The Other Side

I feel compelled to address a broader issue in this country:  rampant hostility.   Since the Florida shooting, I’m seeing a plethora (!) of memes on both sides, tinged with contempt for opposing viewpoints.  I’m pro-gun, myself, but I don’t assume my opponents are idiots simply for disagreeing with me.   And calling each other idiots really doesn’t get anything done.

Gun Control.   When someone shoots up a school, we have to wonder how they acquired access to the weapon in the first place.  Naturally, the weapon itself didn’t kill all those people.   Every day, lawful owners of AR15 do not kill other people.  Criminals kill people with illegally obtained weapons – mostly handguns – and as usual criminals by their nature ignore the laws, including gun control laws.  Knife attacks occur all too frequently.  And again, in the aggregate, more people successfully defend themselves from violent crime with legally owned weapons than are killed in school shootings.   The Armed Citizen, a feature in the NRA’s American Rifleman magazine each month, chronicles exactly that – lawful use of weapons by private citizens in legitimate self-defense - complete with cites to the original news source.  But somehow I doubt gun control advocates are reading the American Rifleman each month – if at all.

Sometimes they cite a combat veteran as being against the Second Amendment.  “I’ve seen what my own M4 carbine rounds do against the Taliban and other enemy combatants, and it boggles my mind how anyone can argue that civilians should have access to weapons like these.”  Combat veterans are in a position to see the damage these weapons can do, and are as entitled as any of us to their political opinions.  But this isn’t Starship Troopers:  you don’t need combat experience to have the right to vote.  Timothy McVeigh was a combat veteran:  does that make his attack in Oklahoma City OK?

Anyhow.  I don’t blame people for wanting to solve the problem.  However, I will oppose any effort to disarm lawful gun owners who aren’t killing anyone or causing problems.   Restrictions on guns for children or the insane, strikes me as a reasonable compromise which is reasonably calculated to address the problem without affecting the rights of sane adults.

Fact: there are highly intelligent Trump voters.  There are highly intelligent Hillary voters.  There are highly intelligent Sanders voters (they’re not all clueless theater majors).  Hell, there were highly intelligent Marxists, and highly intelligent Nazis and SS officers.   That also applies to many senior Al Qaeda and ISIS leaders.  Of course, highly intelligent doesn’t necessarily mean “moral human being”, but it does mean “not an idiot”.

I also see people on MY side use ad hominem attacks – insults instead of arguments – and proffer poor and easily refuted arguments to support my side.  I have to shake my head as being ineptly defended is just as bad as being competently attacked. 

Donald Trump.  I’ve noted earlier that he’s no Hitler.  I’ll add that while I’ve seen my share of inarticulate, misspelling ALLCAPs MAGA maggots, there are others who can spell properly and form coherent sentences who did vote for Trump.   Generally these are people who held their nose to vote for Trump because they disliked Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton.  Remember her?  She hijacked the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders, arrogantly asserting that it was her turn to be President, after seeing Barack Obama take what she felt was hers back in 2008.   Arguably more hawkish than Trump, and recall it was a Democrat, LBJ, who sent US troops to Vietnam in 1965 and a Republican, Nixon, who took them out.  As popular as her husband may have been, no one really likes Hillary.  Trump got less votes than Mitt Romney, and he still won, which means Trump was elected as much because Hillary was unpopular as because he himself was so compelling as a candidate. 

Gary Johnson.  Of course, I didn’t vote for either of them:  I voted for the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson.  Of course, he wasn’t particularly charismatic and didn’t do himself any favors by not knowing where Aleppo was – he should have known someone would ask him about US’ proper role in the Syrian conflict.  But he got 3% of the vote.  That may not sound like much, but it’s 3x his 2012 vote tally of 1%, which itself roughly matched the prior record for LPA, the 1980 Clark-Koch ticket. 

By now I’m solidly Libertarian.  I have to shake my head, though, that many Libertarians refused to support Johnson.    Up until 2012, he was a Republican, albeit a successful two term state governor of New Mexico.  

