"We The People Are Coming"

Kevin Baker points us to Arizona resident Janet Contreras's open letter to our elected representatives:

Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian. Understand this. We don't care. Political parties are meaningless to us. Patriotic Americans are willing to do right by us and our Constitution and that is all that matters to us now. We are going to fire all of you who abuse power and seek more. It is not your power. It is ours and we want it back. We entrusted you with it and you abused it. You are dishonorable. You are dishonest. As Americans we are ashamed of you. You have brought shame to us. If you are not representing the wants and needs of your constituency loudly and consistently, in spite of the objections of your party, you will be fired. Did you hear? We no longer care about your political parties. You need to be loyal to us, not to them. Because we will get you fired and they will not save you. If you do or can represent me, my issues, my views, please stand up. Make your identity known. You need to make some noise about it. Speak up. I need to know who you are. If you do not speak up, you will be herded out with the rest of the sheep and we will replace the whole damn congress if need be one by one. We are coming. Are we coming for you? Who do you represent? What do you represent? Listen. Because we are coming. We the people are coming.

Ms. Contreras's words to Glenn Beck in the transcript of his radio show:

Well, I don't want this. I don't want this fight, Glenn. I don't have the time or the energy or the financial resources for it, but that no longer matters. It no longer matters that I'm able or that I want this fight. I have to take it on. It's not a matter of choice anymore, which is why I wrote the letter.

As it must now be for us all.

READ THE WHOLE THING. And decide if you will let apathy and narcissistic entitlement hand this country over to criminals and thieves.

Are We Surprised?

Especially in light of the previous post.

95% Geek
Only 95%? Maybe there's still hope.

Cool New Toys

No, not guns this time.

This is our new 22 TB fully redundant EMC Avamar enterprise backup. Once it's fully implemented and data replication is complete, one of the racks will be moved to our DR site.

Now THIS is what I call cable management!


Sigh.

Oh well, it's a geek thing. You wouldn't understand.

Freedom!

Farrah and Max are no longer confined to quarters. Surface injuries on horses can get to be kinda like radioactive decay: lots of progress at first, then it feels like the last little bit will never heal up. The vet finally said it was okay to kick 'em out of the barn. All concerned, horses and humans, were mightily relieved.

Thoroughbreds who have been cooped up for any length of time lose what few milligrams of common sense they ever had when finally turned loose, so they have to start out in a small area. Only after they demonstrate they are not going to go up like ten pounds of Tannerite at Boomershoot, they can start to be turned out in progressively larger areas.

Farrah actually behaving herself

It further complicated matters that going out on lush spring grass after being kept in on dry hay, alfalfa cubes, and Triple Crown has to be managed carefully as well. Fortunately, there's a mare with a new foal and a recently-gelded Welsh pony in pretty much the same boat. They will all be gradually acclimated to the pasture together before going back out in the herd.

Max(L) and Farrah(R)

Wishful thinking.

Presenting Reality Effectively

Eric S. Raymond, who's given us A Brief History Of Firearms Policy Fraud and Ethics From The Barrel Of A Gun, hits another one out of the park:

I listened to the others on the channel offer polite, reasoned, factually correct counterarguments to this guy, and get nowhere. And suddenly…suddenly, I understood why. It was because the beliefs the ignoramus was spouting were only surface structure; refuting them one-by-one could do no good without directly confronting the substructure, the emotional underpinnings that made ignoramus unable to consider or evaluate counter-evidence.

The need, here, was to undermine that substructure. And I saw the way to do it. This is what I said:

“You speak, but I hear only the bleating of a sheep. Your fear gives power to your enemies.”

Ignoramus typed another sentence of historical ignorance. My reply was “Baa! Baa! Baaaaa!”

And another. My reply was more sheep noises, more deliberate mockery. And you know what? A few rounds of this actually worked. Ignoramus protested that he wasn’t a sheep. At which point I asked him “Then why are you disarmed?”

*CRACK*

The conversation afterwards was completely different, and ended up with ignoramus speculating about meeting with one of our regulars in his area to do things with firearms.

READ THE WHOLE THING.

