maybe there's hope for hollywood yet.

Here's the trailer for The Golden Compass, the movie based on the first book of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy.

It looks pretty awesome. Here's hoping that the final product does justice to the book. The trailer makes it look like the movie is not going to suck big rocks off the ground, which would be very nice.

Classical music geek question: identify the piece playing at the very beginning of the trailer, and its composer. First person to correctly respond wins...uhm...a pony. (Offer redeemable when I get my first massive royalties check for publishing something as brilliant as the aforementioned Pullman trilogy.)

it boggles the mind, part xvii.

So this 71-year-old former Marine sits in a Subway in Plantation, FL, when two little punks come in with guns drawn and rob the place. The former Marine is the only customer in the store at the time, and after the robbers clear out the register, they demand his wallet as well. He throws it down in front of them, and one of the robbers orders him into the women's bathroom.

Not too keen on being executed, the former Marine draws his concealed weapon and shoots both robbers. One of them is DRT, and the other runs away, only to be found by police later in some nearby bushes with a gunshot wound to the chest.

All in all, a good day for the good guys.

Now the grandmother of the injured robber engages in the most mind-boggling public display of denial and blame-shifting I have seen in a long time. The article remarks on how she sits on her front porch with her minister husband, and ponders "how a man could shoot two people and not go to jail." Furthermore, she opines that the armed citizen "ain't no hero. He is a murderer and God will serve justice."

No, lady, the murderer is the guy who survived, your grandson, who will be charged as such, because he committed a felony resulting in the death of his buddy. The guy who shot your no-good hoodlum grandson and his no-good hoodlum buddy is not a murderer, just someone who wanted to eat his Italian BMT without threatened with summary execution by your dear, blameless grandson. Maybe, if your wonderful family had done a better job at raising him, he wouldn't have gone out to commit strong-arm robbery, and the good citizen wouldn't have had to double-tap him to keep from getting killed himself.

Like a certain fictional space captain would say..."You shot yourself, son. I just carried the bullet for a while."

useless trivia.

The Governator, being Austrian-born, is fluent in German.

However, when his movies are dubbed into German, he doesn't provide his own voice. He is dubbed by a German voice actor instead, because Arnie's Austrian accent is too thick. (To a speaker of standard High German, the southern dialects like Bavarian and Austrian sound quaint and "mountain rural" at best, incomprehensible at worst.)

The voice actor who dubs Arnie is also the regular German voice for Sylvester Stallone and John Travolta, which would cause an interesting dilemma if they all ever decided to sign up for the same movie.

thus to all rapists.

My daily browsing of German newspapers online yielded a heart-warming example of proper self-defense mindset.

For those of you who don't speak German, here's a recap:

The owner of a little Doner restaurant in the city of Essen decides to get frisky with the hired help after closing time. Problem is, his hired help is a.) fourteen years old, and b.) definitely did not consent to any friskiness. He tries to rape her, she yells for help, and her fifteen-year-old friend comes to assist. The older girl sprays some CS gas into the rapist's face, who then proceeds to attack her as well. She grabs a knife and ends the attack in a decisive manner. Rapist receives several stab wounds, drags himself out into the backyard, and neighbors call the cops. The arriving police and paramedics find the guy "wearing only his underwear". Despite immediate medical attention, he expires and reduces the planet's count of rapists by one.

The police says that "the investigation indicates that a case of self-defense is not excluded."

Well, no shit, Sherlock.

today in history.

137 years ago today, General George Armstrong Custer rode up to Little Big Horn and uttered his famous last words:

"Where the fuck did all those Indians come from?"

gun trivia.

The old-fashioned .38 Special round, chambered in those antique revolver thingies, was introduced in 1902.

The thoroughly modern 9mm Luger round, chambered in high-capacity semi-automatic pistols and full-auto subguns, was introduced in 1902.

on a more cheerful note.

Here's a picture of a little boy who's just too cool for I-40.

distressing.

There are many things that change when you have kids. One change you don't expect is that you can never read the news the same way again. Bad things happen to children every day, and such things are reported in the media every day, but as a non-parent, you tend to read them and sort of shrug them off. "That's terrible," you say, and then you go on to the next news item and have a sip of coffee.

