Just a Little Perspective...

Green On White And The Meaning Of Life

The snow came roaring in on Tuesday, and with it the birds, pushing ahead of the blizzard raging behind them. Hunkered down in the cattails, we watched them flying high, fast and gone with neither glance nor quack toward my meager spread and ever-pitiful calling. A typical evening hunt for me.

So we just sat there, the dog and I, in the lee of an old beaver lodge, content to watch the undulating spectacle of migration play out across the evening sky. And, as I often do in the presence of such ancient and wondrous magic, I quickly fell into deep contemplation of all life's mysteries.

I mused and I mulled. I pondered and naval-gazed. I philosophized and proselytized, and just when I was on the verge of pulling it all together into one, all-encompassing unified-field theory of life, the universe and everything, a flight of mallards suddenly pitched into the decoys and my half-formed grand realization was gone like a forgotten dream, leaving in its wake a pair of drakes bobbing in the slushy water.

So much for figuring it all out, but a beautiful pair of greenheads on a luminous winter evening is about as good a consolation as a guy could ask for.

'Tis The Season For Giving...

I want it...


Findmeagift.com are the first in the UK to stock this ridiculously hilarious RC toy! Our fantastic radio controlled helicopter is like no other! Don't expect there to be any room for passengers on this voyage sonny-jim. The Remote Controlled Flying F*ck says it all!

Imagine a normal day in the office and some idiot next to you is blabbering on about something pointless. Instead of turning round and telling them that you don't give a flying f*ck, show them instead!

This remote controlled toy is literally the word 'F*CK' with a helicopter propeller. Fly it around the office or house without a care and let everyone know what you really think of their dull and pointless conversation.

Blatant, crude and oh-so funny, the RC Flying F*ck helicopter is a fantastic way to show your true feelings without having to say a word. Whether you love radio controlled toys, or you just need a way to tell your boss that you don't give a rats ass about his golfing stories, the Remote Controlled Flying F*ck says it all!

Shamelessly stolen from Patrick Burns' Facebook page, or wall, or whatever the hell you call it...

And a Spoonie Shall Save Them...

Pardon the absence. Last week I was in Stuttgart, Arkansas, duck hunting (and rice) capitol of the world, where I shot exactly...one shoveler.

How did I manage to not shoot a single mallard of the non-smiling variety (or any other ducks) in Stuttgart-freakin'-Arkansas? Simple, there weren't any there, and what ducks there were, were scattered all over the area, thanks to a ton of standing water in the fields combined the White River being out of its banks.

Had an absolute blast, anyway. Despite all the mallards for which Stuttgart is justly famous still being somewhere else, I shot my first limit of specks, got to meet a bunch of cool, like-minded folks, developed a much-deeper appreciation for the DU mission and got a glimpse into a part of the larger waterfowling world and culture that's quite a bit different from my own, but still the same.

More to come over on the Field & Stream website...  

Honest Gun Descriptions...

                                                           This gun is "Shithead Approved"...

Greg over at Shotgun Chronicle had a good post recently about Champlin Firearms, a really cool high-end gunshop here in Oklahoma, specifically the descriptions of the firearms for sale on the Champlin website, which tend toward the...highly descriptive...

From Greg's post

I love to visit the Champlin site. Besides being a sweet site to drool over some of the finest guns ever built, like this Purdey over under they also offer good info on guns and some exquisite snippets of sarcasm, like this one from a gun description.

“I believe the guy that installed this recoil pad drives a Volvo, likes warm flat beer and was breast fed until age 7; however the pad can be changed easily.”

Better still, they have a knack for finding cool guns that are interesting and very shootable. Check out this little Italian gun they have listed. What a nice little gun. Except the recoil pad that is…

Nice find, Greg, but you missed this one, man...

#70953, W. C. Scott & Son Makers London, England: A Boxlock 16 Bore Model 162 Made 1901 with 26" Damascus Extractor Barrels that some Shithead blued to make them look like steel barrels but they are British Nitro Proved with Rib Extension & Hidden Cross Bolt at .669 .003 & .011 (Skt.I & Skt.II), Wall thickness on the right barrel at .0295" and .0305" on the left barrel, 2 1/2" chambers, Nitro proved at 1 ounce, A single selective trigger that functions to select the right or left barrel moving the slide forward or rearward, Splinter forend, Open pistol grip stock at 14 1/4 x 1 9/16 x 2 13/16" over a 1" pad, 5 lbs. 14 oz.., 70% coverage of period scroll engraving, The bores are excellent to near excellent plus.

