows all of these things:
The 20-year-old Iowa college student was last seen on July 18 before she vanished without a trace. Police have followed hundreds of leads but have yet to follow one to Mollie, but it is believed she was kidnaped by someone she knew who is inserting himself into the investigation.
A source close to the FBI told Radar Online that authorities believe Mollie’s abductor is hiding in plain sight and even attended a vigil held for the missing student.
“There is reason to believe the person responsible for Mollie’s disappearance attended a vigil and has continued to closely follow the case,” the source said.
Oh what the hell, I worked too hard on the links to go deep on the music.
In my forty-odd years of being a shooting sports aficionado, I’ve learned that like me, most gun nuts like reading about guns and shooting sports almost as much as they like the sports themselves. The explosion of the Information Revolution has resulted in a plethora of scribes talking about guns and shooting, but back in the old days of paper and ink, the market was a lot tighter.
Nevertheless, the shooting scene saw some great gun scribes from a variety of backgrounds. We had cops and cowboys, hunters and target shooters, and some of them were prolific writers. Like must gun cranks, I had my favorites.
So here they are, in some sort of particular order.
Jack O’Connor (1902-1978)
Jack O’Connor with a mountain sheep.
Jack O’Connor was probably the Dean of American gun writers. One of my favorite bits of his work was an article for Outdoor Life titled “Moose Are Too Big,” in which he described being on an Alaskan trip when he was asked to help find and kill a moose for camp meat. The story revolved not around the hunt but the ordeal of dressing, quartering, boning and packing out hundreds of pounds of moose meat, about which O’Connor expressed a preference for birds: “You can shoot a quail, put it in your pocket and go find another.”
O’Connor did nevertheless spend much of his career hunting big game. He was an early advocate for the .270 Winchester cartridge for game up to and including elk, emphasizing the importance of marksmanship and shot placement over raw power. (Not that you can’t have both.)
O’Connor’s books include:
Game in the Desert
Hunting in the Rockies
Sporting Guns
The Rifle Book
Hunting with a Binocular
Sportsman’s Arms and Ammunition Manual
The Big-Game Rifle
Jack O’Connor’s Gun Book
The Outdoor Life Shooting Book
The Complete Book of Rifles and Shotguns
The Big Game Animals of North America
Jack O’Connor’s Big Game Hunts
The Shotgun Book
The Art of Hunting Big Game in North America
Horse and Buggy West: A Boyhood on the Last Frontier
The Complete Book of Shooting
The Hunting Rifle
Rifle and Shotgun Shooting Basics
Sheep and Sheep Hunting
Game in the Desert Revisited
The Best of Jack O’Connor
The Hunter’s Shooting Guide
Hunting Big Game
The Last Book: Confessions of an Outdoor Gun Editor
Hunting on Three Continents with Jack O’Connor
Elmer Keith (1899-1984)
Keith’s autobiography, a crackin’ good read.
Elmer Keith was a prolific gun writer; his book Sixguns is a personal favorite of mine, having survived the test of time to still be one of the best all-around books on revolvers and revolver shooting available. His biggest claim to fame in the shooting world is probably his role in the creation of the .44 Magnum cartridge, which was based on heavy .44 Special loads he devised for the N-frame Smith & Wesson revolvers. He was a fan of the Smith & Wesson Triple Lock, calling it the “finest revolver ever devised,” and Keith was an early convert to Bill Ruger’s placing modern lockwork and sights on the classic American single-actions, resulting in the now-classic Ruger Blackhawk. On hunting rifles, he was a staunch advocate of big guns; he co-developed the .333 OKH wildcat and was an early proponent of the .338 Winchester Magnum.
Funny thing; Jack O’Connor and big-gun advocate Elmer Keith were contemporaries in the American shooting scene, but they held differing views on hunting rifles and sidearms and cordially (and sometimes not-so-cordially) detested each other for many years.
Keith’s books include:
Sixgun Cartridges and Loads
Big Game Rifles and Cartridges
Keith’s Rifles for Larger Game
Elmer Keith’s Big Game Hunting
Shotguns
Sixguns
Guns and Ammo for Hunting Big Game, with John Lachuk.
Safari
Keith, An Autobiography
Hell, I Was There (autobiography)
Townsend Whelen (1877-1961)
Whelen’s “On Your Own in the Wilderness.”