 Was he a solid, 100% Libertarian?  Did he rise through the ranks of the party and do his time in the trenches?  No.  But his closest competitor for the LPA nomination, Austin Peterson, was 35  years old – the bare minimum to qualify for president – and had zero political experience.  

Here’s a news flash.  About 1/3 the country’s voters are Democrat, 1/3 Republican, and 1/3 independent.  This means to win, a candidate has to appeal to independent voters.  A candidate who ONLY appeals to his or her own core constituency will be giving a concession speech on Election Night. 

If the Republicans and Democrats can’t elect a President on their own, certainly the Libertarians, who could probably fit in a football stadium, can’t.   Expecting everyone else to vote for your guy because he’s ticked all the boxes yet has zero relevant experience at any level of government is not realistic, though our current President may either be the 800 lb gorilla exception to this or a growing trend.  We'll see.

ANYHOW.

Let’s work together here.   Don’t assume your opponent is an idiot because he or she disagrees with you.  Don’t insult your opponent because he or she disagrees with you.  Make some good faith effort to find a mutually agreeable solution.  If you can’t, agree to disagree and leave it at that.  (Then call your local congressman.  :D)

My Arsenal

Guns are in the news again.  My Facebook posts put me on the NRA side of this issue, though I am a civilian with no combat experience and also no personal experience with violent crime, either as victim or aggressor.  I do like guns, however, and over the years have accumulated a few.  Here is my arsenal, such as it is.

Beretta 92FS.   Handgun, 9mm caliber. For quite some time, the standard issue handgun of the US military.   Beretta has the distinction of being the oldest Italian gunmaker – since the 1500s – and about the only one which knew what they were doing during WWII, such that Germans would use Beretta submachine guns themselves.  This gun also shows up in popular culture, notably “Lethal Weapon” (the gun Riggs, i.e. Mel Gibson, carries) as well as the first “Boondock Saints” film.  9mm, with a double stacked 15 round magazine.  It’s on the large side, about the largest gun you can reasonably carry concealed.

Ages ago I bought one new, then sold it to a friend.  More recently I bought a used one at a gun show in Manassas – so I’ve owned two, though not at the same time.  For a brief time, I had a concealed weapon permit and carried the new Beretta, but not on a regular basis.   

Mauser KAR98K.  Bolt action rifle, 8mm Mauser (7.92x57) caliber.   In 1898 Mauser finally made a bolt action rifle for the Imperial German Army, the Gewehr 98.  Shortly after, they came up with a much shorter carbine.  Fast forward to the 1930s, and they simply decided to split the difference with one rifle in between the two in length and just go with that as standard issue for everyone.  It’s bolt action with a 5 round double stacked internal magazine, which can be fed from stripper clips.  The bolt is turned down.

There are millions of copies of the 98 model alone, with Yugoslavia being responsible for a lot of them – their M48, made shortly after WWII, is probably the most common, though they were making copies before WWII.  Spain, Belgium, Argentina, Poland, Turkey and China are other big Mauser fans; Mausers were so common and popular in China that the Chinese simply referred to all rifles as Mausers.   [Incidentally, up until 1937 the Germans were supplying Chiang Kai-Shek and his Nationalist Chinese army not merely with Mauser rifles but also the M1935 helmets most often associated with WWII German soldiers, so Chinese soldiers in the early stages of the war, 1937, have a distinct German appearance.]  The US Springfield was such a blatant copy of the Mauser that we ended up paying Mauser royalties on that rifle.  I made it a point to get an actual WWII German K98. 

Ages ago when living in Paris and buying German WWII stuff from the local store, OPTAS, I picked up the bayonet that goes to this gun.  Decades later, immediately after acquiring the rifle, I pulled out the bayonet, and it fit exactly.  Awesome.

This was the standard infantry rifle of the German Army during WWII, plus the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine (to the extent the air force and navy need infantry weapons) and the ever-popular Waffen SS.  According to the markings, this rifle was made in 1942 by Steyr, which used Mauthausen camp workers to make their weapons.  Note, because quantities of the more advanced Gewehr 43 (semi-auto) and StG44 (select-fire assault rifle) were limited, no more than about 400,000 of each, the bolt-action K98 remained in production throughout the war.  

