The Countertop Chronicles

Billy Corgan may have an ego to end all egos, but that new tune by the Pumpkins (yeah, its only half of them so what, he’s the one who counts) is just Smashing

I don’t want to fight
Every single night
Everything I want is in your light.

You and me go there
To places I don’t know to care
The spoils of all I got were left to scrounge.

Don’t let me say this,
but you’re no worse than me,
It’s crazy.

We all are real, if real ever was, it’s just because
We all feel, feel we’ve had enough,
I’m real, ‘cause someone gave us sound.

I wanna be there when you’re happy
I wanna love you when you’re sad.

Can’t stand the morning rain
Get out and take your place then
Can’t stand the blazing sun
Then close your eyes you’ll see
The angel dust.

I don’t want to be
Anything for these
A million watts of sound can’t compare.

Come along you’ll see the world

The current starts to flow and they are on.

Oh it’s a white hot soul they want,
sinful.

You’re real, if real ever was, it’s just because
We all are real, every living soul
Yes I’m real, ‘cause someone gave us sound.

Don’t break the oath
I want to leave you when you’re happy,
Don’t break this oath
I want to be there when you’re sad,
Please bring the pouring rain.

Beyond real, as real as any ghost,
It’s easy now,
I’m real, in every living soul
God gave us.

Can’t stand the blazing sun
Can’t stand the morning rain
Get out and take your place again.

I don’t want to be alone
I don’t want to be alone
I don’t want to be alone
Alone.

If it’s a white hot soul they want
It’s a black heart they’ll get.

So, I’ve got a bit of a dilema.

For the last few months I’ve been positioning myself for a decent slot with Fred’s campaign. My contact there has been rather helpful and its been exciting to watch his candidacy grow. Well, today I got my call. They asked me to send my resume in and let them know what I wanted to help with. Of course, being a candidate, they are also looking for money (and I have no problem raising money) but they also asked if I could attend an upcoming fundraiser this month.

For $2000.

And it comes the week before our summer vacation and the day before my son’s first tuition check is due.

I’m torn. I will certainly give him that amount - and raise much more - but I am hesitant to decline to give at this point even though I know I can’t afford it. He doesn’t have any other fundraisers scheduled, but maybe if I decline now and offer to help host (ie: fundraise) for another . . . .

And the Good Doctor responds!!!

Looks like I’m gonna be taking a 4 day defensive handgun course in Vegas this winter (well, once the weather cools down).

So far, so good.

For other reviews of Front Sight, visit my blog buddy Ron at Reactuate - where he’s always got a load of hot ladies too!

Yep, I’m a whore. Willing to sell myself out to the highest bidder (of course, you say, CT’s a lawyer and a lobbyist)

You may have noticed that I’ve been running an ad for the History Channel’s Tale’s of the Gun. Deal is, they asked me to run it in exchange for a free review copy of the DVD. Well, I got it and watched it last night. Won’t say which episode yet, but will say it was pretty damn good. Look for the review to come this 4th of July weekend.

Also, looks like Front Sight is offerring a free 4 day course to any established blogger who posts links up about the facility. Well, I’ve been doing this for over four years (has it been five????), so I assume that makes me a pretty established blogger.

Here’s the offer itself

How would you like to receive a certificate to attend your
choice of a Four Day Defensive Handgun, Four Day Tactical
Shotgun, Four Day Practical Rifle, Four Day Select-Fire
M16, or a Four Day Uzi Submachine Gun course at no charge
and be able to attend the course at any time in the future
that is convenient for you?

This is a $2,000, Four Day Course of your choice at my
Front Sight Las Vegas facility that you can attend at any
time in the future– at no charge!

Well, I will mail you such a certificate if you will do me
the favor of placing all the following website links on your
personal website, business website or blog.

You can copy the code for the Front Sight links from this
page:

http://frontsight.com/newsletter/front-sight-links.html

Why am I doing this? Why am I giving you such an
unbelievable opportunity to take a Four Day Firearms
Training Course at Front Sight at no cost?

The answer is very simple:

I’m giving you this opportunity in exchange for you helping
me spread all the great information on Front Sight’s
website and all the positive media coverage we have
received for gun owners. By placing the links listed above
on your personal or business website link pages, more
people will see them than ever before and that will help us
positively change the image of gun ownership faster than
ever before.