(Army) Colonel Whelen is best known for his experiments on wildcat rounds based on the then-standard military-issue rifle cartridge, the Caliber .30, Model of 1906. The .35 Whelen was accorded legitimacy by Remington some years back, but his other efforts, including the .25 Whelen, .375 Whelen and the .400 Whelen never gained much traction, although the .25-06 wildcat that became the .25-06 Remington was very similar to the .25 Whelen.
While Colonel Whelen wrote several books, my favorite of his works appeared in Outdoor Life around 1910 and described a several-months adventure he embarked on with a friend, a saddle horse and pack horse each, a rifle each, plenty of ammo and his buddy’s dog. Red-Letter Days in British Columbia is a must-read for any outdoor nut.
Whelen’s books include:
Suggestions to Military Riflemen
The American Rifle
Telescopic Rifle Sights
The Hunting Rifle
Small Arms and Ballistics
Hunting Big Game (of which he was the editor)
Amateur Gunsmithing
Why Not Load Your Own?
Col. Charles Askins, Jr (1907-1999)
Can’t really add much to that title.
You’ve got to love a guy whose autobiography is entitled Unrepentant Sinner. (Dammit, he stole my title.) Askins had two careers, one in the U.S. Army and one in the Border Patrol, and claimed at least 27 men killed in armed combat, which is probably nearly a record in the 20th century. So, when it comes to the deployment of a sidearm in combat, he knew of whence he wrote. He was something of an unsavory character, claiming at one point in his later years that he hunted game because he was no longer allowed to hunt men, but his survival in some nasty environments speaks volumes of his skills with a firearm.
Askins’ books include:
Hitting the Bull’s-Eye
The Art of Handgun Shooting
Wing and Trap Shooting
The Pistol Shooter’s Book
Unrepentant Sinner: The Autobiography of Col. Charles Askins
The Gunfighters: True Tales of Outlaws, Lawmen, and Indians on the Texas Frontier
Shotgun-ology: A Handbook of Useful Shotgun Information
The African Hunt
Asian jungle, African Bush
The Shotgunner’s Book – A Modern Encyclopedia
Texans, Guns & History
The Federalist
Bill Jordan (1911-1977)
Bill Jordan demonstrating the quick draw.
Bill Jordan’s book on handgun combat, No Second Place Winner, was the result of his long career as a lawman. He was also a Marine, with service in WW2 and Korea, leaving the Corps with the rank of Colonel.
Jordan was a lawman back when lawmen was not the visored, armored paramilitary forces we see in our cities today; his armor was a shirt, his only recourse against bad guys was a holstered revolver and cuffs. He was a master with the double-action revolver, once having been recorded drawing, firing and hitting his target in .28 seconds – and he instructed James Arness in fast-draw techniques for Arness’ role as Marshall Dillon in Gunsmoke. Jordan’s thoughts on guns in general and combat handguns in particular are still worth reading.
Jordan’s books include:
No Second Place Winner
Mostly Huntin’
Tales of the Rio Grande
Warren Page (1910-1977)
While the saying “only accurate rifles are interesting” is bandied about a lot and is frequently named a quote from Townsend Whelen, it’s originally attributed to Warren Page, and few have done as much to spread the cause of accurate rifles than he did.
Gun Greats: Norm Williams, Bill Ruger, Warren Page, Joyce Hornady and Clyde Willey.
Page was responsible for the greatest name ever for a wildcat rifle cartridge; he took the old .244 Remington case and blew it out to a 28-degree shoulder and called it the .240 Page Souper Pooper. It was a good round, largely eclipsed now in wildcatting circles by the .243 Improved.
Page’s books include:
The Accurate Rifle
One Man’s Wilderness
Col. Jeff Cooper (1920-2006)
The Browning/Colt 1911 pistol never had a more ardent advocate than Jeff Cooper. A retired Marine, Cooper also promoted the use of the rifle, stating in his book The Art of the Rifle, “…the rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.” That’s a good point lost on all too many folks today, but Colonel Cooper was a man of a simpler time.
Colonel Cooper also coined the term hoplophobia, meaning to have an irrational fear of gadgetry – especially weapons.
Colonel Cooper making a couple of points.
