"Lucy, you have some 'splaining to do!" (I Love Lucy)

I spent the morning thinking of tv themes while getting ready. Man, I loved TBS back in the day. The day when shows started at 10:05 or 1:35. Good job, Ted, on the 5 minute offset.

So the themes. How many could I come up with- themes I could get 80% or more right? Here's how many:

M*A*S*H
A-Team
MacGuyver
Scoobie Doo
Bewitched
Dukes of Hazzard
Cheers
Leave it to Beaver
Gilligan's Island
The Brady Bunch
The Greatest American Hero
The Addams Family
GI Joe
Andy Griffith Show

I usually remember Hogan's Heroes, but I mix that up with the whistle song from Bridge on the River Kwai. And some themes I just don't want to remember (WKRP, I'm not thinking of you... aw, dammit!).

And if I'm prompted, I might just find I remember more of other themes. Like Get Smart.

Rebuttal to Ms. Yewman's 1 Month with a Gun

An intrepid "journalist" is writing a 4-part story on her month with carrying a gun. She's a board member on the Brady Campaign, and is a vocal opponent of exercising the Second Amendment, and guns in general.

While upon surface observation, it sounded like a good story. An anti-gunner is going to experience the world of gun ownership. A "walk a month in their shoes," if you will.

Almost nothing could be further from the truth. I'd believe a Barack Obama birth certificate before I believed Ms. Yewman was going to have some sort of objective experience. This isn't "Black Like Me" territory. This is an exploitative viewpoint and filtered with the most negative connotation, twisted and spun like your favorite t-shirt in the washer.

Intelligent readers will see the article for what it is. Hyperbole, purposeful ignorance, and fear mongering. Readers who hang on every word will further ingrain wrong and misleading information in efforts to propagate more fear and ignorance.

So let's begin tearing into this poor excuse of an "exercise of rights."

My hands are shaking; my adrenaline is surging.

No, it’s not from the latte I just inhaled or because this is the first time in two years I’ve been in a Starbucks since declaring a boycott on its open-carry gun policy.

What’s got me jittery this morning is the 9mm Glock that’s holstered on my hip. Me, lead gun policy protester at the 2010 Starbuck’s shareholder meeting. Me, a board member of the Brady Campaign. Me, the author of a book about the impact of gun violence,Beyond the Bullet.

First part. She's afraid of just carrying the gun in public. She establishes herself as a staunch anti-gun advocate, yet her she is, incredibly fearful of wearing a gun on her hip. Why is there any fear? Is she afraid of it accidentally going off when she stands up? It might magically shoot a coffee store patron?

Yes, I bought a handgun and will carry it everywhere I go over the next 30 days. I have four rules: Carry it with me at all times, follow the laws of my state, only do what is minimally required for permits, licensing, purchasing and carrying, and finally be prepared to use it for protecting myself at home or in public.

Why? Following the Newtown massacre in December, the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, told the country, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”  I wondered what would it be like to be that good guy with a gun? What would it be like to get that gun, live with that gun, be out and about with that gun. Finally, what happens when you don’t want that gun any more?

Ok, so her second part here is laughable. She's already violated her rule number 4. Obviously she's not prepared to protect herself in public if she's incredibly nervous just hanging out at a coffee shop. The lack of preparedness goes on later in the article, and it just shows how much the author is irrationally portraying a new gun owner.

I decided to find out.

Getting the permit to carry a concealed weapon was simple. I filled out a form, had my fingerprints taken for a background check and paid $56.50. No training required. It took far longer to get my dog a license.

The permit process in Washington State varies from office to office. My Concealed Pistol License (CPL) took two weeks to process when I applied in 2006. I hear stories of some law enforcement (LE) offices taking the entire lawful window to issue the CPLs. Some LE offices issue them within 30 minutes. She does not identify the actual time it took for her license to be processed. Very misleading writing here, and an honest writer would have clarified the point.

I started my 30-day gun trial with a little window-shopping. I visited a gun show and two gun dealers. I ended up buying a Glock 9mm handgun from Tony, a gun dealer four miles from my house. I settled on this model because it was a smallish gun and because Tony recommended it for my stated purposes of protecting myself and my home.

