I was in a gun store the other day visiting with friends and window shopping. A black man and his mother and aunt came in to buy a pistol.
They chose the latest incarnation of the Cobray. This is a wanna-be machine pistol in semi-auto only, with a fake suppressor.
He was buying because it looked like a machine pistol and came with a 30 round magazine.

After some discussion about the difference between beef and beefy and why they referred to any pistol as heat. (an old term that is once again popular.) He tried to get someone to tell him how to convert it to full auto. He was told to ask at a class III dealer, perhaps they would know someone.

As I stood there looking at a Kel-Tech pistol in 5.56, he asked what it was and how many rounds it held. He also wanted to know if I was going to buy it and use it for self protection.

I pointed out that it was too large to conceal and on the whole, not the world’s most practical weapon. I told him that when I feel the need to carry a weapon I preferred my xd-45.

He got this blank look and so I explained to him that it is a 45 cal pistol imported from Croatia by Springfield. It carries 13 +1 and is more than sufficient for anything I’m likely to need.
His response came down to, too few rounds for the sort of running fight he imagined.

I know this person and most of his family and he never struck me as the sort to go looking for trouble. However he lives in a rough neighborhood and he worries about the local bangers.

In spite of the fact that he belongs to a gang himself, I once offered to teach him to shoot. But with the way things are portrayed in the movies and the way these guys talk, I’m afraid that spray and pray is the only thing they understand.
He not only refused my offer. He couldn’t understand that simply pointing the weapon in the general direction of your chosen target and pulling the trigger until it quit isn’t good enough.

The fact that he was endangering innocent bystanders didn’t bother him in the slightest.
This is the part that bothers me the most. I learned to treat weapons of any sort with respect. I would rather not shoot anything, much less anybody, I wasn’t trying to hit. But this is of no concern to him.

I use a pistol as a defensive weapon, but he uses it to increase his influence on the street.

Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide attack that also killed at least 20 others at a campaign rally, aides said.
She was shot in the neck and chest by the attacker, who then blew himself up, said Rehman Malik, Bhutto’s security adviser.

“The surgeons confirmed that she has been martyred,” Bhutto’s lawyer Babar Awan said.
This comment reflects the difference in attitudes between our two cultures.

In ours she would have been murdered or assassinated, in theirs she was martyred. To her enemies the assassin is the martyr.

I will never understand, much less respect a culture in which mass murder is considered to be a legitimate part of the political process. Yet in a large percentage of the Muslim world it seems to be an accepted practice.

On the other hand, I suppose that any time you take a stand against a violent opponent, you must be willing to die for your cause. Therefore the term martyr may well be appropriate even if it sounds odd to my ear.

It sounds odd to say this but, at least in this case the killing makes a certain amount of sense, because it was not generic. Instead it was aimed at a specific political target.

President Pervez Musharraf will always have violence at his finger tips even if it’s not controllable. He deals with the frontier by letting the local warlords run things and by not pursing the people who use terror as an everyday tool.
He is a dictator who rules not by law but by force of arms. He regime is corrupt, his army and local police are either afraid of, or collaborating with, known terrorists.

In the well demonstrated brilliance of the current administration. The US sends him more and more money. Based on skewed political beliefs, unkept promises and outright lies.

I don’t know why any of this bothers me. We have our own corrupt administration to deal with. One that backs some of the world’s worst dictators and uses high volume terrorism to force the change of any regime they don’t approve of.

The person who writes the blog “Hostility” is now using voice recognition software. The system he is using is a part of Windows XP, although there may be some portion that needs to be downloaded from the Microsoft site. As a result his spelling is much improved, but the blog remains difficult to read. Mostly do to a lack of punctuation, and a series of incomplete sentences.
The punctuation needs to be spoken as you dictate. For a period you need to say the word period and so forth.

I give him kudos for continuing to blog in spite of a certain amount of ridicule.
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Overheard at a mall earlier in the week. “But, I told my son he could have a Wii.” To which the salesman replied. “We are sold out, but we have some games.”
Not only is this one of the most difficult game systems to find in stock at any time, much less a few days before Christmas. But, this exchange is typical of the season. “I want the impossible” followed by “sorry you can’t have that, but we’ll sell you some games that only work on the device you can’t buy.”

Shoppers are irritable and pushy while they are in the stores, but when they get into their vehicles they become even more aggressive. the number of blowing horns, near misses and fender benders in the store parking lots always grow exponentially this time of year.

“Tis the season to be jolly” and all that hooey.
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How does a person who doesn’t speak spanish manage to order a hamburger, hold the onions?

How can you complain about the food in a chinese restaurant, when it’s being prepared by someone who just came here from a part of the world where they don’t cook chinese food, and they don’t speak, in this case, english?

This is not a complaint about the number of hispanics in this country. It’s a commentary on business practices.

If you are going to do business with a population that primarily speaks english, german, spanish, chinese or any other language, shouldn’t you make certain that there is at least one person one staff at all times who speaks that language?

It seems to me that being able to communicate with your customers should be your first priority if you plan on staying in business.

Just some minor observations on the human condition.

At Pioneer Loan, office politics forced the removal of two blogs.
The first was Hostility.
This is a site some of us made fun of. Yet he is still blogging with some regularity.

Thus far he remains incapable of writing a coherent sentence, much less a complete paragraph.
The person he made angry is still refusing to talk to him, even when it concerns the software the company uses, and that he authored.

