Born in the Wrong Century

Sometimes I think that I was born in the wrong century. Lame, right? That's what they make Renaissance Fairs for, right? Wrong. You got me all wrong. First off, the century and place I feel I might have thrived in was a place that would brutally beat and rape a Renaissance Fair goer.

Maybe a little background is in order here. A large portion of my heritage is derived from Germanic and Irish sources; mostly Germanic, though. My grandmother has traced our roots (on my maternal grandfather's side) all the way back to 14th century German nobility in central and eastern Germany.

"Aha!" you say, "The 14th century was the Renaissance! Busted! You're a Renaissance Fair geek!"

Ummm, no. Fourteenth century Germany (or at least the vast majority of it) had not yet experienced the fruits of the Renaissance. It was largely a dark and brutal place still existing under a mostly medieval feudal system. The powers of Europe conspired to keep Germany divided into small, warring baronies devoid of any central, national leadership. This provided the major European powers with a buffer zone right smack dab in the middle of Europe.

In any event, my people were some of these constantly warring minor feudal lords. Warlords, really. My grandma has a photo of her and my granddad in Germany in the 50s standing at the site of one of our family's keeps. Well, there's a 3 inch ring of stone left of the foundations of the keep at the top of some hill by a river in Germany. But that's where it once stood.

The point? Yes, yes. I have a bit of a temper. My family is famous for it, actually. I think I control it better than anyone in my family, but it's definately there. At work I am pretty flawless at concealing it but oh boy is it there.

Sometimes I feel like I could just cleave people's skulls and grin like a maniac with grey matter dripping from my face. Scary, huh? I think I freak people out when I tell them that I feel this way.

"Wow, man. That such and such in that meeting... what an ass! It would be most satisfying to beat him to death with a large club."

I omit the full mental picture I am experiencing, of course. It involves continuing to beat this jackass until his head is a red smear on the ground and the twitching in his limbs has ceased.

I fully realize that these sorts of feelings are totally out of place in our touchy-feely society. The whole point of this post is that they would have served me quite well in fourteenth century Germany.

Gunshow Review

This weekend I went to the C&E Gunshow in Richmond, Virginia. All in all it was a mixed experience, I have to say. Let me break it down into these 5 categories:

1. Website
2. Selection
3. Vendors
4. Facilities
5. Atmosphere

Website - 2 stars out of 5

Pretty bad, although they did just overhaul it over the weekend. Before it had a black and white repeating gif background, was rife with misspellings, and had scrolling banners. It still has the scrolling banners, but at least they're not blinking now.

http://www.cegunshows.com/

Selection - 5 stars out of 5

Anything you could ever want is what you could find. They had everything from AK-47s to AR-15s to Glocks to Siggs to G22s to MG-34s to Tommy Guns to Mosin Nagants (for $89!) to M1 Garands to Ruger Revolvers to S&Ws of all varieties. There was more, believe me. Much, much more.

They had ammo of every variety, knives (from the practical to the purely ridiculous), and accessories that ran the gamut from helmets (modern and antique) to holsters to ammo cannisters to gunsmithing tools and the list goes on.

Vendors - 4 stars out of 5

The vendors were all very knowledgeable and courteous. They didn't really pressure you, either. Every vendor selling guns that I saw had at least one laptop station set up with Sprint or Verizon Cards for High Speed Internet access in order to process background checks. The longest wait I heard of that day for a background check to process was 30 minutes. Not bad at all.

So why the 4 out of 5 rating, you ask? Certain vendors seemed like they were catering to the hard right wing elements out there. I mean the really hard right wing element. Like swastika hard. Certain vendors seemed to have just a little too much Nazi paraphenalia for my comfort. It wasn't like they were carrying WWII collectibles in general. Nope - just the Nazi stuff. I avoided these vendors completely in terms of my purchases.

I did speak with a couple of these purveyors of Nazi ... ummm - "goods." Only one would engage me on the topic of the Nazi paraphenalia when it became clear that I was probing for non-purchase related reasons. He simply stated that there's a market for the stuff at these shows and he's just turning a buck.

His argument, if you stop thinking right there is a good one. Legally that is where it stops. But these guys weren't simply turning a buck. There were plenty of vendors out there turning plenty of bucks there that day and without Nazi BS cluttering their stalls.

But legally that's fair enough and he has every right to sell this legal merchandise. But for a crowd which claims to be the reddest and the whitest of the red, white, and blue I have to take issue with those vendors who sport the Nazi goods. I mean - really? Naziism and fascism are about as anti-American in spirit and cause as you can get.

Chances are your granddad fought alongside mine in WWII. Or at least they served somewhere in that conflict. Would they approve? It's doubtful that they would do anything short of roll over in their graves (my grandad, at least) if they knew that Americans were glorifying the monstrous empire they fought and died to protect the world from.

Anyone who embraces fascism is a short-sighted political pervert who should be ashamed to hide behind the liberties that the Constitution offers them, seeing that under fascism those freedoms wouldn't exist. Ironic, ain't it?

Facilities - 2 stars out of 5

Meh. That's about all I have to say on that. Meh. There weren't enough bathrooms - there were long lines all day. The place got very hot as the day wore on. There was absolutely no shade outside, either. The only thing the facility itself had going for it was its size. It was a large venue that could fit many vendors.

Atmosphere - 3 stars out of 5

A very mixed bag. Everyone was very polite, but there was a bit of an edge to the crowd. For instance, there were Brown Shirts there. About three of them. There was also a bit of a skinhead presence. They didn't cause any problems, though. Maybe four or five guys?