Mosin-Nagant 91/30.  Bolt action rifle, 7.62x54R caliber.   One of the earlier bolt action models, a joint design of Belgium and Russia.  This served as Russia’s #1 rifle in the Russo-Japanese War (1905), WWI + the Russian Civil War, then WWII, though by that time the PPSH submachine gun became more popular.  It’s usually seen with a spike bayonet on the end (which I have).   This is the full-size rifle, with bolt facing straight out, not the carbine version or the sniper version (bolt turned down).  Best chance of seeing this on countless Soviet propaganda posters.  Vasili Zaitsev, the famous Soviet sniper played by Jude Law in “Enema at the Gates”,  used the sniper version.  [His fictional rival, Major Koenig, played by Ed Harris, of course uses the Mauser Kar98k.]

Model 1917 Enfield, bolt action rifle, .30-06 caliber.   My mother’s father, i.e. my grandfather, served in the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in France during WWI.   Our soldiers in the trenches facing off against the Kaiser used either the 1903 Springfield (the more famous and popular model) or this one, the Enfield.  In practice, 75% used this one.  My grandfather died when I was a baby, and no one else in the family knows which one he carried, so I played the odds and got this one.  It’s about as fun to shoot as any other bolt action and fires the same caliber as the Springfield, BAR, M1 Garand and any .30 Browning machine gun.   I have the bayonet as well, something long enough to make the Huns nervous.

AK47.  Semi-auto rifle, 7.62x39mm caliber.   A few years ago, a shooter caused the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, New Jersey to be shut down briefly, although he didn’t actually shoot anyone.  I realized that my three bolt actions, though firing full power rifle rounds, were not really suitable for contemporary “s**t hits the fan” circumstances, so a modern semi-auto rifle was probably a better bet.  I bought this one.   It’s all black (no wood hardware).  I never bothered to get the bayonet for this one.   Although it won’t fire full-auto, cosmetically it looks identical to the familiar rifle of the modern Red Army, the Warsaw Pact, and countless guerilla and jihad groups. 

[Update 4/19/20].  AR15.  Semi-auto rifle, 5.56mm (.223) caliber.  Back around 1994 I purchased a new one, with a full 20" barrel and cylindrical handguard, looking exactly like an M16A2.  I took it to the range in Warrenton (Clark Brothers) once, and soon after sold it.  More recently I finally managed to replace it with a Springfield Armory Saint.  This has a 16" barrel, collapsing stock, and various other goodies which I'm not fully aware of, except to understand that Springfield took its time to develop its own AR15, and when they did so, they chose to incorporate all the design features which have been developed over the years for civilian AR15s.   They even designed their own proprietary handguard.  I'm very pleased with it.  

And in the past…

Walther PP.  Handgun, .380 caliber.  Just a little bigger than the famous PPK (“Bond, James Bond”), in the same caliber.  This has a smaller 7 round single stack magazine. 

....

Upcoming?  Well, not in the market for any more purchases, but I would love an FN FAL, which would give me a semi-auto weapon in .308 (7.62x51) caliber.  Moreover my budget precludes any Class III (full auto) weapons, which are insanely expensive.

As noted, I haven’t been in a situation to use any of these in combat or crime.  I take them to the range – NRA or otherwise – and fire them there.  Bolt actions are actually a bit more fun to shoot than semi-autos, as you have to work the bolt after each shot and load the internal magazine.  With semi-auto you simply pull the trigger over and over again, reloading via magazine.  In the event I need a gun, I have several choices. 

Morbidly curious:  most plausible victims.   Since I haven’t killed anyone with any weapon I’ve ever owned, who has?  Several are vintage military weapons, acquired well downstream of whoever might have originally wielded the weapon in any combat situation.

The AR15 and AK47 are/were semi-auto civilian weapons, as was the PP.   I sold the AR15 to a friend, and bought the AK47, and the PP, from the same friend, whose character is known as definitely non-criminal.  So no blood at all on those. 