It was obvious from the way I handled the gun that I knew nothing about firearms. Tony sold it to me anyway. The whole thing took 7 minutes. As a gratified consumer, I thought, “Well, that was easy.” Then the terrifying reality hit me, “Holy hell, that was EASY.”  Too easy. I still knew nothing about firearms.

Wow. A gun show and two dealers. This is a gun, lady. It's a few hundred dollar purchase. If you don't shop around when spending that type of money, congrats on having plenty of disposable income. However, I bet you put more thought and time into buying a pair of shoes online than you did this gun. If you're going to use it for personal defense, it might actually help if you know a little bit. Of course, she's just out to prove a point on how "easy" it is to purchase a gun and carry it around. She never really intends on using it for protection. It's a prop for a disingenuous article to further the negative message about guns.

Ms. Yewman purchased a gun she'd never shot. She must just purchase jeans without trying them on. Or ignores the samples at Costco. And knowing she didn't know anything about guns, she neglected to ask the seller for assistance. It's not the salesperson's job to treat you like an idiot. Ms. Yewman, YOU have the responsibility to be informed what you're purchasing.

And regarding the rights of Washington State citizens, open carry is permitted (with some common restrictions), and a CPL allows a buyer to bypass the background check, since one is done when the CPL is issued. It was easy because she spent the time earlier to get a CPL. If she did not have a CPL, the process would have been longer.

Tony told me a Glock doesn’t have an external safety feature, so when I got home and opened the box and saw the magazine in the gun I freaked. I was too scared to try and eject it as thoughts flooded my mind of me accidentally shooting the gun and a bullet hitting my son in the house or rupturing the gas tank of my car, followed by an earth-shaking explosion. This was the first time my hands shook from the adrenaline surge and the first time I questioned the wisdom of this 30-day experiment.

I needed help. I drove to where a police officer had pulled over another driver. Now, writing this, I realize that rolling up on an on-duty cop with a handgun in tow might not have been fully thought through.

I told him I just bought a gun, had no clue how to use it. I asked him to make sure there were no bullets in the magazine or chamber. He took the magazine out and cleared the chamber. He assured me it was empty and showed me how to look. Then he told me how great the gun was and how he had one just like it.

This is where all people familiar with guns lose it. Retarded is too good of a word to waste on Ms. Yewman. Fed by fear and Hollywood's "reality," Ms. Yewman is afraid of a gun right out of the box. Obviously she doesn't have the intellectual fortitude to realize guns require ammo. Otherwise it's just a paperweight. She is purposefully being an idiot customer. If she was really this dense, how did she ever figure out how to do laundry? Change mixing utensils on a KitchenAid mixer?

She proceeds to panic and rolls up on a police officer, asking him how to use a handgun? Did this earth-shattering realization come to her just then, after the purchase? No, she's intentionally promoting her ignorant gun buyer persona. Too bad there's not places she could go to get experience handling firearms so she would have, at minimum, a cursory knowledge of guns. Or, even better, a digital database of information accessible almost anywhere, where she can type in her question and get millions of possible answers. If only that existed.

The cop thought I was an idiot and suggested I take a class. But up to that point I’d done nothing wrong, nothing illegal.

So here I sit at Starbucks, and the irony couldn’t be thicker. On March 12, 2010, I was surrounded by big hairy men with guns on their hips, yelling at me as I led a protest against Starbuck’s gun policy. Today, I’m surrounded by five-year-old boys sitting with their moms at the next table. Now I’m the one with a gun on her hip. The gun makes me more fearful than I could have imagined.

In some way, I feel a certain vindication. I was right to protest Starbucks policy. Today, they have a woman with absolutely no firearms training and a Glock on her hip sitting within arm’s reach of small children, her hands shaking and adrenaline surging.

The cop is right, even if the author is being intentional. Too bad we can't make being an idiot illegal.

Ms. Yewman returns to the present, comparing her past experience in very derogatory, sexist commentary. And continues her fear mongering because she can't fathom the possibility that a gun is an inanimate object that requires an intentional, human act to function. Not to mention, in her entire narrative, she never mentions buying ammo or loading a magazine. For all we know, she's wearing an unloaded gun. Again, a clear violation of her own rules.

