Day of rest...and destruction

So, the after action report is here!  When we went out to "the island" we had quite the assortment of death dealing implements.  My roommate had his Saiga12 and his AR, Another friend brought his Saiga 5.45, and a Mossberg 590, and of course I had my Benelli M3.  It was a first for our friend's 5.45 Saiga, and we spent the first hour dialing in his new optic and mixing tannerite.  After that, the fun began to ramp up.

Our first victim was a stuffed rabbit that was found dead on arrival, so why not use him for target practice?  We shot him up pretty good, but it wasn't enough.  By the end of the day we set him on top of a full propane tank.  Here I am paying respects to his remains after the catastrophic detonation of said propane tank.

We had plenty of bottles to blast, along with a few clay pigeons, but of course, the main attraction was the tannerite.  Most of it we placed in old Dell computer cases that we had lying around just for such an occasion.  What's especially funny is that every time the tannerite would go off, our friend's car alarm would sound off.  Here's a video of the highlights:

Supreme ambivalence

Today started off so well.  It was a slow day at work, I went shooting with some friends, planned to go shooting some more with some others later, but then the day kinda turned to crap.  The first bit to go wrong was my fault.  In all the excitement of getting ready to go, I forgot to call a friend to let him know we were going, so we were one short in our little excursion.  It really makes me feel like a prick when that happens. 

Then, right after shooting, I get a call from my mom saying that the dog died.  A saddening thing, especially because it was the best dog we'd had in a while.  Then, to top everything off, I'm completely blown off by the other people that I wanted to go shooting with (karma I guess).  So that's my day in a nutshell.  I suppose once I get the video and pics, I'll post an after-action report about the shooting, but not right now.

conversations at work

I was leaving work the other day, and was talking to some girl when I apparantly said something complimentary.  As soon as I said it, she spews forth a stereotypical, "Aaawwww you're sweet!"
As soon as she says this, another co-worker spins around and retorts, "Him?... Really?... Sweet?... Are you sure?"
It gave me a devilish smile and satisfaction to know that I have cultivated this reputation.

post-neglegence

Spent all day doing nothing, but I still forgot to post.  Oh well, it's about time for more music anyways.

To those I know and love

Yes, sometimes I may complain about being single, but don't get me wrong.  I'm still enjoying it for the most part, so please, for the love of everything holy, I do not want to be set up with your sister, your wife's friend, your cousin, or your cousin's mentally retarded friend.  Hearing things like that only make me wish I could forcefully and artificially ventilate you via lead poisoning.  Thank you.

Now, on a similar note, I was talking to an acquaintance of mine earlier about how he has some trouble with a girl that's crazy about him, but that he's not really into.  I never thought this girl was bad at all, but apparently he's bugged by it.  I've had similar situations, but that doesn't stop me from giving him crap about it.  He simply looked at me today and asked, "Why me?"
I reply, "Because, you've just won the involuntary lottery!"
Thankfully, he thought it was funny too.

Who knew so may life lessons were taught by Looney Tunes?

random ridiculousness

Just saw this one on youtube.  I laughed until my spleen exploded.  Time for a Nuka-Cola Quantum!

Blog ancestry

I'm not really an overly social person, but I really enjoy reading a selective number of blogs out there.  I've been reading a lot of them for quite a while; even though I never comment on any of them just because I can't think of anything to say that hasn't already been said.  I guess you could say I'm a professional lurker, but that doesn't change the fact that there are a few blogs that have been primarily responsible for me taking to the keyboard and pumping out this garbled mess of a blog myself.

First and foremost, the two biggest influences I had were Tam over at View From The Porch, and Brigid of Home on the Range.  Their blogs are the two that I most associate with unfiltered awesome sauce, peppered lightly with ammunition and the pickled remains of zombie corpses.  Tam has an uncanny knack for expressing information with mass amounts of teh funny and the snark turned to 11.  Brigid, on the other hand, is on the other end of the spectrum.  Every time you read her blog, you walk away with a glimpse of life in general (albeit more poetic), that has some nostalgic profoundness of some sort.

I don't aim to be like either one, but they have definitely had an influence on my judgment, I guess you could say.  If anything, I've been told that my blog is more like a convoluted mix of JayG's and Bonnie's.  However, I can't go on without giving some kind of mention to Breda, either.  She has been a good example and resource for me to use when trying to introduce new shooters into the fold, namely with my mother.  And, yes, I do own a Breda Fallacy t-shirt.

Well, all this talk of blogging has made me realize I've been a bad bear, a very bad bear.  I didn't post anything yesterday.  Looks like I'll have to punish myself by getting a gelato or something.