More Embarrassing Music

In lieu of, like, actual content which requires a functional brain, I will join the "Five Most Embarrassing Albums" meme along with Marko, Tam, Sebastian, Uncle, Squeaky, and Joe:

1. Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Album They had some good music on that show.
2. C.W. McCall's Greatest Hits I used to live in the southwest-Iowa area he wrote into many of his songs. The Shelby County Tribune, the Nishnabotna River, the railroad tracks of Persia, all real.
3. Popstars: Eden's Crush Remember Popstars, the show we have to thank for the whole "American Idol" genre?
4. ABBA: The Album Hey, I like harmony sometimes, okay?
5. Lard: The Last Temptation Of Reid Got it for that all-time classic, "They're Coming To Take Me Away."

I don't consider them embarrassing, but I do also have the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's timeless holiday albums, "A Very Scary Solstice" and "An Even Scarier Solstice." Who can resist carols like "I Saw Mommy Kissing Yog Sothoth," "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fish-Men," and "Harley Got Devoured by the Undead," especially when they sound exactly like their conventional counterparts . . . except for the lyrics. Slip those into the mix at your next Christmas party and watch the fun.

I have to apologize in advance to anyone crazy enough to do a road trip with me. They have to bring their own tunes or they're stuck listening to my usual run of Black Sabbath, Van Halen, and Rob Zombie.

Violence, Victims, And Survivors

Via Xavier, I recently learned about the book "Meditations On Violence" by Sgt. Rory Miller. Based on his description of the subject matter, I ordered a copy and was tremendously impressed.

This book covers violence from the perspectives of the realities of how actual criminal violence varies from training or naive perception, what happens when we experience violence, and how successful and unsuccessful outcomes affect the intended target. Among the unsuccessful-outcome discussions, the author provides the best representation of rape recovery I've ever seen in print from a bearer of the Y-chromosome.

What the author says about trusting an instructor (or therapist) was profound. The most beneficial therapeutic work I ever did was with a psychiatrist who forced me to face the festering places, rip them open, and scrape out the rot. It was painful and ugly, but absolutely necessary. I had to trust him when he said I would survive the horror of facing what I had tried to block away. I trusted him, I did survive it, and I am a better, stronger person for doing so.

When going through a process, some realizations come with very visceral reactions, such as the time something clicked into place while I was driving to work. I had to pull over to throw up in the ditch alongside the highway. Some of the things I'd felt intuitively that Sgt. Miller put into words triggered similar strong reactions when I read them. And that's a good thing, because it meant somebody out there gets it.

The urge to stay a victim is seductive. Our society favors victims, cosseting them and setting up well-funded groups to be their advocates. These groups depend on a steady supply of victims for their existence. Government and law enforcement officials also depend on a steady supply of victims to justify expanding their power and control over every aspect of subjects' citizens' lives.

Staying a victim is also a passive-aggressive way to manipulate and control people. Sgt. Miller describes how such stuck victims can hijack a self-defense class. My family of origin was full of passive-aggressive stuck victims, and they very nearly hijacked my life. Now the only one of them I have anything to do with at all is through sending checks to her nursing home. I will not subject myself to her abuse any more, not hers nor anyone else's.

Stuck victims choose to define themselves by their damage instead of working to overcome it. They can build their entire lives around being a victim. I met lots of people like that during my active process. They only associated with other victims. They went to a different support group every night of the week, groups for sexual abuse, codependency, addiction, overeating, bulimia, you name it. They worked very, very hard at not getting better.

Years after I'd progressed beyond the need for a support group, I ran into someone I'd met at the one I'd attended for a while. She asked me when I had "moved back." Moved back? I never moved away. She said when I stopped coming to the meetings, the group decided I must have moved out of state. That the group meetings had served their purpose and I didn't need them any more was inconceivable.

We cannot always control what happens to us in life, but we are absolutely in full control of how we let it affect us.

Years ago, a sheriff's deputy suggested I needed to get a gun. I asked a friend and her husband who had been a firearms instructor in the Army and the Oklahoma State Patrol about it, and they recommended a .410 pump shotgun. In the finest tradition of "go big or go home," I got a 12 gauge instead. The rest, as they say, is history.

Becoming involved with firearms, making a full commitment to the responsibility of ongoing training and practice, studying firearms law and the judicious use of deadly force, all of these things put teeth in my resolve to be strong, independent, and never again go down without an effective defense. My gun gives me a fighting chance against bigger, stronger, faster assailants or multiple assailants. My training teaches me how I can avoid situations that could force me to present my gun. But if I need to use it, I will.