Cooper’s books include:
Principles of Personal Defense
Another Country: Personal Adventures of the Twentieth Century
C Stories
Fire Works
Shotluck
To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth
The Art of the Rifle
The Modern Technique of the Pistol
Yukon Journal
A Man in Full
Cooper on Handguns
Handguns Afield
Guns of the Old West
Fighting Handguns
Custom Rifles
Honorable Mention: Denis McLoughlin (1918-2002)
Denis McLoughlin was not, strictly speaking, a gun writer. But if you’re interested in the Old West, his book Wild & Woolly – An Encyclopedia of the Old West is an essential reference. Ever wondered what Valley Tan was and where it originated? Heard of the Dog Soldiers but weren’t sure who they were? Don’t know who Annie Moses, Martha Jane Cannary, Alfred Swartz or Melvin King were? Wild & Wooly will tell you. Ever wondered where the Llano Estacado, Inscription Rock or the Mormon Trail were? Ah, but Denis McLoughlin has the answer! Funny thing is, he was a Brit.
Reading about guns isn’t as much fun as shooting them. But imagine the ammo costs if you spent as much time shooting as you can be reading. Take a browse through any of the authors listed here; you won’t be disappointed. Read, and enjoy!
The NFL season gets closer and closer. And college is just two weeks away!!! Until then, we’ve got some baseball. And according to someone, here is how things should finish up. Can’t say I agree with all of that, but ok then. Oh, and yesterday’s results were: the Rays stung the Yankees. The Metropolitans annihilated the Phillies, The Cubs blanked the Pirates, The Nationals cooled off the surging Cardinals, the Phillies got some revenge in the nightcap against the Mets, the Rockies beat the Braves, the Rangers topped the Angels (and pulled off a triple play!), the MINNESOOOOODA TWIIIIIINS!!!!! beat the Tigers, the Royals beat Team Canada, and the Diamondbacks took their NL West lead to 2 with a win over the Padres.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shoutout to Brandt Snedeker, who shot a 59 in his first round at the Wyndham Championship. And he bogeyed his first hole, too. That’s freaking incredible.
It takes the whole British Army and Navy to get her bra off.
OK, on to the birthday boys and girls. If there are any birthday Glibs out there, let us know in the comments. And I’ll let you know that you share the date with: Davy…Davy Crockett “king of the wild frontier”, movie producer Samuel Goldwyn, hottie actress Mae West, Chinese commie Jiang Zemin, pilot Francis Gary Powers, actor Robert “Punchy” DeNiro, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, drummer Sib Hashian, brilliant driver Nelson Piquet, guitarists Eric Johnson and Colin Moulding, singer Belinda Carlisle, murder victim David Koresh, moron Sean Penn, football coach “Chucky”, and all-around douchebag Christian Laettner.
Its also the day Losantville, OH was founded…it would later be called Cincinnati, Charles Darwin left South America for the last time, the first ever air mail took off (in a balloon in 1859), Wagner’s Gotterdammerung debuted, General George Patton entered Messina to complete the conquest of Sicily, Orwell’s “Animal Farm” was first published, 1957 Baseball player Richie Ashburn fouls and hits fan Alice Roth twice in the same game at bat playing for the Philadelphia Phillies, 1st hit breaks her nose, 2nd one hits her while she is on the stretcher (sorry, I had to post the whole thing because it made me laugh), “Life Of Brian” hit theaters, and Bill Clinton admitted under oath that he did in fact have sexual relations with Monica Lewenski.
Still laughing about poor Alice Roth. Anyway, here are…the links!
Twitter continues to be an enemy of free speech. And to those who clapped like retarded seals when Alex Jones got banned/unpersoned by googlefacebookyoutubeapple, keep clapping until it happens to you, you bunch of dumbasses.
Cops are called to home of mentally ill man. Mentally ill man with pill bottles for mental illness in hands freaks out. Cops handcuff man. Cops taser handcuffed man.Handcuffed man dies. Cops involved (FOUR OF THEM!) all get at least a two month vacation. And nothing else will happen.
Sorry your dad doesn’t care for free association, kid.
Father takes kid to first day at private school. Child is sent home because of his hair. School receiving death threats from morons. Bonus social signaling point: Talcum X has weighed in too!
“Was that wrong? Was I not supposed to do that?” Pervy Masshole feds 6 months for spying on girls in high school bathroom. The bastard is lucky my daughter wasn’t a student there, otherwise he’d be serving his sentence with no teeth. Also with no functioning limbs.