Overload of overdose

I had no idea at the beginning of the week that my weekend would be so dang busy.  I had all sorts of stuff going on.  First, I did some gaming on friday night, had a bunch of errands to run the next morning, had a canceled shooting trip that day that I ignored and went shooting anyways, then I went to a small party at a friend's place on saturday night, followed by breakfast with my 2nd family the next morning, followed by church immediately afterwards, and I just found out my roommate had invited a bunch of mutual friends over this afternoon.  Whoah.

Now, in this amount of time I have ingested entirely waaaay too much sugar and junk food.  I feel like Wilford Brimley in Family guy.



Now who the hell did I hit?

The tools and the talent

I don't consider my self to be much of a pistol marksman, but I seem to do much better than some people I know who actually own pistols.  How does that happen?  I suppose the fact that I would try to practice regularly when I actually owned a pistol myself, could have something to do with it.  Of all my friends, I'm pretty sure I was the only one to actually do this.  Sometimes I wonder if shooting guns is just a social thing for them.  Which also makes me wonder, what possesses someone to go through the trouble of buying a firearm, when they have no motivation or intention to actually practice with it? 

Back when I had more money, this was something I did at very regular intervals.  Every week to two weeks, I would just buy two or three boxes of ammo and just go.  No need to make it a social occasion, I honestly wanted to be a better shot.  I often wondered how much I was really accomplishing, considering I have had no formal training and was somewhat new to pistol shooting in general.  But, apparently it pays off, because I am now known as the best pistol shot amongst most I know.

Long story short, I guess I'm just trying to say that it don't take a whole lot of effort to become an acceptable  shot, but it seems a lot of people aren't even willing to put forth the minimal effort needed to become mildly proficient in the use of their own weapons.  That just boggles the mind.

Anyways, looks like I might get in to a heated firefight with a few friends later, so wish me luck.

SHOT show shenanigans

Nah, I wish I could go to the SHOT show.  That would definitely get my mind off of the all the crap I gotta put up with every day.  The worst is when you know of someone that gets free tickets to go to SHOT and they don't use 'em, but you still have no chance of going.  That's crap.  So, I just go to my local gun show and pretend I'm there.  Kinda hard to do when there aren't any booth babes, but that's not what I'm going there for, so I guess it's still plausible in my mind.

As for the actual SHOT show, there's been some interesting stuff announced and some things that are completely baffling.  One that belongs in the latter category would be the Mossberg chainsaw.  If you're unfamiliar with it, basically it's a model 500 with a chainsaw grip mounted to the pump.  Yeah, pretty ridiculous.  The things that I thought were interesting, on the other hand, were the the ADCOR Defense BEAR and the PCP polymer cased ammunition.  Pretty nifty stuff.

Anyways, since I can't be at SHOT, I'm thinking of just getting away from it all today.  Maybe just go hiking for the hell of it.  Been a few weeks since I did that.

nope

Just aint feeling it today, so I guess that calls for more music.

The braindead Brady bunch

So, when I started this blog, it wasn't my intention to make light of current events.  However, the MSM and political reactions to the recent shooting in Arizona, seems to give lefties an unlimited pass to blame it on just about anything.  They are throwing out every slime-ball tactic in the greasy, filth-ridden left field, ranging from blaming Sarah Palin, to blaming it on lack of gun control (despite the fact that most Americans disagree).  Now, the one that gets me the most, is the gun control one.  We've been through this before, and every time (well, most of the time), we the people have seen reason, and refused.  Mission accomplished.

But what about the gun banners?  Well, in their failures, I seem to have developed some pity for the losing team, and have devised a way to help them illustrate their point.  I'm going to market a video game that shows the world that being prevented from exercising basic human rights, not only makes everything safer, but more fun!  Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you, Medal of Citation: Gun Control; Neutered Ops!

It will be a standard First Person Shooter game in which, much like other FPS' it will require you to navigate dozens of levels riddled with terrorists, crazies, rapists, pirates, crackheads, muggers, invading armies, zombies, and whatnot, all trying to kill, rob, eat, and/or rape you.  The twist is that this game will also force you to adhere to varying levels of gun control depending on your difficulty.  This will be enforced by an in-game representation of actual gun-control supporters! It will have four modes of difficulty:

my subconcious is retarded

Someone called me around 7:30 this morning, and I was so tired that once the call was over, I went to sleep and had a dream.  In this dream, I was walking down a pathway in some kind of park, when I saw the person that called me, standing a few dozen yards away.  What was weird was that they were dressed in some kind of nordic/viking outfit and was holding a freaking claymore that was bigger than they are.  That's when this person starts to yell and charges right at me.  I wasn't really scared, but I was so shocked to see this, that I couldn't move.  They continue to charge me, screaming the whole way, while I remain motionless.  As this person approaches me, they raise their sword to strike me down, but right as the sword is about to hit me, the dream ends.

