NHL teams that still have a chance of going 0-84:
Philadelphia
Los Angeles Kings
Philadelphia has lost the first nine games of the season. Didn’t they used to be good? Anyone? McThag?
Your Friday loser update.
October 16th, 2026Random gun crankery.
October 14th, 2026Mike the Musicologist fowarded me a tweet yesterday. I don’t want to embed it here, as I’d be giving free advertising to the people who tweeted it.
MtM and I spent some time trying to get confirmation of that tweet. I ended up reaching out to someone I know, who was aware of the situation but can’t talk about it. This person (who I trust and who has connections) forwarded me an article by Jim Shepherd from “Shooting News Weekly” which confirms what we’d been reading.
Summarizing: Ruger has “temporarily discontinued”/”suspended production” of a bunch of their product line:
Also:
SR1911 (Ruger’s 1911 clone).
LC Carbine
PC Charger
PC Carbine
LC Charger
Redhawk
Super Redhawk
Blackhawk
Super Blackhawk
Single-Series revolvers
Vaquero
No. 1
77-Series rifles
Hawkeye
Ruger Precision
I’m not sure if I should be sad about this. I’m still looking for a Number 1, but I already figured I’d have to find that on the used market. I have two and a half New Model Blackhawks, and I have my Single Six. I did get my Super Redhawk. And I have a Commander length SR1911. Enough of these guns have been produced that you should be able to find them on the used market, though used prices may see a bump.
And:
What’s not been widely distributed with these notices is the fact Ruger isn’t dumping these lines. They’ve paused lines before. Some, like the Ruger Precision Rifle were paused to allow for improvements. Others, like the Red Label shotgun, were paused for years before being reintroduced.
Speaking with Ruger officials, I was reminded — repeatedly — that they realized the importance of many of these products with distributors, retailers and consumers. That’s why they emphasized the moves should be viewed as a company responsibly managing the products’ evolution, not simply ending their history.
So some of these guns could be coming back after redesign and/or re-engineering. Or they could come back after Ruger moves and/or upgrades the production lines.
I have seen people blame this on the ongoing Ruger/Beretta…well, I don’t know what to call it. It isn’t a hostile takeover any longer. But Beretta has made a tender offer for up to 25% of Ruger’s stock. 25% isn’t a controlling interest, and I don’t think Beretta has a director on the board yet. I don’t think this is related, but I don’t feel comfortable asserting that as a certainty.
(I have not tendered my Ruger stock. The $44.80 Beretta is offering isn’t enough to overcome my desire to keep Ruger independent, and if I did tender my stock, I’d make a whole $5.40.)
I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out in 2027. I expect to see some of these products reintroduced, and I expect to see people complaining about how the new versions aren’t as good as the old ones.
But it wouldn’t be a hobby if we didn’t have something to complain about.
Edited to add: American Rifleman story. I think this was published after my post went up. (Hattip: my brother.)
Obit watch: October 14, 2026.
October 14th, 2026P.C. Vey, New Yorker cartoonist.
Or, as the paper of wreckage puts it:
P.C. Vey, Cartoonist Who Would Have Made This Headline Funny, Has Died
I admit, I found several of these particularly funny. Especially the bedtime story one.
Obit watch: October 13, 2026.
October 13th, 2026Drink!
October 13th, 2026Your NFL loser update: week 5, 2026.
October 11th, 2026NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Miami
Tennessee
Chargers
Well, will you look at this? Miami is 0-5, but I can’t believe they are really that bad.
Someone had to win the Tennessee-Houston game, and it turned out to be Houston.
And the worthless Chargers are now 0-5 as well.
This is actually making me kind of happy.
It looks like Miami has a bye next week, and the worthless Chargers play Kansas City. KC is a heavy favorite in that game, of course. Tennessee plays Indianapolis: Indy is also a heavy favorite in that game.
Obit watch: October 10, 2026.
October 10th, 2026Short and quick: Mike Ditka. NFL.com. ESPN. Chicago Tribune (archived). Chicago Sun Times. NYT (share link, may require).
Noted:
Time enough at last!
October 10th, 2026
I have finally crossed enough off of my to-do list, and also resolved some things that other people wanted me to do, so I feel comfortable doing some gun book blogging.
I’m going to start out easy. Two duplicates of books I’ve already blogged (from the Springfield purchase) and two books that I didn’t previously have, but I’ve written about the authors previously.
After the jump…
Obit watch: October 9, 2026.
October 9th, 2026I know about Mike Ditka, but in keeping with this blog’s policy, I want to wait until tomorrow to do a round-up.
In the meantime:
Margaret Hamilton. No, not that one (though I did say to my mother when she asked me if I’d heard of her, “Wasn’t she the Wicked Witch of the West?”). This one led the team that developed the software for Apollo.
…
Cecily Gemmell. You’ve never heard of her, but she was the last tie to a particular era of history.
She was Winston Churchill’s last surviving personal secretary.
Ms. Gemmell, known as Chips, first entered Churchill’s orbit in the summer of 1947 at the age of 18, arriving in the still-stunned aftermath of his 1945 general election defeat as Britain’s wartime prime minister. His reputation as the man who had saved the world from Hitler’s tyranny was titanic, but his electoral ejection from No. 10 Downing Street before final victory — Germany had surrendered, Japan had not — remained humbling.