Beretta.  “Defense contractor surplus” is what I was told.  Meaning some Blackhawk mercenary might have shot someone in Baghdad.  Most plausible victim:  JIHADI.

Mauser.  As noted, made in 1942, at a concentration camp.  By this time the Einsatzgruppen were phased out in favor of the death camps.  The rifle could have gone straight into the hands of a local SS camp guard, issued to a Waffen SS soldier, or a Wehrmacht soldier.   In that case the likely victims would be, A) concentration camp inmate, B) Russian soldier, or C) Allied soldier.  I’d say B is most likely.

Mosin-Nagant.   This appears to be Soviet era.  Possibly used to kill a kulak, though more likely fired at a “Fritz”.  Perhaps reissued in Korea, in which case the targets would be UN soldiers, but WWII is the most likely scenario.  Most plausible victim: WWII German soldier.

Enfield.  Some were issued to US troops in the far East, some to British Home Guard, but most to US soldiers fighting in France in WWI.   Most plausible victim:  WWI German soldier.  (Sorry, Kevin).

I, Tonya

The Winter Olympics are back, and with them, figure skating.   The Russians, banned from competing as a national team due to their prior misconduct, do so as an aggregate referred to as “Olympic Athletes from Russia”.   The US is competitive, but so is the Italian couple.  I don’t pay nearly as much attention as the “intimate female companion”, affectionately referred to as Panda due to her Shanghai origin, of which she is rightly proud.   Likewise, she zoned out on the downhill skiing which intrigued me more.

We both enjoyed this film, starring Margot Robbie, best known as Harley Quinn in the “Suicide Squad” film (DC Universe) in the title role, but also Sebastian “Winter Soldier” Stan, Captain America’s buddy Bucky (Marvel Comics Universe) as the ever hated and ridiculed Jeff Gillooly.   Intriguing that the film came out around now, but not in wide distribution.  Our show at the local megaplex was under the radar, not even on the main list of movies.  But the seats were nice.

The 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, featured the dramatic competition on the US team between sweet, charming Nancy Kerrigan, vs. maybe-rough-around-the-edges Walmart Queen, Tonya Harding.  I can’t profess sufficient discernment to tell you which of the two was a better ice skater, though Harding apparently earned the distinction of being the first American skater to successfully complete a Triple Axel.  NO, this did not mean Harding slept with Axl Rose three times, as plausibly as we might attribute that to Harding.  My subjective impression is that they were both about the same skill.

I also don’t know much about Kerrigan’s background or social life at the time, but it seems Harding came from a lower class background and had the poor choice of picking Gillooly as a mate.  According to the movie, they were on-again, off-again, though they did marry.  Gillooly was physically abusive, though Robbie’s portrayal implies that Harding was probably in pari delicto.

According to the film, Gillooly asked his buddy Shawn Eckhart to send a death threat to Nancy Kerrigan to freak her out and put her off her game.  Shawn took it upon himself to hire a hit-man, Shane, to assault Kerrigan with a collapsible baton.  Harding claimed to be innocent, and the film appears to exonerate her – it’s a bit more vague about Gillooly, though later he’s shown confessing.  I’ll hold off on accusing Harding herself of being in the loop.  Decide for yourself. 

The end result was that Harding came in 8^th, Kerrigan #2 (silver medal), and Oksana Baiul won the gold – she remains unnamed in the movie.  Harding was banned for life from figure skating.    

Robbie doesn’t bear a huge resemblance to Harding, but she does bring the attitude, somewhat like Harley Quinn on skates.  We’ll see if she comes back for more HQ in the future.

Baby Logan Lucky Driver

Two films I wasn’t sufficiently motivated to see in the theaters, although I saw the movie posters for Logan Lucky in the Paris Metro.  They’re both DVD-worthy but not much else.  Both involve cars & crime and have all-star casts.