Freaking weird huh?  See, the worst part of it all though, is that I wouldn't put it past this person to actually do something like that.  Man, I may need some professional help, or something.

Unrequited hate

I miss the good old days of when I didn't give in to my anxieties, emotions and insecurities.  I liked it when I was that soulless, funny, and above all, kind person.  My whole new years resolution this year was to try to be less of a jerk to people in general.  It aint panning out too well.  I swear, the harder I try, the easier it is to just revert to being horrible.  Hence, one of the many reasons I chose the name of St. Grendel in the first place, because I'm just too good at being horrible.  I guess there's just no saving me.  I'll just end up being one of those old people that's just filled with hate and regret, and has to take that out in the worst ways on other people that don't deserve it.  Or, I could just be bi-polar.  Whatever.

The Dr. is in!

Yep, it's Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I did all my celebrations on Saturday.  We had another massive LAN party, despite all the flakes that said they'd be there and didn't show.  I ended up playing till about 4:30 in the am, powered solely on a mix of almost pure caffeine and Mexican sodas.  Even after I threw in the towel and passed out in a pile of vomit after hitting my head on a desk, everyone else kept going at it till about 6 am.  The best part though, is that I had to go to church in the morning, so I didn't get more than about four and a half hours of sleep, so by Sunday night I was eager for some z-time but couldn't get more than a wink because a selected individual, who I will just say is battier than Bruce Wayne's basement, decided to call me sometime after midnight.  Wasn't even that long of a call, but I'm one of those people that once they are up, I'm up for the rest of the day no matter how tired I am.  All in all, my weekend was pretty "amaaaaaaazing!"

In all seriousness though, I do enjoy Dr. King day (though not quite as much as Guy Fawkes day), because it reminds us that we all need to do our part in making the government fear us.  Cuz lets face it, when they don't fear the people, we get crap like this:



Care for some shoulder things that go up, anyone?

antisocial

So, I was playing starcraft 2 with a couple friends last night and it seemed like no one was playing the game-type we were, because the stupid lobby would never fill up.  So one of my friends says, "Where the heck are all the nerds?  It's a friday night for heaven's sake!"

Slow day

There's nothing like pissing off people you're trying hard not to.  Oh well, just gonna have to get some more musical therapy going.  Another artist that I'm not really into, but I do enjoy this song.

SCAR news...but who cares?

Yesterday, I read a story on The Firearm Blog about the multi-caliber lower for the SCAR developed by some guy in Germany.  I suppose this is as good a time as any to say that I know of another rifle that is made by an American company that is just as light, thinner, cheaper, doesn't have a reciprocating bolt handle, or a stock that breaks, and was designed from the beginning to be a multi-caliber platform.  The Robinson Armament XCR.  After having a few opportunities to fool around with both rifles, I must say the ergonomics of the SCAR is practically a nightmare compared to the natural experience that is the XCR; at least, that's how I felt.

True Grit, now with 50% more grit! But %30 less true...

Finally saw the "True Grit" remake by the Coen brothers.  Despite being a fan of the Coens, I was pretty hesitant to watch this one, because of the indisputable doctrine that is "The Duke".  However, despite deviating somewhat from the original (which is to be expected), it was a pretty enjoyable movie.  I was especially pleased to see the setting and characters become more 'gritty', along with some more darker humor placed throughout the film.  Fantastic directing and story boarding also contributed to some great action scenes, and the soundtrack was halfway decent as well.  Overall, it compares well with the first movie, but in my opinion, still comes just short of the gunpowder-coated, cowboy-peppered awesomeness that is John Wayne's. 

Also, just an FYI, I know someone who professes to be a big John Wayne fan, but has never seen True Grit!  Can you believe it?  Anyone who hasn't seen that movie is no true fan of The Duke in my book...

Invention I am proud of #46

Ah, Monday.  We meet again.  And I say to you, "may your blade chip and shatter!"  I just hate my job at the airport so much, that even the people I like there, I still hate 'em.  They say 'hate' is a very strong word, so it seems quite appropriate in this situation.  Anyways, enough talk about that, let's move on to something cheerful!  It's time for the invention exchange!

