You jerks need to tell me....

when there is no music on my front page.

Because I will always by God inflict my taste in music on you.

School Spirit

I was never much for school spirit in high school.  Being firmly on the "geek" side of the social spectrum, back when that wasn't cool, meant that sports and sporting events and pep rallies and GO REBELS FIGHT WIN HURR DURR was more or less an archaic religious ritual wherein we glorified the stupid cocksuckers that made my life difficult every day.  I'm not here to whine, but my high school experiences left me with a sort of low grade PTSD according to my string of court ordered therapists...and I couldn't (and still can't) fathom the brazen idols we made out of these mouth breathing reprobates.  When our high school basketball team went to state, I bet against them in every game despite my lack of interest in gambling, just because fuck those fucking fucks.

The effect stuck around with me through my abortive attempt at college.  My family were all big cradle-to-the-grave IU fans, and me going to IU was a crowning achievement for most of them.  But I wasted it; I was too turned off of school spirit as a concept and I spent the entire time in college avoiding the collective insanity this town suffers during basketball season by cowering in my dorm room.  Oddly enough, this was regarded as kind of cool by the shady characters I was running with at the time, a collection of pseudo intellectuals and limosine liberals who thought I was just the tits. They had pretty well soured me on academia and liberalism by the time I dropped out and I left college without ever having gone to one sporting event.  Oddly, I regret that now-but probably only because I was never smooshed together in a class project with a sports hero.

As an adult, over 30 and disillusioned, I've come to appreciate sports in the tribal sense.  I root for the Colts and for the Hoosiers, for Notre Dame in football even though that has been massively disappointing lately, and I sort of understand what I didn't understand then-that athletics has a sort of primal appeal.  After all, the home team is "Us" and the away team is "Them" and all else being equal, I am much happier if 'We" are beating "Their" asses into a bloody pulp.  I enjoy the collective madness even if my participation is limited, I enjoy the easy pussy flowing like a river across the whole town, and I enjoy especially the fall from grace that comes from sports scandals busting open wide on the internet.

It has taken me a long time to overcome my instinctive loathing towards those who have done nothing to me, who merely share some vague characteristics with the retard monkeys that my high school class was begging to perform abasements for.  I enjoy sports spectatorship and I even enjoy playing sports.  But my favorite position in modern sports is still "Grand Federal Prosector" so maybe my cynicism hasn't retreated too far.

Go Hoosiers.

Contact Drills & Junior D&D

Gracie and I have been taking our hikes along the train tracks with backpacks on and doing some impromptu "Zombie Training."  We've been taking long walks for as long as she could walk; with a pack on she can walk five or six miles without stopping.  How many adults do you know that can do the same?  All bragging aside though, I wanted to discuss how our adventures tie in to our preps and overall training methods.  It is more relevant than you think.

When we go out walking, we sometimes "play zombies" which to hear means she listens to me narrate a spooky zombie story and then we participate in it.  It has a lot in common with LARPing; we physically take the actions we would take in the story.  What that comes down to is that we sneak, hide, break and shoot when necessary.  Basically, we'll be walking along and I'll make a zombie groan; if she hears one, she knows to look at me right away.  Then we go into our decision tree.

Zombies present but unseen: we sneak.  I encourage her to make as little noise as possible; I've taught her how to avoid noisy surfaces, step slowly and quietly, and stop and listen after every fourth or fifth pace. We never sneak without setting a break point; more on that later.

Zombies incoming that haven't seen us: we hide.  With the theoretical direction of the zombies in mind, we rush to get behind something or around a corner.  More sophisticated camoflage techniques will have to wait.

Zombies incoming that have seen us: we break.  "Break" is a command I have internalized in her when sneaking or just walking.  Whenever we sneak or hide, we set a break point so we know where to rush to, and on  daddy's "break" command, we rush to the chosen break point and hide there.  We also break if there are too many zombies to shoot.  From the break point, we hide, resume sneaking, shoot, or break again as needed.

Zombies incoming that have seen us: Shoot.  We "shoot them away" (She has a little toy AK that matches daddy's closely enough that I use it for house clearing drills) and then break.  This is to simulate the group's standard response to hostiles-suppress to break contact.  I teach her to get low, preferably prone, and take shots at zombies while I simulate shooting over her; this is mostly to get her out of the way during a real firefight.  However, in a few years, she can add her .22 to the verdict if strictly necessary.

How does this apply to training?  Well, on a foot bugout, my kid knows to listen for Daddy's command first and foremost; it is extremely important that I don't have to hold her hand as much if shit breaks down because I can give her orders and expect a predictable response.  Each of those orders has a purpose.  "Sneak" as our default mode means that she is gaining a workable understanding of noise discipline and she can sneak for about 500 yards without making a sound before she gets bored; this is an acceptable limit for now.  Again, how many adults could do the same?   "Break" and "Hide" means that she knows to run and hide if told to.  Although in a real scenario I'd grab her hand anyway, it is nice to know that she doesn't necessarily need it, as daddy may be grappling with a tango at the time that we break contact.  Finally, if there is no choice but to slug it out, with the "shoot" command, I can get her prone and out of the way while the adults engage over her head.

Anyway, I just wanted to describe my methods to the internets at large to get them thinking: How am I training my kids to survive?  Groups that don't do that are limited to strictly one generation.  I've been doing it and having fun with it, especially when she admonishes me that I'm stepping too loud.

Congratultions (and simultaneous condolences) Gracie: You have me as the Dungeon Master of your life.  It may drive you crazy-but you'll outlive your peers getting there.