Landscapes: They work like this, everything gets thrown out. You get all your men ready, lay out your guns, and then look at YT or Google images. Oh My. Even though the distance from the beach to the cliffs was only 35-50 yards, the Higgins drivers dropped the doors sometimes 500 hundred yards from the surf line, dumping men into 8 feet of water with 120 lb packs and gear; many drowned. Many who didn’t were killed by MG 42s coming from the cliffs above. Some, enough, made it to poor defensive positions. That’s where we are.
I saw that a 20”x 30” diorama wasn’t going to work. So I bought a 4’x8’x 2” piece of foam board, and cut it to 24” x 60” which is 120 yards scale, enough for the Higgins Boats, sunken Sherman Tanks, a good long field of fire, and some good Atlantic wall stuff.
Water is Tough to Model: You see, to make water work, you need to paint depth gradients, and carve out pits to install the boats, tanks, etc. at various depths, then pour ⅛” deep at a time. To get the proper effect, I did a practice run, and the results were good.
The Base: I’m building my own “Atlantic Wall”, the online offerings are slim and everything I find, I can do better. I noticed my acrylic duct sealer finishes in a nice shade of grey, so I’ll try it for the base of the Landscape. I get to model mortar hits, on land and water, gunfire and 88 shells. This might be awesome. No, this is becoming awesome!
Sand: It isn’t flat is it? I’m working with duct sealer to get an undulating, but still low sandy shore look, and then it will be mostly covered with a fine railroad ballast to make the sand.
Then things changed, I decided the cliff was too tall/cumbersome, so I tossed it aside and built a lower bluff instead, one I can integrate into my Atlantic wall.
So far I have had to learn:
Blood in water;
Water;
Craters and explosions;
Bunkers and cliffs;
Sand dunes.
I’m sure I’m not done learning.
The Men: Are a Pain in the Ass! They are too small for my old eyes, and I don’t own an electron microscope, so the level of detail is a bummer compared to 1/35 scale. However, the action precludes the detail so it’s cool. I finally found a skin tone that works so I don’t have to mix batches anymore, still a long way to go…….
36 faces, 36 minutes, and they all will become casualties.
After eight solid hours of sleep, I feel like I might not be descending into some sort of gray hell anymore. I think I may be able to once again pass for human. The sun is out, the birds aren’t singing, and work is moving towards completion. Or else I just burned out my ability to be stressed about it for a couple of days.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
In sad news, Aretha Franklin passed away this morning. I am moving the music link to the top in her honor. So here’s Aretha with the best rhythm section in the world.
This one’s for Playa Manhattan. Health officials identify organism that sickened 650 diners at Chipotle. No word yet on identifying the sickness that keeps people buying the mediocre food that seems to be making people ill regularly.
Aliens off the Bermuda Triangle? I don’t believe it. Mr. Lizard, cleanup on aisle 3.
I’m usually no conspiracy theorist, but this sketchy report, if verified makes this New Mexico thing start to stink like old fish. First a judge lets two guys accused of multiple counts of child neglect and abuse, some probably fatal since cops found a skeleton in shallow grave, get to walk on a signature bond, then authorities destroy the compound? Again, this report is the only one I’ve seen and cannot verify this report. Maybe some poor CSI guy tripped over a booby-trap and they aren’t telling anyone yet. Its also fucked up, to me, that some news crew is walking around what should be a still active crime scene.
This article is for informational purposes only. Suthenboy is not a credentialed expert. Do not attempt any of these activities without first consulting an expert or a manual published by accredited experts or manufacturers.
Last time I hit the high points of beginning reloading and briefly discussed the different style of presses and other equipment. The presses are useless without dies specific to the cartridge that you intend to reload. Let’s talk about dies.
There are two basic style cartridges: straight walled cases and cases with shoulders on them. Because of the different shape, properties of brass and steel we end up with two different kinds of dies: tool steel and carbide steel.
Carbide steel is extremely hard making it prohibitively expensive to machine a cavity in the die to fit shouldered cases. You can get such a critter but when you see the price tag you will be purchasing tool steel dies. Because tool steel is not nearly as hard and kind of rubbery lubrication is requied to avoid having a brass case stick inside the die. These can be very difficult to remove and the die may be damaged in the process. This adds two extra steps to the reloading process: lubrication and subsequent cleaning of the cases.