Some time ago, I was feeling kinda sick and ended up waking up in the middle of the night choking on a ball of mucus.  It was pretty nasty.  So nasty that it woke up just about everyone in the house.  So, after I cough up this hairball, I come to an amazing thought.  What if there was a way to 'emergency apply' some Vicks Vapo-rub to a friend or relative?  Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you the Vicks Vapo-rub 12 Gauge round!

Now when you hear a loved one having a hard time sleeping due to an illness, you can simply lock and load, point down the hallway and scream, "BREATHE EASY!"  Let off a couple rounds, and go back to sleep with the comfort of knowing that the impact of 1100 fps packs of vapo-rub gel has knocked your friend back into bed, and they will now be sleeping peacefully!  No more spending time out of bed taking possibly dozens of minutes trying to sift through your medicine cabinet, and taking even more time to apply!  Simply point, click, and go back to whatever you were doing.  Now you can actually use that shotgun you've had lying around the house, and finally get to fire some shots in anger!  Anger at the congested sinuses, that is!  Find them at your local drug or sporting goods store.  Available now, in 12 gauge, 20 gauge, and .410.*

*Warning: .410 loads must be fired from a standard length shotgun to be effective. So to be clear, the only verdict "the Judge" will give, is 0 relief.  Furthermore, due to reduced dosages in smaller bores, repeated application of the .410 may be necessary.

Buy it today!

Just another sunday

The end of my day and week.  Kinda started off dumb.  I totally forgot about my church changing the meeting times, so I ended up being late for that.  I have no excuse either, because I was on time last week.  Tried to salvage the day by by going to the gun show right afterward.  Turns out no one wants to talk to you at a gun show if you are wearing a suit, and everyone gives you the "'ol laaazy eye", so that was a no-go.  Then, I come to find they are all out of my favorite candied cashews there, too.  So, the day so far is full of win.  So, in the end, I wound up just playing more Starcraft 2 with my roomie.  Played for so long I can still hear the UI and background sounds in my head right now.  I best drown it out with some more music.   Couldn't find a good vid for this one, so just enjoy the tune.  Not really a fan of Tommy Lee at all, but I do like this song.

Update: the dumb embed doesn't seem to like my blog, so here's a link to a crappy music vid for it instead.

Zerg rushed

I got pwned before the day even started.  Spent my morning shuffling around like a zombie looking for a midnight snack.  That's all I'm gonna say about that.  As for the actual day, a couple friends and I played the star battle map for Starcraft 2 all freaking day long.  Loads of competitive fun.

The run around

Some people confuse me.  For example, I'll suggest to do something with an individual, they'll say "nah, that would be weird/awkward".  But then, after only a short time later, they say they want to do the exact same thing I suggested earlier, but that they turned down because it would be 'weird'.  WTF?  I have had this happen about three times this week alone.  I don't get it.

Update:  Scratch that, it's happened five times now.

Winning combo

Boredom and Garry's Mod.  Sometimes scary, sometimes genius.  Here's something I made with it a while ago.

Yep. Like I said, boredom can be a scary thing when you have such tools at your disposal.  I'm especially proud of the pose I managed to get the G-man in.

Funny buisness

I find it hilarious when someone has a used gun for sale on KSL, and the title of the ad reads something like this, ".40 ACP for sale" or "40 mm pistol", and then have a high-res beauty shot of the gun in their ad, which clearly has the correct terminology printed in bold right on the side of the gun.  You'd think someone would take two seconds to simply look at the markings on their gun to see if they got the details right.  Especially if they don't know diddly about guns.

on being a jerk...

Had someone tell me at work today that I make them want to slice their wrists open.  Mission accomplished.

My weekend gone by, I miss it so.

Wow.  I usually spend new year's eve and the following day just sleeping (the way I thought it should be spent).  But this time around, I was practically party-hopping like mad.  Very out of character for one such as myself, but an enjoyable experience nonetheless.  The only problem with that however, was that I was running on about 10-11 hours of sleep in a 72 hour period.  By the end of my week, I was so hopped up on caffeine to stay awake that I was practically delirious.  Fun times.

Well, it's the beginning of a new week, and the start of a new year.  I should mark the occasion with something nice.  Well, it's been a while since I slapped some music up here, so enjoy!

Kwan - Unconditional Love

another conversation

Was watching Star Trek VI with a friend this morning, and he noticed during the first scene with the transporter, that there is huge pane of glass separating the controls from the pad.  My friend quips, "why do they have a giant piece of bulletproof glass in there?"
I reply, "Because, in the future they realize that's more effective than having TSA agents."

Well, I thought it was funny.