When you're a parent, you can't ever read something about a child dying without imagining yourself in the parents' stead, and just the thought of losing one of your own kids is enough to twist your guts. Parents simply aren't meant to outlive their kids, and losing your own offspring is a deeply unnatural occurrence.

Via Crystal, we learn that New York City blogger NYC Watchdog lost his five-year-old son in a drowning accident.

Ambulance Driver shares the story of a call involving the death of a six-month-old baby.

Non-parents read these kinds of things and say, "Gee, that's terrible," and they mean it, but they can't quite comprehend the primal fear that creeps up in a parent's mind when they read the same thing.

If someone were to ask me to summon up the essence of being a parent in one word, I'd reply without hesitation with "worry". Those little bundles come wrapped up in worry, and it stays with you pretty much every moment of every day. It's one of the things you take on in exchange for the smiles and belly laughs, the hugs and the tickle sessions. Nobody in their right mind wants to burden themselves with it, but we do it because we can't un-love our kids. Not worrying about someone means you don't particularly care about them, and in that context it's only natural to worry more about our children than we do about even ourselves.

Despite this, you can't let your worry consume you if you want to stay somewhat sane. All you can do is to take precautions, and then let them toddle off and find their way, and tell yourself they'll be okay.

That's what parenting is: controlled insanity. Those of you who think it's nuts to want to put yourself through such an experience--you're absolutely right. Those of you who take up that burden and wouldn't trade it for anything--you're absolutely right, too.

more narcissistic whining.

I like the fact that someone at Gunsite likes my essay enough to put it on their page.

I don't like the fact that ol' Major Caudill is once again the one associated with it (albeit only in a forwarding capacity this time.)

I'm done with the whining now. You may carry on.

serve the public trust.

In a recent incident at a local grocery store, young ColtCCO got himself roughed up a bit by a local civil servant with a badge.

To clarify: Tennessee's carry permit is not a Concealed Carry Permit. Open carry with a permit is not against the law, although most authorities on the subject strongly advise that you carry your gun concealed...lest you get hassled by overzealous law enforcers for "breaching the peace", "creating a public nuisance", or some other handy and conveniently nebulous excuse for letting a peon get a taste of concrete.

Now, I know a few police officers. I count several of them among my friends, and I am quite convinced that none of them would even dream about acting like the officer in this scenario. The police officers I know and respect are "peace officers". The yutz with a badge in this story is a "law enforcement officer". There's a profound difference in those job titles, both in the way they carry themselves, and in the way they deal with the citizen on the street. The root of the term "law enforcement" is the word "force", and some people just cannot handle the official power to visit that force upon others. Ideally, those people are weeded out by the recruitment process, but all too often they make it through and get a badge and a gun.

It's one thing to take dangerous criminals off the street, but quite another to come down on a clean-cut young guy who's pushing a grocery cart with his girlfriend, and who is not visibly engaged in any sort of nefarious activity. Is this the kind of police officer produced by an education in a "zero tolerance" environment? Is this perhaps the New Breed of police officer, the ones who tell their subjects that "you better not tell me what the law is, or I'll find me some probable cause"?

Good job, Officer. You turned a polite and intelligent (and moreover, law-abiding) citizen into someone who's going to view you and all your colleagues with fear and distrust in the future.

Keep that in mind next time a local ballot item comes up that asks for taxpayer-funded law enforcement perks, like the retirement fund proposition on the last county ballot. That clean-cut young fellow you body-checked? He votes, too.

Better yet, keep that in mind when one of your future traffic stops goes sour, and you may need the help of a citizen. That citizen may just be the guy you slammed into the wall the other day.

Do you think he's going to stop and render aid, or do you think he might just decide not to bother?

Wouldn't want to give you a reason to find you some Probable Cause, you know.

still teh noob.

"No, noobie...you have to pull the leg of that frog thingy to make the whole thing buzz. Don't you know anything?"

the lawyers are circling.

Talk about having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day at the amusement park.

"Anybody lose anything on the ride? Wallet, keys, body parts, that sort of thing?"

