Kung Fu Grip

from the New Jovian Thunderbolt earlier this month:

 

I'd heard of Todd Jarrett before (back before you could watch video on teh intarnets), but never tried the Kung Fu grip.

No pix from the range today, but it works. Really well.

I recently started shooting regularly again after a long hiatus. The results have been less than stellar. I could keep 10 rounds in the 8 ring at 25 feet (impressive, I know), but they were all over the place. I've blamed my eyes, the new G17, my stance, the temperature at the range, and my state of mind. It didn't occur to me until I ran across this post the other week that I might need to try a different grip instead.

After a bit of practice with the grip, and a few adjustments, I was managing tight groups up close and keeping things in the 9 ring downrange. Not bad for a days work.

I will now obsessively watch every single video of Todd Jarrett instructing that I can find. Para just moved their factory to my neck of the woods, so I can hope he will make a local appearance and I can creep him out by telling him how many thousands of times I've watched his video.

Gender silliness and shooting

Several years ago I suspended logic and listened to the enlightened guy at the gun shop suggest a J-frame S&W revolver for The Wife. She of the smallish hands and dislike of the G27.

Foolish me.

The first time we shot it at the range, even the regular .38 range ammo was enough for her to remark "I like the way the grip fits my hand, but it's kind of uncomfortable to shoot".

D'oh!

Several lessons here:

1. Don't buy a firearm for your spouse as a gift unless they have specified that particular firearm as one that they want or like. Nobody likes to get clothes that are the wrong size - this applies to firearms as well.
   
2. Don't take the word of the guy at the gunshop - there are plenty of other resources out there to provide contrasting opinions
   
3. THINK. Short barrel + lightweight alloy frame+smallish grips=felt recoil for me, so it should therefore be even worse for her. Again, d'oh.

There is a happy ending.

Fast forward to the purchase of a S&W Model 64-4 for The Wife. 

Everyone is happier as she has less felt recoil, an extra round in the cylinder, and I get a 642 to carry in my pocket once the CCW permit shows up in the mail.

Marko has a great post about this over The Munchkin Wrangler that includes this pithiness:

I can’t count the number of times I’ve overheard bad advice given to women when it comes to guns. Seven out of ten times, people will recommend a lightweight snubnose revolver as an ideal first “woman’s gun”, even though the airweight snubbie is a terrible first pick for any new shooter, male or female.

Level 4 on the awesome scale

Who wouldn't want to watch Bruce Lee and Iron Man duke it out?

Government as an embezzler

from the quoteable Mike Folkerth

We find ourselves in the unsavory circumstances of the embezzler who had always promised themselves that they would pay the money back, only to get in deeper and deeper to such time that repayment became impossible.

The Guns of Pulp Fiction

As I was flailing about trying to make a clever comment over at View From The Porch

I googled across a great blog that I've visited before but forgot to bookmark: Legion's Fate

Ctones Movie Guns blogs are just part of the goodness.

A Star model B in 9mm or an Auto Ordinance 1911 in .45. Preferably chromed. That's what you take to pick up Marcellus Wallaces briefcase. Yep.

Bargain Hunting for that HDTV?

I cannot imagine why anyone would be buying a TV right now. 

I'm busy looking for bargains on Mountain Home freeze dried food, bulk ammo, and the elusive affordable PTR91.

But if you A: have some disposable $$

And B: cannot resist the el cheapo prices on flat screens right now...

Don't get stupid with the Monster Cables.

Check this out

I used www.monoprice.com for an HDMI cable when I inherited my HDTV. It was $8.50 w/ shipping. Big Box would sell you the same cable for $69.95.

Fuffled? Fufflery?

Club Orlov continues a pattern of excellence by posting this explanation of the word that perfectly describes...well...the whole damn thing. It's like the The Number 42.

A fuffle is an artful fake, an artifact specifically made to fool, beguile, seduce, or intimidate people into paying for it. Ideally, the initial transaction serves as the basis of a permanent arrangement, with the victim roped into an installment plan, which keeps the payments flowing even after the fuffle itself has crumbled into a pile of dust. An even better fuffle is one that grows over time. Since a fuffle is, in essence, a fake, its useful properties, should it have any, are largely irrelevant, and so its abstract (which is to say, financial) properties come forth as being the essential ones. The most important such property is, quite obviously, size, and indeed fuffles tend to get bigger and bigger over time. This is a telltale feature of fuffles that makes them easier to identify: if something gets bigger and bigger over time while delivering the same or lesser value, then it is quite likely to be a fuffle. Also, fuffles breed: as a fuffle gets larger and larger, it produces offspring of other fuffles, which also grow. Examples come from many realms.

That's it. Fuffle is the word. 

How Did I Get So Political?

Meh.

This is funny stuff. The TelePrompTer thing cracks me up. And it won't go away either. Him and those He Would Have help us have got to have some clue about the teleprompter thing - don' t they?

Here a trillion...

There! A Trillion!

Survival Gardening at the White House?

The First lady is planning a garden at the White House.

She should probably check this out first.

Thanks to Borepatch for the link in the comments to a previous post.