Plus, I know that once you come out and take a course with
us, you will want to take all our courses, so I am willing
to give you a $2,000 Four Day Course at no cost for helping
me spread Front Sight’s message on your websites and at
the same time, build a relationship with you that will
last a lifetime!

]After you have placed our links on your link page, simply
e-mail me a link to the page you have listed our links on
along with your name, address and a personal statement
that you will keep the links on your page for a period of
at least three years.

I will personally review your link page to verify the
links are in place and then mail you a special
certificate, that has no expiration date, to attend the
Four Day Course of your choice. The certificate is also
transferable, so if you cannot use it, you can always
transfer it to someone who can.

Please understand this offer is limited and the
opportunity to get a $2,000 Four Day Course Certificate
will expire (the certificate does not expire just the
opportunity to get the certificate) on June 30, 2007 so
don’t hesitate in placing our links on your personal or
business website.

And it you don’t have a website NOW is the time to create
one while you can get a $2,000 Four Day Course Certificate
from me to do so.

If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me
and I will assist you as I can.

Remember, this offer expires on midnight, June 30, 2007!
Take advantage of this opportunity immediately.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ignatius Piazza
Founder and Director
Front Sight Firearms Training Institute
http://www.frontsight.com
info@frontsight.com
1.800.987.7719

And here’s what he’s asked me to post.

• Front Sight Firearms Training
• Ignatius Piazza - founder of Front Sight
• Ignatius Piazza Blog
• Ignatius Piazza - in Las Vegas Mercury
• Front Sight - in The Mail on Sunday Review
• Ignatius Piazza - in Times Democrat
• Front Sight - on CNN
• Ignatius Piazza - in National Enquirer
• Front Sight - in Icon Magazine
• Ignatius Piazza - in Chicago Tribune
• Ignatius Piazza - in Gun World
• Ignatius Piazza - in San Francisco Chronicle
• Ignatius Piazza - in Fort Worth Star Telegram
• Front Sight - in Financial Times
• Front Sight - on BBC News
• Front Sight - in Gun Web
• Front Sight - in New York Times
• Ignatius Piazza - in Small Arms Review
• Front Sight - in Sierra Times
• Ignatius Piazza - in Forbes Magazine
• Ignatius Piazza - on World Net Daily
• Front Sight - in Guns & Ammo
• Front Sight - on USA Today
• Front Sight - in Santa Cruz Sentinel
• Ignatius Piazza - in Handvapen Guiden
• Ignatius Piazza - in Las Vegas Sun
• Ignatius Piazza - in Las Vegas Life
• Front Sight - in US News & World Report
• Front Sight - in London Times
• Ignatius Piazza - in Washington Post
• Front Sight - in El Pais Seminal
• Front Sight - in Pajaronian Register
• Front Sight - in Black Belt Magazine
• Front Sight - in Cybercast News Service
• Ignatius Piazza - in El Mercurio
• Front Sight - in Los Angeles Times
• Ignatius Piazza - in Playboy
• My Experience at Front Sight
• Ignatius Piazza - on Reform America

Good! I’ll be in Vegas sometime in the next year. Will let you know how it goes.

If your in DC this weekend, check out the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival.

I got a Guinness and Fish and Chips for lunch (surprisingly good, considering the nature of these types of events) and watched an acoustic Irish folk group play.

Delightful

OK,

so we all know that Courtney Love is pretty much nothing but a drugged out talentless twat.

That said, for all you kids out there, at one point in time she was making some pretty compelling music. Of course, as we’ve subsequently learned, that was simply the result of her basking in fairly regular injections of the creative juices of Curt Cobain (and much more importantly) Billy Corgan.

Violet
Lyrics and Music by Courtney Love and Eric Erlandson.

