Gun Related Must Have: AK Ice Tray

Found this brousing the AAC blog, and wanted to memorialize it here for both my readers. This is just plain cool: it's an ice tray that shapes the ice into 7.62X39 cartridges. Now if only they did 'em in 6.8 SPC...

Fort Campbell SOF Three Gun Match

My sunburn today is fairly comprehensive! I spent yesterday out at the Rattlenake Ridge range for the FTCKY SOF Three Gun Match. My employer, ATS Tactical Gear, donated a customized Glock 19 as a raffle prize. The custom work was done by a friend of ours from 5th SFG, and it it's impressive. I'll get a pic of it before it gets transfered to the guy who nabbed it this week.

The 5th Group guys were ready for this match; they'd been practicing quite a bit for it. The top spots last year were taken my 160th guys, with Tony Ely winning the match. That guy can shoot, and has been a serious competitive shooter for a long time. I think it's because he's pilot-tall, which means he doesn't have as far to go to present the gun all the way out like I do. That's what I keep telling myself, at least. What the reality ends up being is that he's better than I am and I have a long way to go to get into that league. lol!

Tony has since moved forward in his career and is posted elsewhere these days. Even so, the Group guys had something for them this year. I watched runs by several of my friends that were just plain fast, with really good hits and clean run after clean run.

Special mention, though, really needs to be made of the guy who doesn't want the attention: my brother-frumma-nuther-mother Matt E. Matt's practice consisted of a hundred rounds of pistol drills that we did a week ago. No carbine at all. He was the first shooter on stage 5, which was where his squad started the match, and got his eye pro sprayed with oil from an "excess of lube", as he called it. He was shooting with an occluded eye, and didn't shoot a couple of targets. Right off the bat, he was down 9 points. However, he won every stage his squad shot from that point on, was the only shooter I can remember cleaning the entire steel stage. After that first stage, he shot better than some guys that get paid to shoot. Out of 59 shooters (IIRC) he finished 20th. I'm really, really proud of how well he did, but it means I can't shoot the match now. He set the bar too high for ATS employees! LOL!

Other than Matt, I think the rest of the top 25 were all Group guys. Several of our gunfighter friends finished way up at the top of the standings. They did well, and so did the Nightstalkers. Bottom line is, if you're an enemy of this country, you don't want these guys knowing who you are, much less where you are. It won't end well for you, I promise!

I wish I had video skills. Pelosi is beggin' to be mocked!

I'm sure you've seen the classic Badger Badger Badger movie. It's been on the 'net for quite a while. It's quite funny, really; I like it.

But now is when I wish I had some video editing skills. I saw Nancy Pelosi lying her ass off on TV this morning, saying she didn't know about water boarding, when we all know she was thoroughly briefed on it. She's trying to cover her substantial butt, and the documentation says the opposite of what she's claiming. In the history of the human race, that's been called lying the whole time.

So, that being the case, for some reason the first thing I thought of while watching her lie was the Badger Badger Badger video, but with different lyrics. Something like this:

Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar

Nancy! Nancy!
(repeat)
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
Liar
A snake! A snake! Snake! A snake! Ohhhhh it's a snake!!
Liar
Liar
Liar...

If you have the skills, feel free to use this idea. Just make sure I get to see it.

Cool Stuff to do in Louisville: The Frazier Museum

A few weeks ago, I visited Louisville, and I'm finally blogging about it.

Upon breakin' my best friend's step-son out of Fort Knox for his Family Day Pass, we decided that there'd be more to do in Louisville than the area directly surrounding the base, so we meandered our way down to that town. Tony's goals for the weekend were pretty simple: eat a bunch of stuff that wasn't completely healthy, and sleep in big time. We succeeded admirably.

We ended up in a hotel over near the airport that was just a few minutes down the freeway from downtown, and another few minutes from the University of Louisville. Being in the area of a University means lots of cheap eats, and the manager at the hotel recommended the 5th Quarter steak house. Turned out to be an excellent suggestion.

Saturday, after a trip to Crack Barrel, we planned to hit the Frazier International Museum, and then wander across the street to the Louisville Slugger museum and factory. Except that we never made it across the street. Turns out that the Frazier is stocked, on three floors, with armor, flails, maces, broadswords, pole arms, pikes, lances, voulges, spears, rapiers, sabers, pistols, revolvers, rifles, carbines, cannons, and some really kick ass dioramas, or tableaus as they seem to prefer to call them. We ended up spending about five hours there, and if they weren't closing, I think I could have spent a few more. This place was everything I love: sharp pointy stuff and things that go BOOM!

They had a really cool exhibition that was done shortly after we reached the third floor. Two living historians gave a demonstration of swordsmanship by way of acting out the scenes from Romeo and Juliet. The point was to describe the fights as they might have actually happened between the Montegues and Capulets, two families that were more or less at war. In addition to acting out the dialogue, they also explained the weapons, even going so far as to tell us something I didn't know: the derivation of the term "swashbuckler". It comes from a fighting style that was common at the time of the Romeo and Juliet. the "swash" refers to the slashing, cutting style of swordsmanship, where the "bucker" refers to the small, round shield used with the weak hand that has that name. Those guys were really, really good. A tip of the ATS hat with the "Kill Bad Guys Like a Champion Today" patch on the back to them.