While I usually frown upon personal injury lawsuits, I have to concede that there's little in the way of monetary settlement that can fix things for a teenager who loses both feet at the ankle due to faulty park equipment. I mean, prosthetics are pretty advanced these days, but we humans tend to be attached to our various body parts in both the physical and psychological sense. While I do love currency, there's not a check in the world big enough to entice me to trade my feet for some titanium replacements. I have a lot of miles on those things.

the virtues of war.

One of my favorite novels of the last fifteen years or so is Steven Pressfield's "Gates of Fire", the tale of the Spartans at Thermopylae told from the perspective of a Spartan squire on the ground. I re-read that book about three times a year, and it's not only a great historical novel, but excellent prose period.

The other day, I was browsing around at Barnes & Noble when I came upon another one of Steven Pressfield's books. This one was called The Virtues of War, and the book jacket said it was a first-person account of Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire. Since I'm a military history junkie, I had to crack it open to the first page and give it a glance.

Sometimes, I buy books just based on the quality and impact of the first page alone; this was one of them.

It starts thusly:

"I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. The calling of arms, I have followed from boyhood. I have never sought another."

The book is an amazingly intense and intelligent reflection of Alexander's life from boyhood to the peak of his power, narrated by Alexander himself as related to a squire. All the battles--Gaugamela, Issus, Granicus, Hydaspes--are presented not in the detailed blood-and-guts style of Gates of Fire, but from the perspective of Alexander himself. The book is as much of a study in leadership as it is a tale of military conquest or memoir.

Anyway, those of you into military history (you know who you are), go to the bookstore and give this one a try.

on plagiarism.

A while ago, I posted a little essay called "Why the Gun is Civilization". It was pretty well received, and got me a lot of positive comments from a variety of people. Some folks asked for permission to reprint and publish the essay in various newsletters and webzines, and I gladly granted it every time, only asking for attribution in return.

Recently, I have noticed my essay pop up on the Internet a lot in various forums, most of which I do not frequent. This in itself causes me no grief, but the reposts are almost invariably attributed to someone who is not me. Some are attributed to a Major L.Caudill, USMC (Ret.), and some are merely marked as "forwarded" by the same person. Others are not attributed at all, giving the impression that the person who posted the essay is also its author.

In school, we call reproduction without attribution "plagiarism". It's usually cause for a failing grade or even expulsion in most college codes of conduct. In the publishing world, we call the same thing "intellectual property theft".

Now, my little blog scribblings are hardly published works in the traditional sense, nor do I incur any financial damage from this unattributed copying, but it's still a matter of honor. I did, after all, sit down and type up that little essay. It may not make it into any print anthologies, but it's mine, and seeing it with someone else's name on the byline is a little annoying. Call it ego, call it vanity, but there it is.

In the end, I guess I should probably shrug it off and tell myself that I can produce something that's worth stealing.

why i quit riding.

And this, friends and neighbors, is why I sold my motorcycle.

I love riding, but I love my kids more, and they'll need their daddy for a while longer. You can be the best rider in the world, and all it takes is some blind idiot in a Mustang to snuff you out and cast you aside like a crushed soda can.

we don't need to learn no foreignese.

Here's one of the reasons why China is going to kick our asses on the global market in another fifty years.

I've been reading up on the development of the Chinese economy, and the strides that ordinary Chinese make to assure they become more than running shoe stitchers for American shoe companies in the future.

They love education over there. School is serious business in China. They learn math and languages at higher levels much earlier than American students. They also have a massive thirst for English language instruction. Learning a second language is desirable to them, and they seize the opportunity if they have it.

Contrast that with the attitudes towards bilingualism in the United States. I recently read an interesting article about a pilot program in a San Francisco kindergarten, where the students received immersion in Mandarin Chinese for an entire year. They had a Chinese teacher who spoke nothing but Chinese to the kids from Day One, and at the end of the year they communicated with the teacher (and each other) in competent Chinese.

I made the mistake of mentioning this program on a conservative-leaning online discussion board, and the responses were overwhelmingly negative, by a ratio of ten to one. This is America, I was told. In America, we speak English, or we are encouraged to go back to whatever furrin place we came from. We don't need to learn no Chinese--they're learning English, after all, and the whole thing just sounds like another liberal attempt to enforce multiculturalism. Press "one" for English, or get the fuck out of the country, yessir.

Bleargh.