And the sky was made of amethyst
And all the stars look just like little fish
You should learn when to go
You should learn how to say no

Might last a day yeah
Mine is forever
Might last a day, yeah
Well mine is forever

When they get what they want they never want it again
When they get what they want they never want it again

Go on, take everything, take everything I want you to
Go on, take everything take everything take everything I want you to

And the sky was all violet I want it again, but more violet, more violet
Hey, Im the one with no soul
One above and one below

Go on, take everything take everything I want you to
Go on, take everything take everything I want you to

I told you from the start just how this would end
When I get what I want I never want it again

Go on, take everything take everyting I want you to
Go on, take everything, take everything I want you to
Go on, take everything, take everything I want you to
Go on, take everything, take everything I want you to
Go on take everything take everything take everything take everything

The periodic southern migration resumes. Look for this blawg to take on a distinctive southern twang over the next week.

Was gonna say posting will be light, but in light of how light its been you should probably expect some amount of uptick in posting frequency.

That said, ill be traveling light this time. Couple pairs of shorts and shirts. Well guns and ammo too, but you get my drift. No xmas gifts, dogs, or the like.

They already went down with mom.

Well, I’m under some Spam attack. Getting a ton of junk comments - and the Wordpress spam filter handles them with ease.

Was loading some .45 Colt tonight. Have a Lee Anniversary kit.

Well, one thing led to another, and the next thing I know is I have a stovepiped live primer sticking up (sideways) out of the shell holder (don’t ask).

Anyway to remove this without it going off? I don’t think so, especially considering the low cost of a new shellholder. Just not worth the time and energy and risk. In that case, is there something I can soak the primer (and shell holder) in to -deactivate it so I can throw it out???

and Harry Reid (D-NV) was the Majority Leader, and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) ran the Energy Committee, and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) ran the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Apparently, at least according to Thomas Freidman and the NY Times, I was wrong.

Well, no, not exactly. He does acknowledge they run things, albeit only in the briefest of senses.

No question, it’s great news that the Democrat-led Senate finally stood up to the automakers

but then he says this . . .

and to the Michigan senators, and said, “No more — no more assisted suicide of the U.S. auto industry by the U.S. Congress. We’re passing the first bill since 1975 that mandates an increase in fuel economy.”

Those “Michigan Senators?” That would be Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin. Oh, by the way, they are both Democrats.

There are other things that make the Senate energy effort ugly. Senate Republicans killed a proposed national renewable electricity mandate that would have required utilities to produce 15 percent of their power from wind, solar, biomass and other clean-energy sources by 2020. Twenty-three states already have such mandates. No matter. Making it national was too much for the Republicans.

Yes, it was all the Republicans. The bill passed with overwhelming bi-partisan support, but its entirely the fault of the Republicans that a quixotic effort to generate more energy than a number of minor sources could ever generate failed. I guess by Freidman’s reasoning then, its all the Democrats fault that a truly greenhouse gas free energy source - Nuclear - was not included (not to mention that if it was, this provision would have passed).

And the Senate, thanks again to the Republicans, also squashed a Democratic proposal to boost taxes on oil and gas companies that would have raised some $32 billion for alternative fuel projects.

You got that? thanks to the Republicans we aren’t going to be forced to pay more (significantly more) for gasoline. How the heck did this paragraph get through the speakpolice at the Times.

An effort by Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota to legislate a national reporting (“carbon counter”) system to simply measure all sources of greenhouse gas emissions, which would enable a cap-and-trade system to work if we ever passed one, also got killed by Republicans.

Yes, the Republicans - the minority party - were able to kill this singlehandly without any fault lying on the part of Democrats. Here’s some inside baseball for you - Klobuchar (a freshman Democrat) is a nice enough lady but she has some of the most inept staff in the entire Senate. If the Democrats were serious about doing this, they would have had someone else (anyone else with a different staff) handle the details here.

So call your House member — especially the Republicans. If you don’t, some lobbyist will.

Yep. I hope Freidman wastes his time calling Republicans. I’ll be sitting in John Dingell’s office (that would be the Democrat Chair and the House Energy and Commerce Committee) except for the 2 evenings I am spending with him at dinner this week (not to mention having ate breakfast next to him and his wife this morning at McLean Family Restaurant).

OK, so I live in McLean, VA . . . about as affluent a community as your gonna find anywhere in the country with schools generally to match. Both McLean High and its chief rival Langley High (which serves the more well to do part of McLean as well as much of the folks out near Great Falls) are two of the best high schools in the country. Students include the children of Congressmen, Lawyers, Internet CEOs, Ambassadors, and high ranking former Military Brass (who settle here to suck at the federal tit). The lower schools - are the creme de la creme of Virginia public education. The most resources. The most money. The highest scores.

