Cocked, Locked And Ready To Rock

I took the Basic Handgun Safety class.  I spent a year researching and shooting various handguns.  I chose and bought a handgun.  Between rental guns and my own I've shot approximately 2,000 rounds on the range.  I took the Ohio Concealed Carry class.  I applied for an Ohio Concealed Carry Permit.  Last Friday I picked up the permit.  Only one thing left to do:  actually leave the house with a concealed handgun.

Last Saturday was the day.  I left the house Saturday morning wearing a pair of cargo shorts and a t-shirt.  Carrying a concealed handgun on my hip.  Using an Inside the Waistband (IWB) holster, I couldn't detect any sign of the gun in the mirror.  I was still paranoid that everyone would know.

First stop, Kroger's.  All the way from my car to the door I'm tugging on the hem of my shirt, even though I know that with this holster there is nothing visible if my shirt does ride up.  At the deli counter I take a number a wait my turn.  Why is that lady looking at me?  She knows I have a gun and she's about to call 911.  I'm sure of it.  And that man over there.  Why does he keep looking over his shoulder directly at me?  Is it the bulge on my hip that I'm sure is about the size of a cannon?  I can feel the sweat forming on my brow.

I get my deli order and head for the salad bar; I need fruits and veggies for the bird.  I'm carrying one of those small baskets since I'm only getting a few items.  I need to put it down to pick from the salad bar, but I know if I bend from the waist the butt of the gun pressing against my shirt is going to be visible to anyone within 100 feet.  So I place the basket on the floor like a woman would, bending at the knees.  Pick it back up the same way.

I get out of there undetected and go home to pick up Mrs. Grumpy.  I don't tell her I'm carrying; I want to see if she notices.  We go to Walgreen's because she needs a new passport picture.  I stand at the entrance frantically searching for the sign prohibiting firearms.  I don't see one, but my behavior makes her suspicious.  So far she hasn't noticed a thing.  As I'm standing at the Photo Center waiting for her to get her picture taken and processed I see a managerial type heading up the aisle from the back straight toward me.  His stride seems quick and purposeful.  He's made me, I'm sure.  Did I miss the sign on the door?  I'm already formulating my apology and getting ready to exit the store.  As he gets within 8-10 feet of me he says "Hi, finding everything you need?"  You betcha.

I suggest we stop for lunch on the way home.  We decide on a restaurant in our neighborhood that we both like.  Again, I quickly sweep the entrance for signage.  None.  I make sure to grab the side of the booth that places my right hip against the wall.  Facing the door, just like the instructor told us.  Lunch is uneventful until we head for the door.  A family with a couple kids is headed in and in passing the little girl brushes my hip with her shoulder.  I'm certain she is going to yell "Gun, Gun", but she just continues on her way.

After arriving home I ask Mrs. Grumpy if she was aware I was armed all day.  She had no idea.  I tell her in the future I will always keep her informed of my carry status.

**  Tune in Friday for Part II

When Did It Start To Rain And When Did The President Know It?

Why Do They Care So Much?

"Hang the bitch"

The other day I was browsing news channels during the day when I stopped on CNN because whatever story they were doing caught my attention.  Suddenly, in the middle of that story, everything ground to a halt because of breaking news.  There was a verdict in the Jody Arias trial.

Now I knew that Jody Arias was accused of killing her boyfriend, but I hadn't really followed the case or her trial.  Just didn't care.  Not the attitude of a lot of people in Arizona.  As I continued to watch they showed a crowd 10 deep on the street outside the courthouse, all eagerly awaiting the verdict.  The reporter, doing some of the back story, showed how people had lined up early each morning of the trial to try and get one of the limited seats in the courtroom.  When the verdict was read it provoked the reaction you see above.  A crowd consisting of mostly women, delirious with joy at the conviction of Ms. Arias.

It led me to wonder why people with no real personal stake in a trial like this become so emotionally invested.  It happened with Casey Anthony and with Michael Jackson.  Is it because the media picks certain crimes and trials to hype?  Why would people give up most of every day for months to gather outside a courthouse and follow every minute detail of the trial of a woman they don't know who killed a man they didn't know?

My first recollection of this type of behavior was the O.J. Simpson murder trial in the 90's, which was preceded by the much watched infamous Bronco chase.  Is that where it started?  Anybody remember an earlier instance?  After all, there are murder trials every day all over the country.  It seems we let the media pick which ones are important and then become fascinated with all the gory details.

I don't see why all of this is necessary.  Nancy Grace declares everybody guilty on day one; why don't we just let her decide?

It's Our Own Fault

By The Big Guy

Senior Contributor

It’s that time of year again. It’s time to talk about television so turn off the television and pay attention. Last year at this time or maybe two years ago at this time (after a while it’s all a blur) we talked about the end of the regular television season and all the cliff hangers that are written into season ending episodes, as though that’s going to get you to come back in the fall, as though you’re going to remember there even was a cliff hanger. If you’re coming back, you’re coming back and if you’re not, you’re not.

