Category Archives: Humor

A little morning comedy

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I haven’t posted much gun related content lately, so to both alleviate that and elicit a little chuckle, I present a release from “Black PR Wire” (which I’d never heard of before)…courtesy of Bearing Arms via From the Barrel of a Gun:

In response to stagnation in the traditional white male market, the gun industry and National Rifle Association (NRA) are now targeting Blacks and Latinos as potential new gun buyers according to a new study from the Violence Policy Center (VPC)

Stagnation in the market? Seriously? What planet are they living on???

Let’s see…according to the FBI, The only year that NICS checks went down year over year was from 2016 to 2017…interestingly, the year that Trump took office. Wonder if that was a coincidence?

Record setting 2020 recorded a full 39.9% increase in checks over 2019 and January of 2021 shattered the record with almost double the number of checks conducted in January 2020 and FOUR TIMES the number conducted in 2012.

Granted, NICS checks aren’t directly representative of sales because NICS checks are conducted for other purposes and not all sales require NICS checks, but it’s a pretty good general indication of trends…and the current trends don’t show me any “stagnation”.  Nor do the empty shelves at gun stores and the “out of stock” notifications for both guns and ammo at online retailers.

I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve been a gun owner virtually all my life…I got my first air rifle when I was about 8 and my first .22 rifle when I was 12 or 13…I’ve been an activist in the gun community for most of my adult life. I’ve been providing beginners with basic safety and firearms handling training for close to 20 years and in my experience, the NRA, VCDL and every other organization I’ve ever been involved with has always encouraged all lawfully present residents of the US to exercise their rights under the Second Amendment. The accusation that the NRA is all the sudden pushing for minorities to buy guns because whites have stopped buying them is not only silly, it’s freaking hilarious.

These people are delusional.

Here’s how it seems to me: The left is losing control of the narrative when it comes to guns. It’s becoming increasingly obvious that it’s not just old fat white guys like me who own and use guns and are engaged in the gun rights community. Go to any gun show and you’ll see a healthy mix of old and young, men and women, all races creeds and colors, enjoying the camaraderie and “kicking the tires” on an assortment of firearms from collectible antiques to the latest and greatest plastic fantastics and EBRs.

And that scares the bejeebers out of them.

It’s probably just so scary to them because they are starting to realize that with minorities and women becoming more and more active in the gun rights community, their chance of gaining popular support for their agenda is waning quickly; but you’ve got to admit, their arguments sound pretty sexist and racist.

Basically, according to them, Blacks, Hispanics and women aren’t capable of evaluating information and making informed decisions, they are prone to being pushed into making unwise decisions by nefarious, faceless actors like the NRA and the NSSA.

Personally, I think more and more people of all races, creeds, backgrounds and sexes are being forced by the reality around them to realize that when it comes to defending themselves and their families, ultimately the responsibility lies with them and them alone. Better to be properly equipped and prepared and never need it than for the need to arise and find you wanting.

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New personalized Virginia Plate

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Hat tip to Musings over a Barrel.

Virginia has come up with a new “Stop Gun Violence” license plate option

When I first saw it, I feared that the money from sales of the plate would end up going to some anti-gun organization, but a Republican amendment to the bill earmarks the funds for mental health programs, which I think is a fine purpose even if unrelated to violence or any particular tool.

With that in mind, I’m sorely tempted to order one of these for my truck who’s plates expire next month.

Paired with another accessory I have in mind, I think it would be a worthy addition:

What say you?

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Custody Case

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Indianapolis, IN – A seven year old boy was at the center of a Marion County courtroom drama yesterday when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody of him. The boy has a history of being beaten by his parents and the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with child custody law and regulation requiring that family unity be maintained to the highest degree possible.

The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents and he adamantly refused to live with her. When the judge then suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried and said that they also beat him.

After considering the remainder of the immediate family and learning that domestic violence was apparently a way of life among them, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him.

After two recesses to check legal references and confer with the child welfare officials, the judge granted temporary custody to the Indianapolis Colts Football Team, whom the boy firmly believes are not capable of beating anyone.

Contributed via e-mail by CB

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Revenge is at hand.

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Remember a few weeks ago, when I related how I found that great bargain on the priceless memento of our President?

How I sent it to a friend of mine as a gift and how he responded?

Thank you so much for the Milton Bradley Commemorative Barack Obama “Yes We Can!” puzzle. I’m at a loss for how to show my most heartfelt appreciation. Email won’t come close. A proper response requires pen and ink on paper. Honestly though, I fear that alone will surely fall short as well. I’ll put serious thought toward how one might properly reciprocate such a thoughtful and beautiful gift from as dear a friend as yourself.

Well, his response came today.


All I can say is: well played, my friend, well played.

I must admit that I’m a bit torn.  Do I leave it in the packaging, helping to retain it’s obvious collector value and to pass down to my children and grand-children as a cherished heirloom?  Or do I open it so that I can grow and enjoy it as it was intended?

Anyone ever had one before?  How long do the plants live?  If I’ll only be able to enjoy it for a couple of weeks or so, It’s not worth ruining the collector value.

What say my faithful readers?

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Aviation Maintenance humor

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I started to leave this as a comment to this post over at Weer’d Beard’s place, but it got too long (surprise, surprise) so I decided to bring it over here.

