The NSA Has Been Monitoring Facebook

All I have to say about that is:

أوباما تمتص جرذ قرد

(Click for translation.)

h/t SayUncle.

Thing I Learned Today

What "derpiness" is, and that it can be beautiful.

BOYCOTT: PLEASE DO NOT BUY WISCONSIN BEER OR DAIRY PRODUCTS

A cheesehead SWAT team murdered a baby deer at a St. Francis animal shelter.

Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree

I had only read it in the book, a long time ago.

Clink this link if the embed is not working.

Hurt Feelings Report

Tiger Woods complains that Sergio Garcia made a "hurtful" remark about him.  A formal hurt feelings report is rumored to be in the works:

(Click to enlarge)

Majestic

A Little Fun With MS Paint

You Had One Job, Lowe's

Says Uncle.

Vinegar for Slow or Mostly Clogged Drains

works.  Baking soda is idiotic.

A principal cause of drain clogs is mineral build-up from the water itself, rust from older iron pipes, and black mold (really, yes, black mold in your drains).  Vinegar will dissolve those.  (As well as your granite or marble countertop if you're not careful.)

DO NOT USE BAKING SODA NO MATTER WHAT SOMEBODY MORE STUPID THAN YOU SAID.  Throwing baking soda down the drain along with the vinegar will defeat the process and actually add to the clog.  The vinegar will be working to dissolve the baking soda, the baking soda will be working to neutralize the vinegar, and the clog will be eating popcorn and watching the two fight it out.  Once the baking soda has neutralized the vinegar, it will reform itself into a solid and become assimilated into the clog.  The idea of combining baking soda and vinegar was likely conceived by idiots who think that the foaming bubbles will work out the clog.  For that matter, never throw baking soda down your drains, ever.  It's powdered rock, for crying out loud.  Get past fifth-grade science fair volcanoes, morons, and think about how things work. 

So here's how you do it.  Get a gallon  of cheap white distilled vinegar from the supermarket.  Pour it down your drain until it backs up to the top of your drain.  Start boiling a teakettle full of water.  You should see, after a time, the vinegar drain out.  Pour the boiling water down the drain.  If you have been eating all your vegetables and saying your prayers every night, you should see the water drain fast with a whoosh and/or gurgle.  Clog gone.

To be safe, pour the remaining vinegar down the drain.  Keep pouring even though it's draining away.  Vinegar is cheap.  Pour another teakettle of boiling water down the drain.  Get the idea?   You're hunting down the broken up survivors of the clog.

As a final step, wash the vinegar (and any clog remnants) thoroughly out of your pipes by letting your faucets run for a couple of minutes.  You don't want it sitting there -- it will corrode the pipes.

WARNING:  If you do not know that boiling water and vinegar should be handled carefully because they can hurt you or your family members, you have no business being alone on the internet.  Find an "assisted living" home that does not have a minimum IQ requirement.

Sorority Scold Resigns

says Patterico:

The Boston Marathon Bombers' Mom

is not happy.

What We Carry

What Uncle carries.
What I carry. Not all at once but more than one sometime.



The Gerber Bolt Action with the Flicket used to be my favorite but now this is what I carry all the time:

Life

A wonderful thing.  Pleasure and pain.

Such foolishness.  Music and math.

I sometimes wonder, why would worms want to live?

Priests Say

"Naked we enter the world and naked we leave it".

That's a lie.

We enter the world clothed in the love of a God Who breathed a soul into clay, and the love of a mother who gave us life.

We leave the world clothed in the love of our parents, brothers, children, and friends.

I Stopped Smoking

After forty years.

Marlboro and Winston just don't taste good anymore.

I Must Scream But It Is Not In My Nature

I had a stroke on Christmas, 2011, and I lost my left leg.

On June 2, 2012 I lost my right eye.  Despite two operations, I am below 20/2400.

Now, I have the same warning symptoms in my left eye.  My doctors tell me there is no preemptive procedure.

Being cripppled is tough, but being crippled and blind is a bitch.

I am only 56.  What happened to my three score and ten?

Post Removed, Comments Remain

Comment Policy

Mine is,
Walk right in, take your shoes off, set a spell.  If I don't like a comment you made, I might scold you or even delete it (rare).  My digital home, my decision.

I Went Half Blind

in my right, dominant, eye, four days ago.

It does not bother me. So far, I have had a very full and very good life.