Turns out there’s something even more important going on at this very same time of the year in the Tee Vee biz. It took place this very week. All of the major television networks and all of the minor ones for that matter announced their new fall schedules. Yep they are rip, roaring, ready to go with all their new shows for the fall, not to mention all the big hits that are coming back. Oh, and over there kicked to the curb you will find the unmentioned. That would be the shows that were just a week ago a part of last year’s better than ever new fall lineup that weren’t good enough after all and they have been cancelled. It used to be you had to make an effort to find out the names of these shows but with all of the media shows about the media, Entertainment Tonight and their clones, it’s pretty easy to find out who’s out of a job and/or what you’re going to do with your Friday nights now that Vegas and CSI: New York have both been cancelled.

A few things I need to mention in the interest of perhaps accidentally educating readers. The major networks, which consist of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox still account for the vast majority of eyes across America that sit down to watch something on television each day. If you take all the viewers of all the other channels on your cable or satellite system, they don’t usually add up to anything close to those watching the big four. The networks have these meetings at this time of year, which are referred to as “Upfronts,” to peddle their wares to advertisers. Pssst. Hey, buddy. Buy now and I can get you a hell of a deal on thirty-second spots in Modern Family. No? How about Revenge? It’s a regular TV bazaar where the buyer is king.

Of course, TV viewers have no say in the outcome of any of this. While it is still usually true that the shows with the most viewers have the best chance of continuing, there are so many extenuating circumstances, both real and imagined, that kill programs outright or get them moved around the prime time landscape. And that’s our own fault. While the DVR and every other method of “on demand” viewing may have freed us up to watch things when we choose, it has also given networks the latitude of moving shows where they feel they will best be able to combat programming from the competition, which seems sort of silly. Of course, networks have captured the market on silly or even stupid when it comes to deciding what you watch. After all, if they’re so smart, how come there are so many shows cancelled each year? That’s not our fault, although right now some network executive is telling some advertising executive that as a matter of fact, it is.

Hero Of The Week

Air Force Senior Airman Pedro I. Espaillat, Jr.
Age:  20
4th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron
Died 15 May, 2004
Kirkuk, Iraq

It's All About Politics

Every time you read or hear the word "Benghazi" think about this:

While George W. Bush was president there were 13 attacks on U.S. facilities that resulted in 60 deaths, not including numerous and fatal attacks on the embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.  Now find the transcripts from the hearings about those attacks and the resulting dead Americans.

I'll wait.

Bah, Humbug

Yesterday was Mother's Day.  A totally made up holiday.  Created by a cabal of the card, candy, jewelry, restaurant and flower industries.  I guess buying all that shit for your mother pumps money into the economy, but really, don't you feel coerced?  If you don't send flowers, buy jewelry, take mom out to dinner or at least buy a card, you're burdened with guilt, most of it self imposed.

The worst part of the whole thing is now Facebook.  People feel they must post sappy poems, pictures of sunrises overlaid with more sappy odes to motherhood, or personal messages to their mothers.  For Christ's sake, call her and tell her how you feel; do you really need the validation of your "friends" fawning comments on your post?  Is nothing private in this digital age?

I'm not totally heartless; I think about my mother on Mother's Day.  But those are memories that belong to me.  I don't need to tell all of my supposed "friends" on Facebook about the relationship I had with my Mom.  Or post pictures of her holding me when I was 4 years old so all of those "friends" can "like" my picture.

If your mother is still alive, hopefully you don't need Mother's Day to push you to do something nice for her.  If your mother is no longer alive, call a sibling or other relative if you want to reminisce about dear old mom. 

Another reason to give up Facebook.

Go Ahead, Make My Day

“Also when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they’re ready to do it. Also when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they have the wherewithal and the weapons to do it,” Porter added.


Those are the words of the new president of the NRA, Jim Porter.  To give this quote some context, it came as part of a diatribe against President Obama and his efforts to expand background checks for gun buyers.  The rights new mantra is that any form of increased gun control is equivalent to "tyranny" and that the citizenry must be armed to forcibly resist the tyranny that Obama and the feds are trying to impose on us.

This on the heels of a Farleigh Dickinson University poll that showed 44% of Republicans polled believed that armed revolution against our government may be necessary.  Why and how do Americans come to these conclusions?  I think they live in a bubble, only listening to news outlets that mirror their views, only reading web sites that back up their crazy, paranoid theories.  That these news organizations and web sites and blogs are lying and making up stories to fit their and their listeners preconceived notions matters not.  Their minds are made up and they are willing to believe whatever moronic story fits their mindset.