The minorities that attended tended to travel in groups. I don't know why this would be, but it might have had to do with the Nazi paraphenalia and Brown Shirts walking around.

The one bright spot is that there was a booth for Sportsmen for Warner. Not that a Democratic candidate's booth makes it a bright spot for the simple fact that he's a Democrat. No, I mean more that you definately had a right-wing presence there and it was good to see at least a little bit of a center-left presence as well. The fact that a bit of balance was tolerated was a good thing, is all I'm saying.

Gunshow Cherry

I get my gunshow cherry popped tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes...

Gadget Pr0n

I got an iPod Touch recently. All I have to say is:

"Oh, God! ... ungh... jism!"

My wife laughs at me and says I'm turning into a Mac-fag. She's such a homophobe! I'm totally kidding on that one. In fact, she's a hag in need of a fag to pal around with. So seriously, if you're gay and you live in Charlottesville and you have no hag... boy, do I have the primo hag for you! Leave a comment and I'll give you my wife's contact info.

Haha! Like there are any gays that read this site! Guns 'n' hikin' 'n' campin' 'n' gamin' 'n' civil liberties arguments 'n' political rantin'... All things the gays like, right?

Anyways - it seems you can't discuss Apple technology without talking about the gays! That's why my wife is giving me crap about the deep and abiding love I have for my iPod Touch. I'm a pretty anti-Apple, pro-PC partisan when it comes to computing. I do not consider iPods computing, though.

To tell you the truth, the iPod touch comes as close to computing as any mp3 player ever has, though. You can surf the web on this thing via hotspots. There's a small selection of applications you can install on the device and a small array of built-in apps. I can check and write email from my iPod. I can get the weather at the touch of a button and stocks as well. So the iPod Touch comes close to computing.

Maybe you could call it limited computing, at best. The applications are more like a set of features than real apps, however. It isn't a computer until I can write and compile code on the device and not just for the device.

None of this detracts from the awesomeness of the iPod Touch, however. It is an amazing little device with the slickest interface I have ever seen on anything. Period. I haven't had to so much as open the owner's manual. That is the mark of a truly usable device. When you don't have to refer to the owner's manual at all then you know your UI is great.

So, in order to not be a playa hata I must give it up... Fucking awesome job, Apple.

Oh, word.

Weekend Outings - Busts!

Seems like the two big outings I had planned for the weekend fell through in one way or the other. I was going to take the kids shooting out in Barboursville on my parents' farm with my step-Dad's old Ruger 10/22. After that we were going to go out to a friend of my Mom's place a few miles down the road to have a cookout.

Well, as far the the shooting goes, that was a complete failure. I knew the gun had a bad rear sight and I pre-ordered a new rear sight for the gun which had arrived on time. Victory, right? Well, not so fast. I couldn't get the old rear sight off without getting really aggressive about it. Since the gun isn't mine I just left the sight on my step-Dad's desk in case he wanted to try his hand at it.

On top of that, the barrel was plugged with what I can only guess was some sort of corrossion. To that end was left a little vial of some sort of ballistic corrosion cleaner, a cleaning rod, and some wipes. Okay - I guess I was to clean the gun, too. And I did try - for about 30 minutes. I made some headway with the solvent and cleaning rod. Every time I pulled one of the pads out off the barrel, it was filthy.

I managed to get the rod about two inches back into the barrel, but no more. The barrel was still fouled and my faith in this weapon was now severely shaken. I did oil the bolt up a bit (it was stiff as hell). I guess this old Ruger had been neglected for quite some time.

I thought I remembered my grandmother having some old bolt-action .22. So I asked her and she said, "Oh, I think I have something like that." So I followed her back to her wing of the house and she reaches into her dresser drawer and pulls out a loaded revolver! It was some old .35.

I said, "Grandma! This is loaded!"

To which she replied, "Oh, yes. Ready for action."

Haha. I love that lady! So I asked her if she had a .22 rifle.

"The only rifle I have is the one in the lamp."

Now, my Grandma isn't crazy despite her highly advanced years. She does have a rifle-lamp. It's an old Springfield 1903 (complete with ridiculously huge bayonet!) in an old-style wooden rifle stand that has a lamp built into it. It's actually very cool. Totally steampunk.

No worries - I took the kids out anyways. I had brought my shotgun and some target shells with me out to Barboursville. I taught them all some gun safety. Understandably none of them wanted to shoot the shotgun. I would've let them, too - standing there helping them manage the gun the whole time, of course.

Well, that was quickly finished. I only had 25 shells. Next on the slate was the cookout. We got there and there was a total lack of kids in the 10-14 age range. My kids (10 and 13) quickly got bored playing with the younger kids who were all eight and younger.

We stuck it out for a while, though. Just as the band was about to start playing, it started to rain. Between the soon-to-be-busted nature of the cookout and the bored state of the kids we decided to pack it in and go home.

Oh, well.

Gun Show in Richmond

Man, am I turning into some sort of redneck or what? Haha. See, I can use the word redneck without offending people because I grew up in Barboursville, Virginia, by God!

Me and a group of my buddies are going to a gun show in Richmond in a couple of weeks. I won't link the website because, man is it ghetto!

Tiled animated gif wallpaper? Check.

Misspelled scrolling banners? Check.

Rants about ATF agents and civil liberties? Check.

Mad ghetto.