On a larger scale, a gun is a tool for self protection (modeling after the author's initial purpose of having this gun). Like any tool, you need to use it and learn how it works. No one is born with the innate sense of hammering. How many thumbs have we crushed? No one instantly picks up a paintbrush and completes the Mona Lisa. The author's explicit denial of personal responsibility and purchasing diligence is absurd, and anyone who promotes this article as a worthwhile experience in exercising the Second Amendment need to see it for what it really is: excusing responsibility.

The irrational argument Ms. Yewman is advocating is an empty, desperate plea that lacks any sort of personal responsibility and thought. Which is the crux of the anti-gun rhetoric. It's not just the act of disarming people. It's the furthering of an agenda to remove personal responsibility and accountability from the people, and making the government create laws to manage our behavior. Liberty? Individual rights? Ms. Yewman's so intent on exercising her First Amendment to villify the Second, she's skipped over the very tenets of our nation's founding purpose.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

"Code name: Irene." Black Hawk Down

America is afraid.

We are afraid on any number of fronts. Environmental, economical, warfare, political, financial, and safety. What makes us afraid? What is being done about it? And what's there to be afraid of?

The uncertainty that surrounds us is what makes us afraid. Not knowing, or expecting to change, is what drives the fear. And right now, we don't have a good vision for our country. There's no end in sight. Well, hopefully four years.

Americans need to feel safe and protected. We don't because the leadership of our country is doing a piss-poor job of that. The media is a horrible influence as well, constantly berating the fact that the sky is falling. Journalism used to be worthwhile, but we've constantly been attracted to sensationalism and yellow journalism.

Most of our fears are unfounded, only propagated through media and selected information sources. Things that unfold on the world's stage will not affect any of us directly. The tsunami from Japan. Not a big deal to the US, collectively. Deepwater Horizon. Huge impact on the Gulf states and a minority percentage of the US.

We fear because we don't know. And we have a "leader" who promised transparency. Yeah, good luck with that. Our next group of leaders will be required to be the ones who will make us feel safe.

"Zang! (Excellent)" - Wayne's World

Ok... somebody needs to slap these car designers. It's one thing to be "inspired" by the past and retro features. But now they're just getting lazy and copying styling from the 70s, which is never a good idea.

The new Ford Escape:

The new Toyota RAV4

 And the 70s runabout: The AMC Gremlin.

"Wanna know what the most annoying sound is?" Dumb & Dumber

To me, the most annoying sound is that of ignorance. Not racial, just plain old ignorance. When people spout off opinions and think that nothing on their ends comes at a cost.

I recently had a nice little discussion about the eventual return of a professional basketball team in Seattle. They're likely getting a new facility in the south part of downtown, next to the Mariners' Safeco Field and Seahawks' Century Link Field.

The area is industrial, no doubt about it. It's also in close proximity to the Port of Seattle. Now, my bone of contention is 1) Why do we need another NBA team and 2) Why build an arena in that area when it's better for the economy to improve the Port of Seattle infrastructure.

So in regards to 1: The Sonics already left. Our city hasn't faltered. We've embraced the Sounders soccer club, so it's not like they wouldn't have a fan base. I'm not a big basketball fan. I'm not a big hockey fan, either, but I'd rather see an NHL team before an NBA team returns.

But here's the deal with the second point. The cost of the arena and the location. The Port of Seattle is in need of infrastructure improvement. It's the intermodal improvements, actually. Getting the stuff off the ships and onto trucks and trains to other areas of the US. The Port of Seattle Marine Terminals brings in $3 billion in revenue, and $254 million in state and local taxes. It employs over 100,000 people, making it one of the state's largest employers.

And as business goes, you have to keep up or be left behind. The Seattle ports have huge competition up and down the coast, from Vancouver, Canada to Los Angeles, CA. There's even a little canal in Panama, with it's recent improvements, will cut the cost advantage of cross-country shipping. But Seattle chose not to invest in improving the Port infrastructure that would keep it competitive, thriving, and profitable. Instead, they're going with a sports arena that would bring in a little over $4 million in tax revenue (that was estimated from the 2000 study for Memphis NBA team).