Have these kooks stopped to consider how that revolution against the perceived government tyranny might look?  Do they realize that the government has tanks, jet fighters, stealth bombers, Cruise missiles, drones for Christ's sake?  Even a well organized and trained militia group might last a couple days.

The purveyors of the fear and lies that feeds these views, Fox News, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity etc. are all laughing all the way to the bank, while these ignorant Bubbas hoard their arms and ammo and dream of overthrowing the black man in the White House. 

Focus on Cleveland

By The Big Guy

Senior Contributor

The city of Cleveland has been minding its own business for a number of years. In fact, if I had to think back I’d say that it’s been about forty-four years since anyone has bothered giving Cleveland more than a passing glance and that was over the fact that the river running through the middle of town caught fire. Not buildings on the river, but the disgustingly polluted river itself caught fire. Time magazine decided this was a problem and brought the attention of the nation to Cleveland over the matter for a short period of time back in 1969.

Since then, Cleveland has pretty much gone back to minding its own business, quietly becoming a proud symbol of the rust belt and taking a population hit that moved it from the fifth largest city in the country to it’s current ranking of forty-seven. Today’s Cleveland is smaller than the booming metropoli of Tulsa and Omaha. It’s barely bigger than Wichita, Kansas. But this week Cleveland once again found itself the center of the country’s attention and once again not for anything good.

Not all that far from the very river that caught fire way back when, three girls who had gone missing as teenagers ten years ago were found alive, having been held captive for that period of time by yet one more demented member of our human race for reasons we do not yet know and probably really don’t want to know, although I would sure like to find out about the perpetrator’s two brothers who apparently have no complicity in the matter but didn’t think it odd that three young girls suddenly decided to take up residence with their sibling. Of course the complete story will be a made-for-TV movie on the Lifetime channel soon enough. The preening faces of the media couldn’t get to Cleveland fast enough to do their on-the-scene diligence and I have this vision of Nancy Grace screeching at news officials at CNN until they chartered her a jet to get her to northeast Ohio before anyone else.

I am compelled to point out something that has gotten absolutely no media attention of which I am aware, not even from TMZ or The Hollywood Reporter. It requires me to make an admission. Here it is: I watch Hawaii 5-0. Scant hours after the Cleveland news broke about the three girls held prisoner for ten years and that Amanda, the first captured, had managed to break loose, run to a neighbor and call the police, CBS ran an episode of Hawaii 5-0 with a story about a girl who had been held captive in a home, shackled in a room for ten years. Her name was Amanda. I am not making this up. Tell me that’s not creepy.  

In fairness to Cleveland I don’t think that most cities find themselves the center of attention for anything good unless it has to do with a sporting event which says a lot about us in this twenty-first century of ours. And just as sure as the media will pack up their satellite dishes and head back to New York or Atlanta and wait for what’s next, Cleveland will go back to laying low and continuing its slide down the list of largest cities in the United States. The days of Andrew Carnegie and Standard Oil and Republic Steel are long, long gone. Everyone there will be a lot more comfortable.

Hero Of The Week

Army Spc. Isela Rubalcava
Age:  25
296th Combat Support Battalion
3rd Brigade
2nd Infantry Division
Died 8 May, 2004
Mosul, Iraq

When Will It Be Enough?

Oakland Park, FL:  A 13 year old boy shoots his 6 year old sister.

Yuma, AZ:  A 3 year old boy finds his grandmother's 9mm handgun in the laundry room and shoots himself in the face.

Salinas, KS:  A 7 year old boy, playing with a gun while his father and brother were shooting on family property, shoots himself.

Talahassee, FL:  Mother shoots her 3 year old daughter near a public golf course and then commits suicide.

There have been at least 3, 835 gun deaths in America since Newton.

The answer from the NRA is more guns and no expansion of background checks.

Listen to this guy's idea presented at the recent NRA Convention in Houston.

Pet Peeve

Many times at public events such as athletic contests, auto races, graduations, political rallies etc. a member of the clergy will be asked to give an invocation before the proceedings begin.  Almost without fail the invited clergy will be from a Christian denomination.  And about 99% of the time they will end their prayer with "In the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ."

I get it that they're Christian and that those are words they use every day.  But contrary to what the Tea Party Taliban would have you believe, Christianity is mentioned nowhere in our constitution.  We are not a Christian nation.  We are a melting pot of people who practice many religions or no religion.  Would it hurt on these occasions to give a non-denominational invocation?  Or just do without a prayer at all?  Why is it necessary to potentially offend anyone?  Why is it necessary in some instances (public school graduations) to stomp on the hallowed principle of separation of church and state?

I'm sure some Christians will argue that since they make up the vast majority of religions practiced in this country that it only makes sense to have a Christian prayer.  They're the same ones who believe there is a War on Christmas.

Inexcusable

Notice his finger on the trigger?  Nice training.