Wherein Our Hero Acts the Pompous Jackass

So in the absence of Codex to work on (although the work of revision is apparently endless) I have been dabbling in other realms of fiction, just to keep my brain lubricated for when I start the second book.  I've been tooling around with creepypasta just because I want to work on my overwriting and the bare bones medium forces me to make every word count.  It sucks on the one hand, when all I want to do is gamble about tossing flowery phrases over my shoulder like some sort of syphillis addled satyr, but on the other hand it is a medium that is literally designed for nothing more than a flesh crawl, the horror equivalent of a cheap nut.

I've also been reading but not writing fan fiction for a project I am contemplating where I write the most atrocious troll fiction ever written for all the various fandoms I have a Hate-On for.  Fan fiction is a medium I've dabbled in before, God Forgive Me, but I really think it is the best method to skewer certain types of fiction and I think I am going to savagely enjoy it if I decide to develop it.

All of this has had my Lovecraft story suffering badly.  The problem with TCM is that I don't really have a central plot and so the whole thing suffers from lack of focus.  (Well, that and I have no idea how real detective work goes, which is why it resembles a sexy summer blockbuster more than anything by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.)  Of course, all I want to do with it is establish the Chris By-The-Throat Lovecraftverse in my head; the actual story I am writing for that universe is another project involving coyotes but some of the settings and tropes are being tested out with Everyone's Favorite Unicorn Hunters.  I'll finish the story-I just can't promise the ending will make sense or even resolve any issues; it's just psycho fluff.

Anyway, that is the story of the Dread Scumfuck's Quill and what he has been doing with it.  I'll have a section of Codex up on this blog again as a preview in honor of submitting it to the fourth publisher so far.  I'm not quite on the verge of swallowing my pride and self publishing, but I can see it without a telescope.

Goodnight, heathens.

Femslash Friday - MOAR TINKERBELLE

Just when I was about to give up on prayer, some sweet deity gives me this.

Obviously Tink is my favorite Disney character to ship.  I tried hard to nail down the source for this image but couldn't find anything to link to; it appears to be some kind of Google Images Mary Celeste.

I'll see you next week Scumfucketeers.

Get Your Squick On

Some people ask me why I have to bring up my various sexual deviancies on this blog that is, at least ostensibly, a gun blog.  You've heard a lot about it and you'll hear a lot more, especially if things heat up with a charming unicorn in our future sometime.  Part of the reason is that I like making people uncomfortable; I view it as a calling and, let's face it, that is more or less the only thing I'm any good at.

But the real answer of "Why here?  Why on your gun blog?"  That one is generally "Because I'm the libertarian you have to live with."

Do you believe in personal freedom or not?  (And personal freedom in the closet isn't freedom at all.)  I can live with you expressing your aversion to my lifestyle, but can you live with me living that lifestyle and not covering it up?  If not, despite any concurrent views we might have on the gun issue, we are on opposite sides of the culture wars.

In the end, it has become my way to preemptively weed out those that wouldn't be comfortable around me, and get a few cheap shock laughs along the way.  Nothing about that is inconsistent or hypocritical and I have made that point before.  And honestly, no one has ever come here to give me any shit about it-but maybe that is because I've made it clear from the beginning.

I'm not breaking your leg or picking your pocket-so what's the fucking problem?

Where We Need To Focus

So where do gun owners need to focus now, in this little legal battle of the bulge?

Strategically, we are and have been winning.  The facts (well, the peer reviewed ones anyway) are consistently on our side.  The court decisions have been in our favor.  State governments are getting the picture and expanding gun ownership.  This is a desperate cheap shot, the cheapest shot of all, and they were prepared for it the second there was an opening with a dog and pony show the likes of which I hope to never see again.

Final nail in the coffin for gun control?  It could be, if we make the push.  What do we need to do? I have taken the liberty of compiling a bullet list.

1. The modern debate is defined by sound bites.  The infographic and the snarky parody facebook picture, along with twitter, means that you need to fit more content into less space.  The gun banners are rallying on tumblr and twitter and trying to appear larger than they are.  We know, from every comment thread on every news article, from every six month waiting period for ATF paperwork, for every long ass line outside the sheriff's office for CCW paperwork, that we outnumber then en masse, and every echo chamber they build is one we can overwhelm them in-if we are willing to go there.

2. Internal witch hunt.  We need to either educate or publicly shame the Gun Owner Butts.  You know, the ones that will let them take your semi auto rifle as long as they can keep their precious shotgun and why do you crazies need an assault weapon anyhow?  We crucified Zumbo and that other guy that Zumboed when they stepped out of line and we need to continue doing so at every opportunity.  Let them know "Need" has nothing to do with it.

3. Full court press on the local front.  The absolute best thing we can do right now to safeguard our rights is to push our state legislature to assert their own rights.  Do you know the name of your local State Senator?  What about your Sheriff?  Make them say in public that they will stick to the various Firearms Freedom acts that have been passed.  If they won't, elect yourself a firebrand.  A libertarian president might be a pipe dream, but a libertarian sheriff could make your life a lot easier as a gun owner.

4. While I'm on the subject of party-FOR GOD'S SAKE ABANDON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.  Even if Family Guy hadn't Godwined the Republican Party into irrelevance already, the Heffalumps no longer represent small government OR gun rights.   Every crowing establishment republican that is gleefully going "This wouldn't have happened with My Guy, but you jerks had to go off into Wookieland..."  Shake him by his wise old head and scream in his face "GUN OWNERS HAVE CARRIED THE TORCH FOR YOU CRAPSACK HEFFALUMPS FOR TOO LONG AND YOU SERVE UP MITT "ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN" ROMMNEY?"  They fucking deserved to lose and you know it, so wipe that partisan grin off your face and make it happen.

5. Continue networking and training as if you are going to fight a war.  I can't promise you one won't come, whether I like it or not.  But these cowards-not so much in government but as in media-need to see that the big stick is there and what the big stick is for.