Baby Driver.  Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a getaway driver permanently addicted to iPods and mixes.  As a driver, he’s quite effective, though it’s this annoying import drift s**t we’ve been smacked with incessantly in the “Fast & Furious” movies (ZZZ).  The mastermind is Doc (Kevin Spacey).   Baby dates the cute flapper chick from Downton Abbey (Lily James); here she’s a cute waitress.   Flea and Jamie Foxx have roles, as does Don Draper (Jon Hamm), against whom they later face off against.   Lots of action, some modestly clever dialogue, but mostly the convergence of multiple talented actors in a marginally entertaining “robbery & chase” flick.   Here Spacey is kinda phoning it in, as if Frank Underwood has a part-time job as a bank robbery mastermind; likewise, Hamm dials Draper’s moxie and arrogance up just a little as Buddy.  As you might imagine, the prior heists go fairly well, it’s the final one which goes FUBAR.  Baby’s ultimate destiny is probably the one thing which distinguishes this film from hundreds of other similar ones.

Logan Lucky.   A pair of brothers, Jimmy and Clyde (Channing Tatum & Adam Driver) conspire to steal from the Charlotte NASCAR speedway.  In particular, under the midfield there’s a cash receptacle from all the concession stands, which as you might imagine tends to accumulate a larger amount of cash during races.  With the help of a safecracker and his younger brothers (Daniel Craig + Brian Gleeson & Jack Quaid) they manage to weasel it through.   Lots of NASCAR stuff here.   The Winter Soldier, Sebastian Stan, is here as gluten-free NASCAR driver Dayton White, and Seth McFarlane plays a particularly obnoxious and unsympathetic Brit, owner of White’s team.   Darrel Waltrip and Jeff Gordon play themselves.  I’d say it comes together fairly well, so job well done.  By the way, with the beard, Channing Tatum looks like Doug Benson pumped up to XXL.  Maybe they should make a movie together.

I pick Adam Driver to play Roger Waters.  Is it a stretch to pick Leonardo DiCaprio as David Gilmour?  Hit me with your Mason and Wright casting choices.  If the Doors got a movie, we deserve one about Floyd.

Sweet Leaf

Yes, more s**t about stoner rock and Black Sabbath.  Here, though, I have to be critical.

By the way, a bit on why Black Sabbath serve as the inspiration for stoner rock.  Let’s look at the band’s top two competitors in the 1970s:  Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.

Deep Purple were hardly even a drinking band, and with the obvious 800 lb gorilla exception of Tommy Bolin, who OD’d on heroin a few months after Mark IV crashed and burned on their Asian tour of Come Taste the Band, wasn’t into drugs.  They don’t sing about getting drunk, high, or otherwise screwed up.

Led Zeppelin were into alcohol (Bonzo) and heroin (Page), but Plant was writing the lyrics and preferred to be pretentious and up in the clouds.  Singing about drugs was beneath his dignity.

That leaves Sabbath:  the #1 song is, of course, “Sweet Leaf”, an obvious tribute to cannabis.  “Hand of Doom” is a caution against heroin – which even Ozzy knew to avoid – whereas “Fairies Wear Boots” (also from Paranoid) refers to “tripping”, i.e. LSD use.  And they had to praise cocaine with “Snowblind”.  Add this to the doom and riffing, plus the otherworldly change-ups best seen on Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage, and you’ve got a strong recipe for a band inducing its fans to fire up a bong.   

Back to this dirtweed idiocy claiming to be a stoner rock Sabbath tribute album….

Track Listing: Into the Void (Cancer Bats); Dirty Women (Mos Generator); Changes (Bloody Hammers); The Warning (Wo Fat); The Writ (Stoned Jesus); Hole in the Sky (Scorpion Child); Hand of Doom (Death Hawks); Lady Evil (House of Broken Promises); Planet Caravan (Machuca); Sleeping Village (Witch Mountain); Electric Funeral (Solace); Solitude (Ulver); “After Forever” – in fact, Tomorrow’s Dream, you morons (Pentagram); Sweet Leaf (Weedpecker); Paranoid (Golden Void); Iron Man (William Shatner).