Dies for straight walled cases are usually fitted with a carbide steel liner. Because they are so hard and highly polished straight walled brass cases do not stick and slide right out with a polished surface. This greatly adds to the convinience of sizing spent cases back to size specifications. Always get carbide dies for straight walled cases.
Of the manufacturers I prefer Lee Precision dies. Dies are full length threaded on the outside in 7/8×14 so that it screws into the press. This is pretty universal. There is a lock ring that rides on the outside of the die to set it firmly in the press. Lee is the only manufacturer that uses an easily replacable rubber O-ring to tension that lock ring. The other manufacturers use a set screw in the lock ring. That tiny set screw can become frozen and difficult to remove. It also sets against the 7/8×14 threads on the outside of the die and can damage them. Also, Lee dies are of high quality, low cost and combine several operations in single dies. Because some people prefer other brand dies but want the Lee style lock ring Lee will happily sell you as many of their lock rings as you wish to buy.
All of the manufacturers produce high quality dies and I own at least one set from all of them. There is one more type of die worth noting. These are high-precision dies aimed at the long range rifle shooter. These allow for more precise sizing and seating of bullets, something we will discuss in a later article. The stand-outs are the Redding and Forster dies.
If you are getting into benchrest shooting you would definitely want to shell out the bucks for some of these. I don’t have any because the dies I already have make ammunition that is more accurate than I can shoot anyway.
This is a highly technical, tedious subject that is impossible to write about with inspiration. I will try to include as many tips and tricks I have learned over the years that you can’t find in any book so that those who intend to start reloading will be saved the time and trouble of learning on their own. I hope there are enough gun nerds around here that some will slog their way through and any other reloaders out there please add your tips in the comments.
The White Sox are on a tear right now. They’ve reeled off two in a row..which is one more in a row than the Astros have won. But one is better than none, so I’ll take it. Other winners were: Seattle, the MINNESOOOOOOOOOODA TWIIIIIIINS!!!!!, the Cubs, the Mariners, the Phillies, the Mets, the Rays, Indians, Braves (and the Marlins pitcher was bush league last night, by the way), Blue Jays, Cardinals, Angels and the Dodgers avoided the sweep.
Effendi
Any Glibs out there celebrating a birthday today? Please out yourself in the comments. Oh, and you share it with: football pioneer Amos Alonzo Stagg, soldier and writer T.E. Lawrence, “Felix The Car” cartoonist Otto Messmer, Israeli leader and Nobel laureate Menachem Begin, “laureate of American lowlife” Charles Bukowski, philanderer Frank Gifford, Catwoman hottie Julie Newmar, moron Carol Mosely-Braun, musician Barry Hay, bluesman Eric Bibb, wife of aforementioned philandered Kathie Lee Gifford, director and SJW James Cameron, guitarist Tim Fariss, nasty skank Madonna, comedic actor Steve Carell, and musician Bob Hardy.
Its also the day Yorktown was founded, the Brits, with help from Tecumseh, captured Fort Detroit, “Siegfried” debuted at Bayreuth, Babe Ruth hit the first ever homer at Comiskey Park, riots in Calcutta between Muslims and Hindus over Pakistani independence left over 4000 dead (1946), the Shah fled Iran for Rome, Ringo replaced Pete Best as drummer for the Beatles, the Ramones played their first gig, Peter Gabriel quit Genesis, John DeLorean was acquitted, Bon Jovi released “Slippery When Wet”, and Julian Assange was granted political asylum by Ecuador.
OK, now on to…the links!
Lying scumbag
Lying, spying, murdering piece of shit John Brennan had his security clearance revoked by President Trump. Now of they could just get around to trying the son of a bitch for perjury among other things, we’d start scratching the surface of the justice that he so richly deserves.
With closing arguments completed, the jury will begin deliberations in the Paul Manafort bank and tax fraud trial. I hope they didn’t buy into the government’s class war bullshit and see that there were literally no bankers that made a complaint about his loans, and his so-called “fraud” involved several people operating completely in the open.
he director of this whole thing is a hilarious composite of 80’s tropes between the thick glasses, the power-stache, alcoholism, and womanizing. He embodies the type of toxic masculinity that quite frankly is missing from popular culture. Yes, he’s a dick, but he’s kind of the glue that binds all these people together and frankly that’s probably why you will watch beyond episode 1.
Of the manufacturers I prefer 