I'm sure by now most of you have seen the crawl at the bottom of one of the news channels:  "5 year old boy shoots 2 year old sister in KY."  This story just makes my blood boil and makes me want to throttle so many people.

The boy was given the gun as a gift last year.  Who gives a 5 year old a .22 rifle as a gift?  Even allowing for the prevalence and history of guns in rural areas, nothing excuses exposing a 5 year old to a rifle.  He doesn't have the mental capability or the manual and physical dexterity to handle a firearm. 

The children's mother was in the yard when she heard the rifle go off.  The local coroner said the rifle was kept in a corner and the family didn't realize there was a bullet in it.  Didn't realize?  That is no excuse any time, but especially with children in the home.  First of all, the rifle should have been locked up where the children couldn't get to it, not left standing in a corner, even if it wasn't loaded.  Secondly, the parents should have known, before leaving a rifle unattended, that it was their responsibility to clear the weapon.  You must check and double check the chamber, visually or even manually, to be sure there are no rounds in the weapon.

Next there is the gun manufacturer, Keystone Sporting Arms, which specializes in guns for children.  Their Crickett line is marketed with the slogan "My first rifle" and comes in multiple bright colors, even pink for little girls.  They also market kid sized shooting accessories and apparel.  Their website has a "Kids Corner" where there are plenty of pictures of children shooting at ranges and hunting.  Making your living marketing guns for children is just repugnant.

A boy playing with a gun he considered to be his.  One shot to the chest of his 2 year old sister.  Parents who are not only negligent and complicit but also stupid.  A company deliberately selling killing tools to children.

Remember though, guns don't kill people, people kill people.

I'm a Collector

By The Big Guy

Senior Contributor

The compact disc was first thrust upon America in March 1983. The album that goes down in the record books as the first one to be released on compact disc is 52^nd Street by Billy Joel. The first album to sell a million copies on compact disc alone is Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits in 1985. I point this out to give you a marker for when our world went from analog to digital. It was thirty years ago and we’re not going back, no matter what the new aficionados of the long playing record and the vacuum tube amplifier might profess.

I began buying albums on compact disc late in 1984. I used to have hundreds of those long playing records. At one point in history they were the height of fidelity and the only choice for purchasing music. I had hundreds of them that dated back twenty years and it was hard for me to make the switch over to CDs. I continued to spend the majority of my music dollar on LPs and only bought an occasional CD when there was an album I considered special. Looking back I have no idea how the heck I decided what was special. Coincidentally a basement flood left the vast majority of my LPs swimming in about three feet of water one weekend. The technology shift was on and I was now a part of it. This meant that not only was I buying new albums but I had to replace all the albums I lost. To whatever extent I could, I rebought my entire music library on CD.

I now own somewhere close to four thousand compact discs. I know. It’s crazy. I have these giant, steel library cabinets in one room of my house to hold them all in some reasonable order without them taking over the place. I used to build these adorable bookcases to hold them. It was a great system until I went flying past the two hundred mark. Pretty soon I ran out of wall space to put them. Then we did some construction in the house and the CDs all went into moving boxes where they lived for a year or so. I was beginning to look and feel like a hoarder. So I bit the bullet, bought the cabinets and brought some order back to my life. Now all I worry about is whether the floor of the room will actually continue to support the weight. It keeps me up some nights.

The other thing that keeps me up is my buying habits. I break out in a cold sweat when I see the word “remastered” on a CD label. The move from LP to compact disc has not been an exacting science. When things first got started most record companies just took the audio tape they used to make the records and used it to make compact discs. Most discs made in this way sounded like crap but it was a compact disc and so I bought it. Then three years later they found the original master tape and used that to make a remastered CD. So I bought that. Two years later they would realize it wasn’t really the master tape but a duplicating master tape but now they really, really had the real master tape from which they were remaking the compact disc. So I bought it again. Really. I have, by actual count seven completely different and individual copies of the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds originally released on LP in 1966 and most people would tell you that they all sound exactly the same. Clearly, I need help.

People ask why my music collection is all on CD and not just digital files on my computer. I think they want to know how I could make the jump from LPs to CDs thirty years ago but five or ten years ago didn’t make the next jump from CDs to digital downloads. Quite honestly there’s something visceral about the shopping experience, holding a compact disc in my hands in a music store (which sadly are becoming all but extinct), still being able to look at the front and back cover and read the liner notes. However, as an occupant of the twenty-first century, every time I buy a new CD it gets digitized and added to my iTunes library. It is amazing that all the space taken up by those four thousand or so compact discs can be transferred to the space of a single (but very large) computer hard drive and made available for instant access. This twenty-first century is pretty cool.  

Hero Of The Week

Army Sgt. Joshua S. Ladd
Age:  20
367th Maintenance Co.
Army National Guard
Died 1 May, 2004
Mosul, Iraq