This is why our economy will be left behind. It's not just because the Chinese are willing to work for less money--it's because they value education, and they recognize the importance of making yourself competitive for the world market. We're going to be left behind because we dumb down our education system, and because we whine that we deserve twenty-dollar-an-hour union jobs--and by golly, we should have the right to make those companies who outsource their labor stay in the United States, because if a corporation is based here, they have the duty to hire Americans above anyone else, even if that American is half as educated and paid ten times as much as his Chinese counterpart. The sense of entitlement that has permeated every fiber of the American quilt naturally extends to the workplace now, and this is where the so-called Conservatives fall right in lockstep with the Socialists they despise. That's when you find them all clamoring for government regulation of private business, because it's simply not fair/patriotic for a business owner to hire foreigners over his own countryfolk just to make a profit.

It's kind of funny that a country which officially embraces capitalism would cripple itself economically by embracing socialist attitudes about work (the right to an income, national allegiance above profitability, government control of the flow of goods), and a professed socialist country would increase its economy exponentially by embracing capitalism and free market principles.

In the age of instant global communication, you simply cannot turn up with your diploma from Mediocre State College and expect it to be a voucher for a 90k-a-year white collar job. The white collar jobs are increasingly being picked up by people in Bangalore, Mumbai, Peking, and other places where education hasn't been dumbed down to the point of being the punchline to a joke. The blue collar jobs have already been picked up by the uneducated folks in those countries about twenty years ago, when their American counterparts still insisted that a person needs to be paid a healthy union wage for turning the same screw or hitting the same button all day long.

a theorem.

When preparing hot dogs in a kitchen with dachshunds present, the likelihood of accidentally dropping a hot dog onto the kitchen floor is directly proportional to the number of dachshunds sitting on that floor and wishing for this event to occur.

Furthermore, the likelihood of such an accidental drop is on a base-10 logarithmic scale: the presence of multiple dachshunds increases the chance of the drop exponentially.

An alternate theory is the idea that four dachshunds tracking the hot dogs and simultaneously thinking, "Drop it! Come on! Drop it!" have an unnerving effect on the hot dog assembler, impairing his/her hand-eye coordination.

Linoleum sharks, that's what they are. Drop just a little piece of edible substance on the floor, and the kitchen turns into a suburban version of the Discovery Channel.

some more gunography.

So I had a lengthy post all typed up, complete with pictures and careful annotations...and then Blogger mangled it into a cryptography exercise.

Here's a more abbreviated version, then.

My digital camera dates back to the Pleistocene. It's one of the old Sony Mavicas with the built-in floppy drive. (One-point-two megapixels! Who-hoo!) Despite its ancient technology status, it does take pretty decent pictures when you get the light just right.

Here are a few snapshots of guns I've owned over the years. Most of them are in the "Never Should Have Gotten Rid Of That One" category. Some day, I'll have enough play money in the bank to be cured of my guntradeitis, but such is the curse of the guy with limited funds....you have to get rid of some of the old if you want something new.

Anyway, here goes:

Beretta 950BS "Jetfire" Inox

SIG P225

SIG P232

Colt Defender

Smith & Wesson 1066, 10mm Auto

Heckler & Koch P7M8

And finally, a sampler mix of slugs in a sidesaddle on a Benelli Nova.

pea one.

This is what we used to tote around in the Bundeswehr before they switched to that fancy new plastic squirtgun. It's the Walther P1, the military version of the P38.

I can't really say that the P1 was my "issue" handgun, since a sidearm wasn't part of my standard equipment. (My issue weapon was a G3A3 rifle.) I only got to carry a P1 whenever I was in charge of the guard at the main gate or the off-site ammo depot, or whenever I had to do an armed escort for worn-out guns that were transported back to a depot for disposal.

When the Bundeswehr switched to the P8 (a version of the H&K USP), they sold all their old Walthers, and a lot of them turned up on the U.S. market. I bought this ex-service P1 for about three bills, and I figured my old uniform accoutrements would make nice picture dressing for it.

The P1 is a bit tall and long for an eight-shot 9mm. This thing was designed and built when there was no such thing as a compact or subcompact 9mm carry gun--pistols in that caliber were military sidearms that didn't need to be concealed. Still, it points well and has very little recoil, and it's certainly not impossible to lug around if it's all you have. For the price, an old Bundeswehr P1 makes a great knock-around gun for the truck or boat.

good advice.