I got this because two bands I really like, Wo Fat and Weedpecker (do they toke?  Need you ask?  I have to wonder what Polish weed is like) are on this.   They do a decent job of it.

With one exception, they’re all Ozzy songs:  House of Broken Promises (who?) cover “Lady Evil”, hardly the best song on Heaven & Hell.  I’d have gone with “Lonely Is the Word”. 

The Death Hawks (who???) butcher “Hand of Doom” by making it into a half-assed acoustic song.  Black Sabbath have several acoustic songs.  Why ruin this one? FAIL.

I don’t know if was the producer of this album or the ever-f**ked Bobby Liebling who was responsible, but if you can’t tell “After Forever” from “Tomorrow’s Dream”, Tony Iommi should come to your house and kick you in the nuts.  Free of charge.  Having said that, the cover itself is not bad. 

I’m puzzled as to why “Sleeping Village” was put on disc two, well after “The Warning”, which it runs into on the first album.  I’m also puzzled that Witch Mountain bothered to cover it at all.  8 albums – more, if you include 13 or any of the non-Ozzy albums - and that’s the song you chose?  SMH.

Is William Shatner a stoner rock band? Lest we think that some group of non-Montreal Star Trek actors thought it would be clever to name themselves after Captain Kirk himself (or Denny Crane) it turns out that this is, in fact, Shatner himself.  He makes a decent attempt to actually SING the song, a more heroic attempt than his “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” effort, and Zakk Wylde brings the artificial harmonics we recognize from his work with the Ozzman.  Someone was probably a bit too stoned when they put this on the list.   From the rest of the mistakes I guess whoever did this doesn’t know any better.  Maybe it was a joke, but given the consistent incompetence on display here, the ignorance explanation is more plausible.

What’s funny is that by now I’ve been into stoner rock for years and bought lots of stuff from All That’s Heavy.  Yet I only recognized a few of these bands.  Moreover, stoner rock stalwarts like Fu Manchu, Nebula, Kyuss, Monster Magnet, etc. are absent.  So who put this thing together?

Then there’s the idea of a tribute album at all.  With any given song you can…

1.         Screw it up.  Why bother?  In particular, making an electric song acoustic is the easiest way to do this.  Let the band itself make this mistake.

2.         Play it verbatim.  In that case, there’s little point in doing it at all.  Then again, doing so is a way of saying the original version is the best.  

3.         Play it a little differently.  How?  Here’s your chance to either shine or crash & burn.  Choose wisely, but there is not to TRY but only to DO.  Where have we heard that before?

Before this, we had these two more mainstream (and much better) tribute albums to Black Sabbath:

Nativity in Black.  A better, A-List group.  After Forever, the actual song (Biohazard); Children of the Grave (White Zombie); Paranoid (Megadeth); Supernaut (1,000 Homo DJs); Iron Man (Ozzy w/Therapy); Lord of this World (Corrosion of Conformity); Symptom of the Universe (Sepultura); The Wizard (Bullring Brummies): Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath (Bruce Dickinson with Godspeed); N.I.B. (Ugly Kid Joe); War Pigs (Live) (Faith No More); Black Sabbath (Type O Negative).

Nativity in Black II.  A sequel, with some bands reappearing.  Sweet Leaf (Godsmack); Hole in the Sky (Machine Head); Behind the Wall of Sleep (Static X); Never Say Die (Megadeth); Snowblind (System of a Down); Electric Funeral (Pantera); N.I.B. (Primus with Ozzy Osbourne); Hand of Doom (Slayer); Under the Sun (Soulfly): Sabbra Cadabra (hed(PE)); Into the Void (Monster Magnet); Iron Man (Busta Rhymes).

Even these had some good tracks and some absolute stinkers.  The first one was mostly faithful versions with no misses.  But NIB II had some horrendous ones:  Machine Head, Static X, System of a Down, and Busta Rhymes were absolute s**t.  Dave Wyndorf screwed up "Into the Void" with a confusing ad lib about "dinosaurs in Vietnam".  I'm ambivalent about hed(PE)'s version.  The rest on that album were fine.