Cleverness...

from the view from the porch

How come when I put my AmEx bill on my Visa, it's stupid, but when the government does it, it's stimulus?

Tam=awesome. 

She generally has more snark posted by lunchtime than most fit in in a week.

How They See It

Hard to believe this is on Time.com

Careful there! Don't go besmirching Him and those He would have Help us.

I like this line about retaining vs. replacing the "key traders and risk managers" at AIGFP :

In other words, the guy who just stabbed the nation in the gut is the only surgeon who can stop the bleeding.

What a mess. I wouldn't be surprised if AIG ends up being ground-zero to The Whole Thing Falling Apart (my new acronym TWTFA - I am not expecting that to catch on or anything).

Don't Shoot (Shotgun)

I am looking for a shotgun.

I've been filling in the empty spaces in the cache when finances and opportunity meet in the dark alley behind the convenience store that is my life. 

My shotgun options currently include the recently inherited:

- vintage 28" 12 gauge double - Sears & Roebuck

- antique .410 single shot

- pretty but not ammo-friendly 28" 16 gauge pump

I like the double as it is remarkably simple, and with proper care should be in the family generations from now. However the 28" barrels are not particularly conducive to popping around the corner to surprise unwanted guests. As it has some sentimental value, I don't see much sense in hacking it down to the shortest legal length. There is also the whole "2 shots and reload" thing.

The .410 is of the same vintage as the double and also should be fine for the types of shooting that it was originally manufactured for.

The 16 gauge pump is a curious piece as I must admit that I until I flipped it over and looked at the stamp, I had only heard of .410, 20, 12 and 10 gauge. A cursory search for shells leads me to believe that this is primarily a bird gun. Great. Back in the case with you.

Years and years ago I bought a Mossberg 500 combo at Service Merchandise (remember them?). The "combo" included an 18.5" barrel and a pistol grip that I now recognize is kind of useless. Remembering the enthusiasm that I had for the pistol grip makes me very glad that there was no Airsoft back then as I can say with no small amount of sadness that I would probably be a mall ninja type if I had the finances and gear available. What a goober.

The 500 was solid, and after a trip to the range with the pistol grip (and a little advice from the rangemaster), the factory buttstock went back on. The pistol grip was banished to the box-o'-gunstuff and the shotgun itself took up residence underneath my mattress until it was ultimately sold to finance a Para-ordinance P13. 

I wish I had kept both of them.

I think I might have answered my own question. I need to find a Mossberg 500 combo. 

• Long barrel and magazine plug for hunting
  
• shorter barrel for the house
  
• pistol grip to sell on gunbroker for $.50
  

A quick Gunbroker search shoes I can get what I am looking for for $360 plus shipping. Plus what the FFL transfer will run. 

Not much of a bargain, is it?

Looks like Mossberg still makes these new, so maybe I can get my guy at the shop to order me one and not have to sell something else to be able to get it. We'll see.

So I'll leave you with this...

Now for lyrics:

"Don't Shoot Shotgun"

Run for cover
(Run for cover)
Don't shoot! - Shoot!
She's so dangerous
(Shotgun!)
(Gun!)
(Don't shoot shotgun!)

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm right
Fallin' head over heals at the speed of light
Hey little miss heaven on earth
Whoa, won't you walk this way but I see a red alert
Oh, my senses say keep away
So don't shoot!

Don't shoot shotgun
Dream on nightmare
Touch 'n' go
Dove turned destroyer, she cut you up, she's a slave of love

Run for cover, she's so dangerous
Undercover, she's so shameless

Don't shoot shotgun
You got me bitin' my lip
Don't shoot shotgun!
Ya shootin' straight from the hip

So don't shoot shotgun
Shoot me, baby!
Ow!

Hit 'n' miss, flesh and blood
She's sweet and indiscreet, she can't get enough
A little midnight madness
Oh baby, you can't hide
So wild 'n' unpredictable
Step aside
'Cos you're, you're shooting wide

Run for cover, she's so dangerous
Undercover, she's so shameless

[Repeat Chorus]

Oh
Shake it, shake it!
Ah, take this, little hit 'n' miss

[guitar solo]

[Repeat Chorus]

Don't shoot it!
Don't shoot shotgun!
Shake it, shake it!
Aw, take this little hit 'n' miss
Ow!
(Don't shoot shotgun!)
Oh shoot it!
Don't shoot it!
Uh, Oh shotgun!
Shoot me, baby!
Ow!
Let it blow!

This song was new when I paid $175 for a Mossberg 500 combo at Service Merchandise. Ouch.

Detroit wasteland

A Time photo essay via Instapundit shows the crumbly side of Detroit that looks hauntingly like Pripyat, Ukraine. 

Play the game - is this picture of Detroit or Pripyat?

Traveling today...

and working. Happy to still have a job. I finally, finally got to watch WALL-E tonight and it is even better than everyone said that it was.