Other arguments for an NBA team coming back to Seattle is the jobs. Ok, listen. You'll have one or two years of design and construction. After that, you'll have seasonal employment for a couple of hundred people, selling overpriced beer and hotdogs, and pointing idiots to their seats. The organization itself isn't a large employer. Certainly not when compared to the Port.

Improving the Port would also add jobs, too. And ones that pay a good, liveable wage. Career jobs. I mean, when in comes down to dollars and cents in making the decision, it's a no-brainer.

Create jobs and improve the economy, or put your stock in another sports team that overpays overgrown children to run around throwing a ball in the hoop (oh, don't worry, I have issues with all professional athletes that are overpaid).

There are other locations for the stadium, and the Port addressed that. But the powers that be ignored common sense. Again.

OT: Senator Feinstein is an idiot.

Obvious disclaimer: I support the 2nd Amendment.

Senator Feinstein, the asshat person behind the revised "Assault Weapons Ban of 2013," is a complete moron when it comes to firearms. Banning a firearm is in direct contravention of the Constitution, but obviously she's not concerned with the Constitution. Even though she swore to "uphold and defend the Constitution" upon taking her seat to represent the people of California.

I've taken to Twitter (@mbull) because, well, why not? I can't email her, she's not my legislator. But suffice to say, I've done more tweets to her recently than generic tweets. Mainly these tweets are to poke holes in her thought process, because her and her staff routinely misinterpret statistics and bend facts to fit their argument, because they know that most people won't look at the reports or raw data.

Basically, they say whatever they want because they know people are stupid and/or lazy.


Prime example- from one of her recent press conferences on her proposed bill: Assault weapons were created for a purpose and

"...my view that’s a military purpose, to hold at the hip, possibly, to spray fire to be able to kill large numbers."

Hold the phone, Rambo. Military-grade firearms aren't meant to be fired from the hip. Military-trained soldiers do not fire from "the hip" except in rare instances. That's why firearms have a stock (among other things, like sights). 

Also, Senator Feinstein is concerned that a pistol grip is a military feature. No, it's not. It's a better ergonomic way to hold a rifle. Try this- hold a .308 rifle or a M1 rifle from the shoulder like you're going to shoot a target. Then hold a rifle with a pistol grip. Which one is more comfortable? Which one requires you to cock your wrist at an odd angle?

Other inaccuracies on Senator Feinstein's part include misrepresenting statistical reports. From her webpage:

In a Department of Justice study (pdf), Jeffrey Roth and Christopher Koper find that the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban was responsible for a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders, holding all other factors equal. They write: “Assault weapons are disproportionately involved in murders with multiple victims, multiple wounds per victim, and police officers as victims.”

Actually, what Roth and Koper say is:

Our best estimate is that the ban contributed to a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders between 1994 and 1995, beyond what would have been expected in view of ongoing crime, demographic, and economic trends.  However, with only one year of post-ban data, we cannot rule out the possibility that this decrease reflects chance year-to-year variation rather than a true effect of the ban.

Guess what? Contributed is not synonymous with responsible. Not by a long shot. And just a little bit further on in the report:

We were unable to detect any reduction to date in two types of gun murders that are thought to be closely associated with assault weapons, those with multiple victims in a single incident and those producing multiple bullet wounds per victim.  We did find a reduction in killings of police officers since mid-1995.  However, the available data are partial and preliminary, and the trends may have been influenced by law enforcement agency policies regarding bullet-proof vests.

And other highlights from other reports that Senator Feinstein has on her site:

It is Premature to Make Definitive Assessments of the Ban’s Impact on Gun Crime
•  Because the ban has not yet reduced the use of LCMs in crime, we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.

In the broadest sense, the AW-LCM ban is intended to limit crimes with
semiautomatic firearms having large ammunition capacities – which enable shooters to discharge high numbers of shots rapidly – and other features conducive to criminal applications.  The gun ban provision targets a relatively small number of weapons based on outward features or accessories that have little to do with the weapons’ operation.  

Ok. So "other features conducive to criminal applications" is a retarded argument. Feinstein wants military-style weapons banned. Now the reports she quotes state the ban is intended to limit crimes committed with guns that appeal (maybe?) to criminals. Or features that are conducive to criminal activities. In which these features have nothing to do with the gun's operations. Just because it looks scary to you, or because it's what the military uses, doesn't mean it should be banned. That logic is f**king retarded.