I don't have anything funny or insightful to share today. Miss Lyra is still running on a nocturnal schedule, so my attention is taken up by Quinn during my regular waking hours, and by Lyra during my regular sleeping hours. Robin and I are at the point where we sit together at night while she's feeding Lyra, and we get all nostalgic about those days when we actually got more than four or five hours of sleep.

Anyway. This, too, shall pass. In the meantime, I'll leave you with some sage advice from the product box of my old Norinco Makarov.

schadenfreude.

It pains me to even spill electronic ink on the subject of that ditz, but one Ms. Paris Hilton has been carted back to jail in tears. Apparently, the local county sheriff released her on Day 2 of her 40-some day DUI sentence, to spend the rest of the sentence at her modest four-bedroom home under house arrest.

The judge in the case said something like, "Nuh-uh!", ordered the little brat back to court, and had her transported back to jail to serve the remainder of her sentence. Miss Hilton had a tearful meltdown in the courtroom, crying for mommy as she was hauled off.

Is there a sorrier sight than that of a multimillionaire trust fund baby having a meltdown at the prospect of a 40-day sentence in a private cell? I mean, it's probably hard for her to comprehend that she landed herself in trouble daddy can't buy her way out of, but dammit, show some decorum and march off with dignity.

One would think she'd learn a lesson from all of this, but she'll be back on the club circuit the day after her release. I even smell a book based on her harrowing experience.

Just shows that you can buy an education, but you can't buy intelligence.

today in history.

Sixty-three years ago, a lone German officer stepped out of his bunker on the Normandy coast early in the morning for a whiz and a smoke, glanced at the ocean, and exclaimed, "Ach, du Scheisse."

blogroll time saver.

I've greatly streamlined my daily blogroll check with Google Reader. You subscribe to your favorite blogs by adding their URLs, and it'll list them all on the same sidebar, bolding the ones that have new entries. Now I only need to visit one page to check up on all the new blog entries of the day, rather than having to go to each and every blog individually to check it.

it's important to be polite to bugs.

I'm sitting in the back yard again for our afternoon outdoor time. Quinn is bending over to study the occasional ant or bug scurrying on the warm concrete of the patio, and he's being very polite. Every time he finds a new one, he says, "It's an ant. Hi, ant!", or "It's a bug. Hi, bug!"

Ah, technology. Wireless networks are great fun. I can drag this Powerbook to everyroom in the house, or the front porch or outside patio, and still be tethered to the Intarwebz. In fact, the only drawback about our plan to move out of suburbia and to some more secluded property is the unlikeliness of high-speed Internet access. I'd say that I have what it takes to become a Luddite, but I'd be lying...I've had DSL for nigh on eight years now, and every time it's out (which happens three or four times a year), it's a major inconvenience. You don't even realize how much of your daily routine requires an Internet connection until you have to do without one for a day or so.

There's always satellite Internet, of course, but it's expensive as hell, and you still have to tie up a phone line for the uploads and download requests.

In other geek toy news, my iPod's screen bit it last week, and I was already resigned to writing off the $250 I had to shell out for it, when I stumbled upon my receipt from the Apple Store and discovered two months left on the factory warranty. I turned it in for replacement at the Apple Store at West Town Mall, and picked up a brand new replacement today. Talk about tech toys that have made themselves indispensable...there are ways to listen to your music without an iPod, but they're just so damn inconvenient once you're used to carrying your entire CD collection around your neck on lanyard earphones.

stupid conscience.

My cell phone number must be just a digit off from that of a local funeral home. I often receive calls from old folks asking about funeral arrangements for their relatives.

I received another one of those about five minutes ago. Some elderly lady asked whether we had made arrangements for one Mister Whatshisname yet.

What I did tell her was, "I'm sorry, ma'am, you must have the wrong number."

What I was briefly tempted to tell her was, "Oh yeah, old Bob Whatshisname. We were going to send him off on the Viking ship out on Fort Loudoun Lake at dawn tomorrow, and then light him up with flaming arrows all Nordic-style. Will you be supplying the virgin for the sacrifice, or do we have to bring one? 'Cause, you know, that'll add to the bill a little."

die hard at the costco.