Kitchen Gardening

via PrudentHome.com

Clearly, this data is just for one family (of five), one yard (.3 acre), one garden (roughly 1600 square feet), and one climate (Maine, zone 5b/6), but it gives you some sense of what’s possible. If you consider that there are about 90 million households in the US that have some sort of yard, factor in the thousands of new community and school gardens we could be planting, this really could add up. Our savings allowed us to do different things including investing in some weatherization work for our house last fall that is making us a greener household in another way. Some might ask what this would mean for farmers to have more people growing their own food. The local farmers I know welcome it because they correctly believe that the more people discover what fresh, real food tastes like, the more they'll want to taste. In our case, part of our savings helped us to buy better quality, sustainably-raised meat from a local CSA farmer.

Read the rest at kitchengardeners.org

Off to get the soil sample...

The infinitely readable ClubOrlov recently posted this...

and here's a great table - 

Amounts of Vegetables To Be Grown & Preserved For a Family of 4 Persons  

- from the grannymillerblog.

Surviving The Great Depression

via SurvivalBlog. Of course.

"That's what people had to do then. Most people had a garden. People plowed their garden with horses, there was somebody who came around with a plow and a horse and plowed gardens for people. People on southside had chickens, pigs and cows and people were always bringing eggs to the store and trade. I just don't know what people would do today, of course everybody on southside had to get rid of their chickens and hogs when it was incorporated into the city later," he said.

~98% of everyone I know is incapable of understanding how to live like this, let alone actually living like this. Better to start late than to start when it's too late.

And yes, today I discovered italics for the very first time.

How They See It

I am not going to spend all morning picking this apart, but this article from Newsweek has an interesting take on the financial mess.

It's all the rich people's fault.

Readings...

Amazon recently delivered the SAS Survival Handbook, Revised Edition by John "Lofty" Wiseman. 

It comes highly recommended from people who recommend such things.

2 chapters in so far.  Wiseman spends a lot of time on knives. He should, of course.

Soon I'll post my review of this book as well as When All Hell Breaks Loose by Cory Lundin, which answers a lot of the same questions from a similar mindset - albeit with a very different delivery.

Off to sharpen the knives now.

9mm ammo search

Local shops have marked up their range and carry ammo to the point that buying online in bulk has become not just smart but necessary. 

But even in bulk, .45 and .40 S&W ammo is priced several notches higher than 9mm Luger.

So I bought a G17 to have something somewhat more affordable to shoot recreationally (and someday perhaps competitively), my first ammo purchase was a case of Federal 115gr ball. This is more than decent ammo that has reloadable brass and at the equivalent of $12.50 a box is far cheaper than a box of Wolf at the range. 

So I am so busy patting myself on the back by finding a relative (these days) bargain that I forget that since the G17 is in my Bug Out Bag, it might make sense to have something other than ball in all of those extra magazines that I have stashed all over the place.

So I go to Cabela's, Cheaper Than Dirt, and Sportsman's Guide (who, by the way have a decent deal on Remington Golden Saber in several calibers).

To make a long story longer - I ended up back at Gunbroker and I bought 100 rds of Federal Premium LE Tactical 9mm 124 Hydra-Shok ammunition as I already scrounged one ancient box of Hydra-Shok from the cache. 

Good call? 

Who knows. It's a royal pain finding reasonably priced ammo. Even in bulk. 

No more ammo for me for awhile (unless I run across an unpillaged rural Wal-mart). Must buy more food.

Wall Street on the Tundra

Here's a fascinating Vanity Fair article by Michael Lewis. His look at the collapse of Icelands banks and currency is a notice as to how far we still have to go to find the bottom.

Iceland instantly became the only nation on earth that Americans could point to and say, “Well, at least we didn’t do that.” In the end, Icelanders amassed debts amounting to 850 percent of their G.D.P. (The debt-drowned United States has reached just 350 percent.) As absurdly big and important as Wall Street became in the U.S. economy, it never grew so large that the rest of the population could not, in a pinch, bail it out. Any one of the three Icelandic banks suffered losses too large for the nation to bear; taken together they were so ridiculously out of proportion that, within weeks of the collapse, a third of the population told pollsters that they were considering emigration.

Ugh. Derivatives.

Botach Tactical

Looking for some great deals on some gear? Check out http://www.botachtactical.com. They have the best prices around on a variety of items - flashlights, boots, clothing and optics. 

I just ordered a pair of waterproof Rocky boots for $49.95 for myself and I got another pair for my wife for $29.95. That is insanely cheap.

It seems to take roughly 7 weeks for them to process your order - but it's worth the wait. 

Bonus: they'll send you a coupon for 10% off your next order (so save the optics for your inevitable 2nd order).

Magic Mexican Bullets

A chuckle from New Jovian Thunderbolt:

It's a Magic Bullet! It hunts down blue uniforms that are covering a bullet resistant vest. The bullet then grabs the Law Enforcement Officer by the collar and slaps his face a bunch of times until said cop calls the bullet "Mommy." Satisfied the police officer is sufficiently humiliated, it then backs up a few feet and goes through the kevlar armor as though it were tissue paper and seeks out the heart. It then bits down on the aorta until the unmanned peace officer expires. Another tragedy that could have been averted if we only had more laws. Like one against murdering people.

Getting started...again.

Once I get up and running, I should be able to find everything that I am looking for right here. We'll see.