Take for instance our local elementary school, Kent Gardens. It has a full time French Immersion program and seems as if nearly 95% of the teachers there are PhDs.

But then, thats part of the problem. I don’t need a fucking PhD to be my kids kindergarten teacher. Especially one that insists her Kindergarten students call her Dr. G-O (she’s got some long and confusing fucking foreign name). And don’t getr me started on the Ridlin and efforts to transform our little boys into girls (or at least effeminate homosexuals, not that there is anything wrong with that).

But now this just takes the cake!

All touching — not only fighting or inappropriate touching — is against the rules at Kilmer Middle School in Vienna. Hand-holding, handshakes and high-fives? Banned. The rule has been conveyed to students this way: “NO PHYSICAL CONTACT!!!!!”

School officials say the rule helps keep crowded hallways and lunchrooms safe and orderly, and ensures that all students are comfortable.

I think its another tool for out of touch and worthless teachers (and an asinine county administration) to pass the buck and not do their job.

Thankfully, I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Whenever I hear of rules like this, I believe it’s the first sign that a person should not be in education, where one of the duties is to teach young people not just academics but also appropriate behavior. That always has been and always will be a part of education. Rules such as this lead me to believe that a person does not want to do the hard work; he or she would rather make rules to preclude any possible problems.

The problem is, of course, that this attitude is endemic throughout Fairfax County, and so I have to spend money I could otherwise save for college to send my kid to private school.

And Cameron Diaz is an idiot.

While she explored the Inca city of Machu Picchu high in Peru’s Andes, Diaz wore over her shoulder an olive green messenger bag emblazoned with a red star and the words ‘Serve the People’ printed in Chinese on the flap, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao’s most famous political slogan.

While the bags are marketed as trendy fashion accessories in some world capitals, the phrase has particular resonance in Peru.

The Maoist Shining Path insurgency took Peru to the edge of chaos in the 1980s and early 1990s with a campaign of massacres, assassinations and bombings.

Nearly 70,000 people were killed during the insurgency.

Remember that the next time the local neighborhood leftist/socialist/communist/progressive/democrat starts sprouting off about their dreams of a utopian worker class.

But, we can’t expect the idiots in Hollywood to have the first clue about such things, can we?

Looks like Jeff’s hooked too!

As I said the other day

A great - even if somewhat politically correct - thing to do in the summer.

And this here machine takes it to the next level.

They call it The Flutterer (Since we used it to warm up, I kept calling it The Fluffer). It would shoot 3 birds out - in random directions - at a time. To play the game we would line each team of 5 up at the regular trap stations and then someone would yell PULL. The flutterer would then unleash a continuous stream of birds until all the ammo was exhausted.

Yes, that is how I went through 4 cases of ammo in an afternoon. Simply unreal experience.

Well, it wasn’t really sporting of them.

When I headed out to the midwest, amongst the 1000 rounds I shot (yes, thats 4 cases of shotgun shells) was my last 50 - a quick round of sporting clays in which I got my ass handed to me by, amongst others, this kid. He was last years Iowa State Trap shooting champion. In our 5-some was also the reigning trap champ as well as their coach and this guy in the orange shirt who kicked all of our asses. He shot a casual 47 of 50 on the hardest sporting clay course I’ve ever seen (granted, I haven’t seen that many).

As Sebastian reported, it looks like McCarthy (Bigot-NY) is the lead sponsor of COngresses latest gun control scheme. No surprise there.

Here’s the report from yesterday’s CR

By Mrs. MCCARTHY of New York (for herself, Mr. BOUCHER, Mr. DINGELL, Mr. SMITH of Texas, Mr. BISHOP of New York, Mr. CASTLE, Mr. EMANUEL, Mrs. LOWEY, Mr. MOORE of Kansas, Mr. MORAN of Virginia, Mr. PASCRELL, Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Mr. SHAYS, Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, and Mrs. CAPPS):

H.R. 2640. A bill to improve the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.