Evil, thou name art CMP

I fired up the old Bad Dog email earlier today. Outlook thought, and it downloaded and it downloaded, then it presented me with email.

Spam...spam...amusing forwarded pictures...hey...hold on, it's the CMP sales update!

As we can all remember, the Civilian Marksmanship Program people are the ones responsible for my three-month emotional meltdown related to the M1 Carbines.

They announced the pricing and release schedule for the remaining carbines a while back, and I am pleased. They're keeping the prices within the realm of sanity, and spreading the releases out enough that I should be able to at least try to get my paperwork in for one of the Saginaw S'G' (Grand Rapids) guns in March 2009.

So what could they have that might interest me? I'm not buying an Underwood carbine, and although their ammo prices are nice, I can't afford those quantities. But I clicked anyway. And what to my wondering eyes should appear...the Garands are back!

Reasonably affordably, too.

Now, the limit for CMP purchasers is 12 Garands a year. I bear no ill will toward those with the means to buy one a month or 12 in one fell swoop, but I am not among them.

Just one for me, please. I fired off an email to see what new paperwork I'll have to send along with the order as a result of the move. They say ship times will probably be 90-120 days.

[sigh]

But hey - that should give me time to stockpile ammo. Which, let's be honest, is a pretty good time in and of itself.

Blatant thievery

I am totally stealing Murphy's shit, because it's cool. Check this out:



If you like his concept, the guy who does it all the time is over at Military Motivators - it'll give you a case of either the misty eye or the giggles, and, occasionally, both.

I laughed out loud when I saw Murphy's take, though, because we did that. We accumulated Beanie Babies. People back home sent them to our Soldiers, and since we were the people who hung out with locals, other soldiers in other units passed them on to us when their church groups and such sent them.

Swear to God, I participated in the distribution of Beanie Babies to every terrorist in every don't-go-there-if-you-want-to-live village in our AO. Really, once you've rolled out into Injun Country and done your basic assessment of infrastructure, atmospherics and local needs, why not hand out some stuffed animals while you hobnob with the insurgents?.

It actually took us a few months to figure out that simply driving out to any of the small, hostile villages we referred to as Mulla Jihad (all the little towns seemed to be named Mulla Something), asking questions and handing out stuffed critters was a really bad idea.

But we did have fun with the Beanie Babies. We lashed 'em to bumpers, and some of our guys would stick one in a helmet band now and again. They rode shotgun on the dash, and I think we lashed one to a radio antenna. And you know what? We all lived. Coincidence? Possibly, but I ain't gonna laugh at anybody's hood ornament. If it gets you back alive, it's good voodoo.

It ain't a base town

We haven't lived on/near a major regular military installation in years. However, the Florida location was next to an air base that, although it lacked hordes of young wardogs tearing up the bars, still supported lots of military people. And there was a sizeable military presence near our workplace in Minnesota.

So it never even crossed my mind when I took Mr. Abby's blue deltas (short sleeve khaki shirt with green stripes, worn with the blue pants with the red stripe - a combination so awful that only the Marine Corps could have dreamed it up) to the cleaner.

"Can you do these and have them ready tomorrow?" I asked.

"Sure! Do you want starch in the shirt?" replied the cheerful gal behind the counter.

"Nah, let's let him go without this time."

And I took my ticket and left. Little did I know I really should have specified that I wanted the uniform cleaned and pressed. Like, the creases really were supposed to be there.

They cleaned the pants and shirt, and pressed the creases out of the shirt. If you've seen the male Marine uniform shirts, you're fully aware of the ironing job the Mister has ahead of him tonight. It makes me glad I asked for no starch, or he'd have a creaseless shirt that was stiff as a board.

Note to self - do not assume anything about the dry cleaner.

Shots from the road

About a quarter mile from Bad Dog Central is our neighborhood little strip mall. It houses the dry cleaner I took Mr. Abby's stuff to this morning.

It also houses...well...this:



It's empty, but I cannot for the life of me imagine why the Ladies 30-Minute Workout place couldn't co-exist with the doughnut shop.

Things I'm doing

...instead of blogging this morning.

A kindly coworker leant me her copy of the new Harry Potter book, since the children took theirs home with them and Mom took hers to read on the plane. That should be finished tonight.

Also, Mr. Abby seems not to be able to drive to the dry cleaning place a quarter of a mile away, so I shall now be leaving early to do that.

I ran this morning, which was good. Downside, I didn't swim with Jack, so he shows signs of devouring something in the house while we're gone today. In sort of a detached way, I'm interested to see what that will be.

However, I did have time to zip over to CNN. Best political headline in a while: Elizabeth Edwards: Can’t make John ‘black’ or a ‘woman’

I didn't read any further - it really didn't seem to be news. Elizabeth Edwards seems like a perfectly nice woman, but I didn't really expect her to be able to alter the basic biological characteristics of another living being by sheer force of will. Then again, the use of scare quotes aroung "black" and "woman" is slightly interesting. I always thought both being black and being a woman were fairly factual states, and not really open to a lot of shading.

AH, well. Off to the dry cleaner I go.

Morning TV

I have CNN on, and some woman is talking about the weather. Goodness gracious - it appears it's going to be hot. Pretty much everywhere. It's as if it were...oh, I dunno...August???

Then they teased a story about some young girl, like ten or something, who weighs a zillion pounds and has already had a tummy tuck and...

[click]

Love that old country music satellite channel, yes I do.

Yet another reason to love Thailand

beyond just the phenomenally nice people and the fabulous scenery, there's this: Thai police officers who break rules will be forced to wear hot pink armbands featuring "Hello Kitty," the Japanese icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior officer said Monday.

How great is that? I'm pretty sure that the pervasiveness of Hello Kitty is a sign we're in the End Times, but at least the Thai authorities have found a use for that stupid image.

"Simple warnings no longer work. This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor," said Pongpat, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division in Bangkok.

Hey! Guilt and shame! I like how this Mr. Pongpat thinks.

"(Hello) Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It's not something macho police officers want covering their biceps," Pongpat said.

That's awesome. Now, if we could just the Thais past that whole child-sex-trade thing...