The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Kept smelling gasoline. Should have checked earlier, because this thing cost me more than half a can of gas. Under heat-induced pressure it has been pissing a very tiny stream of gasoline for a week and a half.

No idea how it happened. There’s no sign of any special trauma, just a sort of crease with a pinhole in the middle.

By happenstance I was loading the Jeep trailer for an anticipated dump run tomorrow, so I stripped off that nice vent and dumped the can in with the other trash.

I have found the heaviest thing in the world.

Why did he think he wanted this? What did he plan to do with it? Was it only a practical joke on me, that took its sweet time paying off?

Whatever, it’s outa there now. And so is this damned thing… Continue reading →

Nylon strapping is useful. When I first set up the chicken yard outside the cabin, I needed some top cover against sun and raptors. First thing that came to mind was this big cargo parachute that T had dragged home from somewhere. It lasted a couple of years before UV and wind had reduced it to rags, and before I consigned it to the burn barrel I cut off the shrouds – which hadn’t deteriorated at all.

I mostly use them as tie-downs for the propane bottles, each of which has a permanent one. The rest gradually got used up here and there – I had one left in the Jeep’s gearbag but it went to an honorable death this morning. Continue reading →

This is going to be hilarious to watch.

Schumer Targets Possible Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett

Yeah, this’ll be fun to watch for the memes alone…

…and yet, in those few moments when I find myself taking American governance seriously – usually when I’m a bit in my cups – I do wonder if I shouldn’t be appalled at the fact that all national-level political questions are now decided by counting which geriatric judges are “liberal” or “conservative.” Is that in the Constitution really? Maybe it’s one of those penumbras or emanations I’ve heard so much about.

Sure hope you’re happy…

Shook up this can of water sealer yesterday evening, read the instructions and was dismayed to see the “Don’t walk on it for 48 hours” instruction, which would have given me pause back when LB lived here. Fortunately I can cope with the back door’s still-improvised stairs more easily than he could.

But don’t you know, this’ll be the day I get visitors clueless enough to go around the blocked steps and insist on knocking on the front door anyway?

Also should have looked for a smaller can, because it looks like I mistakenly purchased a lifetime’s supply of Thompson’s Waterseal.

Yes, you saw it here first.

I have this game I play with expendable commodities. It has a serious enough basis – since I need to keep stocks and can’t just run to the store whenever, I need to know how long things last, right? So I write the date I opened a coffee can, or unwrapped a box of matches, or started a new paper roll right on the package and then when it’s expended I note how long it lasted. That way I learn useful things, like, I need two jars of strawberry jam for every jar of peanut butter, and at least two boxes of kitchen matches to get through a winter.

You’re wondering what this has to do with the fundamental difference between men and women? Patience, Grasshopper! The most valuable Eternal Verities are tucked away inside the most mundane details.

The great unanswerable mystery that is woman, for example, has not to do with ethereal matters at all, but simply, “What does she do with all that goddam toilet paper?”

Right? Right? C’mon, you know it’s true.

I sure hope you didn’t come here looking for the answer. Are you kidding? I’m still trying to figure out plumbing, there’s no way in hell I’ll live long enough to cope with women.

But I can at least illustrate one thing men can do, which women demonstrably can not. Ready? Behold! A phenomenon which can only a man living at least a mile from any human female could possibly display!

🙂

It goes against my nature and training to spend any more money on the porch’s temporary floor, but I do have to concede that certain readers are right about one thing…

Monsoon Is Coming.

And while I do hope to replace the plywood with a proper 2X6 floor next year, there would be no meals missed if I spent $20 on a gallon of water sealer in the meantime.

So I spent $20 on a gallon of water sealer for the porch’s temporary plywood floor. I’ll roll on the first coat this evening at last light, before I move indoors for the night.

A couple of people hit the tip jar recently, plus one of those care packages of water bottles came complete with an envelope of green paper, and that gave me the opportunity to stock up on some commodities. I do go through a lot of dollar store peanut butter and jelly here at the Secret Lair, and having moved the pantry into the Lair’s loft last October I did something dumb: I moved all the jars from the kitchen cabinet to the loft. And so I lost count of how much I was using, and this past week something unthinkable happened: I ran right out of strawberry jam, and damned near out of peanut butter!!!!!!!

I’ve never done that before.

So anyway, I hit the dollar store this morning during the regular Monday water run, and have begun the expensive process of stocking back up. Also they had some of the good flour, so I scored #25 of that. I’m nowhere near out of flour but I do go through it pretty steadily since I bake all my own bread.

Also refilled a glaucoma med, and renewed vital but precarious stocks of ammo and bourbon.

So that’s where your money goes, and much grass (yeah, I wish) muchas gracias!

I had to break out the Official TUAK Camera for this – which as it turns out I still don’t know how to focus when zooming heavily, so bear with me…

Yup, that bird – tentatively identified by a TUAK reader as a Phoebe – that built a nest on the Secret Lair right where I was planning to paint, has successfully hatched out two little fledglings currently intent on making her life busy. They’re in the “shut up and stuff something down my throat” phase of avian development.

I’ve had other things on my mind and haven’t been doing anything constructive anyway, and so have left her as unmolested as I can given that she takes it as a big crisis every time I walk around that corner of my own damned cabin. I still have to finish painting those eaves, but the parts vulnerable to Monsoon are complete so it doesn’t have to be this week – or last month, which is when it was scheduled for doing.

I’m from Michigan. Winter is not new to me, and before I moved here it held no special dread. I knew before I moved here that high desert winters are cold, but I shrugged and said, “I’m from Michigan.” Which only goes to show that what you don’t know you don’t know can bite you hard.