The other site is Richard’s Blog.
Rich has been blogging for some time, and a minor inconvenience like relocating is not going to stop him.
His blog is mostly observations of the people in place he works, with sarcasm aimed at everyone…. including himself and his employers.

The situation as I see it is simple.
The first author feels that he was unjustly attacked and will continue to post just to irritate his perceived enemies.

The second author is one of those people that reacts badly to threats, even veiled threats.

The person who started this entire mess behaves like a spoiled brat and is allowed to interfere with the day to day running of an office by refusing to communicate with the person that offended her.

It’s quite obvious that I have nothing to do with the running of the company. Or there would be fewer princesses on the payroll.
The first two persons may be childish, but the last is destructive.

I believe that for Christmas. I will send to Pioneer Loan, a sign that reads; “Please drive carefully. Children at play.”

Political Nevada has taken up the suggestion that gangs be treated as terrorists.

Rags over on Rag Hand put forward this idea some time back.

For my two cents worth. It seems to me that the bleeding hearts would have to live in a neighborhood run by one of the more violent gangs before they are allowed to have a voice.
To treat gangs as anything other than terrorists is to give them tacit permission to rob, murder, rape, and deal drugs.

Any group that relies on violence and fear to achieve their goals is by definition a terrorist group.

Sometime today one of the owners of Pioneer Loan centers in Las Vegas ordered the removal of an employee’s blog.

The story as I heard it goes something like this.

One of the company’s IT workers was forced to wait for one of their loan officers who had overslept. This man complained to another IT worker who proceeded to write a solitary line about the incident, avoiding the use of names, in his blog.

The late worker called the IT worker who had been forced to wait and screamed at him until he hung up on her.
She never spoke to the person who had written this now infamous line.

The late worker complained to one of the owners last evening and this morning the first IT worker’s blog was ordered removed. The person who had written the offending line, voluntarily removed his own.

The blogs are Hostility and Richard’s blog and are for the moment being hosted on rcnevada.

A Tempe, AZ woman who stabbed her lover to drink his blood the night before Valentine’s Day was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
“I’m really sorry that all this went on,” Tiffany Sutton told the judge. “I never meant to hurt anyone.”

Robert McDaniel agreed to let her tie him up for sex, but told police he became scared and asked Sutton to untie him when she attacked him with a knife. Instead, she sliced his leg, punctured his arm, shoulder and back, and cut his neck and stomach. When he escaped, she chased him with a pickax.

Officers reported that Sutton said McDaniel signed a disclaimer promising “he wouldn’t prosecute when the sex got crazy.”

Her mother noted that Sutton struggles with borderline personality disorder, a condition characterized by extreme instability, impulsive behavior and fear of abandonment.
According to prison health records, Sutton thought she was a vampire for the first several weeks she was in jail.

The question that springs to mind is this:
Considering the nature of the disclaimer she says McDaniel signed, just how many times has she attacked someone during sex?

All of that don’t have the good sense to die while we’re at the top of our game are going to get old…. That, is a cold, hard, unavoidable fact.

Now, PBS has a special on aging called Life Part 2. In it, they have both scientists, explaining the workings of the brain and entertainers like Bob Newhart explaining what it’s like to be older.

They have some simple advice on how to slow down the inevitable slowdown. Exercise and learning.
It seems that the brain can be stimulated to create new synapses by the act of doing every day things differently. They suggest little things like brushing your teeth with your weak hand, or taking a new route to work.

As we age, our minds and bodies start to deteriorate. They just wear out.

We see the old folks every day. Working at Walmart or the local Macdonald’s. We think they’re too slow and we get tired of having to repeat ourselves or speak up….. I have bad news… That will be you in a few fleeting years.

I’m not so young, but I’m not so old that women approaching middle age find me completely unattractive. My mind still functions at a reasonable rate. But I fear what I see coming.

I have no idea how to be old. None of us do. Until we arrive there, and then our minds will deceive us into believing that we are not at all like those “old” people we see around us.

I fear what most people fear. Not death so much, as the loss of independence.
I’m no longer married, and I have no children or close relatives to whom I can become a burden.
Who will take care of me when I’m no longer able?
How will I get around?
How will I remember to take the inevitably increasing number of medications?
This list gets longer every time I think about these questions.

For the present, there is not much that can be done.

I will continue to lose weight. A thing that is much harder at fifty something than it was at twenty something.
I will continue to put aside a little money each month to invest in something safe and interest bearing. High risk investment is for the young, who have time to recover from their mistakes.
I will continue to work. As long as you keep moving, they don’t throw dirt on you.
I suspect that there is yet time to develop a hobby.

As for a long term relationship… Perhaps…..

BBC NEWS | Americas | Brazilian dogs go under the knife
There follows a list of available procedures: wrinkle-reduction, eyebrow-correction and even full canine facelifts.

“Why shouldn’t a dog be beautiful?” asks Edgard.

“Beauty is desirable. We all like talking to someone who looks good and smells nice. Its the same with dogs.”

In Brazil it’s common for show dogs and the pets of the wealthy to have plastic surgery.
I can see a shot to correct a drooping ear on a show dog, but a face lift??

A new blog by the name of Political Nevada, debuted today.

The first post is a rant about public servants and their lack of accountability.

The person writing is obviously literate, which is an improvement over a number of blogs, I have read of late.

Hostility doesn’t count.
That blog is written by someone who is either badly dyslexic or functionally illiterate.