Robin bought one of these glass kettles recently, and I am utterly mesmerized by it every time I put on water for tea or coffee. Because it’s made of glass, you can see the water boiling, and the red glow from the heating element makes the whole thing look like a science experiment.
Monthly Archives: February 2011
free: ten thousand cubic feet of snow. local pickup only.
Yes, this is the Snow Belt. Yes, moving to New England and complaining about snow in winter is like going to Mickey D’s and complaining about finding hamburgers on the menu.
But this winter, it’s getting a bit ridiculous:
We have ten acres of land, and most of them are covered in snow three feet deep or more. If I wanted to get ambitious, I could probably build a life-sized 500-foot Snow Cthulhu with the kids.
on writing and guns.
I get the occasional gun question from writer friends who know that I own firearms. If you’re one of them, I have a two-part invitation for you:
- Feel free to ask me technical questions abut guns and the use of them for your stories. I’ve been owning and legally carrying firearms for twenty-two years, both professionally and as a private citizen, and I know an awful lot about the subject. And even if I don’t know the answer, I probably know people who do.
- If you’re ever in the area, and you’d like to get some safe instruction in handling and shooting firearms in a safe and low-stress environment, let me know. I’d be glad to teach you the basics of gun safety, handling and shooting a weapon, and responsible gun ownership.
old man’s war, the movie.
John Scalzi, who instructionated me greatastically at Viable Paradise XII, just sold the movie rights to his “Old Man’s War” military SF series of novels to Paramount Pictures. Wolfgang Petersen, of “Das Boot” fame, will direct the first movie.
Good for him! I hope he remembers his former students when he builds that solid gold mansion in Ohio with all the millions from the 10% of gross receipts his wife undoubtedly negotiated for him.
aw, jeez….not this shit again.
In a spectacular display of Not Getting It, some of the Republicans in the Live Free Or Die State are getting cocky about having a supermajority in the NH House and Senate again…and they’re trying to use it to roll back the gay marriage law. Of all the issues on the table, they make gay cooties a priority once again.
In past elections, I’ve voted for a few Republicans for local office–whenever there wasn’t a Libertarian running, or whenever the Democrat on the ballot was more of a douche than the Republican. Should the NH Republicans be successful in getting our gay marriage law repealed, I will never again vote for another Republican in this state. I’m sick and tired of the debate. We shouldn’t have it in a state that has LIVE FREE OR DIE as its motto. We shouldn’t have it because the straight majority shouldn’t be able to vote itself special rights they can deny to gays, or blacks, or Jews, or Christians, or left-handed people. We shouldn’t have that debate anymore for much the same reason why we shouldn’t have a debate about reintroducing miscegenation laws. This particular culture war is pretty much over. There are just too many people nowadays, both liberal and conservative, who recognize that the state should have precisely fuck-all to do with licensing, condoning, or promoting marriage between two consenting adults.
Now, I realize that I’m once again poking the hornet’s nest with a stick by talking about homosexuality, and inviting certain commenters to leave their feces-obsessed ramblings all over this here Interblog. I do, however, want to put a theory out there:
Most opposition to, disgust with, and fear of homosexuality in this country is simply male discomfort at the thought of male homosexuality. The arguments against homosexuality and gay marriage come wrapped in convenient religious or pseudo-biological arguments, but to me, it looks like it’s simply a moral cloak wrapped around the fact that a lot of straight American males are grossed out at the idea of two men having sex. (Note the relative popularity of lesbian vs. gay porn among straight males—ask a college frat brother what he thinks of two hot chicks getting it on, and he’s much more likely to give that a thumbs-up than the idea of two hot guys getting it on.)
On a side note—I throw up a little in my mouth whenever I hear someone referring to the Defense of Marriage act. Talk about a positively Newspeak name for a piece of legislature. How do you defend something by making sure there’s less of it? How does it “defend” my marriage when my home state doesn’t let a gay couple get the same legal benefits my wife and I enjoy? And do come back to me when the straight marriages in this country don’t have a 50% divorce rate. If social conservatives wanted to defend the institution of marriage, they should start with the straight folks first. But I’m utterly convinced that most of the anti-gay marriage hullabaloo is just personal disgust and discomfort packaged in convenient selective bits of Scripture.
(And lest anyone accuse me of “being hostile toward religion” again…I have an awful lot of friends who are a.) Christian, b.) good people, and c.) in favor of equal marriage rights. Keeping marriage and government apart isn’t exactly a new-fangled radical idea. Render unto Caesar, and all that.)
it’s funny ’cause it’s true.
Quote of the Day, and Single Best Description of the Chicago Election Process, goes to Tam today:
It’s time for that quadrennial Día de los Muertos in Chicago, when the residents of the cemeteries are polled to see who Dick Daley has chosen to be the new mayor.
T’hee.
put together in new hampshah.
