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Sunday, August 21st, 2011

I didn’t have to use my AK. All in all, I’d have to say, it was a good day weekend.

I got up bright and early (by Saturday standards) and staggered down to the Saxet Gun Show, where I met up with the legendary Borepatch and some other folks. (I am leaving their names out because I want to protect their privacy. Yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket. It has nothing to do with me being a bad and evil person and forgetting their names. It is all about privacy protection. Just ask my wife, Morgan Fairchild.)

I don’t have much to add to Borepatch’s report. I only found one gun I really liked at the show (a Savage model 24, .22 LR over 20 gauge) and the owner was asking just $250, but I didn’t have that much cash on me, didn’t want to leave and find a bank, and…well, if it is there next month, maybe. This would be a good survival gun for the car.

Also, Borepatch is right about the number of approving comments that Sean Sorrentino’s Gunwalker t-shirt received. Borepatch and I discussed the idea of trying to sell them at gun shows, which is a very tempting idea indeed.

(While I was there, I met another gentleman who recognized me from my statement in Borepatch’s comments that I’d be wearing that shirt. It turns out he’s a regular reader of Borepatch’s blog, my blog, and the Saturday Dining Conspiracy pages. Personally, I thought reading both my blog and the SDC pages was an approved method of “enhanced interrogation” for prisoners at Gitmo, but hey, whatever gets you through the night. I was going to introduce him around, but I was on my way to see a man about a racehorse at the time, and when I came back, he was gone. Feel free to leave a comment, Mr. I’m Not Identifying You Here For “Privacy” Reasons.)

(I also saw one of the H&K .22 rimfire MP5 clones. It was going for around $600, as I predicted.)

After the gun show, I went down and paid off my layway at Tex-Guns, official purveyors of fine weapons to WCD. I now have a very nice Marlin 336 lever gun in .30-30: once I get some logistics worked out, and September 1st rolls around, this is going to sit in my car as my equivalent of a “patrol rifle”.

And then I went and had dinner with my mother and some friends at the Vivo on 620 at Lake Creek Parkway. The current chef, Paul Petersen, ran a place called the Little Texas Bistro in Buda; we ate there once, and it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Then he moved out to Marathon and worked at the Gage Hotel there for a while. Now he’s working at that Vivo, and hasn’t lost his touch. I had the”surf and turf”: one crabmeat enchilada and one brisket enchilada. It was one of the best meals I’ve had this year, and very reasonably priced.

(I did have some problems with Vivo, but none of them were with the cooking. They all stem from the current management’s decision to encourage an active singles/pick-up scene at Vivo. We were in a semi-private room, and towards the end of the meal, the music was loud enough that some of our party had to leave. Also, I’m not a prude, but when you’re taking your mother someplace, and there’s paintings of topless women everywhere, and a photo collage on the wall of the semi-private room featuring butts and other body parts, that’s a bit disconcerting.)

Today, of course, was the long threatened trip to the Snake Farm. I’m happy to say that everyone who went also came back, they all enjoyed themselves (from what I hear), and everyone who wanted one got a t-shirt. Or, as we like to say around here…

…the guys get shirts!

And much progress has been made on getting the Saturday Dining Conspiracy logs up to date. Which is comforting.

And Lawrence has put up some good photos from Worldcon, including a few of friends of mine I haven’t seen in a long time.

So, yeah, it has been a good weekend. How was yours?

(For those of you who don’t understand the “didn’t have to use my AK” reference, which is probably 99+% of my audience because you’re not fans, I suggest you go to your refrigerator and look at some Ice Cubes. (Warning! Adult subject matter!) Actually, I’m not a huge fan, either, but “It Was a Good Day” tickles my funny bone for some odd reason.)

Posted in Admin, Clothing, Geek, Guns, Lizards, Regular, Reptiles, Shirts, Snakes, Spiders | 3 Comments »

News roundup.