Until I moved here I’d never wintered in one of these things before…

…without a working furnace. Watching how thick the ice from my breath can form on the inside of the windows. One winter I sometimes went a week at a time without ever taking off my heavy coat. Yeah, I grew up in Michigan – in a house in Michigan. With central heating, and actual insulation in the walls. Which were not made of tin.

That trailer got hot in the summer sun, but that didn’t bother me nearly as much as six months of sore fingers and toes. I spent five winters there – and for non-winter-related reasons I still have some affection for it. But I hated winter in the Interim Lair so much I grew to dread winter.

Then I got the Secret Lair nominally habitable, and to my dismay it wasn’t a big improvement at first and the problem of July 1 continued: The problem being that on July 1, the numerical mid-point of the year, I traditionally started dreading the return of winter! Seriously, I couldn’t enjoy my warm season for how much I hated the thought of returning to the cold season!

But the past three years have brought major incremental improvements to the cabin, to the point where it is now at long last much more house-like. And today, to my amused pleasure, I find that I can arrive at July 1 and just … enjoy that there’s still so much more summer left to enjoy. And when winter returns, unless it’s an unusually nasty one I’m more likely than not to kind of enjoy that, as well.

An actual thing that actually happened…

The California Supreme Court says state laws cannot be invalidated on the grounds that complying with them is impossible.

The nice thing about California law is it doesn’t require me to come up with tedious commentary. 🙂

I keep getting blindsided by reminders that Little Bear doesn’t live here anymore. Finished a peanut butter jar yesterday and I swear I was halfway through turning around to offer it to LB when reality hit.

The Lair’s paint came in a big heavy expensive 5-gallon jug courtesy of Big Brother, so I needed something less cumbersome to work with when I was doing brushwork. Settled, naturally enough, on an empty #10 Mountain House can. When I was done I poured the surplus back into the jug, set the can upside-down on an old board in the yard, and then peeled the cured remains off the tin later for re-use.

But now I guess I’ll have to find another can…

Seriously, cattle? Seriously?

Long-time readers will recall that, in addition to their usual gifts of cowpies and chewed-flat yard plants, this isn’t their first act of pointless material destruction.

Say, I never tried this – or even considered it. I assumed Micarta, like canned vegetables and detective novels, only came from giant factories in China.

But M. Silvius is far more adventurous than I.

Pretty cool.

Welcome!

To rip off H. L. Mencken, I am impatient with their haunting fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time.

Mostly it’s just funny, but now one of them has gone too far. Here’s someone who literally wants to suck the joy out of life…

‘Ode to Joy’ has an odious history. Let’s give Beethoven’s most overplayed symphony a rest

Because Hitler, of course. And something something German nationalism 200 years ago, which last I checked didn’t have anything to do with me.

Roll in your grave, Jonathan Edwards…

Four years ago Bayou Renaissance Man gifted me a scout scope, to compensate for my post-surgery eyesight which is better than ever at long range and utterly gone at short. I bummed a WASR belonging to Ian that had one of those Ultimax rails where the upper handguard is supposed to be…

Might not have been the world’s ugliest gun, but it was probably the funniest-looking one in the neighborhood, and a little muzzle-heavy. Worked, though. Hunted out some feral dogs with that rig.

Then two years ago Ian bought a Kobra red dot that would only fit on the WASR’s receiver…

…and I used that for a year, but then Ian – who’s trying to run a business – needed the rig back. I went back to the World’s Ugliest Gun, the Official Long Gun of TUAK since I sold the M1A, whose iron sights I still couldn’t really see. So I bought a cheap red dot and a rail that replaces the rear sight, and came up with something really bizarre-looking…

…and it hasn’t worked for me very well. I swapped out the buttstock from the Formerly Pink AK, but – well, I really don’t have anything specific against that red dot but it wasn’t getting it done for me.

So I thought, well, the WUG still has that little piece of rail, and I have that Leupold scout scope…

And I think maybe that’s going to do me better. I’ll wear it a while and see.

One of the things I like about beater AKs is that I’m not afraid to tinker with them. 🙂 Maybe that’s how people with bank accounts think about their ARs.

I’m getting interesting results from having relocated the gamecam to the wide bend in the wash, but the target stands is a lousy location for obvious reasons of the incoming fire variety. Particularly since I’m hoping to sight in a rifle later today. So I made a thing.

Last month sometime I sent away for this camera-mounting gadget made to screw into trees, which gives me options that don’t limit me to tying the camera to things with a web belt. Time I used it – I fixed it to an old 4X4 that I mounted upright at the bend of the wash well away from bullet splash, and now I can hope for the benefit without the disadvantages of the location.

Nothing much of any interest going on last night…

…though I wonder where this little guy thinks he’s going. Probably going to try his luck pushing down the metallic target stand, just to get an early start on being a dick to Uncle Joel.

I’m thinking maybe I should preemptively brace that stand like I did the other one. It didn’t take very long…

I’m still working on building up the numbers, but in terms of prosthesis-supporting textiles I’ve never been happier with my current arrangement. Which doesn’t mean you won’t sometimes rub a big bloody blister in the bottom of your stump when you least expect it.

I’d also like to know when that callous my surgeon told me to expect is going to start forming. I’ve only been waiting 46 years now…

It’s true what they say, you know: Your feet are there to keep your legs from fraying at the end.

Good thing they called me from the feed store.

Wax on…

Wax off.

My back problem enjoys a good ironic joke, it seems – I did my part in getting the hay stacked in the barn at full speed and my back never gave me a moment’s problem – but spasmed good while I was taking that second picture. Bastard.