This is the Armada tableau, depicting the English kickin' the ever lovin' crap out of the Spanish armada. Tactics made the difference once again.


This next one is from the Battle of Balaclava, more famously known as "The Charge of the Light Brigade". Professionalism in the face of blundered leadership. Note the wild eyed look on the face of the horse. They did an excellent job with this one.


This last one I included as much because I thought it was extra cool as for my friend Matt E. who's a big, big fan of the movie Zulu. The Battle of Rourke's Drift. This photo is not, in my opinion, the best angle to see this scene:


The tableau photos are from the Frazier's website. Those are some great quality pics! Much better than I'd be able to do with my digital camera!

After spending all day at the museum, we wandered around a bit and took a drive down River Road. We found Joe's Crab Shack, and despite the crazy long wait-no doubt because of the 50 top they set before us-we ate more than we should have again...which was one of the stated goals. Again, success. The aforementioned hat drew the attention of the manager as he was walking by. He stopped, took a long look at it, and said "That's what I thought that said. I just wanted to be sure". I just grinned and told him "It was a gift from a friend." He left with a disconcerted look on his face. lol!

Sunday meant we had to get him back to base, but we had enough time to hit Crack Barrel again, and went to see "Fighting". Decent movie, but we saw it more because there was nothing else we wanted to see than it being the first choice. :) I dropped Tony back at Fort Knox, and eventually found my way back home. The best news we heard was that somebody got caught by a Captain at Kentucky Kingdom in civilian clothes. The order was Class A's or Class B's all weekend. Oops!

We had a great time, and I'm really, really proud of that young soldier. He's still got about a month of AIT to do, then it's off to Texas to be a Cav Scout. He's a smart young man, and a self starter. He's going to do great things in the service.

He's got another graduation coming, so I'll be up that way in about four weeks or so. I'm really looking forward to that one.

Star Trek: Yup!

Went with Paul J. to see the new Star Trek today. I gotta say, overall its a very enjoyable movie. Even if it was a PG-13 and Simon Pegg wasn't in this one enough, I liked it, especially in contrast to the movies that came before it.

The existing flicks are OK, although I'm not a big fan of the ones with the TV show cast in 'em. Much like the James Bond series and the new Batman franchise, the new one is just better than its predecessors. Bad Attitude Bond and Mean and Nasty Batman are improvements over the previous versions, and in total, so are the cast of the new ST.

There are a couple of character interactions that I thought were outside the canon of the original, and the young Spock isn't as comfortable in the role, in my estimation, than Leonard Nimoy, but those are huge shoes to fill. Still, he was good in the role, and Karl Urban was surprisingly good as Bones. In the past, his performances could be characterized as...how to put it...wooden. As Bones, he channeled just enough of Deforest Kelly to let you know who he was, while still putting his own twist on it. I didn't figure out who Nero was until I looked it up on IMDB. Great performances abounded.

Go see it. Its a good story and quality escapism for a couple hours, and it's just plain fun. I'm looking forward to seeing the others in this franchise.

Consider your heroes

I got to meet a legend, hero and great American today. Tony Pryor was in the store today, meeting another great American who's just become Surefire's Director of Military Sales. Between the two of them, they've killed more people that the plague (they were all bad). Matt and I got to spend a bit of time hanging out with those two, and it was, as it usually is with those kind of dudes, just sitting at the feet of the masters. There's all kinds of stuff to be learned from listening to a couple of pros talk shop.

Once they'd left, Matt and I kinda looked at each other, grinned and just marveled at how cool it was that one of our heroes was hangin' out and buyin' some stuff. I made a comment about how weird it would seem to a run-of-the-mill average citizen that we care so much about a guy like him coming in, and we wouldn't care that much if George Clooney or "some other faggit", in Matt's words, was there. It brings an interesting question to light: who are your heroes?

The older I get, the less I care about celebrities, especially those that are famous for being famous rather than being talented in a particular area. They're just people. Sure, they do things that are entertaining and get well compensated for that, but for the most part, what they give is escapism...and stupid, uninformed political statements. That I may want to go see somebody's performance in a movie doesn't mean that their popularity means anything more than that they are good performers. Most of them don't contribute much to the country as a whole, although there are exceptions.

There are only a few ways that celebrities, whether they be musicians, actors, athletes, or artists, can get my attention, much less respect. One of those is to take their own time and put it in with the USO or visiting troops on posts across the country. There are those, like John Wayne, who used their celebrity to make things better for America's defenders. Others have used their positions to make things better for their fellow citizens, and some put their hands were their mouth is and work. But a lot of Americans consider them to be royalty for being celebrities, and that's just wrong.

Take some time and look at who your heroes are. Consider why exactly they're your heroes, and what they do to make this a better place. If that's not what they do, perhaps you should consider changing the criteria that put them on that pedestal for you.