Youth was a requirement for a Churchill stenotyping secretary. “The Old Man,” as he was known, dictated so long and so late into the night, as a rule, that stamina was essential. Ms. Gemmell joined a team of extraordinarily bright and capable, if often exhausted, young women, and a proud line of exceptional Churchill personal secretaries (all but one of them female) that extended back through both world wars to 1902. At her death, Ms. Gemmell was the last.
…
Ms. Gemmell was initially assigned to Churchill’s literary assistant, Denis Kelly, cataloging the prime minister’s World War II papers in anticipation of Churchill writing his war memoirs. The cache was housed at Chartwell, Churchill’s country home in the county of Kent, and so a place was found for Ms. Gemmell to live in the nearby village of Westerham. She bicycled back and forth to Chartwell, pushing the bike up “an incredibly steep hill” that, at least, “was a cinch coming back down.”
She worked in what she described as the semi-basement of the Muniment Room at Chartwell — “completely untrained,” but tasked with organizing the monumental paper trail of Churchill’s wartime existence. She saw virtually no one other than Mr. Kelly, along with “everybody’s socks — the socks of the famous,” from her obscured vantage. She would “look up and see Anthony Eden’s pink socks leaving the room,” she recalled, referring to the foreign secretary who would later briefly become prime minister. “All I saw of the famous were their socks.”
…
Your Friday loser update.
October 9th, 2026NHL teams that still have a chance of going 0-84:
Philadelphia
Los Angeles Kings
Calgary
Still early, but I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re going to have at least one horrible team this year. And I don’t think it will be one of the Florida teams, which I hope will make McThag happy.
Firings watch.
October 8th, 2026I can’t find it now, but I recall the Titans wearing Oilers throwback uniforms during a fairly recent game. I also recall advocating for the public flogging of everyone involved in this decision.
Seven months later, the executives who oversaw the uniform and logo switch have been fired.
According to a statement to the Nashville Tennessean, the Titans have decided to move on from three vice presidents who oversaw marketing, creative and revenue.
“As the Titans prepare for the opening of our new stadium and the future of Titans football, we are making changes to how we lead the business side of the organization,” the Titans said in a statement to the Nashville Tennessean. “We will hire an Executive Vice President and Chief Business Officer to lead our revenue, marketing, and communications teams. As part of these changes, Adam Nuse, Erin Swartz, and Charles Jensen are leaving the organization. We are grateful for everything they have contributed to the Titans and wish them the best in future endeavors.”
I know, it is rooting for laundry, and more so than usual. But the Titans annoy me, and this is one of the reasons.
Obit watch: October 7, 2026.
October 7th, 2026Eva Marie Saint. NYT (share link, may require).
Other credits include “Grand Prix”, “The Last Days of Patton”, “When Hell Was in Session”, and “The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming”.
Burning in Hell watch: Bill Harris. You may remember him from hits like the Symbionese Liberation Army, the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, and the murder of Myrna Opsahl.
Nice use of the passive voice there, NYPost. “…shotgun went off”.
NYT (share link, may require).
“What Was the Symbionese Liberation Army?” (NYT share link, may require).
Obit watch: October 6, 2026.
October 6th, 2026Jim Bakker. NYT (share link, may require).
No offense intended, but I honestly thought he had died several years ago.
Jeffrey Archer, writer and convicted perjurer.
Sometimes, it seems like the judges in sketches on “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” are uncomfortably close to reality. “Fragrance”?
…another newspaper, The News of the World, reported allegations that Mr. Archer had committed perjury at the original libel trial in 1987, forcing him to withdraw from the mayoral race.
Those charges came to trial in September 2000, and in July 2001, he was given a four-year jail term for perjury and perverting the course of justice. After two years in a variety of correctional institutions, he was released, resuming his career as a prolific writer. He kept his title and retired from the House of Lords in 2024.
Obit watch: October 5, 2026.
October 5th, 2026Marjoe Gortner, who had one of the oddest career arcs in entertainment history.
He spoke eloquently as a child, so his parents, Vernon, a Christian evangelical minister, and mother, Marge, had him ordained as a preacher at age 4, when he performed a marriage ceremony for a Paramount newsreel.
Now a celebrity, the long-haired Gortner delivered gyrating, dramatic sermons at revival meetings across the U.S. as his family amassed a fortune estimated to be worth $3 million, but he said his father took off with the money shortly before Gortner turned 16.
He rejoined the ministry as a way to earn a living and in 1971 granted a film crew access to him during his final revival tour. The resulting 1972 documentary, Marjoe, produced and directed by Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan, debuted at Cannes and won the Oscar for best feature documentary. (The poster called it “a real story millions of people refuse to believe.”)
He went on to become an actor. Other credits include “Starcrash”, “Acapulco Gold“, and “American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt”.
Burning in Hell watch: Dennis Hastert (R-pedo).
Your NFL loser update: week 4, 2026.
October 4th, 2026I think maybe panic is worth considering now.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Miami
Houston
Tennessee
Chargers
Tampa Bay
Houston is 0-4, which surprises me. But…is there a chance, maybe a slim one, but a chance, that the worthless Chargers could go 0-17 this year?
A man can hope, can’t he? Isn’t hope what defines humanity?
NHL teams that still have a chance of going 0-84:
Detroit
Philadelphia
Dallas
Chicago
Los Angeles Kings
Calgary