And anyone who would take that away from me has a vested interest in preventing victims from evolving into independent survivors.

Live Free Or Die

Mark Steyn's Hillsdale College lecture, via Kevin at Smallest Minority, who got it from Geek With A .45:

READ THE WHOLE THING.

Love BUG

The more I work with my S&W Airweight J-frame, the more I think this little gun is one of the best investments I could have made in my shooting skill set.

Oh, I'm not producing any targets yet worth keeping or posting online. For every live round I fire, I probably execute fifty or more hopefully-perfect dry trigger presses. Most of the time, I can keep a dime balanced on top of the gun while dry practicing.

So what's the value of all this "non-productive" busywork? Besides ammo savings, I mean.

My shooting with the snubby ain't there yet, but my 1911 shooting is getting WAY better.

The Close Quarters class I had on April 18 showed me that my old tendency to jerk the trigger still returns under pressure. Watching my groups straggle off toward the lower left was frustrating and discouraging. So I decided to buckle down and confront my problem head-on by concentrating on the little, lightweight, jumpy gun as a means to get better with the big, heavy, stable one.

And it works.

But targets with such little tiny holes sure look funny. They'll look a lot less funny when all the little holes come together to make one big ragged one.

It'll get there.

Zipper Horse

The boarding farm where I keep my horses puts great effort into providing as safe an environment as possible. Even so, Murphy has a special affinity for horses and horse people.

So when I got the call that Farrah had a cut on her side, I said of course have the vet look at it. At least she had the decency to show up injured when the vet was already there to do a vaccinate-a-thon on several other boarders' horses.

But I was surprised to find this when I went out to the barn after work.

The gash is over a foot long, and the little tan things are segments of rubber tubing to keep the sutures from tearing through the skin. Followup care includes my giving her 20 cc's of penicillin IM once a day for five days. To put it mildly, Farrah isn't real happy about that.

For those unfamiliar with intramuscular injection techique in horses, you first fill the syringe, then remove the needle and hold it between thumb and forefinger. Next you find the center third of the center third of the horse's neck, away from major blood vessels and ligaments and the cervical spine. Then you use the heel of your hand to thump the injection site sharply three or four times before smacking the needle in: thump, thump, thump, STICK. Finally you fit the syringe to the needle hub, draw the plunger back to make sure you aren't in a vein or artery, then inject the penicillin and remove the needle. Jolly fun.

And the cost associated with this little equine experiment in creative self-destruction? $255.81 for the vet bill. Baled wood shavings at $8.00 or more each for bedding the oversize stall where Farrah (and her boyfriend Max for companionship, also keeping Max from having a separation-anxiety nervous breakdown) is confined until cleared by the vet. Another $20.00 or so for extra syringes and needles to give the daily penicillin injections, since the vet didn't leave nearly enough of them. The return vet visit scheduled for two weeks after the injury will cost a minimum of $50.00.

Which brings me to a rant.

Horses are a huge responsibility. A huge, potentially dangerous, expensive responsibility. One misstep can instantly generate untold veterinary costs -- or doctor bills since horses are big and strong with excellent reflexes. At the best of times, becoming a horse owner should never be undertaken without careful consideration of the knowledge, skill, time, and money required. In this economy, buying a horse on a whim is unconscionable.

Horses need a lot of space in order to be horses and not unhealthy four-legged house plants. They need training from qualified, humane trainers, and their owners need to make sure those trainers are qualified and humane. And riding lessons, what a concept. You can't learn to ride by watching Hidalgo any more than you can learn to shoot by watching Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

Guess what, good horse care facilities, training, and riding lessons cost money, too. So does good equipment that's safe for the rider and won't harm the horse.

And if selling a horse, the seller absolutely must do everything possible to ensure that horse does not go to slaughter.

So to the idiots who wanted to buy one of my horses, no preference which one, because my horses are nice and well-behaved, never mind they have no clue what owning a horse entails, I have this to say:

Not just No, but OH HELL NO!

There. I feel better now. Time to go back to the boarding farm to throw hay and refill water and check sutures and otherwise keep my horses in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

And you thought guns were the only things I wasted lots of time and money on?