Last weekend, we were supposed to travel down to Manchester for a birthday party, but our friends cancelled on account of two out of their three daughters running high fevers. I had already crossed Boskone off my list of events this year because of the party, and I didn’t want to rush down to Boston on short notice, so I just ended up staying home and having a quiet weekend with the family.
As a consolation prize, I got to dash into West Lebanon on Saturday morning for the annual Fun Show. It was really hot, really crowded, and really devoid of great deals–not that I was in a position to take advantage of any. I did, however, turn the Ruger LCP into some walking-around cash, which in turn put the toy budget above the critical mass needed to pick up this at my local gun shop:
That’s a SIG Sauer P229 in 9mm. I had been on the lookout for one in that caliber for a while, and when my local shop had one on the shelf for a very reasonable tariff, I had to take a shot at it. It’s date coded 2003, and has so little wear on it that it’s pretty much a new gun.
They’re good to me over at Hollow Point Sports. When I expressed interest, they pulled the P229 off the shelf and held it for me, without so much as a layaway payment, until I had enough pennies rolled to pick it up. Dillon and Sam at HPS are awesome guys who run a well-stocked and clean shop. If you’re ever in the Enfield area and find yourself in need of gun-related stuff, stop by and check them out. (HPS is right on Route 4 in Enfield, on the right side of the road if you’re heading toward Canaan. They’re across the street from a fairly big PetroMart gas station.)
Why did I get rid of the Ruger? Well, I wanted that SIG more than the LCP, the Ruger was expendable, and I had carried it less and less lately because even with the pocket holster, it tends to wear out the pockets of my jeans to leave a tell-tale gun shape. Also, sometimes you just need to jump on an opportunity as it presents itself, and the LCP is utterly replaceable.
My last SIG was a P220 I sold just before we moved from Tennessee to New Hampshire. I had almost forgotten just how nice they are, and how well they shoot. I’ve been mostly carrying a 3″ K-frame for nigh on seven years now, and I’m pretty good with that gun, but there’s nothing I shoot as well as a SIG Sauer with those Von Stavenhagen pattern bar-dot sights. The first time I took that P229 out for a quick 50-round spin, it was absolutely no challenge to hit a soda can offhand at 25 yards with every shot. Back in Knoxville, I owned a P229 in .357SIG once, and that one was a great shooter as well, but the 9mm version has a much softer recoil, and the follow-up shots and double-taps are noticeably faster.
I’m still a revolver guy, and nothing is going to dislodge that 3″ K-frame Smith from the carry gun slot, but that P229 is so nice it only reinforces my opinion that the classic P-series SIG Sauer pistols are just about as good as it gets in an out-of-the-box factory pistol.
(Ammo is Federal “9BPLE” 9mm +P+. Holster is iTac retention paddle holster.)
a glimpse into hef’s private bordello.
This article on life in the Playboy mansion makes me want to scrub myself down with lye.
There’s absolutely nothing about Hefner’s little fantasy fulfillment lifestyle that isn’t icky to the extreme–and I say that while having no Puritan hang-ups about sex whatsoever. What Hugh Hefner practices is not a “sexy” lifestyle. A guy who pays a harem of twenty-something women to sleep with him and give the world (and himself) the illusion that he’s some sort of bon-vivant stud is not sexy. It’s just an old, sad, pajamas-wearing, Viagra-popping dude who likes to have sex with pneumatic blondes, and who built a business around the fulfillment of that desire. At the end of the day, the fact remains that he has to pay for sex.
On a side tangent, this shows how silly, arbitrary, and misogynistic our prostitution laws are. What happens at the Playboy mansion isn’t legally speaking prostitution, even though it involves a guy paying women to live and have sex with him for $1,000 in pocket money a week and a chance to become a centerfold. If those women walked out of the Playboy Mansion, went to the next shopping mall, and offered some random stranger sexual favors for $1k a week, they’d be arrested for prostitution. Where exactly is the difference here–other than the fact that it’s the male initiating and controlling the transaction here, and not the woman?
Like I said–lye scrubdown. Living in a place with soiled mattresses and dog shit on the carpet, to be on sexual standby for an octogenarian man-child who probably never got a woman interested in him without the prospect of money or career advancement? Ick, ick, a thousand times ick. I think any streetwalker is far more respectable than any member of Hef’s harem…at least straight-up hookers don’t practice self-deception about what they do for a living.
so it goes.
Borders has filed for bankruptcy protection.
The linked article mentioned that borders didn’t even have an e-commerce site until 2008, almost ten years after Amazon started theirs. (For five or six years prior to Borders.com, Borders actually had Amazon do the e-commerce for them. Talk about a bone-headed management move.) With visionary management like that, it’s no wonder they ended up with over a billion bucks of debt.
I’m waiting for an official list of store closures to see if we’re going to lose the West Lebanon location, which is the only big bookstore in a sixty-mile radius. On a plus side, I’ve been checking out more of the local independent booksellers in the area.
Update: Here’s the official list of closings. Looks like West Leb has ducked the hatchet, but the Borders down in Nashua is going.