I have not killed a person, not written a book, not flown to the moon.

I have loved a woman, made a daughter, reduced prisoners’ sentences and helped save some from execution.

We are all prisoners of life, in a way. My chains were made of gold.

The Standard By Which Bouzouki Music Is Judged

Just As Long As It's Sharp

Don't get hung up on the knife.

ΠΡΩΤΟΜΑΓΙΑ

Ας θυμηθουμε τα θηματα του Κουμουνισμου.

Seems Like Uncle

does not have enough pictures of pretty things.



The knife is a Gerber FS2 from 1980. The pistol is a Walther PPK/s, in .22LR. From the sixties I'm told-- I bought it on the street in Chicago when I was sixteen or so.

Never has misfed or jammed with Remington Match (Standard Velocity). Never cleaned except with a little brake-cleaner spray and a drop of CLP in the action. I never touched the rifling.

Today

would have been my twentieth wedding anniversary, if I had not gotten divorced three and a half months ago.

But it still would have been the fourth of anniversaries on the list. It was just a time when we signed a marriage license in front of a judge.

It was on October 13 when I first saw her and never looked at another woman since.

It was on March 17 when we moved in together and scandalized our parents.

It was on June 22 when we were apart and dating and made our daughter.

For Uncle, My Mother's Knife

We're farmfolk and this is the only knife my mother used for as long as I knew her, fifty-four years or so, from cutting the head off a rooster, skinning a rabbit, turning a pig into ham, bacon and sausage, peeling potatoes, dicing onions, slicing bread .... My father kept it sharp with a file.

It's an Okapi, German-made, of plain carbon steel, and likely a lot older than I am.

The Weddings Rings Were Gold

Gold, too, the chains that bound our youth. Why didn't you see them?

Open the window for the May breeze. We started for one place and to another life takes us.

Finally, Something About Mayor Bloomberg I Like

Mayor Bloomberg, the richest man in New York, only owns two pairs of shoes.

The last time I bought shoes was in June, 2001.

Lice Like Clean Hair

Who would of thunk it? No perfumed shampoos, no conditioners, no hairsprays.
I have a perfume allergy and I wash with scentless soaps and shampoos. The baby, too, every day.
Then she was sent home, from school.
We shaved our heads, threw out our pillows, washed our clothes, bedsheets and pillowcases, three times, and now I'm sneezing my lungs out because of RID, Rosemary, and Fairy Tales.

Is Blogging Mainly Whining?

About the context of a story, about the way the story is reported, about the media outlet that published it, about another blogger's treatment of the story? Sure seems that way to me.

Man up and do your own original reporting.

A Very Pretty Kukri

That belongs to GuardDuck.

He writes, "I like a well used knife, so I really like DirtCrashr's. But just because; here's a pic of my presentation model kukri."

The Advantage A Knife Has Over A Gun,

if there's nobody you want to shoot, you can always whittle.
From Texas Machinist:

W-2 Brine-Quenched

One of mine. A Sykes-Fairbairn WWII commando knife.

A Kukri

that belongs to DirtCrashr.
As always, click on picture to embigen.

A Picture For Anwyn

When I Am King Of The World

architects will not be allowed to put pipes under three inches of cement.

What looks like half a donut at the lower left of the upper right quarter is water from a broken hot water pipe.



Took two of us seven hours to break through the cement and stop the leak, and I still have to restore the floor and the wall.

Katana and Gunto (Updated With Saber)

The top four photos are from Texas Machinist (who has his own site at Texas Machinist, naturally) and writes:

"This was a sword [my father] got in combat. I don't remember what island but the officer was leading his men with a Nambu in his right hand and the sword in his left. One of my father[']s friend[s] knew how to take off the handle and read the date and family name on the shank. It seems an odd length, shorter than a katana but not as short as the normal short sword. I know many were shortened for later military use but I have no idea on this one. The blade is mirror like and the edge is sharp."







These two are mine, of a gunto, a machine-made but still very good sword, that has decorated my daughter's playroom since she was born.
(Some Greek parents put a knife under their babies' cribs as a charm against evil. That's not why I did it.)

As always, click to embigen.

UPDATE: Saber, also from Texas Machinist
Note the Western design with the chrysanthemum decoration on the hilt.

What Do You Do With A Broken Scissors?

Take the remaining good blade and make it into a knife. The wood is very old pine. Practically fossilized, no sealers necessary.