His post was basically a link to a series of funny gripes purportedly written by FEDEX pilots and the signoffs that the maintenance people used to document the “solutions” to the problems.

The term “gripe” is slang.  The official term for a problem reported by pilots is a “discrepancy”, but pretty much everyone (at least in the Navy) uses the slang term “gripe”.

Not to rain on the parade but variations of that list have been around for a long time.  Where the list is supposedly from depends on where you find it.

I’ve seen similar lists (the “IFF in OFF position” one makes regular appearances on all of them) reported as actual gripes from the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps and even once saw them reported as being from the British Air Force.  I have to admit that’s the first time I’ve ever seen them being claimed by a civilian aviation community.

That does not reduce the hilarity though, and many of them are very similar to gripes aviation maintenance people see on a regular basis…which is what makes them so funny.  The best humor is rooted in reality.

This stems from the fact that the pilots generally know relatively little about how the equipment they are trained to operate actually works.  When I wanted to get under a pilot’s skin I would ask them “Why is it that it takes a college education to break an airplane but only a high school education to fix one?”…but I digress.

The funniest gripe I ever dealt with was when I was working on P-3’s when I was but a lowly Third Class Petty Officer.  P-3 Pilots don’t wear aviator helmets but use headsets with boom microphones similar to the picture on the right.

The Audio system allows the pilots to select specific radios to be heard in each ear.  The pilot can select one radio (or more than one) for the right ear,  and different radio(s) for the left ear, which can help them identify exactly who it is that’s talking to them based on which ear they hear it in.  It also helps to prevent the different radios from “walking on” each other and both transmissions becoming garbled.

I had a brand new pilot (actually still flying as a copilot) report that the audio channels were reversed.  I checked the radios and intercom system and they were working fine so I signed off the gripe “could not duplicate discrepancy” and didn’t think much more about it.

It is a faux pas for pilots to write gripes that get signed off that way because it often means they didn’t know what they were doing, so they get annoyed when we sign off their gripes as “could not duplicate”.

The next time the pilot flew (a different plane no less), he wrote the same gripe and complained to Maintenance Control because this was a “duplicate gripe” that had been signed off once already.  He was mad because I obviously didn’t know what I was doing when I made him look bad by signing it off the way I did last time.

The Maintenance Control Chief called me down to talk to the pilot.  I very patiently listened to him rant and rave about how incompetent I was for signing off his gripe when it obviously hadn’t been fixed because he had the same problem again today (it apparently didn’t even occur to him to be suspicious about the fact that he was having the exact same “problem” on two different airplanes).

I asked him very politely to demonstrate the problem for me and went out to the airplane with him.  We climbed into the cockpit and powered up the systems, he sat in the copilot’s seat, flipped the boom mike around and put the headset on his head.  He then proceeded to select UHF1 in his left ear and did a radio check with Maintenance Control.  “See!” he exclaimed.  “I’ve got the radio selected for left ear and the audio is coming from the right.”

I didn’t say a word.  I grabbed the earpieces in my hands, took the headset off his head, flipped the mike around again and put the headset back on his head so that the mike was coming from his left ear rather than his right and said “try it now.”

He didn’t even bother trying it again.  He uttered some expletive or another and just stormed off the plane…probably more embarrassed and/or mad at himself than mad at me.

I signed off the gripe: “Screwed Pilot’s head on straight, checks 4.0 on ground power.”

I don’t think that pilot said two words to me again that entire tour of duty.

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And its 5678sdfg for the WIN!

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The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping. I mean: you’re not helping! Why is that, ZedgarDOS? They’re just questions, ZedgarDOS. they’re written down for me. It’s a test, designed to provoke an emotional response… Shall we continue? Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about… your mother…

In comments directed to the person who stood by filming while this was going on

Hat tip to Artful Articulations

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Your funny for the day

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Remember the lunatic Richmond bartender with delusions of adequacy that I linked to a couple of days ago?

The one so eager to debate that he doesn’t allow comments on his own blog?  The one who is so courageous and confident in his position that when he leaves a comment on other blogs (like, say, this one) he does so anonymously?  The one who, rather than actually discussing the issue or even trying to make a point,  just posts a link to a picture of himself looking rather like we would expect a raving lunatic to look?  Yea, that guy.

Well apparently he has been completely unaffected by the strong reaction that his rather spirited post engendered in gun owners…so unaffected, in fact, that he’s now “redacted” that post from his blog.

Wait…what?

Anyway, he’s now claiming that he want’s to “debate” the issue in public.

Yes…the guy who won’t permit debate on his blog, and who’s debating skills on other blogs so far has been restricted to posting links to pictures of him making a fool of himself, all the sudden wants to calmly and rationally discuss the issue.

Gee, I wonder how that “debate” would go.

I was tempted to take him up on his offer for about a half a millisecond…which is about how long it took me to realize that only an idiot would try to “debate” with a screeching, poo-flinging monkey who’s entire argument consists of screaming obscenities and insults at the top of his lungs.

I’m thinking that a better plan, now that the offending post has been removed anyway, is just to let the issue drop and allow Mr. Jack Lauterback to fade right back into the well-deserved obscurity from whence he crawled a few days ago.

Wrestling with pigs and all that.

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