Friday, July 15th, 2011

By way of our good friend James, we have learned that CNN did a story on Texans purchasing guns to prepare for uncertain economic times. Ordinarily, we probably wouldn’t have said anything about this piece, but the gun shop profiled is Tex-Guns, the official purveyor of fine weapons to WCD.

And the NYT has discovered the Snake Farm on I-35. This is a place that we have not been to yet, but we keep threatening to load up the car and take our nephews there. Perhaps we will arrange that in the next couple of weeks.

Posted in Clippings, Reptiles, Snakes | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

“This is a substantial amount of iguana meat, well beyond what would be considered as personal use, it lacked the necessary permits for lawful importation and further it was found hidden in masa,” said Joe Uribe, Acting CBP Port Director in Laredo.

I think the lessons here are:

  1. Always make sure you have the proper permits for your iguana meat.
  2. If you have the proper permits, you don’t need to hide your iguana meat in masa. Or anything else for that matter.
  3. Small amounts of iguana meat for “personal use” are apparently okay with Customs.
  4. You can find recipes for iguana online.
  5. At the moment, I very much wish that I was in Tijuana.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Lizards, Music, Radio, Reptiles | 3 Comments »

Random notes: July 1, 2010.

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Happy Canada Day, everyone. I hope you’re able to celebrate in the traditional way, with beer and back bacon.

The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has overturned the death sentence for Ronell Wilson. Mr. Wilson was convicted of shooting two NYPD detectives, James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews, who were engaged in a gun purchase sting. According to the NYT, Mr. Wilson was the only defendant sentenced to death by a jury between “1988 through March 2008” (?), though prosecutors asked for the death sentence 19 times during that period.

In this case, the court just overturned the sentence, not the conviction:

The Court of Appeals’ ruling centered on two arguments that prosecutors made to the jury about Mr. Wilson’s remorse and acceptance of responsibility for the killings during the penalty phase of his trial. The judges noted that prosecutors used Mr. Wilson’s demand for a trial and his failure to plead guilty as evidence that he lacked remorse and refused to accept responsibility. The judges said prosecutors had argued to the jury that Mr. Wilson’s statement of remorse should be discredited because he failed to testify.

The WP is reporting that serious consideration is being given to awarding the Medal of Honor to a living person. That person is not named in the WP article, and the nomination is still being reviewed by the White House. This is significant because every Medal of Honor awarded since Vietnam has been posthumous.

Edited to add: Florida has banned ownership of “Burmese pythons and six other large, exotic reptile species” effective today. As noted in this space previously, the state has a bit of a python problem:

Many of the creatures have escaped or been set loose by pet owners and that’s upsetting Florida’s ecology as they prey almost unchecked on native birds and animals.

Apparently, existing owners will be able to keep their snakes. This is amusing:

The ban applies as well to reticulated, northern African, southern African and Amethystine pythons, green anacondas and Nile monitor lizards, but the main focus is on Burmese pythons.

Estimates of their presence in the wild have ranged as high as 100,000, but the state’s first python hunting season ended in April without a single snake reported caught. Conservation officials said unseasonably cold weather, instead, may have killed up to half the pythons.

No snakes caught? Darn. (I was actually discussing the possibility of getting together a python hunting expedition with some of my co-workers, but none of us owns the proper weapon.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Snakes | 1 Comment »

The Burmese beneath.

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

5 African rock pythons, which in their homeland are known to eat goats, are seen during a 3-day search in Miami-Dade County.

In addition, state environmental officials worry that the rock python could breed with the Burmese python, which already has an established foothold in the Everglades. That could lead to a new “super snake,” said George Horne, the water district’s deputy executive director.

I have no joke here, I just like saying “super snake”. For some reason, that made me think of “Fer-de-Lance” (aka “Snakes on a Sub”).  Which, apparently, is available on DVD (in a double feature with something called “Medusa”, which looks like a real piece of crap; then again, “Fer-de-Lance” probably isn’t as good as I remember it being, either.)

Posted in Clippings, Snakes | Comments Closed

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