And now we move on to the most blatant smoke and mirrors effort of Feinstein & Co. According to numerous reports, the bans on "assault weapons" and large capacity magazines (LCM) have shown, at times, a dramatic drop in either a) guns with LCMs being used/recovered or b) assault weapons being used/recovered.

Let that sink in.

Statistics show that banned items are found less frequently than expected.

No sh*t, Sherlock. I mean, it doesn't take a genius to expect that if something is banned, fewer people will be using it.

The misdirection here is subtle, if you're not thinking. These studies show that LCM and "assault weapons" are used less during the time period of the law. The studies do not correlate any data to a decrease in crime. In fact, these studies don't even acknowledge that the AWB/LCM bans had any affect on crime*. None! A ban on an item that doesn't prevent crime?! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

I have also removed "magnificent assclown" from the text herewithin, since I don't want a knock at my door from guys in black suits and shades.

*I read a handful of articles and conclusions of the reports, not all of them. I've not found a direct correlation between the AWB and decrease in total gun-related crimes.

"I want to see mountains, Gandalf. Mountains!" (LOTR:FOTR)

I've seen The Hobbit. That new movie from Peter Jackson from J.R.R. Tolkien's book The Hobbit. The origin story of Bilbo Baggins and the One Ring. I've never read the book. Luckily, I went into the movie without preconceived notions of what would be in the movie. I knew Bilbo would get the Ring, somewhere, somehow.

So let's get into the movie from a story-telling standpoint, and how it belongs in the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) universe. Warning- here be spoilers.

It's a good story. Whether or not that story needs to be spread out into three movies, I'm not sure. I haven't read the book to see what parts can be eliminated. The challenges Jackson & Co. had to deal with was how to make the movie fit, being filmed over 10 years after LOTR. Actors age, and unfortunately there are CG programs that can de-age actors. I say unfortunately because it's implemented horribly. It looks like Bilbo is wearing a latex mask, poorly painted by people not good enough to win Face/Off (TV show on SyFy).

So there's that problem. Bilbo looks horrific. Outside of the clothes, he looks totally different in The Hobbit than he did in LOTR.

I'm a fan of the series, so it somewhat is discouraging for me to say this. Jackson went Lucas. As in George Lucas. As in, OMG CGI! CGI! CGI ALL THE THINGS!!!!! There's a point in the storytelling that gets overshadowed with the technological desires. Specifically, the underground capture and escape of the company. In the escape sequence, Dwarfs (Dwarfs, mind you) are running and/or sprinting across bridges, outcroppings, falling, sliding, and doing all manner of physical things in addition to fighting a non-stop onslaught of goblins/trolls/orcs (I don't know what they are).

Really. It looks worse than the charge out of the front gate at Helm's Deep. There are parts that the CG just takes all magic out of the movie. Lots of movies do that, sadly, and someday I might get used to it. But probably not.

It's a long story, with a lack of roller-coaster between scenes. It goes from adventure to stop, to adventure, to stop, to adventure, to stop. There's little storytelling. We have snippets and flashbacks of the main leader (not Bilbo). But there's nothing about the rest of the party. They're just there. Boromir had more depth than the others in the company. And that's because of the very frequent action. It plays out like those "long falls" in movies, where the character falls down somewhere, stops momentarily, then the table they're on collapses, and they fall again, until they hit the floor, which then gives way and they keep falling. On and on and on. The Hobbit is like that.

The other thing that let me down was the vastness of Middle Earth that was portrayed in LOTR. When the company starts off, the stunning cinematography present in LOTR is avoided in The Hobbit. That might have been a case of "They've already scene it before," but I think there are enough spots to create the Middle Earth world.

Maybe all this points are based on how the pacing of LOTR was. I wouldn't deny I was expecting something more akin to the first Middle Earth trilogy.

On the positive (since most of this is negative), Martin Freeman did a good job as a hobbit. He does a good job of epitomizing the reluctant hero. Even for a thief.

Overall I'll buy the blu-ray when it comes out, eventually, just to keep the franchise complete. It's not necessarily something non-die-hards need to see right away.