As a revolver shooter and -toter, I sometimes encounter folks who deem the wheelgun a cute anachronism at best, a useless antique whose utility as a serious defense weapon has been eclipsed by the ascent of the flatgun, which can hold two or three times as many marbles in the tank.

Some arguments aginst the wheelgun have some validity, especially in comparison with the semiautomatic pistol. The wheelgun holds less rounds (usually--the difference in capacity between an eight-shot S&W 627 and a single-stack 1911 is negligible), it's slower to reload, and its larger bulk around the midsection makes it a little more difficult to carry inside a waistband.

One of the arguments that doesn't hold much validity, and one that I encounter quite frequently in revolver-versus-autoloader discussions, is the dreaded "multiple attackers" scenario.

"Criminals work in packs!" some folks will point out. "If you are faced with more than six attackers, you're screwed if you carry a six-shooter!"

Folks, I have news for you: if you get accosted by a half-dozen or more armed attackers who have any amount of skill and determination, your goose is cooked, regardless of what you carry in your holster. If you tote a plastic autochucker with a 19-round magazine, you're just as dead as I am with my six-shot Smith--the only difference will be that you'll die with more bullets in your gun.

My strategy in a multiple-attacker scenario would be to shoot the most belligerent one first, and then engage the remainder as needed with what I have in the gun, and hope that the sight of one or more of their buddies dropping will make the rest reconsider their plans for the evening.

Now, don't get me wrong: more bullets in your gun are never a bad thing. Nobody's ever been in a gun fight and found themselves wishing they had less ammunition in their weapon. However, there are tradeoffs with every weapon system, and I made the conscious choice to sacrifice capacity for the reliability and simplicity of the wheelgun. In addition, I find that I can simply put bullets on target most accurately and consistently with a S&W double-action revolver. I'm confident that my revolver a.) lets me put the rounds where they need to go better than anything else, and that b.) the gun is going to to bang every time I pull the trigger. In my mind, that's an acceptable trade for extra capacity.

weekend at fidel's.

Castro standing up, talking to Vietnamese official.

Was he propped up by two of his buddies, perhaps? Did his voice seem strangely out of sync with the movements of his mouth?

yeah, we're like twins.

Your results:
You are Jean-Luc Picard

Jean-Luc Picard 60% Beverly Crusher 60% Deanna Troi 55% Geordi LaForge 50% Worf 50% Mr. Sulu 50% Spock 42% Mr. Scott 35% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 35% Data 32% Will Riker 30% James T. Kirk (Captain) 30% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 25% Uhura 20% Chekov 15%

A lover of Shakespeare and other fine literature. You have a decisive mind and a firm hand in dealing with others.

Click here to take the "Which Star Trek character am I?" quiz...

back to school.

Well, here we go again.

After my unceremonious exit from the sorry-ass school where I was going for my teaching degree, I basically took six months off from school. I was too burned-out, and frankly too cheesed at the sorry state of education in this state, to scratch together the motivation for a quick transfer to another school.

I guess I could have written the whole thing off altogether, but I'm twenty grand in hock to the bank for student loans, and if I don't finish this four-year degree, we'll be making the equivalent of an extra car payment every month for quite a few years without anything to show for it in return. Besides, I've left too much stuff unfinished in my life already; back to school it is.

I enrolled at ETSU in one of their distance-learning degrees, a generalized "Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies", with concentrations in English and PoliSci. They let me transfer most of my credits from my two previous schools, and I can finish this thing up in two more semesters, plus the summer.

I'll have to squeeze the classwork into an already busy day, but that's what I'll have to do if I don't want to waste a bucket of hundred-dollar bills. It remains to be seen whether a four-year degree is really more than a waste of money, representing a cash outlay that could have been used to pay off the mortgage--or that could have been left with the bank to begin with--but a B.S. never exactly hurt anyone except by writing the checks for the aforementioned loans.

Classes start Monday, tuition is paid for the summer, and I guess I can cut that sleep back to four hours a night. What's that saying from Conan the Barbarian again?

"Time enough to rest in the grave."