If you're ever in Enid, Oklahoma (and if you are, I'm sorry...) then a trip to Champlin Firearms is highly recommended. It occupies a distinctly nondescript (from the outside) ramshackle metal building at the Enid airport, but walk through the door and you know you're in a real gunshop. And the best part is, you are free, nay encouraged, to handle any of the guns in their inventory.

It's interesting, but I can speak from personal experience when I say it's also a bit terrifying to fondle a gun worth more than your house.

Guns I Shoulda Bought: Pre-War Superposed...

It was a thing of beauty leaning there in the gun rack among the ass-ugly plastic fantastics and worn-out department-store pumpguns. Two triggers, two barrels, solid rib, with a stock of swirled chocolate.

It was a widower's gun, on consignment for an elderly lady whose husband had had good taste in firearms and a penchant for Brownings. In addition to the super there was a sweet sixteen and two light twelves, all pristine post-war guns.

But I only had eyes for that old 30's-vintage super. I'd come into the gun shop, press my face to the glass of the circle rack and slowly turn the carousel until it was level with my face, then I'd ask to look at it, again. The asshole clerk would sigh, hand me the gun and glower impatiently while I fondled it.

I'd swing the gun on a few imaginary birds, break it open yet again, look down the bores, trace my fingers over that beautifully-figured stock and then reluctantly hand it back to dickface, who would put it on the rack with a smirk and then go back to ignoring me. The hangtag said $600. Hell, they were practically giving it away.

Didn't matter, of course. It may as well have been $60,000. I was a sophomore in college. I was working as a donation clerk at the local Goodwill store. I shared a dumpy one-bedroom apartment with a girlfriend who made even less than I did. I was driving a Schwinn at the time. I could afford Milwaukee's Best. I could afford Hamburger Helper. I couldn't afford a Browning Superposed no matter how much of a screaming deal it was.

And then, of course, one day it was gone from its place in the rack. The eared phallus smiled broadly as he told me that some guy from Tulsa here on business had walked in, just killing some time, picked up the super and bought it on the spot. "Helluva deal on that gun, too bad you couldn't get it."

Yep, too bad...

That's Great, But Does It Have Any Quail?

Because I'm having a helluva time finding any down here on Earth...

From the BBC

Astronomers have confirmed the existence of an Earth-like planet in the "habitable zone" around a star not unlike our own. The planet, Kepler 22-b, lies about 600 light-years away and is about 2.4 times the size of Earth, and has a temperature of about 22C.

It is the closest confirmed planet yet to one like ours - an "Earth 2.0". However, the team does not yet know if Kepler 22-b is made mostly of rock, gas or liquid. During the conference at which the result was announced, the Kepler team said that it had spotted some 1,094 new candidate planets.

The Kepler space telescope was designed to look at a fixed swathe of the night sky, staring intently at about 150,000 stars. The telescope is sensitive enough to see when a planet passes in front of its host star, dimming the star's light by a minuscule amount. Kepler identifies these slight changes in starlight as candidate planets, which are then confirmed by further observations by Kepler and other telescopes in orbit and on Earth.

Kepler 22-b was one of 54 candidates reported by the Kepler team in February, and is just the first to be formally confirmed using other telescopes.

More of these "Earth 2.0" candidates are likely to be confirmed in the near future, though a redefinition of the habitable zone's boundaries has brought that number down to 48. Kepler 22-b lies at a distance from its sun about 15% less than the distance from the Earth to the Sun, and its year takes about 290 days. However, its sun puts out about 25% less light, keeping the planet at its balmy temperature that would support the existence of liquid water.

On the Nature of Whisky...

"Of the history, geography, literature, philosophy, morals, use and abuse, praise and scorn of whisky volumes might be written. They will not be written by me. Yet it is opportune that a voice be raised in defence of this great, potent, and princely drink where so many speak to slight and defame, and where so many glasses are emptied foolishly and irreverently in ignorance of the true qualities of the liquid and in contempt of its proper employment.

For, if one might, for a trope's sake, alter the sex of this most male of beverages, one would say that there be many who take with them to the stews beauty and virtue which should command the grateful awe of men.

Though, in truth, there is little of the marble idol of divinity about this swift and fiery spirit. It belongs to the alchemist's and  to the long nights shot with cold, flickering beams; it is compact of Druid spells and Sabbaths (of the witches and the Calvinists); its graces are not shameless, Latin, and the abundant, but have a sovereign austerity, whether the desert's or the north wind's; there are flavours in it, insinuating and remote, from mountain torrents and the scanty soil on moor-land rocks and slanting, rare sun-shafts."

                                                               From Aeneas MacDonald's "Whisky"


I think this is going to be a good book. With an intro like that, how can it not be?